217 



By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 

 {^Continued from Vol. xviii , p. 285.) 



Lady Arabella's Progeess. 



^N a former volume of this Magazine ' was given a short 

 1^ account of Lady Arabella Stuart, so cruelly treated by 

 King- James I., in consequence of her clandestine marriage with 

 William Seymour,the Protector Somerset's great grandson (afterwards 

 Marquis of Hertford, and finally restored Duke of Somerset) : and 

 of the accidental discovery, among the Marquis of Bath's papers at 

 Longleat, of a book of her expenses kept by Mr. Hugh Crompton, 

 her steward. 



A book of expenses, if carefully kept, serves, to a certain extent, 

 the purpose of a journal or diary ; because each recorded item of out- 

 lay records also some act done, some taste indulged, or some move- 

 ment made. Accordingly in his register of the poor Lady's money, 

 received and spent during the year 1609, Mr. Hugh Crompton has 

 preserved to us much of her private history during her last year of 

 liberty, for she was sent to the Tower soon after her marriage, in 

 the beginning of the year 1610. We have in it all the little details 

 of her living, at Blackfriars, Whitehall, Greenwich Palace, or else- 

 where : the cost of diet, wages, horse-keeping, masques, rewards, 

 &c., but for the present Paper it is proposed to extract from the 

 manuscinpt a few only of the items that refer to a visit, or as in the 

 case of visitors of Blood Royal it was generally called, a Progi'ess, 

 made by her, in 1609, among her friends and relatives — principally 

 in Derbyshire — and her return to London. 



She was a native of that county, having been born about the year 



1575, at Chatsworth, the home of her mother, Elizabeth Cavendish, 



and of her grandmother, the celebrated " Bess of Hardwick." On 



her father's side she was niece to Mary, Queen of Scots, and therefore 



Vol. xv„ pp. 159, 202. 



