The end of Cecil has been supposed to have been hastened by these anxieties; but probably he was worn out by the incessant cares which have pulled down other ministers besides him; for in his last moments he said to Sir Walter Cope, "Ease and pleasures quake to hear of death; but my life, full of cares and miseries, desireth to be dissolved." He had sought benefit at Bath, but without effect, and died at Marlborough on his return. Like his father, he had great talents, applied in a cold and ungenerous manner; but with all his faults he was a great minister.
We must now introduce the story of a lady whose fate was very hard—Arabella Stuart. Lady Arabella (born in 1577) was descended from Henry VII.'s eldest daughter Margaret, like James himself, and therefore was to him an object of suspicion. Her proximity to the Crown had drawn upon her the attention of both princes and conspirators at various times. When she was only about ten years of age, Elizabeth used to show her at Court as the person she meant to make her heir. This she did to provoke James, whose pretensions were nearly as odious to her as those of his mother. But in after years Elizabeth treated her with extreme severity. James, indeed, contributed to this, by asking her in marriage for his favourite, Esmé Stuart, Duke of Lennox, who was Arabella's cousin, also of the same royal descent. Elizabeth was extremely chagrined at such a proposal, reprimanded James sharply, forbade the marriage, and imprisoned the unoffending maiden. Again, Raleigh and Cobham were accused on their trial of having designed to depose James and place her on the throne in his stead. Lady Arabella did not wait to be questioned on the subject, but on receiving a letter of such purport from Cobham, immediately sent it to the king, and only laughed at the proposal. Again her name was mentioned in the Gunpowder Plot. James does not seem to have had any fear of her on these occasions. But he was more afraid of aspirants to her hand than of conspirators; and had, no doubt, settled in his mind that she should never marry. Like Elizabeth, he repulsed all offers of the kind, both from subjects and foreign princes, lest from the marriage should issue claimants to his throne. Cecil took care, on the death of Elizabeth, to secure the person of Arabella till James had been proclaimed and had taken possession of the throne. The king himself appeared disposed to act liberally towards her, except in not permitting her to marry. He settled a pension upon her, allowed her apartments in the palace, and she was recognised while the Princess Elizabeth was in her tutelage as first lady of the Court. The year after James's accession, the King of Poland sent an ambassador to demand her in marriage; but even Poland was not distant enough for royal fears. Next came a proposal from Count Maurice, titular Duke of Guelders, but James would not listen to it; and Lady Arabella, who was a clever woman, made it her policy—both under Elizabeth and James—to appear averse from any marriage whatever. She devoted herself to literature, poetry, and even theology, which became fashionable at Court from the predilections of James.
Queen Anne appears to have had a great regard for the Lady Arabella, who was handsome, of a lively and affectionate disposition, and ready to enter into all the taste for masques and pageants which distinguished her royal mistress. She was, in fact, the great ornament of the Court of James; but her attractions were only the more dangerous to her safety, considering her descent. The feeling that she excited increased James's alarm, and she was kept under the close surveillance of Elizabeth Cavendish the Countess of Shrewsbury, who was her aunt. The countess appears to have treated her with much harshness, and James to have paid her salary very badly. On the whole, no situation, with all its splendour, could be more miserable than that of Lady Arabella. No wonder, then, that she sought to escape from it. In her childhood she had been acquainted with Sir William Seymour, the son of Lord Beauchamp. They met again at Court, and their early attachment was renewed and rapidly grew into love. The Lady Arabella was now watched and harassed more than ever by her shrewish guardian Lady Shrewsbury, and matters came to such a pass between them that James was obliged to interfere. He paid up the arrears of her pension to enable her to discharge her debts, and to soothe her made her a present of a cupboard of plate, worth two hundred pounds. The chief cause of Lady Arabella's discontent was supposed to arise from her pressing necessities; but there was a deeper cause—the restraint upon her affections; and it was not long before some officious Court spy conveyed to James the alarming intelligence that there was an engagement of marriage plighted between Seymour and Lady Arabella. Seymour was also descended from Henry VII., and such a marriage in prospect was enough to terrify James beyond conception. He instantly summoned the offenders before his Council, where they were severely snubbed and forbidden to marry without the king's permission. They both promised to abandon the idea, but this was only to disarm suspicion till they could effect their marriage. In July, 1610, it was discovered that they were already wedded, and James issued an immediate order for their arrest. Seymour was committed to the Tower, and Arabella to the keeping of Sir Thomas Parry at Lambeth.
The youthful couple were so much pitied that they did not find it difficult to meet. Seymour bribed his keeper so effectually that he suffered him frequently to go out of the Tower, and he met Lady Arabella in the garden at Lambeth, and even in the house, unknown to Sir Thomas Parry. Meanwhile the friends of the young people were not inactive. They used all the means they could imagine to soften the mind of the king towards them; and the queen, who loved Arabella and received the most eloquent letters from her, praying her to exert her influence in her behalf, did her utmost to procure the liberation of her and her husband. Unfortunately, whispers of their stolen interviews reached James, and he sent instant orders to guard Seymour better, and to remove Lady Arabella to Durham, where she was to be in the keeping of the bishop. When the order reached Lady Arabella, she positively refused to go; but the officers carried her forcibly out in her bed, placed her in a boat, and rowed her up the river. In spite of her resistance, her keepers set forward on their journey; but by the time that they reached Barnet, her agitation of mind had thrown her into a fever, and the doctor declared that nothing but the discontinuance of the journey could save her life. He waited on the king himself and assured him of this. But though James confessed that carrying her away in her bed was enough to make her ill if she had been well, he was peremptory in his commands that she should proceed. To Durham she should go, he said, if he were king. To this the physician replied that the lady would obey if the king required it. "Obedience!" repeated James; "is that required?" But when his first anger was over he relented, and allowed her to remain for a month at Highgate in the house of the Earl of Essex. There she was closely watched; but on the 3rd of June, 1611, the very day that the Bishop of Durham set out northward to prepare for her reception, she effected her escape.
The plan of flight to the Continent had been carefully concerted between herself and her husband in the Tower, through the medium of two of Seymour's friends. It was arranged that Arabella should get away in male attire, and Seymour in the garb of a physician. A French vessel was engaged to lie off Gravesend to receive the fugitives, and carry them to the Continent. All was in readiness, and Arabella, says Winwood, "disguising herselfe by drawing a great pair of French-fashioned hose over her petticoats, putting on a man's doublet, a man-lyke peruque, with long locks over her hair, a black hat, black cloake, russet bootes with red tops, and a rapier by her syde, walked forth between three and four o'clock with Mr. Markham. After they had gone on foot a mile and a halfe to a sorry inne, where Crompton attended with their horses, she grew very sicke and fainte; so as the ostler that held the styrrup said that gentleman would hardly hold out to London. Yet being set on a good gelding a-stryde in an unwonted fashion, the stirring of the horse brought blood enough into her face, and so she rode on towards Blackwall."
Lady Arabella found boats and attendants ready to row her down to Gravesend, where she expected to find her husband. But Seymour had not been quite so expeditious in making his way out of the Tower. He had indeed effected it, and was on his way, but Lady Arabella, on getting on board, found that he had not arrived; and the French captain, aware of the serious nature of his commission, grew afraid, and in spite of Arabella's entreaties dropped down the river towards its mouth. Seymour, on finding that the vessel had sailed without him, engaged the captain of a collier for forty pounds to land him in Flanders.
No sooner was the news of Arabella's flight from Highgate conveyed to Court, than the utmost consternation prevailed. A messenger was despatched to the Tower to order the strictest surveillance of Seymour, but the man brought back the appalling tidings that he also had escaped. The terrors of a new conspiracy seized James and the courtiers. It was soon asserted that it was a design of the King of Spain and the Papists; that the fugitives were to be received in the Netherlands by the Spanish commander, and were to be brought to London at the head of a Catholic host.
Couriers were hurried off in all likely directions to intercept the culprits, and the Thames was astir with ships and boats to discover them on board any vessel there. In spite of this sharp pursuit, the collier put Seymour safe on shore in Flanders; but Lady Arabella was not so fortunate. The French vessel was chased and brought to in mid-channel. After some resistance it was boarded, and the unhappy princess seized, brought back, and secured in the Tower. Meanwhile James had written very angry letters to the archduke of Austria and the authorities of the Netherlands, as well as to the king and queen-regent of France, accusing them roundly of being accessory to the plot, and demanding them to send the fugitives back.
For a time Lady Arabella bore imprisonment better than could have been expected. She declared that she did not mind captivity for herself, so that her husband had escaped. Yet not the less did she appeal to the generosity of James for her liberty, nor relax her efforts to that end through the kind offices of the queen. But all such endeavours were useless: James had had too great a fright to risk anything more. He sent the lady word that as she had eaten of the forbidden fruit, she must now pay the penalty of it. All hope of moving the relentless soul of the royal pedant gradually forsook her, and then her splendidly sensitive mind gave way. She became a pitiable lunatic, and died in her prison on the 27th of September, 1615. James had thrown the Countess of Shrewsbury into the Tower at the same time with the Lady Arabella, on suspicion of being a party to the scheme; but that high-spirited lady refused to give an answer to any interrogatories put to her, notwithstanding menaces of the Star Chamber and heavy fines. On the death of Lady Arabella she was set at liberty.
