ARBELLA STUART.*
THE romance of the unfortunate lady whose life is the subject of this volume has long been a favourite theme of novelist and biographer, but the intrinsic interest of the story is suck that there is still room for a fresh presentation of it. Born in 1575, the great granddaughter, of Henry VIII.'s elder sister, Arbella was, throughout the reign of Queen Elizabeth, next. after James of Scotland in succession to the English crown, and indeed many preferred her claim, to that of the alien James. Elizabeth, however, would have none of this claim, and, -although poor Arbella herself seems never to have thought seriously of advancing it, the ambiguity of her position proved fatal first to peace, then to liberty, and finally to life itself. Marriage with James would have saved her, and such a solution at one time seemed possible, but James chose to ally himself with Anne of Denmark, and from this moment it became a cardinal point of Elizabeth's policy to prevent any Aolseita Stuart ; a Biography. By B. C. Hardy. London Constable and Oer [12s. 6d. net.]
oust& which might make Arbella a claimant to the throne' Foreign aspirants to her hand were.many, and a futile love affair with Essex did-not improve her position in Elizabeth's .eyes. To Arbella herself, after the death of -Essex, the only hope of freedom seemed to lie in some undistinguished marriage, and in 1602 she began to make overtures to the Earl of Hertford, with a view to engaging herself.to his eldest grandson, Edward Seymour. The Seymours were, unfortunately, exceedingly dis- tasteful to the Queen; and the only result of the proposal was -that the unfortunate Arbella became practically a prisoner in the house of her grandmother, the redoubtable "Bess of Hard- 'wick." The passionate, almost hysterical, letters in which she -expressed her resentment of the Queen's treatment did not help to mitigate Elizabeth's displeasure, and a futile attempt to escape in 1603 might have had disastrous consequences had not the Queen's death and the accession of James intervened. The new- monarch looked -favourably on her, and she soon secured an honourable position at Court, being appointed 'carver to the Queen. But Arbella, who was, as her letters show, a woman of learning, wit, and a perhaps rather too sensitive refinement, soon began to tire of the rough sports and crude revelries-of the royal Court: In 1610 came the great tragedy of her life. She fell in love—curiously enough with William Seymour, Lord Hertford's second grandson. Unhappily the Seymours were no- more -agreeable to James than they had been to Elizabeth, and the match was forbidden. The rest of the wretched story is well known. A secret marriage was followed by the arrest of the .parties. After some months of' -confinement, sweetened by stolen meetings, they made good their escape, but the affair was bungled, and although William reached France poor Arbella was captured in the Channel and brought back to a close imprisonment, in which, after years of hopeless and hysterical entreaty, she died broken-hearted in 1615.
Mr. Hardy, if he adds no new discovery, tells his lamentable story carefully and on the whole clearly. His treatment might have been more effective had he confined himself more strictly to the personality of its central figure. But the year's which he describes are of such interest, and Arbella came so closely into contact with events and persons of the first importance, that it was no- doubt difficult to avoid digression.
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