THE TOWER
CHAPTER XII
THE STUARTS—JAMES I.
In Nichols’s “Progresses,” that mine of information regarding James I., his court and times, it is related that James paid his first visit to the Tower on 3rd May 1603, “when His Majesty set forward from the Charter House and went quietly on horseback to Whitehall where he took barge. Having shot the bridge, his present landing was expected at the Tower stayres, but it pleased His Highness to passe the Towre stairs toward St Katherines, and there stayed on the water to see the ordinance on the White Tower (commonly called Julius Cæsar’s Tower) being in number twenty pieces, with the great ordinance on the Towre wharfe, being in number 100, and chalmers to the number of 130, discharged and shot off. Of which, all services were sufficiently performed by the gunners, that a peale of so good order was never heard before; which was most commendable to all sorts, and very acceptable to the King.”[1]
Owing to the plague then raging in London, the customary procession at the coronation was omitted, although the King rode in state from the Tower to Westminster, preparatory to the opening of his first Parliament on 15th of March 1605, as the Londoners had made their welcome for him ready. In Mr Sidney Lee’s “Life of Shakespeare,” he states that Shakespeare, with eight other players of the King’s company of actors, “walked from the Tower of London to Westminster in the procession which accompanied the King in his formal entry into London. Each actor received four and a half yards of scarlet cloth to wear as a cloak on the occasion, and in the document authorising the grant, Shakespeare’s name stands first on the list.” This is the only time that we can positively know that Shakespeare was ever at the Tower; but his frequent introduction of the fortress into his historical dramas makes it certain that he must often have visited a place so full of dramatic episodes and historical memories.[2]
Four months earlier, while staying at Wilton, news had reached James of a plot to place the crown upon the head of Lady Arabella Stuart, and a large batch of alleged conspirators were taken to the Tower in consequence. Among them was Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Cobham, and his brother, George Brooke, Thomas Lord Grey de Wilton, Sir Griffin Maskham, Sir Edward Parham, Bartholomew Brookesby, Anthony Copley, and two priests named Weston and Clarke. This conspiracy, if it deserves the name, and for which Raleigh was for the second time sent to the Tower, owed its existence to the unlucky Arabella, daughter of Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox, younger brother of Darnley, and consequently James’s first cousin on the mother’s side.
State Procession from the Tower in the days of the Stuarts.
Arabella Stuart was also related to the Tudors, and this double relationship to the reigning sovereign and to the late Queen was her greatest misfortune, and the cause of her untimely death. She appears to have been amiable, refined, virtuous, and good-looking, but of a somewhat frail physique and countenance, to judge by the excellent miniature which Oliver painted of her. That her mind was not a strong one is very evident, and one cannot be surprised that she became insane under the burden of her misfortunes.
Lady Arabella was made use of as a tool by James’s enemies, and at Lord Cobham’s trial it was conclusively proved that she had no share in any of the schemes which had the placing of herself on the throne for their object. Had it not been for her unfortunate marriage she would probably have ended her life in peaceful obscurity. This unhappy lady disliked the life of a court, and had lived principally with her grandmother, old Lady Shrewsbury, “Bess of Hardwicke,” as that much-married and firm-minded dame was nicknamed, in her beautiful homes of Chatsworth and Hardwicke Hall, in Derbyshire. In the last year of Elizabeth’s reign, Arabella, whose hand had been asked in marriage by many suitors, and amongst them by Henry IV. of France, and the Archduke Mathias, met, and fell in love with William Seymour, grandson of the Earl of Hertford, and had been kept in close confinement by the Queen in consequence.