She was the mother of Arbella Stuart, a close relation to the English and Scottish thrones.
[1] Bess was a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth I and became one of the wealthiest women in England.
Queen Elizabeth I became enraged at the two mothers for arranging such a controversial marriage without her permission.
The Queen sent Elizabeth's mother[citation needed] and mother-in-law, Margaret Douglas, to imprisonment in the Tower of London.
The Earl of Shrewsbury wrote to William Cecil that his wife, Bess of Hardwick, "takes my daughter Lennox's death so greivously that she neither does nor can think of anything but of lamenting and weeping.