Arbella

by Sarah Gristwood

Cecil Papers

  Papers compiled for Robert Cecil and his father, now held at Hatfield House, the property of the Marquess of Salisbury. (These citations refer to the original documents, as opposed to those in the calendar; see ‘Hatfield’.)

  Folger

  Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC

  Hatfield

  Calendar of the Cecil Papers (see ‘Cecil Papers’): Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. The Marquess of Salisbury preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire)

  HMC

  Historical Manuscripts Commission

  PRO

  Public Record Office, Kew

  SP

  State Papers (the reference given being that of the document, rather than the calendar page)

  Talbot

  Talbot Papers at Longleat, the property of the Marquess of Bath

  Note on Previous Biographies

  Any new biography builds on the work that has gone before. In the case of Arbella Stuart, that has accrued into a considerable body since the middle of the nineteenth century. Agnes Strickland devoted to her one section in her well-known Lives of the Tudor and Stuart Princesses. Even before that, however, Elizabeth Cooper had in 1866 published her two-volume The Life and Letters of Lady Arabella Stuart which – living up to the boast contained in its subtitle, Including Numerous Original and Unpublished Documents – remains a valuable resource today. Miss Cooper, however, complained that her researches had been hampered by the number of manuscripts then in private hands and inaccessible to historians. Twenty-three years later, in 1889, Emily Tennyson Bradley (later Mrs Murray Smith) was luckier. Her Life of the Lady Arabella Stuart also printed a substantial body of documents – including, this time, almost all Arbella’s own letters, reprinted in full though with modernized spelling and punctuation.

  In the next century, 1913 saw not one but two biographies: Blanche Christabel Hardy’s Arbella Stuart: A Biography and M. Lefuse’s less well-known The Life and Times of Arabella Stuart. Although by now normal practice was to incorporate documents into the text, rather than printing them separately as Cooper and Bradley had done, both Hardy and Lefuse offer much original material at length or in its entirety. They thus remain (despite the virtual absence of source notes) a useful tool; and to this category one should add Lives of the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon by Maria Theresa Lewis (later Villiers; 1852), in which the lengthy section on William Seymour, straddling volumes 2 and 3, includes some otherwise elusive documentation of the couple’s flight.

  Three biographies of Arbella Stuart were published in the second half of the twentieth century, of which the last was David Durant’s Arbella Stuart: A Rival to the Queen (1978). This may perhaps best be seen as a companion volume to his authoritative and detailed Bess of Hardwick, first printed in 1977 and reissued in 1999. Ian McInnes’s Arabella: The Life and Times of Arabella Seymour, 1575–1615 tells her life as a ripping yarn. But the biography to which I personally feel most indebted is P.M. Handover’s enormously well-documented Arbella Stuart, Royal Lady of Hardwick (1957). With this I would couple in gratitude The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, edited by Sara Jayne Steen (1994) which, while not a biography as such, adds a hundred-page biographical and critical essay to its invaluable transcript (footnoted, and with the original orthography) of virtually all the extant letters written by Arbella Stuart, and some she received. Most recently, Ruth Norrington published In the Shadow of the Throne: The Lady Arbella Stuart (2002), a comparatively brief survey of Arbella’s life which places particular emphasis on her medical history.

  Prologue

  The main source of information about Arbella’s flight, right down to the ostler’s words and the clothes Arbella wore, is the letter written by courtier Sir John More to Sir Ralph Winwood, then ambassador to the Hague. This is to be found in the third volume of Winwood’s Memorials of the Affairs of State in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James the First (1725).

  1 ‘We may by God’s grace’: The letter Arbella wrote to her husband is to be found in BL Harl. MS 7003 ff. 150–1; others of her letters used here will be referenced later, when quoted at more length.

  2 Bright’s account to the privy council: SP lxvi no. 30.

  3 brought in for questioning: Lists of arrests made are quoted in Cooper ii 190, 195.

  4 The admiral of the fleet: The report of Admiral Monson is in BL Harl. MSS 7003 f. 130.

  5 Griffen Cockett: The captain’s report is in BL Harl. MSS 7003 f. 128.

  Part I

  Arbella Stuart’s early life is well-trodden ground. The sources for this first part of the book, therefore, are largely secondary. Inevitably the patterns of Arbella’s early childhood were those laid down by others, notably Bess of Hardwick, of whom David Durant wrote an invaluable biography. (I should like here to acknowledge his generosity in making his notes for the book available to future research at the University of Nottingham Library; also to thank Peter Day, then librarian/archivist at Chatsworth, for informing me that he had done so.) At the time of writing there is no biography of Lady Lennox, though there is a good deal of information about her in Dulcie M. Ashdown’s Tudor Cousins, which, fascinatingly, traces all the possible lines of claim through the sixteenth century. Ashdown is also a good source of information on Lady Catherine Grey whose romance, however, is chronicled in many places – notably as one of the Two Tudor Portraits in Hester Chapman’s dual biography, and pages 163–240 of the first volume of Cooper’s Life and Letters.

  6 ‘was dealt in suddenly’: CSP Scottish v 68.

  7 ‘Now my Lord’: Lefuse 12–13; Durant Bess 85. Lady Lennox – like the earl of Shrewsbury – wrote several letters on this subject; for more of the correspondence see also Lefuse 2–4, 11–13, 15–16.

  8 The Lennox or ‘Darnley’ jewel: The jewel is described in Scarisbrick 84.

  9 The queen’s spymaster: For Walsingham’s interrogation of Fowler see CSP Scottish v 30; cited by Handover Arbella Stuart, who describes it (p. 304) as being erroneously calendared 1574.

  10 Back in London, she found herself committed to the Tower: It used to be said that Bess, too, was imprisoned; later opinion has tended to disagree. (Just as, by the same token, it was once believed that Bess was the Lady St Loe sent to the Tower after having been made the confidante of Catherine Grey; this is now identified, instead, as Bess’s sister-in-law. See addendum to the 1999 reissue of Durant Bess.)

  11 precise date and place of Arbella’s birth: the anomalies of the record are described in Cooper i 37; her godparents (p. 17) in Bradley i 33 who, however, gives no reference. Both these authorities accept as accurate the information given (in a pedigree of Lady Lennox’s descendants, found in BL Harl. MSS, f. 588) that Arbella was nata 1575 apud Chatsworth in Anglia, while noting certain inaccuracies in the record, and that Chatsworth is written in a different hand. By the time Handover came to write, this was agreed to be insufficient evidence, and Durant in Arbella Stuart 212n, speculates that she was instead baptized from (and born in?) Hackney.

  12 ‘I yield your Majesty’: CSP Scottish v 202.

  13 the convoluted web of debated rights: The issue of the succession as it appeared at the time of Arbella’s birth is chronicled in much more detail in Ashdown: see esp. 33; 39ff for Lady Lennox’s early history; 55 and 68 for the succession as laid down by Henry VIII; and 117ff for the marriage of Catherine Grey. For Henry VIII’s will see also Nenner 13, 16, 38, 58, 272n.

  14 But as a Catholic, a foreigner and a prisoner: Nenner 57–8 has described how, by an act of parliament in 1351, no alien was permitted to inherit land in England – this covering, presumably, the right to inherit England itself. See also Ashworth 33.

  15 ‘greatest dolour’: For Lady Lennox on Charles Lennox see Bradley i 21.

  16 ‘gives great promise for the future’: Bradley i 22.

  17 ‘How the dower can be avoided’: For Lady Lennox on the Lennox lands, see Lefuse 22. See also Elizabeth Lennox’s letters on the same subject
quoted in Bradley i 43, Hardy 27–8. ‘Dower’ may mean ‘dowager’s portion’, i.e. Elizabeth Lennox’s inheritance from her husband.

  18 A message was sent off: BL Harl. MSS 289, 198; quoted in Lefuse 22.

  19 In a draft will: Labanoff iv 356; quoted (in the original French) in Handover Arbella Stuart 54, Hardy 26.

  20 On 9 March she died: The circumstances of Lady Lennox’s death are described in Ashdown 173–4.

  21 Wardship of the infant: The death of her father, the head of the household, had by the standards of the day made Arbella technically an orphan, although her mother was still alive. It is also worth noting that generational relationships were not described in the sixteenth century in such rigid terms as today: Bess refers to Arbella as her daughter; Arbella to Bess as her parent; and the earl of Hertford refers to William Seymour as his nephew and his grandson within a single letter.

  22 Lady Lennox’s will ordained the jewels: Lefuse 27, Hardy 24–5, Cooper i 49.

  23 ‘Be it known’: CSP Scottish v 350.

  24 ‘She endured very well’: Durant Arbella Stuart 21.

  25 ‘I have not so evil deserved’: Steen Letters 15.

  26 ‘My mother hearing of the infection’: Bradley i 44, Lefuse 24–5.

  27 The young countess left: Durant Arbella Stuart 29.

  28 ‘O my little heart!’: Erondell French Garden 7–8.

  29 Shrewsbury wrote to Walsingham: CSP Dom 1581–90 42–3, quoted in Cooper i 57–62.

  30 Seven days later: For Bess’s letters to Burghley see Bradley i 52–3; also Hardy 29–33, Lefuse 30–1, 35–7.

  31 four hundred pounds’ pension: Charles Nicholl (The Reckoning) suggested multiplying by 500 to get a rough equivalent of modern value.

  32 ‘drinketh every day’: Durant Bess 100.

  33 ‘I doubt not’: Durant Bess 100.

  34 ‘The matter of the Lady Arbella’s remaining’: Durant Arbella Stuart 34.

  35 ‘Four times’: Walpole’s rhyme is quoted in Bickley 34.

  36 Bess was indeed: My picture of Bess’s early history, and of the Shrewsbury marriage, was influenced by that given by Durant in Bess, chs 6–9.

  37 ‘Firstly that one’: Labanoff vi 51–7; quoted (in English) in Durant Bess 130–1, Lefuse 47; see also Plowden 44–53.

  38 ‘First I assayed’: Cooper i 68; Hardy 52. For Bess’s schemes with Leicester, see also Bradley i 56, Durant Arbella Stuart 33.

  39 A few years on: For Shrewsbury on Arbella, see Hardy 57–8, Bradley i 72–3.

  40 one in three among the country’s older peers: This is Lawrence Stone’s estimate; see Crisis 66.

  41 ‘as near a free woman’: Lambeth Palace Library, MS 3201 ff. 124–5, transcribed in Steen Letters 183.

  42 ‘Sir – After the closing’: Hardy 34–5.

  43 Lady Jane had told Roger Ascham: Chapman Lady Jane Grey 46–8.

  44 ‘virtuous disposition’: Harington Tract on the Succession 45.

  45 ‘Great learned lady’: Steen Letters 56–7.

  46 ‘I may well say’: For Lady Lennox’s verses, see Ashdown 43–4.

  47 All three: Information on the Talbot daughters is drawn from Hunter and Hutton.

  48 ‘patching up every idle word’: Cecil Papers 135 ff. 130–8.

  49 ‘pleasant quasi-maternal relationship’: Fraser Mary Queen of Scots 575; the evidence she adduces, however – Mary’s will, for example – suggests familial support, but leaves dark the question of daily contact. James Mackay, in his biography of Mary, asserts (272) that the hostility between Bess and Mary was further complicated by their rivalry for Arbella’s affection, and that Bess ‘sought, by her vile slanders, to deny Mary access to the little girl’.

  50 ‘Let me lose’: Cecil Papers 135 ff. 130–8.

  51 Mary left to Arbella her Book of Hours: Bradley i 11–12, Hardy 44–5.

  Part II

  The best single secondary source for the plotting and political machinations which dominated Arbella’s life during the 1590s is P. M. Handover’s Arbella Stuart, Royal Lady of Hardwick. Handover is by far the most politically oriented of Arbella’s earlier biographers; and her book is particularly interesting in this context since she also wrote an important biography of Robert Cecil (The Second Cecil). More recently, Robert Lacey (Robert, Earl of Essex) has written of the earl of Essex, albeit concentrating largely upon his flamboyant personality and his relationship with the ageing queen. A different perspective may be found in several later academic studies, like that of Paul Hammer (The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics), which paints the picture of an earl more complex and more astute than the conventional image allows. In more general terms John Guy, in The Reign of Elizabeth I, postulates the post-Armada years as a separate and distinct phase in the queen’s long reign.

  There is a substantial body of what one might call succession literature, to which the best guide I found was Howard Nenner’s The Right to be King. A number of the contemporary texts are available in comparatively modern editions, most notably Sir John Harington’s A Tract on the Succession to the Crown and Cecil’s secret correspondence with James. My picture of Elizabeth’s court was much influenced by Alison Weir’s Elizabeth the Queen and also by The English Court, edited by David Starkey.

  David N. Durant’s biography Bess of Hardwick is invaluable for the background to Bess’s building work – as for her household’s expenses during the London trip of 1591–2. His work apart, the best secondary sources for Arbella’s life at Hardwick Hall are those published by the National Trust, which administers the building today. Beyond the detailed guide book written by Mark Girouard, they are: A Very Goodly Prospect by Gillian White and Of Household Stuff: The 1601 Inventories of Bess of Hardwick, along with Oldcotes by Pamela Kettle and the English Heritage guide book to Hardwick Old Hall by Lucy Worsley. Mowl, Elizabethan and Jacobean Style, and Watkins, In Public and in Private, help to place Hardwick in a contemporary context.

  Finally, this may be an appropriate place to mention the literature of a burgeoning field of study; the political interactions of women in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. This was not, of course, a game Arbella herself was at this point free to play. She was, however, ably represented by her aunt Mary Talbot – of whom I only wish I had been able to find a biography. Mary Talbot, however, does feature in Violet Wilson’s 1924 precursor to the field, Society Women of Shakespeare’s Time; I was also gripped (although the timescale tends to be slightly later) by Antonia Fraser’s groundbreaking The Weaker Vessel. But in this area it is to recent academic publications that one must also look: work like Frye and Robertson’s Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens; or Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 1450–1700, edited by James Daybell. The former has a particularly interesting essay on ‘Sewing Connections: Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, Elizabeth Talbot, and Seventeenth Century Anonymous Needleworkers’ (Frye); the latter an essay on Arbella’s letters by Sara Jayne Steen, to be discussed more fully under Part V below. Papers by James Daybell and Sara Jayne Steen on, respectively, Bess of Hardwick’s information networks and the political interests of the Cavendish–Talbot women are both to be published in a volume of essays edited by James Daybell, Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450–1700 (Ashgate) in the course of 2003.

  52 ‘Lady Cobham does not advise’: Folger X d 428 (131). While the letter is dated 8 December, there is no year; the estimate of 1585 is approximate.

  53 The time was approaching: This is usually taken to be Arbella’s first formal court appearance. But cf. Fugger News-Letters, 2nd series 56–7:

  Antwerp April 29 1581: Letters from England of April 22 announce the arrival of the French Embassy to the Queen. It was received in audience the very next day. We are told that the Queen had with her a young lady who was called by every one her cousin and next heiress to the English throne after the Queen’s death. But now it is said to be evident she is a daughter of the Queen whom she had by N.N. So a marriage is to be arranged between this young
lady and the Duke of Alencon. This cannot long be kept secret.

  This passage is endorsed by the editor, Victor von Klarwill, ‘Presumably Arabella Stuart’. The theory of Elizabeth having had a daughter by the unidentified NN does, however, rather discredit anything else this reporter might have to say.

  54 Arbella would be the ‘lawful inheritress’: Handover Arbella Stuart 77, citing Strickland. Bradley i 64–5 usefully gives the French phrases.

  55 An entranced visitor: Frederick, later duke of Württemberg, who visited England in 1592. His narrative was compiled by his secretary Jacob Rothgeb and published at Tübingen in 1602.

  56 Charles Cavendish reported: HMC Devonshire Papers at Hardwick 3rd Report ii 42, quoted in Lefuse 49, Hardy 47, Bradley i 62–4.

  57 ‘my housekeeping doth stand me’: Cooper i 93, Hardy 49–50.

  58 ‘Look to her well’: De Chateauneuf to Henri IV, Handover Arbella Stuart 77, citing Strickland.

  59 a notorious smuggler: Ashworth 187.

  60 She was staying with Gilbert: for Arbella’s note to Burghley, see Steen Letters 120.

  61 ‘My cousin Mary’: Huntingdon Library, MS HM 803, quoted in Steen Letters 119.

  62 ‘displayed such haughtiness’: CSP Ven ix 541 (and see introduction to Part III below).

  63 ‘then in highest favour’: Cecil Papers 135 ff. 130–8.

  64 It is tempting to speculate: From earliest days, biographers have speculated on Arbella’s relationship with Essex. Agnes Strickland wrote that she nursed ‘a brief and hopeless passion’ for the earl: a comparatively restrained romanticism for which (since she offered no proofs) she was none the less censured by both Handover and Durant. Hardy, however (83–5 and 96), went a good deal further, writing that in 1602 ‘her heart lay buried in the grave of Essex.’ It is interesting to note that the old ideas, in a different form, have come around again: Norrington (50) perceives the same kind of emotional attachment I too see. She postulates ‘clandestine meetings’, and speculates that Arbella’s ‘wayward’ behaviour in 1603 may have been due to her grief.