Arabella Stuart, whose name is hardly mentioned in history, except with regard to sir Walter Raleigh’s ridiculous conspiracy, whereby she was to have been placed on a throne, to which she had neither inclination nor pretensions, and by means unknown to herself, was the only child of Charles Stuart, fifth earl of Lennox, (uncle to king James I., and great grandson of king Henry VII.,) by Elizabeth, daughter of sir William Cavendish of Hardwick. She was born about the year 1578, and brought up in privacy, under the care of her grandmother, the old countess of Lennox, who, for many years, resided in England. Her double relation to royalty was obnoxious to the jealousy of queen Elizabeth, and the timidity of king James I., who equally dreaded her having legitimate issue, and restrained her from allying herself in a suitable manner. Elizabeth prevented her from marrying Esme Stuart, her kinsman, and heir to the titles and estates of her family, and afterwards imprisoned her for listening to some overtures from the son of the earl of Northumberland. James, by obliging her to reject many splendid offers of marriage, unwarily encouraged the hopes of inferior pretenders, among whom, says Mr. Lodge, was the fantastical William Fowler, secretary to Anne of Denmark. Thus circumscribed, she renewed a connection with William Seymour, grandson to the earl of Hertford, which, being discovered in 1609, both parties were summoned to appear before the privy council, where they received a severe reprimand. This mode of proceeding produced the very consequence which the king meant to avoid; for the lady, sensible that her reputation had been wounded by the inquiry, was in a manner forced into a marriage, which becoming publicly known, she was committed to close custody, in the house of sir Thomas Parry, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, at Vauxhall, and her husband, Mr. Seymour, sent to the Tower. In this state of separation, however, they concerted means for an escape, which both effected on the same day, June 3, 1611. Seymour got safely to Flanders; but his poor wife was retaken in Calais roads, and brought back to the former prison of her husband, the Tower, where the sense of these undeserved oppressions operating severely on her high spirit, she became a lunatic, and languished in that wretched state, augmented by the horrors of a prison, till her death, which occurred on the 27th of September, 1615. Thus ends the eventful story of poor Arabella, a woman, (if we may credit her portrait, prefixed to Lodge’s third volume of “Illustrations of British History,”) of commanding and elegant appearance, and undoubtedly of a firm and vigorous mind; and it is well observed by that author, that “had the life of Arabella Stuart been marked by the same criminal extravagancies, as well as distinguished by similar misfortunes and persecutions, her character would have stood at least as forward on the page of history as that of her royal aunt, Mary of Scotland.” The above letter was, probably, written from the Tower, though, I am sorry to say, there is neither direction nor superscription, and, therefore, to whom can be only matter of surmise.
I am, Sir, &c.
A.
The Loves of “The Lady Arabella.”
From an article in the “Curiosities of Literature,” illustrations may be derived to the article of our correspondent A. “The whole life of this lady seems to consist of secret history, which, probably, we cannot now recover:—her name scarcely ever occurs without raising that sort of interest which accompanies mysterious events.” She is reputed to have been learned, and of a poetical genius; yet of her poetry there are no specimens, and her erudition rests on Evelyn’s bare mention of her name in his list of learned women.
On the death of queen Elizabeth, the pope conceived the notion of restoring the papacy in England, by uniting the lady Arabella to an Italian cardinal, of illegitimate descent from our Edward IV. His holiness presumed if he qualified the cardinal for marriage, by depriving him from the priesthood, the junction of Arabella’s relationship to Henry VII., with the churchman’s “natural” pretensions, might secure the crown! Her attachment to the catholic religion is doubtful. Perhaps her disposition was rightly estimated by father Parsons: he imagined “her religion to be as tender, green, and flexible, as is her age and sex; and to be wrought hereafter, and settled according to future events and times.” The pope’s plot failed. Winwood says, “the lady Arabella hath not been found inclinable to popery.” He wrote after the “future events,” contemplated by Parsons, had “wrought.”
Another project for making the lady Arabella queen was after the enthronement of James. The conspirators requested her by letter to address herself to the king of Spain; she laughed at the letter and sent it to James, who, as regarded her, did not think of it more seriously, and so failed a second plot, wherein the name of the illustrious Raleigh was implicated.
In the year 1604, there appears to have been a third design to make her queen, though not of this country. The earl of Pembroke writes to the earl of Shrewsbury—“A great ambassador is coming from the king of Poland, whose chief errand is to demand my lady Arabella in marriage for his master. So may your princess of the blood grow a great queen.” If this was the object of the embassy, nothing came of it.
Before the death of queen Elizabeth, the marriage of the lady Arabella with her kinsman lord Esme Stuart, whom he had created duke of Lennox, and designed for his heir, was proposed by James himself, but Elizabeth “forbad the bans” by imprisoning the proposed bride, who was suspected to have favoured a son of the earl of Northumberland, against whom Elizabeth again interposed. She had other offers. “To the lady Arabella, crowns and husbands were like a fairy banquet seen at moonlight, opening on her sight, impalpable and vanishing at the moment of approach.”