off to Margaret Tudor’s grandson Charles Stuart (younger brother of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots), and now she was eager to see her “jewel,” Arbella, become the next queen of England.
James VI had a better claim to the English crown than did his cousin Arbella. Both his parents (Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley) were descendants of Margaret Tudor. But James was born and raised in Scotland, which made him, as a foreigner, potentially ineligible to inherit. Many believed, in fact, that Arbella Stuart would be the next to rule.
Elizabeth I made no effort to clarify the issue of the succession. In fact, the spinster queen had always been notoriously cagey on the subject. Naming an heir would, she once said, “require me in my life to set my winding sheet before my eye.” Still, it looked like Elizabeth might be leaning toward Arbella when, in 1587, she called her young cousin to court for the first time—an invitation never extended to King James.
The first encounter with the mighty Elizabeth had to have been frightening for eleven-year-old Arbella. “This was the woman she had been raised to emulate, the one who held her fortune in her hands,” wrote biographer Sarah Gristwood. “What is more, she curtseyed before the terrifying figure who,just five months before, had ordered the beheading of her royal aunt Mary [Queen of Scots], whose unburied body still lay stinking at Fotheringay.”
Arbella was given all the honors due a royal lady of her rank, even the enviable opportunity of dining right beside the sovereign. She performed so well at court that she was able to write triumphantly that the queen “by trial pronounced me an eaglet of her own kind.” Elizabeth did indeed seem impressed by Arbella. “Look to her well,” she remarked to the wife of the French ambassador. “She will one day be even as I am.”
Tantalizing as the queen’s words were—an apparent endorsement of Arbella as her successor—nothing was ever quite as it appeared with Elizabeth Tudor. In fact, she was engaged in a game of diplomatic chess, and Arbella was a mere pawn—conveniently transformed into “a near cousin of her [Elizabeth’s] own, whom she loves much, and whom she intends to make her heir and successor,” as the French ambassador perceptively put it. Arbella was dangled as a potential bride in the European power market, as Elizabeth saw fit, then withdrawn. She was also used as a check on King James in Scotland: trotted out as the one who could easily displace him in line as the next potential English monarch should he grow too confident, or dare overreact to his mother’s execution.
Blissfully unaware of these machinations, Arbella reveled in her starring role at Elizabeth’s court. Her time there was fleeting, however, and when she was no longer diplomatically useful, she was sent back to the remote Derbyshire countryside, under the ever watchful eye of her domineering grandmother, Bess. As Arbella grew into adulthood, this increasingly suffocating existence at Hardwick Hall became intolerable. “The unfortunate lady has now lived for many years, not exactly as a prisoner, but, so to speak, buried alive,” wrote the Venetian envoy.
Bess of Hardwick unintentionally offered a glimpse of her granddaughter’s bleak existence—the one she helped create—ina letter to Queen Elizabeth’s chief minister, William Cecil, Lord Burghley: “Arbella walks not late; at such a time as she shall take the air it shall be near the house, and well attended on; she goeth not to anybody’s house at all; I see her almost every hour in the day; she lieth in my bed-chamber.” Little wonder, then, that Arbella was desperate to break away.
As Queen Elizabeth’s reign drew to its close, Arbella made a frantic gambit to free herself from her grandmother’s total domination and, quite possibly, to enhance her chances of inheriting the throne. She attempted to betroth
James VI had a better claim to the English crown than did his cousin Arbella. Both his parents (Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley) were descendants of Margaret Tudor. But James was born and raised in Scotland, which made him, as a foreigner, potentially ineligible to inherit. Many believed, in fact, that Arbella Stuart would be the next to rule.
Elizabeth I made no effort to clarify the issue of the succession. In fact, the spinster queen had always been notoriously cagey on the subject. Naming an heir would, she once said, “require me in my life to set my winding sheet before my eye.” Still, it looked like Elizabeth might be leaning toward Arbella when, in 1587, she called her young cousin to court for the first time—an invitation never extended to King James.
The first encounter with the mighty Elizabeth had to have been frightening for eleven-year-old Arbella. “This was the woman she had been raised to emulate, the one who held her fortune in her hands,” wrote biographer Sarah Gristwood. “What is more, she curtseyed before the terrifying figure who,just five months before, had ordered the beheading of her royal aunt Mary [Queen of Scots], whose unburied body still lay stinking at Fotheringay.”
Arbella was given all the honors due a royal lady of her rank, even the enviable opportunity of dining right beside the sovereign. She performed so well at court that she was able to write triumphantly that the queen “by trial pronounced me an eaglet of her own kind.” Elizabeth did indeed seem impressed by Arbella. “Look to her well,” she remarked to the wife of the French ambassador. “She will one day be even as I am.”
Tantalizing as the queen’s words were—an apparent endorsement of Arbella as her successor—nothing was ever quite as it appeared with Elizabeth Tudor. In fact, she was engaged in a game of diplomatic chess, and Arbella was a mere pawn—conveniently transformed into “a near cousin of her [Elizabeth’s] own, whom she loves much, and whom she intends to make her heir and successor,” as the French ambassador perceptively put it. Arbella was dangled as a potential bride in the European power market, as Elizabeth saw fit, then withdrawn. She was also used as a check on King James in Scotland: trotted out as the one who could easily displace him in line as the next potential English monarch should he grow too confident, or dare overreact to his mother’s execution.
Blissfully unaware of these machinations, Arbella reveled in her starring role at Elizabeth’s court. Her time there was fleeting, however, and when she was no longer diplomatically useful, she was sent back to the remote Derbyshire countryside, under the ever watchful eye of her domineering grandmother, Bess. As Arbella grew into adulthood, this increasingly suffocating existence at Hardwick Hall became intolerable. “The unfortunate lady has now lived for many years, not exactly as a prisoner, but, so to speak, buried alive,” wrote the Venetian envoy.
Bess of Hardwick unintentionally offered a glimpse of her granddaughter’s bleak existence—the one she helped create—ina letter to Queen Elizabeth’s chief minister, William Cecil, Lord Burghley: “Arbella walks not late; at such a time as she shall take the air it shall be near the house, and well attended on; she goeth not to anybody’s house at all; I see her almost every hour in the day; she lieth in my bed-chamber.” Little wonder, then, that Arbella was desperate to break away.
As Queen Elizabeth’s reign drew to its close, Arbella made a frantic gambit to free herself from her grandmother’s total domination and, quite possibly, to enhance her chances of inheriting the throne. She attempted to betroth
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