My review of Arbella: England's Lost Queen, by Sarah Gristwood

Arbella: England's Lost Queen

by Sarah Gristwood

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Arbella is an excellent reading adjunct to mainstream Tudor-Stuart characters, especially after exhausting other material and craving more of the genre.

For anyone fascinated by such royal genealogies, Arbella's lineage is a feast to behold: great-great granddaughter of Henry VII and first cousin of James VI & I, she was descended from both of Henry VIII's sisters, Margaret and Mary. Her claim to the throne was therefore doubly, triply threatening to the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, her first cousin twice removed.

Her formidable maternal grandmother, Bess of Hardwick, another of my favourites, became Arbella's ward when she was orphaned at 7. Arbella spent her childhood cloistered away in Bess's various gilded cages, receiving private tuition considered fit for her rank (archived dispatch documents have triggered speculation that poet Christopher Marlowe was one tutor).

Bess, a well practised keeper for years entrusted with jailing Mary of Scots, now had Arbella's safeguard in mind. Tight house security to prevent kidnappings, agenda-driven friendships and romances left the girl isolated, lonesome but deeply conscious of her royal lineage. Periodically invited to Elizabeth's court for royal scrutiny, she proved not so socially adept, a tad precious and disinclined to kowtow, so was not embraced by the vain queen.

Repeatedly sent away again, she always resumed her stately seclusion, the powers that be wanting her watched in this age of plots to dethrone and assassinate Elizabeth. Continuing home education into her twenties, Arbella acquired several languages and mastered the lute, viol and virginals. She was a restless soul, suspected by some of carrying her great grandmother Margaret Tudor's porphyria, famously passed down to cause the madness of King George III.

Her ambitious marriage suitors included the Pope's brother, the Duke of Parma's son and ... William Seymour Lord Beauchamp and later 2nd Duke of Somerset (whose grandfather Edward 1st Earl of Hertford had incurred Elizabeth's wrath for secretly marrying Lady Catherine Grey, sister of 'nine days queen' Jane, without royal permission). Later ones included Ludovic Stuart, 2nd Duke of Lennox, then even the King of Poland! With Arbella's marriage requiring royal approval, none of these suspicious sounding matches materialised - such men were believed acquisitive of her claim to the throne.

Weary and frustrated, Arbella eventually settled on William Seymour who, as grandson of Lady Catherine Grey, was sixth-in-line to the throne himself, intensifying Arabella's threat to the crown. With history appearing to repeat itself and royal permission denied they married secretly in 1610. The result was their separate house arrests under King James, in various stately homes.

After feigned illness and transfers, Arbella escaped dressed as a man (Shakespeare's cross-dressed heroine of Cymbeline has been read as a reference to Arbella) to meet her husband and flee to France. With her husband not making it to port on time she sailed alone, only to be captured at sea by King James' men, and henceforth imprisoned in the Tower of London. She never again saw her husband who, after arriving at port late and missing her, reached safety abroad at Ostend.

Arbella was made the focus of the 1603 Spanish Government funded 'Main Plot', involving Sir Walter Raleigh, to oust King James, replacing him with Arbella. However, seeing parallels between this and the Lady Jane Grey plot that saw her ancestor beheaded, cautious Arbella, already up to her neck in strife, immediately reported the plot when asked to agree in writing to Philip of Spain. This, however, only saved her neck from the block.

Arbella remained in the Tower until her death in 1615, which she helped along by starving herself.

Another tragic Tudor-Stuart descendent well worth the drama. Sarah Gristwood's fine craftsmanship equals that of her contemporaries.