[Illustration: ALL SAINTS’.] [Sidenote: _THE UNHAPPY EARL_] The tower being so fine, of what nature was the body of the church? That we cannot know, for it was rebuilt in a classic style by Gibbs, in 1725, and has the appearance of a great pillared hall, very fine of its kind, and extraordinarily spacious. It was quite a new church, not more than twenty years old, when Prince Charlie attended mass here in the ’45. There are many fine monuments, chiefly from the older building, among them the elaborate memorial, with coroneted effigy, of the famous Bess of Hardwick, that scheming, matchmaking, imperious woman, four times wedded and widowed, whose passion for building and rebuilding rivalled that for forming matrimonial alliances. She is said to have erected her own monument, and it is likely enough she did. Her fourth marriage, in her fiftieth year, to the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, embittered the existence of that unhappy man. He was custodian of Mary Queen of Scots. The anxieties of that charge, and a sorry time of it with his wife, shortened his existence. “Two devils,” he described the Countess and the prisoned Queen, and it is likely enough he privately thought Queen Elizabeth, who was for always worrying him, a third. The quarrels of Earl and Countess were notorious, and the Bishop of Lichfield wrote him what was intended to be a comforting letter on the subject. The tenor of it ran that the case certainly was unfortunate, but, after all, this was the usual lot: “Some will say in yʳ L. behalfe tho’ the Countesse is a sharpe and bitter shrewe, and therefore likely enough to shorten yʳ life if shee should kepe yow company: In deede my good Lo. I have heard some say sa; but if shrewdnesse or sharpnesse may be a just cause of sepacion between a man and wiefe, I thinke fewe men in Englande woulde keepe their wives longe; for it is a comon jeste, yet trewe in some sense, that there is but one shrewe in all the worlde, and so ev’y man hathe her, and so ev’y man might be rydd of his wife, that wold be rydd of a shrewe.” Looking at that proud, arrogant, masterful face, upturned on the monument, you feel sorry, not only for the Earl, but for all who commerced with her. [Illustration: ST. ALKMUND’s.] [Sidenote: _A GROTESQUE STATUE_] Among the many of the Cavendish family who lie here are William, second Earl of Devonshire, and his wife and children. The Earl himself died in 1628, and he and his family were commemorated by a fearful monument, the effigies grotesquely misshapen and clad in what seem to be sheets. In 1877 the horrible thing was destroyed, but the statues themselves remain; the Earl himself, a shortened figure with wide mouth and a combined wistful, comical, and grotesque expression that puzzles the modern beholder with reminiscent feelings. Where, he asks himself, has he seen the like before? and presently the truth is borne in upon him, that the thing might well be a reproduction of the late Mr. Dan Leno.