One day at Court, calling Arabella to her side, and presenting her to Madame Chateauneuf (the French Ambassadress), she bade the lady look well at that child. ‘She is not so unimportant as you may think. One day she will be even as I am, and be lady mistress.’ This speech was doubtless intended to spite the King of Scotland, rather than to be believed by those who heard it. M. and Madame Chateauneuf were delighted with the child, observing that ‘she spoke Latin, French, and Italian well, sufficiently handsome in the face, and without doubt the lawful heritress of the kingdom, if James of Scotland be excluded.’
The grave old Lord Burghley loved the child, and made much of her at supper, on the first night of her presentation at Court.
Years passed on, and Arabella was made the centre of intrigues of all kinds, both abroad and at home; and she became the object of jealousy and suspicion. The Queen’s fury was roused by hearing her young kinswoman had betrothed herself to William Seymour, grandson to the Earl of Hertford, and the unfortunate Katherine Grey.
The alliance was most distasteful to Elizabeth, who was inimical to the whole house of Hertford. Arabella was arrested, and Her Majesty, much perturbed, fell sick; it was even reported that the illness was of the Lady Arabella’s contriving! Alluding to this, she writes most pathetically:—‘While we wash our hands in innocency let the grand accuser, and all his Ministers do their worst. God will be on our side, and reveal the truth to our most gracious Sovereign.’
Elizabeth died. James succeeded, and Cecil spoke to him in behalf of his cousin, then a kind of honoured prisoner at Wrest House, the seat of the Earl of Kent, who had married a Talbot. Cecil besought and advised the King to deal gently with her, and she was set at liberty, but went by her friend’s advice to dwell at Sheen, with my Lady Northampton, whence she wrote many letters petitioning for some allowance suitable to her birth. James at first showed her much favour, and appointed her nominally governess to his daughter, Princess Elizabeth. She accordingly set out for Welbeck to meet the Queen (Anne of Denmark) and her retinue on her way from Scotland. Sir Charles Cavendish (Arabella’s uncle) gave the royal travellers a royal welcome at his house of Welbeck with revellings and maskings, and beautiful girls dressed as nymphs, and the goddess Diana, who came to bid the Queen welcome, ‘and proved to be no other than the Lady Arabella.’
Bess of Hardwicke had deputed her granddaughter to invite Queen Anne to Chatsworth, but to the old lady’s disgust her invitation was not only rejected but waived in favour of her deadly enemy, her step-son and son-in-law, Lord Shrewsbury.
Princess Elizabeth was charmed with her governess, and was never so happy as in her company. At Queen Anne’s first drawing room, we are told that Arabella was present with her aunt, Lady Shrewsbury, and that ‘both were sumptuous in apparell, and exceeding curious in jewellery.’ From letters preserved at Longleat we find that Lord Shrewsbury was in constant correspondence with his niece, urging her to prudence, warning her of pitfalls around her, in consequence of her being made the unwilling and unconscious nucleus of political plots, and her answers invariably testify to her sense and her affection for her counsellor. She was at Woodstock with the Court during the Plague, and writes delightful letters thence, which we regret not having the space to insert. Her own views were in no ways dazzled by Court life; her playful description of a Dutch lady who came over from the Duchess of Holstein to learn the English fashions, must perforce be inserted:—‘She hath been here twice from Oxford, and thinketh every day long till she be at home, so well she liketh her entertainment, or loveth her own country. In truth, she is civil, and therefore cannot but look for the like which she brings out of a ruder country. But if ever there were such a virtue as courtesy at the Court, I marvel what is become of it, for I protest I see little or none of it but in the Queen, who speaketh to the people as she passeth, and receiveth their prayers with thankful countenance.’
Another letter bemoans the loss of time which the royal pair lost in their immoderate passion for hunting, to the great disgust of many courtiers, who were not equally enamoured of the noble science. She says: ‘I could believe I had become a child again; we are seeing the ladies-in-waiting take delight in the most frivolous games, such as “Arise up, pig,” and the like.’
She was also much disgusted at the manner in which the dead lioness, the late Queen, was kicked at. Small as was the pittance allowed her, she was expected to offer Christmas and other seasonable gifts to Her Majesty Queen Anne, and others.
Poor Arabella, considerate and wise, whose leisure was spent, ‘scant as it was, in reading of service and preaching.’