Arbella

by Sarah Gristwood

  His initial tactic of pretended complicity had obviously worked to a degree. ‘Sir, as you were a private person I found all humanity and courtesy from you,’ she wrote, before warning him in her final epistle: ‘If you come as a commissioner, consider what power one mortal creature how great soever hath over another how miserable soever. If as a friend, deserve that holy name before you take it upon you.’ She had come to repent ‘the trust I have reposed in your sincerity and fair promises’, and in a bitter postscript to one note, she added: ‘I deal better with you than you with me for I do not torture you with expectation nor promise better than I will perform.’ But she had become aware that her letters were received with scant sympathy.

  The longest letter of all was the one she wrote to the wretched Brounker on 9 March, Ash Wednesday; a holy day that had grim significance for Arbella. The earl of Essex had been executed on Ash Wednesday. The first gloomy months of the year were over-full of melancholy anniversaries: the deaths of her mother and Lennox grandmother; the execution of the queen of Scots.

  Throwing back at him Brounker’s opinion which ‘I took so very unkindly at your hands, that the more I writ, to the less purpose it was’, she conceded (or perhaps one should say boasted) that she ‘might utter more welcome matter in 2 words’. But gratifying her correspondent with a simple communication was not her goal, she declared frankly. It would, she assured Brounker, be a great mistake to think

  that my troubled wits167 cannot discern how unlookt for, how subject to interpretation, how offensive every word [of this letter] will be even to you … [But] I determined to spend this day in sending you the ill favoured picture of my grief … being allowed no company to my liking and finding this the best excuse to avoid the tedious conversation I am bound to, I think the time best spent in tiring you with the idle conceits of my travelling mind till it make you ashamed to see into what a scribbling melancholy … you have brought me … If you leave me till I be my own woman … then your trouble and mine too will cease.

  Sure enough, the letters Arbella wrote after her release from Hardwick were of no more than usual length or fantasy; indeed, the single theme most often reiterated is guilt at having written briefly and tardily. But this was a final verbal fling before the stream of her self-revelation dries up forever; a seven-thousand-word jeu d’esprit. ‘I will not excuse my prolixity,’ she ended her epistle. ‘God forgive me my excess – and [you] your defects in love and charity.’

  It is important to admit – to stress, indeed – that by this stage the letters have indeed passed the bounds of rationality. The allusions culled from Arbella’s extensive reading in the classics are tossed into the screeds she wrote in these few days with a randomness that suggests a mind at once capable of processing a vast range of material with in-credible speed, and incapable of so harnessing that material as to interact successfully with another mentality. She was rummaging through the bottom drawer of her own particularly cultured history. One passage in the letter of 4 March, about her supposed lover being ‘transported by some Archimedes168 to Newstead as miraculously especially to himself as certain Romans (those Romans were full of unsuspicious magnanimity) were hoisted over the walls of the besieged Syracuse’, ran on for some dozen more lines before the sentence ends, without ever pausing to explain the allusion in any way. En route it took in: a sideswipe at the court (‘you courtiers are wonderfully hardhearted and slow of belief’); a boast as to her own discretion; a threat as to her lover’s power; and a promise that she ‘will not, no I assure you I will not, no I will be sworn (if you administer the oath) I will not if I can choose see him.’

  Perhaps the staggering length of the Ash Wednesday missive is best seen in the context of the events in London, and that strange sense of a time out of kilter – that things could end at any minute, or could go on indefinitely – which attends any prolonged deathbed ceremony. What is more, Arbella was writing in the secret knowledge that she had planned to escape from Hardwick the very next day. She hoped and believed that by the time her extraordinary letter reached Brounker, she would be free and miles away. This means that in the practical sense, it was unnecessary. But Arbella’s aim in writing had long passed beyond mere practicality. Communication with the court, with an objective hearer, was no longer her primary aim. The letters had by now a double life: as communiqué, and as diary.

  Arbella was writing for her own relief. ‘My weak body and travelling mind must be disburdened soon or I shall offend my God’ – presumably by suicide. She was wallowing in gloom:

  I have conquered169 my affection. I have cast away my hopes, I have forsaken all comfort, I have submitted my body and fortune to more subjection than could be commanded, I have disposed of my liberty … What harm can all the world do me now? … My servants shall be taken from me, then shall I be no more troubled with their troublesome importunity and inquisitiveness. I shall hear of my friends’ trouble and by comparison of my own think it nothing.

  But she had good reason. In this Ash Wednesday letter Arbella used the metaphors of violence with a frequency that suggests she had been threatened with brutality. ‘I shall spit my tongue in my torturer’s face … lay the axe to the root of the tree in time and let me lose my head … this concealed truth which torture whom you list you shall never find.’ Indeed, she mentioned threats openly: ‘my head … which her Majesty hath threatened to take’. She remained defiant: ‘I am deaf to commandment and dumb to authority.’ But her nerves were wearing thin. ‘For the passion of God let me come to my trial in this my prison170 instantly.’

  Thus she came to the real point. Demanding the right to a trial, Arbella Stuart went on to make what amounts to a plea for personal liberty and the right to love. ‘When it shall please her Majesty to afford me those ordinary rights which other subjects cannot be debarred of justly, I shall endeavour to receive them as thankfully now as if they had been in due time offered,’ the letter launched out hardily. She spoke of those who ‘may thank themselves if they have lost all the interest of voluntary obedience they had in me’. ‘But [if] I am grown a woman and therefore by her Majesty’s own saying am not allowed the liberty of granting lawful favours to princely suitors, how then dare subjects justify their most justifiable affections?’

  It is in this letter that Arbella uttered her memorable commitment to her own identity: ‘When all is done I must shape my own coat according to my cloth, but it will not be after the fashion of this world, God willing, but fit for me.’ With the war of words about to take a different turn – with a physical escape from Hardwick planned – she hoped soon to be able to arrange her own destiny.

  ‘Disorderly attempts’

  PERHAPS AFTER ALL, in all those years at Hardwick, Arbella had been cobbling together more than her stitchery; had indeed done, as she so casually mentioned, ‘very many things’ without the knowledge of her watchful guardians. In January 1603, Brounker had noted Henry Cavendish as present in the district around Hardwick and in company, ominously, with a notorious Catholic, Henry Stapleton. From Bess’s viewpoint, the Catholic bias of the neighbourhood was a threat. She had written long ago to Lord Burghley of ‘one Harrison171, a seminary that lay at his brother’s house a mile from Hardwick … if any such traitorous and naughty persons (through her Majesty’s clemency) be suffered to go abroad … they are the most likely instruments to put a bad matter in execution.’ Arbella, in the years of her confinement, may have come to see their presence rather as an opportunity.

  Now, both Henry Cavendish and Stapleton were back near Hardwick, lodging at an inn in Mansfield nearby. With them were some thirty or forty mounted men, hidden in small groups around the country – ‘some of them with “dags” [daggers]’, Bess observed coolly later. One man had a case of pistols. Another rider was observed by two local men as having ‘a little pillion behind his saddle, which he hid with his cloak’. Clearly, the party hoped to carry some lady away.

  But before Arbella could be mounted upon the pillion, the conspirators’ firs
t task was to spirit her outside Hardwick. The house may have been built in the newest and most luxurious style, but, notwithstanding the elegant golden façade, its high walls and enclosed courtyard (accessible only through the porter’s lodge) fulfilled the function of a fortress.

  On 9 March, the day of Arbella’s Ash Wednesday letter, Cavendish and Stapleton received an evening visit from Arbella’s page, Richard Owen. On the next day, the two men were to ride to the gates of Hardwick where Arbella, on some pretext, would join them. Early in the morning of 10 March the two leaders rode into the hamlet of Ault Hucknall, half a mile from the edge of the Hardwick estate. They had with them just eight men, the rest being concealed in the wooded land thereabouts. John and Matthew Slack,172 two marksmen employed by a local resident, Mrs Ireton, claimed they saw several hundred men on horseback, but they were probably exaggerating – very pardonably.

  Cavendish and Stapleton asked the Slacks to walk the horses while they went across to the vicarage and asked for the church key, hoping from the height of the steeple to see when Arbella had come safely through the gates. But the vicar denied them access and the two men turned discomforted away, remarking with sarcasm that Arbella would thank him for their good entertainment.

  The appointed hour had passed by now, and Arbella had not come to their rendezvous. Bess, later that night, reported what had happened with a flatness that purposely mulcts the event of much of its nervous tension. ‘At about twelve of the clock Arbell came out of her chamber, went towards the gates (as she said) intending to walk, but being persuaded it was dinner time, did stay.’ Arbella had that morning received and burned a letter from London, presumably containing instructions, as Bess discovered subsequently.

  Shortly afterwards, Owen and ‘old Freake’, Arbella’s embroiderer, brought a letter to Henry Cavendish at Ault Hucknall. ‘She cannot come out this day,’ Henry Cavendish was heard to say, before the cavalcade mounted up and rode away. The Slacks heard one of the serving men explain: ‘We cannot now come to our purpose, but about a fortnight hence we must come again when these blunders are past, but we must not come with so many near the house.’ But Arbella’s uncle seems to have decided to make one last attempt there and then.

  Bess described the scene in the report she wrote to the privy council: ‘At about two of the clock in the afternoon, there came to my gates my son Henry Cavendish and one Mr Stapleton.’ The rest of the party waited, ‘well weaponed’, a quarter of a mile away.

  For that Arbell173 was desirous to speak with my bad son Henry I was content to suffer him to come into my house and speak with her, rather than she to go to him, but sent him word not to remain here above two hours. I would not suffer Stapleton to come within my gates, for I have disliked him of long for many respects …

  Arbell and Henry Cavendish had not talked as I think a dozen words together but they both came down and offered to go out of my gates. One of my servants entreated them not to offer to go out until they had my consent. Arbell seemed unwilling to stay, yet at length by persuasion did stay until word was brought to me. When I understood of it, I sent to her that I did not think it good she should speak with Stapleton, and wished her to forbear it … She asked if she were a prisoner and said she would see, and so went to the gates and would have gone out, but was not suffered …

  It is ninety long paces from the doors of the house to the porter’s lodge, and Arbella must have felt eyes upon her every inch of the way. And in the lodge, looking through the gates, Arbella could only give to Stapleton ‘some vain, idle words of salutation’, as Bess put it dismissively. The dowager sent down messages to Stapleton that he should go. Then, when he ignored them, she sent others, for all the world as if he were an importunate dog she were trying to shoo away. Bess also forbade Henry Cavendish from returning the next day, as Arbella had asked; but her granddaughter did not give up so easily. ‘He was no sooner gone out of my gates but she made herself ready to walk abroad, which I thought not convenient she should do and so she stayed.’ Bess was beginning to repeat her words: for an old lady, it had been a tiring day.

  The reader of this acount has the sense of Arbella, and indeed even Henry the experienced soldier, fatally wavering in the face of Bess’s habitual authority – authority at once forceful and moral. Forty armed men would probably have been enough to storm the house by force, but its chatelaine was a mother and grandmother, surrounded by well-known and beloved servants who would inevitably have been injured in the fray. The reader cannot but be aware, too, of Bess’s repeated use of the possessive – ‘my house’, ‘my gates’ – and the affront offered to Arbella’s once almost royal dignity. Bess had shown herself mistress of the day. She doubted, though, whether she could win another such: Arbella ‘being here one day, I fear I shall not have her here the morrow if I should suffer her but to go without my gates. In my opinion it were better she were removed farther from the north which way I fear she would go.’ The north had always been rebellious, Catholic territory. If Arbella were sent south, she would not ‘be acquainted with so many to help her as she is hereabouts’, Bess suggested practically.

  Bess’s messenger rode post haste to the court. But Arbella had her own mouthpiece in the south – George Chaworth, the Hardwick servant who had so chivalrously offered to do her service. Receiving word from Arbella on 15 or 16 March, he rushed to take her message round to Brounker. But he found his quarry reluctant to speak with him; the official version of latest events at Hardwick had probably got to him first.

  Returning to see Brounker the next day, Chaworth was told the government officer had left town, presumably heading for the midlands. He set off in pursuit. ‘I better bethought me of Sir Henry going from court against his promise made to me,’ Chaworth wrote to Arbella. ‘I presently departed,174 posted with all speed to the house at Lambeth – he was gone from thence post as they told me into the country – I followed him to know the cause of his sudden going – I overtook him, and as I perceived against his will.’ Chaworth pursued the unhappy Brounker on all points, since ‘if it be my folly, my love to your honour made me foolish.’ As so often, it is hard not to feel sorry for the government envoy.

  In the face of Chaworth’s protective questions, Brounker denied that there was any hurt meant to Arbella. ‘I feigned to him that I had matters reported of his going down … as that he went to fetch your honour to the Tower – or to London, or to procure your honour’s straight keeping in the country and hard usage from my old lady, all which he with solemn protestations denied.’ Brounker told Chaworth, indeed, that he wanted nothing more to do with Arbella, ‘because he hath you not at any certainty but in a hundred minds and that you say and unsay and diverse several things’. But the real reason for Brounker’s mission was not hard to see: ‘to give charge that you be not suffered to pass through the country, or to give charge to the gentlemen in the country or else northwards that none help your honour away’. These, Chaworth adds self-deprecatingly, ‘be only my foolish conjectures’. But he was probably in part right, ‘for as I hear the post northward be stopped already.’ Indeed, his own communication was intercepted, and forwarded by Brounker himself to Cecil.

  While still in London, Chaworth had seen his cousin Bridget Carr, a gentlewoman of the queen’s privy chamber, entreating her to speak to the queen – ‘she is sick, though courtiers say contrary.’ In this he was certainly right: on 11 March Elizabeth had lapsed into ‘a heavy dullness’ and ‘unremovable melancholy’. She had, as the French ambassador reported, lost the will to live. Her counsellors begged her on their knees to go to bed, but ‘if you were in the habit of seeing such things in your bed as I do when in mine, you would not persuade me to go there,’ she told one well-wisher, chillingly.

  Every communication now carried an added burden of urgency. Chaworth sent his letter to Arbella by a messenger to whom he gave ‘straight charge to post night and day without rest’, he added excitably. But the messenger would have had a hard job to beat Brounker, who arrived back at Hardw
ick on 17 March, having spent a mere two and a half days on the way.

  Brounker was indeed armed with a warrant invoking all the Derbyshire authorities to suppress ‘unlawful assemblies and disorderly attempts’. He at once sent for Henry Cavendish – but, as Cecil had ordered, tactfully, ‘by friendly letter’. Henry was given a generous seven days to prepare his bags to travel to London for further questioning. The whole scenario was to be played pianissimo; but ‘I have an eye upon Mr Cavendish, that if he may exceed his appointed time, he may know the force of your lordships’ commands,’ Brounker assured the council grimly. Everyone was interviewed, down to the villagers – except for Stapleton, who had fled. Brounker naturally refused Arbella’s request that she should be present at these examinations.

  He carried a letter175 from the council to Bess, cautiously regretting that Arbella’s thoughts were ‘still no better quieted’ and instructing – since the queen (in whose name they still acted) would not hear of her removal from Hardwick – that ‘you will deal as mildly with her in words as you can’. Her Majesty would have Arbella ‘barred of no thing fit for her … as long as those discreet friends of hers, whom you assign to accompany and attend her, can keep her within bounds of temper and quietness … Fashion all things as the young lady might not mislike her habitation.’ In other words: just keep her quiet. That no more drastic action was taken against the conspirators can be put down to the extreme sensitivity of the situation, with Elizabeth’s death expected any day. If the queen did die, then Brounker’s warrant, like almost every other piece of authority in the land, might fall into abeyance during an interregnum, calling his right to detain Arbella into question.