791 



STUART, ARABELLA. 



STUART, ARABELLA. 



792 



a friend, to creep up the channel of a brook which was between two of 

 these posts. He was accompanied by Macdouald of Qlenaladale, with 

 whom, after surmounting numerous difficulties, he reached the hill of 

 Corado, between Kintail and Glenmoriston. Here he found some of 

 his faithful followers living ia a cave : wretched and altered as he was, 

 his brave adherents knew him, and fell upon their knees. " He had," 

 gays Home, "a coat of coarse dark-coloured cloth, and a wretched 

 yellow wig, with a bonnet on his head. His brogues were tied with 

 thongs, so worn that they would hardly keep on his feet. His shirt 

 was saffron, and he had not another." He remained in this cave five 

 weeks and three days ; and not even the reward of 30,000/. which 

 was offered for his person, would have tempted these poor men, who 

 sheltered the wretched descendant of the Stuarts. He continued his 

 wanderings for many weeks ; sometimes becoming so exhausted from 

 fatigue and want of food that he could not walk without help : at 

 length, after many narrow escapes, he was able to cross Locharkaig, 

 and reach the fir-wood near Achuacarry. Here he heard from his 

 faithful chieftains, Lochiel and Cluny, that they were at Badenoch, 

 where he might with some risk joiu them. About the 29th of August 

 Charles met his two friends, and was conducted by them to Letter- 

 nilick, a remote place in the great mountain Benalder, where lie 

 remained until a vessel arrived at Lochnauuagh to convey him to 

 France. On the 19th of September he reached Boradale, travelling 

 only by night, and sailed for France on the 20th ; he arrived at Morlaix 

 in Brittany on the 29th of September 1746. During the wanderings 

 of the prince the secret of his concealment had been entrusted to 

 hundreds of persons of every age and sex. Flora Macdonald was for 

 some time confined in the Tower, but, being liberated, she found a 

 home for a short time in the house of Lady Primrose, a Jacobite lady. 

 No organised scheme for establishing Charles Edward upon the throne 

 of England was ever afterwards formed. 



Charles was received in France with professions of affection from 

 Louis XV. ; and, until his departure from France became necessary 

 to insure peace with England, he was well treated by the French king. 

 In 1748, after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the king of France could 

 not allow him any longer to remain in his dominions. Charles long 

 resisted the attempts made to induce him to leave France ; and not- 

 withstanding a letter from his father, recommending him to comply 

 with the wishes of Louis, he remained at Paris. At length Charles, 

 in stepping out of a coach from the Opera, was seized, and sent to 

 Vincennes ; and he was afterwards conducted with a guard out of the 

 kingdom. After some delay he repaired to Rome. Charles Edward 

 married a princess of the house of Stolberg in Germany, who survived 

 him, and married Alfieri. [ALFIERI.] The union was not happy, and 

 the latter period of the prince's life was disgraced by habits of intoxi- 

 cation. He had no issue by his wife ; but he left a natural daughter, 

 whom he created Duchess of Albany, and to whom he bequeathed a 

 considerable property. For many years Charles seems to have cherished 

 hopes of recovering the crown of Great Britain ; but at length, when 

 his claims ceased to be sustained by any foreign power, and when the 

 courts of Europe no longer gave him the title of Prince of Wales, he 

 took the title of Count of Albany, and sank into a habit of life strangely 

 contrasted with his former activity. He died on the 31st of January 

 1788. Notwithstanding his failings, Charles Edward possessed much 

 energy and fortitude. His brother, Henry Benedict, who was created 

 by the old Pretender Duke of York, and afterwards made Cardinal 

 York, was the last representative of the royal house of Stuart. Henry 

 Benedict died at Rome in 1807. 



It is scarcely necessary to refer to a claim set up within the last few 

 years by two brothers, John Sobieski and Charles Edward, whose name 

 appears to be Hay-Allan, but who called themselves Stuart, who, in 

 ' Tales of the Century, or Sketches of the Romance of History between 

 the years 1746 and 1846,' and elsewhere, attempted to persuade the 

 world that they were the descendants of a son of Charles Edward 

 Stuart by his wife the Princess Louisa, who was surreptitiously handed 

 over to an agent of the Hanoverian government, and by him conveyed 

 to Scotland and brought up under the name of Hay as his own son. 

 Their story was investigated, and clearly shown to be a fiction, in the 

 ' Quarterly Review,' vol. Ixxxi. 



STUART, ARABELLA, or ARBELLA, often styled, both by her 

 contemporaries and by subsequent writers, the Lady Arabella, was the 

 only child of Charles Stuart, duke of Lennox, younger brother of 

 Henry, lord Darnley, the father of James I. James and she therefore 

 were full cousins. Her mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir 

 William Cavendish, father of the first Earl of Devonshire. The birth 

 of the Lady Arabella has been variously plaoed from 1574 to 1577, 

 but the most probable year is 1575. The Lady Arabella stood in the 

 same degree of relationship to Elizabeth that James himself did 

 through his mother ; both were great-grandchildren of Henry VIII.'s 

 eldest sister Margaret ; James through his mother, Queen Mary, and 

 her father James V. of Scotland, son of that princess by her first 

 husband; Arabella, by her father, Charles Stuart, and his mother, 

 Margaret Douglas, the daughter of the English princess by her second 

 husband, Archibald Douglas, earl of Angus. She was born in Eng- 

 land ; and during the reign of Elizabeth that circumstance was openly 

 stated by Parsons, the Jesuit (in his 'Conference about the next 

 Succession to the Crown,' published under the name of Dolman, in 

 1594), as giving her claim to the throne an advantage over that of the 



Scottish king. At all events she was undoubtedly, before the birth of 

 his son Henry, in February 1594, the next in order of succession to 

 James ; aud if he had died without issue, she would have been 

 Elizabeth's heir, upon the same principle that he was so accounted. 



The position in which she was thus placed by her illustrious 

 descent, and near connection with the thrones both of England and 

 Scotland, forms the key to the sad history of the Lady Arabella. 

 While she was yet very young, it is said that her cousin, King 

 James, wished to have her married to her relation, Lord Esme 

 Stuart, whom he looked upon as his heir in case he should die 

 childless, and whom he had created Duke of Lennox ; but the 

 scheme, which must have been projected before 1583, the year in 

 which Esme, duke of Lennox, died, was defeated by the opposition 

 of Elizabeth. When she grew up, other matrimonial speculations 

 were entertained with regard to her, some by herself, some by others ; 

 for a full account of which the reader is referred to the ' Biog. Brit.,' 

 and to Mr. Disraeli's paper n ' The Loves of the Lady Arabella," in his 

 'Curiosities of Literature' (pp. 357-363, edit, of 1838). She first 

 became an object of general public attention by the manner in which 

 her name was brought forward in 1 603, immediately after the acces- 

 sion of James, in the affair of the alleged plot called ' The Main,' for 

 which Sir Walter Raleigh was tried : one of the charges against 

 Raleigh was, that he designed to raise the Lady Arabella to the throne, 

 under the protection of Spain. There is not the leaat probability 

 however that any such design was ever entertained; it "is at any rate 

 admitted on all hands that the Lady Arabella knew nothing of it. 

 (Howell's 'State Trials,' ii. 1-60; Jardine's 'Criminal Trials,' i. 389- 

 520; Lingard's 'History of England,' ix. 8-18; Tytler's 'Life of 

 Raleigh,' pp. 257-301.) But her situation was a sufficiently difficult 

 and dangerous one, without this unfounded suspicion or imputation ; 

 the more especially as she appears to have been entirely dependent 

 even for subsistence upon the bounty of the crown. James's wish 

 evidently was, that she should remain unmarried ; but in February 

 1609, a discovery was made of a love affair in which she was engaged 

 with a companion of her childhood Mr. William Seymour, second son 

 of Lord Beauchamp, the eldest son of the Earl of Hertford ; and 

 although both parties were called before the council, and there sharply 

 reprimanded and warned to take heed of what they were about, their 

 affection disregarding all consequences, they managed to get secretly 

 married very soon after. The marriage was discovered in the summer 

 of the following year, 1610; on which Seymour was immediately 

 committed to the Tower, and the lady placed under custody in the 

 house of Sir Thomas Parry at Lambeth, from which it was some months 

 after ordered that she should be transferred to Durham, there to 

 remain under charge of the bishop. This marriage probably excited 

 James's alarm and fury the more, iuasmuch as the Seymours 

 inherited a claim to the crown which many persons thought better 

 than his own, in virtue of their descent from Mary, the youngest 

 sister of Henry VIII., upon whose representatives that king had 

 settled the succession, in case of failure of his own issue, by a will 

 which an act of parliament had certainly authorised him to make. 

 [HENRY VIII.] The Lady Arabella had scarcely set out on her 

 forced journey to the north, in April 1611, when she waa taken ill, or 

 professed to be taken ill, at Highgate ; and here in consequence she 

 remained for six days, whence she was removed first to Baruet, and 

 then, at the end of eleven days, to the house of a Mr. Conyers, at 

 East Barnet, where she was kept, till contriving to elude the vigilance 

 of ber keepers, she set out, disguised in male apparel, and, attended by 

 a Mr. Mark ham, about three o'clock in the afternoon of Monday the 

 3rd of June, took horse at a little inn about a n.ile and a half distant, 

 and about six o'clock reached Blackwall, where, going into a boat that 

 was in readiness, she was rowed down the river, and next morning was 

 taken on board a French vessel that waited for her and her husband 

 at Lee. Seymour meanwhile had also contrived to effect his escape 

 from the Tower ; but as he did not make his appearance so soon as 

 had been agreed upon, the vessel set sail without him, and he was 

 obliged to make a bargain with a coaster from Newcastle to take him 

 across to Flanders, which he reached in safety. His wife was not so 

 fortunate ; a small ship of war was immediately despatched from the 

 Downs to intercept her, and she was captured in Calais Roads. She 

 and Seymour never again met. She was thrown into the Tower, 

 where sickness, sorrow, and ill-treatment, after some time deprived 

 the poor victim of her senses, and she died insane in her prison, on 

 the 27th of September 1615. Many of her letters that have been 

 preserved, and which have been printed by Mr. Disraeli, Ballard 

 ('Memoirs of British Ladies'), and others, show that the Lady Arabella 

 united no ordinary talent and literary accomplishment to her high 

 spirit and passionate strength of character ; and she also appears to have 

 possessed a considerable share of personal beauty. Seymour was not 

 only permitted to return to England the year after the death of his wife, 

 but was the same year created a baronet ; and, his father having died 

 previously, he became Earl of Hertford on the decease of his grandfather, 

 in 1621, and in 1640 was made Marquis of Hertford, under which title 

 he makes a considerable figure in the history of the civil war, in 

 which he fought on th- side of the crown, although he had allied him- 

 self to the parliamentary general the Earl of Essex by marrying his 

 sister. He just lived to witness the Restoratioa, and to be restored 

 by Charles II. to the dukedom of Somerset, which had been forfeited, 



