In a letter to Lord Leicester, Shrewsbury calls his wife "his wicked and malicious wife," and accuses her and "her imps," as he irreverently styles the whole brood of Cavendishes, of conspiring to sow dissensions between him and his eldest son. These disputes being carried to Elizabeth, she set herself with heartless policy to foment them in every possible way. She deemed that her safety consisted in employing one part of the earl's family as spies on the other. In some signal quarrel about the property round Chatsworth, she commanded the earl to submit to his wife's pleasure: and though no "tame snake" towards his imperious lady, as St. Loo and Cavendish had been before him, he bowed at once to the mandate of his unfeeling sovereign--such was the despotism and such the loyalty of those days. His reply, however, speaks the bitterness of his heart. "Sith that her majesty hath set down this hard sentence against me to my perpetual infamy and dishonour, that I should be ruled and overrunne by my wife, so bad and wicked a woman; yet her majesty shall see that I will obey her majesty's commandment, though no curse or plague on the earth could be more grievous to me." * * "It is too much," he adds, "to be made my wife's pensioner." Poor Lord Shrewsbury! Can one help pitying him? Not the least curious part of this family history is the double dealing of the imperious countess. While employed as a spy on Mary, whom she detested, she, from the natural fearlessness and frankness of her temper, not unfrequently betrayed Elizabeth, whom she also detested. While in attendance on Mary, she often gratified her own satirical humour, and amused her prisoner by giving her a coarse and bitter portraiture of Elizabeth, her court, her favourites, her miserable temper, her vanity, and her personal defects. Some report of these conversations soon reached the queen, (who is very significantly drawn in one of her portraits in a dress embroidered over with eyes and ears,) and she required from Mary an account of whatever Lady Shrewsbury had said to her prejudice. Mary, hating equally the rival who oppressed her and the domestic harpy who daily persecuted her, was nothing loath to indulge her feminine spite against the two, and sent Elizabeth such a circumstantial list of the most gross and hateful imputations, (all the time politely assuring her good sister that she did not believe a word of them,) that the rage and mortification of the queen must have exceeded all bounds.[48] She kept the letter secret; but Lady Shrewsbury never was suffered to appear at court after the death of Mary had rendered her services superfluous.