Arbella

by Sarah Gristwood

First published 2003

Amazon

3.9(2,149)

Lady Arbella Stuart was born close enough to the throne to be treated as a possible successor to Elizabeth I, yet never secure enough to control her own future. Sarah Gristwood follows her upbringing under the formidable Bess of Hardwick, the schemes that gathered around the unsettled succession, and the hopes invested in a woman descended from both Tudor and Stuart lines.

James VI and I’s accession ended Arbella’s immediate royal prospects but did not remove the danger attached to her blood. Her secret marriage to William Seymour created a new dynastic combination that the king regarded as a threat, leading to confinement, an attempted escape and imprisonment in the Tower of London. The biography presents Arbella as an intelligent, articulate woman whose struggle for personal freedom became inseparable from the politics of monarchy.