In ‘Arbella Stuart: A Rival to the Queen’, David N Durant writes that there was a portrait of Lady Jane Grey in the 1566 Chatsworth inventory. He also states that, ‘in 1789 John Byng in his Torrington Diaries noted one’ (Durant,1978).
In ‘Bess of Hardwick: Portrait of an Elizabethan Dynast’, David N Durant writes about Bess’s portrait of Lady Jane Grey. ‘This illusive portrait has vanished from Hardwick. Bess had one at Chatsworth in the 1566 inventory but non is mentioned in 1601 at Hardwick. When Byng made his visit and reported this in the Torrington Diaries (1789) he found a portrait of Lady Jane Grey, yet none is given in the 1792 inventory. However, ‘Lyson’s Derbyshire (1817) lists amongst the portraits at Hardwick one of ‘Lady Jane Grey’.’ (p.262)
Mary Lovell writes, Bess ‘spent the remaining months of 1565 at Chatsworth, where, in the New Year, an inventory was taken. In My Lady’s Chamber: 3 tables, on which (pictures) of; Sir William Cavendish, my master (Sir William St Loe,) another of my lady (Bess), and another of my Lady Jane (Grey).’ p.193
The 1601 inventories of the three properties belonging to Bess of Hardwick (Chatsworth and the New and Old Buildings at Hardwick), do not list a portrait of Lady Jane.
The entry for Saturday 13 June 1789 by John Bying in his Torrington diaries, states that there is a portrait of Lady Jane Grey at New Hardwick Hall.
This painting is referred to in the following:
The Torrington Diaries 1781-1794 (Volume 2) edited by C Bruyn Andrews
Arbella Stuart: A Rival to the Queen by David N Durant
Bess of Hardwick: Portrait of an Elizabethan Dynast by David N Durant
A Queen of a New Invention: Portraits of Lady Jane Grey Dudley, England’s ‘Nine Days Queen’ by Stephan Edwards
Bess of Hardwick, Mary Queen of Scots, and the Cavendishes: Cultural Legacies of Captivity by Lisa Hopkins
Devices & Desires: Bess of Hardwick and the Building of Elizabethan England by Kate Hubbard
Bess of Hardwick: First Lady of Chatsworth by Mary S Lovell
