Lady Arbella Stuart

Lady Arbella Stuart (also Arabella, or Stewart; 1575 – 25 September 1615) was an English noblewoman who was considered a possible successor to Elizabeth I. During the reign of James VI and I (her first cousin), she married William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset, another claimant to the English throne, in secret. King James imprisoned Seymour and placed her under house arrest. When she and her husband tried to escape England, she was captured and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where she died at age 39.

She was the only child of Charles Stuart, 1st Earl of Lennox (of the third creation), by his marriage to Elizabeth Cavendish. She was a grandchild of Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox (of the second creation) and Lady Margaret Douglas, the daughter and heiress of Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, and of Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England and widow of King James IV of Scotland. Arbella was therefore a great-great-granddaughter of Henry VII and was in line of succession to the English throne, although she did not herself aspire to it.

Her paternal grandparents, the 4th Earl of Lennox and Margaret Douglas, had, of their eight children, two sons who survived childhood: Arbella's father Charles and his older brother Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who became the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the father of Arbella's cousin James VI and I of Scotland, England and Ireland. Her maternal grandparents were Sir William Cavendish and his wife Elizabeth, better known as "Bess of Hardwick".

Arbella's father died in 1576 when she was an infant. She was raised by her mother Elizabeth Cavendish, Countess of Lennox, until 1582. The death of her mother left seven-year-old Arbella an orphan, whereupon she became the ward of her grandmother Bess, rather than Lord Burghley, the Master of the Court of Wards, as might have been expected.

During most of her childhood she lived in the protective isolation of Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire with her grandmother, who had married George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1568. It seems she enjoyed periodic visits to the court and to London, including court visits during the summers of 1587 and 1588 and one that lasted from November 1591 to July 1592.

Starting in early 1589 or thereabouts "one Morley ... attended on Arbell and read to her", as reported in a dispatch from Bess of Hardwick to Lord Burghley, dated 21 September 1592. Bess recounts Morley's service to Arbella over "the space of three years and a half". She also notes he had hoped for an annuity of £40 a year (equivalent to £14,000 in 2023) from Arbella based on the fact that he had "been so much damnified [i.e. that much out of pocket] by leaving the University". This has led to speculation that Morley was the poet Christopher Marlowe, whose name was sometimes spelt that way.

For some time before 1592, Arbella was considered one of the natural candidates to succeed her first cousin twice removed, Queen Elizabeth I.

Arbella’s exact place in the line of succession was a matter of debate both legally and politically. By strict Primogeniture, she was second behind her cousin James before the birth of his children. However, the Treason Act 1351 from the reign Edward III barred “aliens” from inheriting the English throne which Arbella’s supporters (mainly Catholics who opposed James) argued meant she was first in line as she was born in England and James was not. Further complicating matters was that Henry VIII’s will had bypassed the Stuarts all together to place his niece Frances Grey (daughter of his younger sister Mary) and her descendants behind his own children. Due to the ambiguity surrounding her, Arbella became a key chess piece to the various groups who wanted to use her for their own ends.