MS. Vitellius, B. xii. ff. 70, 98), and he signed the letter to the pope urging him to grant the divorce. He also signed the articles against Wolsey in 1529, and entertained the cardinal at Sheffield Castle, on his way to London, after his arrest. It was there that Wolsey contracted the disease that proved fatal at Leicester Abbey. In 1532 Shrewsbury was again in command of an army on the Scottish borders.
The dissolution of the monasteries brought Shrewsbury many grants; among them were Wilton, Shrewsbury, Byldwas, Welbeck, and Combermere Abbeys, and the priories of Tutbury and Wenlock. When the rebellion in the north broke out in October 1536, Shrewsbury promptly raised forces on his own authority, and ‘his courage and fidelity on this occasion perhaps saved Henry's crown’ (Froude, iii. 109). The spread of the rising was checked by his action, and time given for the royal levies to arrive. Shrewsbury served through 1536 and 1537 under the Duke of Norfolk, and next to the duke was mainly instrumental in the suppression of the revolt. Under an act of parliament, 28 Henry VIII, he was considered, as an absentee, to have forfeited the earldom of Waterford and his Irish estates. He died, aged 70, at his manor of Wingfield, Derbyshire, on 26 July 1538, and was buried at Sheffield Castle (Vincent and other peerage historians assign his death to 1541). His will, dated 21 Aug. 1537, was proved on 13 Jan. 1538–9.
Shrewsbury married first, about 1486, Anne, daughter of William Hastings, first baron Hastings [q. v.], by whom he had eleven children. The eldest son, Henry, died an infant, and the second, Francis Talbot, fifth earl of Shrewsbury [q. v.], is separately noticed. He married, secondly, about 1512, Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of Sir Richard Walden of Erith, Kent. By her, who died in July 1567, he had issue one daughter, Anne (d. 1588), who married as her second husband William Herbert, first earl of Pembroke of the second creation [q. v.]
[For fuller details of Shrewsbury's career see Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vols. i–xiii, which contain some two thousand references to him. Many letters from him are extant among the Cotton MSS. in the Brit. Museum, and in the Talbot Papers which were presented to the College of Arms by Henry Howard, sixth duke of Norfolk. These papers were largely used by Lodge in his Illustrations of British Hist. See also Campbell's Materials for the Reign of Henry VII, Gairdner's Letters and Papers, Henry VII, and Andreas's Historia (all in Rolls Ser.); Rymer's Fœdera; Rolls of Parl. vol. vi.; State Papers Henry VIII; Cals. of Rutland and Hatfield MSS. (Hist. MSS. Comm.); Polydore Vergil's Historia; Hall's Chron.; Wriothesley's Chron. (Camden Soc.); Herbert's Life and Reign of Henry VIII; Burnet's Hist. of the Reformation; Pocock's Records of the Reformation; Cavendish and Fiddes's Lives of Wolsey; Archæologia, iii. 213, 219, xiii. 265, xxxi. 167, 173; Peerages by Collins, Burke, Doyle, and G. E. C[okayne]; Hunter's Hallamshire; Brewer's Reign of Henry VIII; Froude's Hist. of England (in the index to which Shrewsbury is confused with his son, the fifth earl).]
TALBOT, GEORGE, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury (1528?–1590), elder son of Francis Talbot, fifth earl [q. v.], by his first wife, Mary (d. 1538), daughter of Thomas Dacre, second lord Dacre de Gillesland, was born about 1528. He was present at the coronation of Edward VI, took part in the invasion of Scotland under the Protector, Somerset, was sent by his father in October 1557 to the relief of the Earl of Northumberland pent up in Alnwick Castle, and would seem to have remained for some months in service upon the border. Camden states that he had a force of five hundred horsemen under his command. He succeeded to the earldom on 25 Sept. 1560, was elected K.G. on 22 April 1561, and was appointed lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Staffordshire, some four years later. Upon the death of his first wife, Gertrude, eldest daughter of Thomas Manners, first earl of Rutland [q. v.], he allowed himself, in 'an evil hour,' to be fascinated by the charms of the celebrated 'Bess of Hardwick' [see Talbot, Elizabeth], whom he married in the early part of 1568. In the latter part of the same year the earl repaired to the court, where, in November, the queen assured him that 'er it were longe he shuld well perseve she dyd so trust him as she dyd few.' This assurance assumed a concrete form in December, on the 13th of which month Shrewsbury wrote to his wife, 'Now it is sarten the Scotes quene cumes to Tutburye to my charge.' In the choice of Shrewsbury, Elizabeth evinced her usual good judgment. He was a nobleman of the very first rank, of good character, and 'half a catholic.' There was therefore an appearance of respect to Mary in the choice of such a man to be her keeper. He had several houses and castles in the interior of the kingdom, in any of which she might be kept with little danger. His immense property would minimise the demands upon the royal treasury–some 2,000l. a year being all that was allowed the earl for maintenance; and finally he 'had a
