REPORT. XXVli 
is one of the unfortunate Mary Stuart, who for seventeen years 
was in the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury. It is a full length 
in a mourning habit, with a white cap and gauze veil peculiar to 
her, taken in the thirty-sixth year of her age, and the tenth of her 
captivity, and bearing the date of 1578. It has been asserted 
that Mary Stuart never was at Hardwick, and I am not prepared 
to say that she spent any length of time here; but that she occa- 
sionally came on a visit with the Earl and Countess I fully 
believe, and there is no evidence that I know of to prove the 
contrary. There are several pictures of the Countess taken at 
different periods of her life, and one in particular, where she 
appears in a black dress, with a string of five or six rows of pearls 
hanging over it, will claim your attention. Left for the fourth 
time a widow, she spent the latter part of her long life in building ; 
and the work she accomplished is indicated by the original ac- 
counts, which show that not a penny was expended without the 
sanction of her own name. The Countess was afflicted with what 
is often called a ‘building mania ;” and Horace Walpole men- 
tions a prediction believed in the neighbourhood, that the 
Countess would not die so long as she continued to build. In 
an old parchment roll of the events which occurred in the county 
of Derby, is this record :—‘‘ 1607. The old Countess of Shrews- 
bury died about Candlemas—a great frost this year.” So the 
masons could not work, and the end came. She died at Hard- 
wick, and was buried in the church of All Hallows, Derby, where 
a fine mural monument with recumbent figure, erected in her 
lifetime, marks the place of her interment. Another interesting 
character, whose early life was spent at Hardwick, is the unfor- 
tunate granddaughter of the Countess of Shrewsbury, the Lady 
Arabella Stuart. Unknown to her husband, the Countess had 
married her favourite daughter, Elizabeth Cavendish, to Lord 
Lennox, younger brother of the murdered Darnley, and conse- 
quently standing in the same degree of relationship to the Crown. 
The Queen, in her consternation, ordered the old Countess to 
the Tower, from which she was afterwards released only to meet 
with another grief. The young Lady Lennox, while yet in all her 
