[574] State Trials, ii. 765.
[575] Collier, 712, 717; Selden's Life in Biographia Brit.
[576] Carte, iii. 698.
[577] State Trials, ii. 23; Lodge's Illustrations, iii. 217.
[578] Winwood, iii. 201, 279.
[579] Id. 178. In this collection are one or two letters from Arabella, which show her to have been a lively and accomplished woman. It is said in a manuscript account of circumstances about the king's accession, which seems entitled to some credit, that on its being proposed that she should walk at the queen's funeral, she answered with spirit that, as she had been debarred her majesty's presence while living, she would not be brought on the stage as a public spectacle after her death. Sloane MSS. 827.
Much occurs on the subject of this lady's imprisonment in one of the valuable volumes in Dr. Birch's handwriting, among the same MSS. 4161. Those have already assisted Mr. D'Israeli in his interesting memoir on Arabella Stuart, in the Curiosities of Literature, New Series, vol. i. They cannot be read (as I should conceive) without indignation at James and his ministers. One of her letters is addressed to the two chief-justices, begging to be brought before them by habeas corpus, being informed that it is designed to remove her far from those courts of justice where she ought to be tried and condemned, or cleared, to remote parts, whose courts she holds unfitted for her offence. "And if your lordships may not or will not grant unto me the ordinary relief of a distressed subject, then I beseech you become humble intercessors to his majesty that I may receive such benefit of justice, as both his majesty by his oath hath promised, and the laws of this realm afford to all others, those of his blood not excepted. And though, unfortunate woman! I can obtain neither, yet I beseech your lordships retain me in your good opinion, and judge charitably till I be proved to have committed any offence either against God or his majesty deserving so long restraint or separation from my lawful husband."
Arabella did not profess the Roman catholic religion, but that party seem to have relied upon her; and so late as 1610, she incurred some "suspicion of being collapsed." Winwood, ii. 117.
This had been also conjectured in the queen's life-time. Secret Correspondence of Cecil with James I., p. 118.
[580] State Trials, ii. 769.