Her husband and his father were currying favour with James, but seemed to have troubled themselves little about the poor prisoner, though by some it was believed Seymour wrote to her constantly, and that his letters were intercepted. She grew weaker in body and more feeble in mind, until on the 25th of September, says Nichols, ‘that ill-fated and persecuted lady, Arabella Seymour, daughter of Charles Earl of Lennox, and cousin-german of Henry Darnley, father of King James, died in the Tower of London.’
In the dead of night the daughter of a line of kings was carried along the black river to Westminster Abbey, and there deposited in the royal vault beneath the coffin of Mary Queen of Scots. All pomp and ceremony were forbidden, the Burial Service was read by stealth as over some felon’s grave, not for any fault of her own, but because ‘to have a great funeral for one dying out of the King’s favour would have reflected upon the King’s honour.’
A sadder page can scarcely be found in England’s history, and among many crimes which blacken the fame of James Stuart, perhaps the slow murder of his unhappy kinswoman is the worst.
The terrible traces of suffering and unmistakable signs of imbecility exhibited in this portrait, lead to the conjecture that it must have been painted during her confinement in the Tower.
No. 88.
JAMES DUKE OF YORK, AFTERWARDS
JAMES II., KING OF ENGLAND.
By Sir Peter Lely.
BORN 1633, DEPOSED 1688, DIED 1701.