lady seems to consist of secret history, which, probably, we cannot now recover. The writers who have ventured to weave together her loose and scattered story are ambiguous and contradictory. How such slight domestic incidents as her life consisted of could produce results so greatly disproportioned to their apparent cause, may always excite our curiosity. Her name scarcely ever occurs without raising that sort of interest which accompanies mysterious events, and more parlicularly when we discover that this lady is so frequently alluded to by her foreign contemporaries.

The historians of the Lady Arabella have all fallen into the grossest errors. Her chief historian has com. mitted a violent injury on her very person, which, in the history of a female, is not the least important. In hastily consulting two passages relative to her, he applied to the Lady Arabella the defective understanding and headstrong dispositions of her aunt, the Countess of Shrewsbury; and by another misconception of a term, as I think, asserts that the Lady Arabella was distinguished neither for beauty, nor intellectual qualities.* This authoritative decision perplexed the modern editor, Kippis, whose researches were always limited; Kippis had gleaned from Oldys's precious manuscripts a single note, which shook to its foundations the whole structure before him; and he had also found, in Ballard, to his utter confusion, some hints that the Lady Arabella was a learned woman, and of a poetical genius, though even the writer himself, who had recorded this discovery, was at a loss to ascertain the fact! It is amusing to observe honest George Ballard in the same dilemma as honest Andrew Kippis, This lady,' he says, ' was not more distinguished for the dignity of her birth, than celebrated for her fine parts and learning; and yet,' he adds, in all the simplicity of his ingenuousness, I know so little in relation to the two last accomplishments, that I should not have given her a place in these memoirs had not Mr Evelyn put her in his list of learned women, and Mr Philips (Milton's nephew) introduced her among his modern poetesses.'

The Lady Arabella,' for by that name she is usually noticed by her contemporaries, rather than by her maiden name of Stuart, or by her married one of Seymour, as she latterly subscribed herself, was, by her affinity with James the First, and our Elizabeth, placed near the throne; too near, it seems, for her happiness and quiet! In their common descent from Margaret, the eldest daughter of Henry VII, she was cousin to the Scottish monarch, but born an English woman, which gave her some advantage in a claim to the throne of England. Her double relation to royalty,' says Mr. Lodge, was equally obnoxious to the jealousy of Elizabeth, and the timidity of James, and they secretly dreaded the supposed danger of her having a legitimate offspring. Yet James himself, then unmarried, proposed for the husband of the lady Arabella, one of her cousins, Lord Esme Stuart, whom he had created Duke of Lenox, and designed for his heir. The first thing we hear of the Lady Arabella, concerns a marriage: marriages are the incidents of her life, and the fatal event which terminated it was a marriage. Such was the secret spring on which her character and her misfortunes revolved.

This proposed match was desirable to all parties; but there was one greater than them all, who forbad the bans. Elizabeth interposed; she imprisoned the Lady Arabella, and would not deliver her up to the king, of whom she spoke with asperity, and even with contempt.

The

pre

* Morant in the Biographia Britannica. This gross blunder has been detected by Mr Lodge. The other I submit to the reader's judgment. A contemporary letter-writter, alluding to the flight of Arabella and Seymour, which alarmed the Scottish so much more than the English party, tells us, among other reasons of the little danger of the political influence of the parties themselves over the people, that not only their tensions were far removed, but he adds, They were ungrace. ful both in their persons and their houses.' Morant takes the term ungraceful in its modern acceptation; but in the style of that day, I think, ungraceful is opposed to gracious in the eyes of the people, meaning that their persons and their houses were not considerable to the multitude. Would it not be ab. surd to apply ungraceful in its modern sense to a family or house? And had any political danger been expected, assuredly it would not have been diminished by the want of persor al grace in these lovers. I do not recollect any authority for the sense of ungraceful in opposition to gracious, but a critical and literary antiquary has sanctioned my opinion.

A circumstance which we discover by a Spanish memorial,

greatest infirmity of Elizabeth was her mysterious conduct respecting the succession to the English throne; ber jealousy of power, her strange unhappiness in the dread of personal neglect, made her averse to see a successor in her court, or even to hear of a distant one; in a successor she could only view a competitor. Camden tells us that she frequently observed, that most men neglected the setting sun,' and this melancholy presentment of personal neg lect this political coquette not only lived to experience, but even this circumstance of keeping the succession unsettled miserably disturbed the queen on her death-bed. Her ministers, it appears, harassed her when she was lying speechless; a remarkable circumstance, which has hither to escaped the knowledge of her numerous historians, and which I shall take an opportunity of disclosing in this vo

lume.

Elizabeth leaving a point so important always proble matical, raised up the very evil she so greatly dreaded; it multiplied the aspirants, while every party humoured itself by selecting its own claimant, and none more busily than the continental powers. One of the most curious is the project of the Pope, who intending to put aside James I, on account of his religion, formed a chimerical scheme of uniting ARABELLA with a prince of the house of Sa. voy; the pretext, for without a pretext no politician moves, was their descent from a bastard of our Edward IV; the Duke of Parma was, however, married, but the Pope, in his infallibility, turned his brother the Cardinal into the Duke's substitute by secularising the churchman. In that case the Cardinal would then become King of England in right of this lady!-provided he obtained the crown!* We might conjecture from this circumstance, that Arabella was a catholic, and so Mr Butler has recently told us; but I know of no other authority than Dodd, the Ca tholic historian, who has inscribed her name among his party. Parsons, the wily jesuit, was so doubtful how the lady, when young, stood disposed towards catholicism, that he describes her religion to be as tender, green, and flexible, as is her age and sex, and to be wrought here after and settled according to future events and times.' Yet in 1611, when she was finally sent into confinement, one well informed of court affairs writes, that the Lady Arabella hath not been found inclinable to popery.'*

Even Henry IV of France was not unfriendly to this papistical project of placing an Italian cardinal on the English throne. It had always been the state interest of the French cabinet to favour any scheme which might preserve the realms of England and Scotland as separate kingdoms. The manuscript correspondence of Charles IX with his ambassador at the court of London, which I have seen, tends solely to this great purpose, and perhaps it was her French and Spanish allies, which finally has tened the political martyrdom of the Scottish Mary.

Thus we have discovered two chimerical husbands of the Lady Arabella. The pretensions of this lady to the throne had evidently become an object with speculating politicians; and perhaps it was to withdraw herself from the embarrassments into which she was thrown, that, ac cording to De Thou, she intended to marry a son of the Earl of Northumberland; but to the jealous terror of Elizabeth, an English Earl was not an object of less magnitude than a Scotch Duke. This is the third shadowy husband!

When James I ascended the English throne, there existed an Anti-Scottish party. Hardly had the northern monarch entered into the Land of Promise,' when his southern throne was shaken by a foolish plot, which one writer calls a state riddle; it involved Rawleigh, and unexpectedly the lady Arabella. The Scottish monarch was to be got rid of, and Arabella was to be crowned. Some of when our James I was negotiating with the cabinet of Madrid. He complains of Elizabeth's treatment of him; that the queen refused to give hm his father's estate in England, nor would deliver up his uncle's daughter, Arabella, to be married to the Duke of Lenox, at which time the queen ueo palabras muy asperas y de mucho disprechia contra el dicho Rey de Eerocia she used harsh words, expressing much contempt of the king. Winwood's Mem. i, 4

See a very curious letter, the CCXCIX of Cardinal D Os sat, Vol. v. The catholic interest expected to facilitate the conquest of England by joining their armies with those of AT. belle,' and the commentator writes that this English lady had a party, consisting of all those English who had been the judger or the avowed enemies of Mary of Scotland, the mother of James the First.

Winwood's Memorials, ili, 281.

these silly conspirators having written to her requesting letters to be addresed to the King of Spain, she laughed at the letter she received, and sent it to the King. Thus for a second time was Arabella to have been Queen of England. This occurred in 1603, but was followed by no harsh measures from James the First.

In the following year, 1604, I have discovered that for the third time, the lady was offered a crown! A great ambassador is coming from the King of Poland, whose chief errand is to demand my Lady Arabella in marriage for his master. So may your princess of the blood grow a great queen, and then we shall be safe from the

danger of missuperscribing letters.'* This last passage

seems to allude to something. What is meant of the danger of unssuperscribing letters?'

If this royal offer was ever made, it was certainly forbidden. Can we imagine the refusal to have come from the lady, who, we shall see, seven years afterwards, complained that the king had neglected her, in not providing her with a suitable match? It was this very time that one of those butterflies, who quiver on the fair flowers of a court, writes, that My Ladye Arabella spends her time in lecture, reiding, &c., and she will not hear of marriage. Indirectly there were speaches used in the recom mendation of Count Maurice, who pretendeth to be Duke of Guildres. I dare not attempt her.' Here we find another princely match proposed. Thus far, to the Lady Arabella, crowns and husbands were like a fairy banquet seen at moonlight, opening on her sight, impalpable and vanishing at the moment of approach.

Arabella, from certain circumstances, was a dependant on the king's bounty, which flowed very unequally; often reduced to great personal distress, we find by her letters, that she prayed for present money, though it should not be annually.' I have discovered that James at length granted her a pension. The royal favours, however were prob ably limited to her good behaviour.I

From 1604 to 1608, is a period which forms a blank leaf in the story of Arabella. In this last year this unfortunate lady had again fallen out of favour, and, as usual, the cause was mysterious, and not known even to the writer. Chamberlain, in a letter to Sir Ralph Winwood, mentions the Lady Arabella's business, whatsoever it was, is ended, and she restored to her former place and graces. The king gave her a cupboard of plate, better than 2001. for a new year's gift, and 1000 marks to pay her debts, besides some yearly addition to her maintenance, want being thought the chiefest cause of her discontentment, though she be not altogether free from suspicion of being collapsed.'§ Another mysterious expression which would seem to allude either to politics or religion; but the fact appears by another writer to have been a discovery of a new project of marriage without the king's consent. This person of her choice is not named; and it was to divert her mind from the too constant object of her thoughts, that James, after a severe reprimand, had invited her to partake of the festivities of the court, in that season of revelry and reconcilia

tion.

We now approach that event of the Lady Arabella's life, which reads like a romantic fiction: the catastrophe, too, is formed by the Aristotelian canon; for its misery, its pathos, and its terror, even romantic fiction has not exceeded!

It is probable that the king, from some political motive, had decided that the Lady Arabella should lead a single life; but such wise purposes frequently meet with cross ones; and it happened that no woman was ever more * This manuscript letter from William, Earl of Pembroke, to Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury, is dated from Hampton-Court, Oct. 3, 1603. Sloane's MSS, 4161.

+ Lodge's Illustrations of British History, iii, 286. It is curi. ous to observe, that this letter by W. Fowler, is dated on the same day as the manuscript letter I have just quoted, and it is directed to the same Earl of Shrewsbury; so that the Earl must have received, in one day, accounts of two different projects of marriage for his neice! This shows how much Ara. bella engaged the designs of foreigners and natives. Will. Fowler was a rhyming and fantastical secretary to the queen of James the First

Two letter of Arabella, on distress of money, are preserved by Ballard. The discovery of a pension I made in Sir Julius Car manuscripts; where one is mentioned of 1600/ to the Lady Arabella. Sloane's M3. 4160.

Mr Lodge has shown that the king once granted her the duty

solicited to the conjugal state, or seems to have been so little averse to it. Every noble youth, who sighed for distinction, ambitioned the notice of the Lady Arabella; and she was so frequently contriving a marriage for herself, that a courtier of that day writing to another, observes, 'these affectations of marriage in her, do give some advantage to the world of imparting the reputation of her constant and virtuous disposition."*

The revels of Christmas had hardly closed, when the Lady Arabella forgot that she had been forgiven, and again relapsed into her old infirmity. She renewed a connexion, which had commenced in childhood, with Mr William Seymour, the second son of Lord Beauchamp, and grandson of the earl of Hertford. His character has been finely described by Clarendon: He loved his studies and his repose; but when the civil wars broke out, he closed his volumes and drew his sword, and was both an active and a skilful general. Charles I created him Marquis of Hertford, and governor of the prince; he lived to the Restoration, and Charles II restored him to the dukedom of Somerset.

This treaty of marriage was detected in February 1609, and the parties summoned before the privy council. Seymour was particularly censured for daring to ally himself with the royal blood, although that blood was running in his own veins. In a manuscript letter which I have discovered, Seymour addressed the lords of the privy council. The style is humble; the plea to excuse his intended marriage is, that being but A young brother, and sensible of mine own good, unknown to the world, of mean estate, not born to challenge any thing by my birthright, and therefore my fortunes to be raised by my own endeavour, and she a lady of great honour and virtue, and, as I thought, of great means, I did plainly and honestly endeavour lawfully to gain her in marriage.' There is nothing romantic in this apology, in which Seymour describes himself as a fortune hunter! which, however, was probably done to cover his undoubted affection for Arabella, whom he had early known. He says, that he conceived that this noble lady might, without offence, make the choice of any subject within this kingdom; which conceit was begotten in mo upon a general report, after her ladyship's last being called before your lordships, that it might be.' He tells the story of this ancient wooing- I boldly intruded myself into her ladyship's chamber in the court on Candlemass day last, at what time I imparted my desire unto her, which was entertained, but with this caution on either part, that both of us resolved not to proceed to any final conclusion without his majesty's most gracious favour first obtained. And this was our first meeting! After that we had a second meeting at Brigg's house in Fleet-street, and then a third at Mr Baynton's; at both which we had the like conference and resolution as before.' He assures their lordships that both of them had never intended marriage without his majesty's approbation.‡

But Love laughs at privy councils, and the grave promises made by two frightened lovers. The parties were secretly married, which was discovered about July in the following year. They were then separately confined, the lady at the house of Sir Thomas Parry at Lambeth, and Seymour in the Tower, for his contempt in marrying a lady of the royal family without the king's leave.'

This, their first confinement, was not rigorous; the lady walked in her garden, and the lover was a prisoner at large in the Tower. The writer in the Biographia Britannica, observes, that 'Some intercourse they had by letters, which, after a time, was discovered.' In this history o love these might be precious documents, and in the library at Long-leat these love-epistles, or perhaps this volume, may yet lie unread in a corner.§ Arabella's epistolary talent was not vulgar, Dr Montford, in a manuscript letter, describes one of those effusions which Arabella addressed to the king. This letter was penned by her in the best terms, as she can do right well. It was often read without offence, nay, it was even commended by his highness, with the applause of prince and council." One of these

*Winwood's Memorials, Vol. iii. 119.

This evidently alludes to the gentleman whose name appears not, which occasioned Arabella to incur the king's displeasure before Christmas; the Lady Arabella, it is quite clear, was resolvedly bent on marrying herself!

Harl. MSS, 7003.

It is on record that at Long-leat, the seat of the Marquis of Bath, certain papers of Arabella are preserved. I leave to the noble owner the pleasure of the research,

amatory letters 1 have recovered. The circumstance is domestic, being nothing more at first than a very pretty letter on Mr Seymour having taken cold, but as every love-letter ought, it is not without a pathetic crescendo; the tearing away of hearts so firmly joined, while, in her solitary imprisonment, the secret thought that he lived and was her own, filled her spirit with that consciousness which triumphed even over that sickly frame so nearly subdued to death. The familiar style of James the First's age may bear comparison with our own. I shall give it entire.

'Sir,

'Lady Arabella to Mr William Seymour.

'I am exceeding sorry to hear that you have not been well. I pray you let me know truly how you do, and what was the cause of it. I am not satisfied with the reason Smith gives for it; but if it be a cold, I will impute it to some sympathy betwixt us, having myself gotten a swollen cheek at the same time with a cold. For God's sake, let not your grief of mind work upon your body. You may see by me what inconveniences it will bring one to; and no fortune, I assure you, daunts me so much as that weakd'un ness of body I find in myself; for sinous vivons l' age veau, as Marot says, we may, by God's grace, be happier than we look for, in being suffered to enjoy ourself with his majesty's favour. But if we be not able to live to it, I, for my part, shall think myself a pattern of misfortune in enjoying so great a blessing as you, so little awhile. No separation but that deprives me of the comfort of you. For wheresoever you be, or in what state so ever you are, it suffice th me you are mine! Rachel wept and would not be comforted, because her children were no more. And that indeed, is the remediless sorrow, and none else! And therefore God bless us from that, and I will hope well of the rest, though I see no apparent hope. But I am sure God's book mentioneth many of his children in as great distress that have done well after, even in this world! I do assure you nothing the state can do with me can trouble me so much as this news of your being ill doth; and you see when I am troubled, I trouble you too with tedious kindness; for so I think you will account so long a letter, yourself not having written to me this good while so much as how you do. But, sweet sir, I speak not this to trouble you with writing but when you please. Be well, and I shall account myself happy in being

Your faithfull loving wife,

'ARB. S.'*

In examining the manuscripts of this lady, the defect of dates must be supplied by our sagacity. The following 'petition,' as she calls it, addressed to the king in defence of her secret inarriage, must have been written at this time. She remonstrates with the king for what she calls his neglect of her; and while she fears to be violently separated from her husband, she asserts her cause with a firm and noble spirit, which was afterwards too severely tried!

To the King.

'May it please your most excellent Majesty.

་

ing with Uriah. But I assure myself, if it please your majesty in your own wisdom to consider thoroughly of my cause, there will no solid reason appear to debar me of justice and your princely favour, which I will endeavour to deserve whilst I breathe.'

It is indorsed, A copy of my petition to the King's Majesty.' In another she implores that If the necessity of my state and fortune, together with my weakness, have caused me to do somewhat not pleasing to your majesty, let it all be covered with the shadow of your royal benig nity.' Again, in another petition, she writes,

Touching the offence for which I am now punished, I most humbly beseech your majesty, in your most princely wisdom and judgment, to consider in what a miserable state I had been, if I had taken any other course than I did; for my own conscience witnessing before God that I was then the wife of him that now I am, I could never have matched with any other man, but to have lived all the days of my life as a harlot, which your majesty would have abhorred in any, especially in one who hath the hon our (how otherwise unfortunate soever) to have any drop of your majesty's blood in them.'

I find a letter of Lady Jane Drummond, in reply to this or another petition, which Lady Drummond had given the queen to present to his majesty. It was to learn the cause of Arabella's confinement. The pithy expression of James the First is characteristic of the monarch; and the solemn forebodings of Lady Drummond, who appears to have been a lady of excellent judgment, showed, by the fate of Arabella, how they were true!

'LADY JANE DRUMMOND TO LADY ARABELLA, Answering her prayer to know the cause of her confinement.

This day her majesty hath seen your ladyship's letter. Her Majesty says, that when she gave your ladyship's petition to his majesty, he did take it well enough, but gave no other answer than that ye had eaten of the forbid den tree. This was all her majesty commanded me to say to your ladyship in this purpose; but withal did remember her kindly to your ladyship, and sent you this lit tle token in witness of the continuance of her majesty's favour to your ladyship. Now, where your ladyship desires me to deal openly and freely with you, I protest I can say nothing on knowledge, for I never spoke to any of that purpose but to the queen; but the wisdom of this state. with the example how some of your quality in the like case has been used, makes me fear that ye shall not find so easy end to your troubles as ye expect or I wish.'

In return, Lady Arabella expresses her grateful thanks -presents her majesty with this piece of my work, to accept in remembrance of the poor prisoner that wrought them, in hopes her royal hands will vouchsafe to wear them, which till I have the honour to kiss, I shall live in a great deal of sorrow. Her case,' she adds, could be compared to no other she ever heard of, resembling no other.' Arabella, like the queen of the Scots, beguiled the hours of imprisonment by works of embroidery; for in sending a present of this kind to Sir Andrew Sinclair to be presented to the queen, she thanks him for 'vouchsafing to descend to these petty offices to take care even of these womanish toys, for her whose serious mind must invent some relaxation.'

The secret correspondence of Arabella and Seymour was discovered, and was followed by a sad scene. It must have been now that the king resolved to consign this unhappy lady to the stricter care of the Bishop of Durham. Lady Arabella was so subdued at this distant separation, that she gave way to all the wildness of despair; she fell suddenly ill, and could not travel but in a litter, and with a physician. In her way to Durham, she was so greatly disquieted in the first few miles of her uneasy and troublesome journey, that they would proceed no further than to Highgate. The physician returned to town to report her state, and declared that she was assu redly very weak, her pulse dull and melancholy, and very irregular; her countenance very heavy, pale, and wan; and though free from fever, he declared her in no case fit for travel. The king observed, It is enough to make any sound man sick to be carried in a bed in that manner she is; much more for her whose impatient and unquiet spirit. heapeth upon herself far greater indisposition of bady than otherwise she would have. His resolution, however, was, that 'she should proceed to Durham, if he were king! 'We answered,' replied the doctor, that we made Do

doubt of her obedience.' 'Obedience is that required,' replied the king, which being performed, I will do more for her than she expected.'

The king, however, with his usual indulgence, appears to have consented that Lady Arabella should remain for a month at Highgate, in confinement, till she had sufficiently recovered to proceed to Durham, where the bishop posted, unaccompanied by his charge, to await her reception, and to the great relief of the friends of the lady, who hoped she was still within the reach of their cares or of the royal favour.

A second month's delay was granted, in consequence of that letter which we have before noticed as so imprestive and so elegant, that it was commended by the king, and applauded by prince Henry and the council.

But the day of her departure hastened, and the Lady Arabella betrayed no syniptom of her first despair. She openly declared her resignation to her fate, and showed her obedient willingness, by being even over-careful in little preparations to make easy so long a journey. Such tender grief had won over the heart of her keepers, who could not but sympathize with a princess, whose love, holy and wedded too, was crossed only by the tyranny of statesmen. But Arabella had not within that tranquillity with which she had lulled her keepers. She and Sey mour had concerted a flight, as bold in its plot, and as beautifully wild, as any recorded in romantic story. The day preceding her departure, Arabella found it not difficult to persuade a female attendant to consent that she would suffer her to pay a last visit to her husband, and to wait for her return at an appointed hour. More solicitous for the happiness of lovers than for the repose of kings, this attendant, in utter simplicity, or with generous sympathy, assisted the Lady Arabella in dressing her in one of the most elaborate disguisings. She drew a pair of large French. fashioned hose or trowsers over her petticoats; put on a man's doublet or coat; a peruke, such as men wore, whose long locks covered her own ringlets; a black hat, a black cloak, russet boots with red tops, and a rapier by her side.' Thus accoutred, the Lady Arabella stole out with a gentleman about three o'clock in the afternoon.— She had only proceeded a mile and a half, when they stopped at a poor inn, where one of her confederates was waiting with horses, yet she was so sick and faint, that the ostier, who held her stirrup, observed, that the gentleman could hardly hold out to London.' She recruited her spirits by riding; the blood mantled in her face, and at six o'clock our sick lover reached Blackwall, where a boat and servants were waiting. The watermen were at first ordered to Woolwich; there they were desired to push on to Gravesend, then to Tilbury, where, complaining of fatigue, they landed to refresh; but, tempted by their freight, they reached Lee. At the break of morn they discovered a French vessel riding there to receive the lady; but as Seymour had not yet arrived, Arabella was desirous to he at anchor for her lord, conscious that he would not fail to his appointment. If he indeed had been prevented in his escape, she herself cared not to preserve the freedom she now possessed; but her attendants, aware of the danger of being overtaken by a king's ship, overruled her wishes, and hoisted sail, which occasioned so fatal a termination to this romantic adventure. Seymour indeed had escaped from the Tower; he had left his servant watching at his door to warn all visiters not to disturb his master, who lay ill with a raging tooth ache, while Seymour in disguise stole away alone, following a cart which had just brought wood to his apartment. He passed the warders; he reached the wharf, and found his confidential man waiting with a boat, and be arrived at Lee. The time pressed; the waves were rising; Arabella was not there; but in the distance he descried a vessel. Hiring a fisherman to take him on board, to his grief, on hailing it, he discovered that it was not the French vessel charged with his Arabella; in despair and confusion he found another ship from Newcastle, which for a good sum altered his course, and landed him in Flanders. In the mean while the escape of Arabella was first known to the government, and the hot alarm which spread may seem ludiCrous to us. The political consequences attached to the union and the flight of these two doves from their cotes, shook with consternation the grey owls of the cabinet, more particularly the Scotch party, who, in their 'error,

These particulars I derive from the manuscript letters among the papers of Arabella Stuart. Harl. MSS, 7003.

paralleled it with the gunpowder treason, and some political danger must have impended, at least in their imagination, for Prince Henry partook of this cabinet panic.

Confusion and alarm prevailed at court; couriers were despatched swifter than the winds wafted the unhappy Arabella, and all was hurry in the sea ports. They sent to the Tower to warn the lieutenant to be doubly vigilant over Seymour, who, to his surprise, discovered that his prisoner had ceased to be so for several hours.James at first was for issuing a proclamation in a style so angry and vindictive, that it required the moderation of Cecil to preserve the dignity while he concealed the terror of his majesty. By the admiral's detail of his impetuous movements, he seemed in pursuit of an enemy's fleet; for the courier is urged, and the post-masters are roused by a superscription, which warned them of the eventful despatch: Haste, haste, post haste! Haste for your life, your life! The family of the Seymours were in a state of distraction; and a letter from Mr Francis Seymour to his grandfather, the Earl of Hertford, residing then at his seat far remote from the capital, to acquaint him of the escape of his brother and the lady, still bears to posterity a remarkable evidence of the trepidations and consternation of the old earl; it arrived in the middle of the night, accompanied by a summons to attend the privy-council. In the perusal of a letter written in a small hand, and filling more than two folio pages, such was his agitation, that in holding the taper he must have burnt what he probably had not read; the letter is scorched, and the flame has perforated it in so critical a part, that the poor old earl journeyed to town in a state of uncertainty and confusion. Nor was his terror so unreasonable as it seems. Treason had been a political calamity with the Seymours. Their progenitor the Duke of Somerset the protector, had found that all his honours,' as Frankland strangely expresses it, had helped him too forwards to hop headless.' Henry, Elizabeth, and James, says the same writer, considered that it was needful, as indeed in all sovereignties, that those who were near the crown should be narrowly looked into for marriage.'

But we have left the lady Arabella alone and mournful on the seas, not praying for favourable gales to convey her away; but still imploring her attendants to linger for her Seymour; still straining her sight to the point of the hori zon for some speck which might give a hope of the approach of the boat freighted with all her love. Alas! Never more was Arabella to cast a single look on her lover and her husband! She was overtaken by a pink in the king's service, in Calais roads; and now she declared that she cared not to be brought back again to her imprisonment should Seymour escape, whose safety was dearest to her!

The life of the unhappy, the melancholy, and the distracted Arabella Stuart is now to close in an imprisonment, which lasted only four years; for her constitutional delicacy, her rooted sorrows, and the violence of her feelings, sunk beneath the hopelessness of her situation, and a secret resolution in her mind to refuse the aid of her physicians, and to wear away the faster if she could, the feeble remains of life. But who shall paint the emotions of a mind which so much grief, and so much love, and distraction itself, equally possessed?

What passed in that dreadful imprisonment cannot perhaps be recovered for authentic history; but enough is known; that her mind grew impaired, that she finally lost her reason, and if the duration of her imprisonment was short, it was only terminated by her death. Some loose effusions, often begun and never ended, written and erased, incoherent and rational, yet remain in the fragments of her papers. In a letter she proposed addressing to Viscount Fenton, to implore for her his majesty's favour again, says, "Good, my lord, consider the fault cannot be uncommitted; neither can any more be required of any earthly creature but confession and most humble submission.' In a paragraph she had written, and crossed out,

she

This emphatic injunction,' observes my friend Mr Hamper, would be effective when the messenger could read;' but in a letter written by the Earl of Essex about the year 1597, to the Lord High Admiral at Plymouth. I have seen added to the words Hast, hast, hast for lyfe! the expressive symbol of a gallows prepared with a halter, which could not be misunderstood by the most illiterate of Mercuries, thus

it seems that a present of her work had been refused by the king, and that she had no one about her whom she nught trust.

Help will come too late, and be assured that neither physician nor other, but whom I think good, shall come about me while I live, till I have his majesty's favour, without which I desire not to live. And if you remember of old, I dare die, so I be not guilty of my own death, and oppress others with my ruin too, if there be no other way, as God forbid, to whom I commit you; and rest as assuredly as heretofore, if you be the same to me,

'Your lordship's faithful friend,

'A. S.' That she had frequently meditated on suicide appears by another letter-I could not be so unchristian as to be the cause of my own death. Consider what the world would conceive if I should be violently inforced to do it.' One fragment we may save as an evidence of her utter wretchedness.

In all humility, the most wretched and unfortunate creature that ever lived, prostrates itselfe at the feet of the most merciful king that ever was, desiring nothing but mercy and favour, not being more afflicted for any thing than for the losse of that which hath binne this long time the only comfort it had in the world, and which, if it weare to do again, I would not adventure the losse for any other worldly comfort; mercy it is I desire, and that for God's sake!"

Such is the history of the Lady Arabella, who from some circumstances not sufficiently opened to us, was an important personage, designed by others, at least, to play a high character in the political drama. Thrice selected as a queen; but the consciousness of royalty was only felt in her veins while she lived in the poverty of dependance. Many gallant spirits aspired after her hand, but when her heart secretly selected one beloved, it was for ever deprived of domestic happiness! She is said not to have been beauti ful, and to have been beautiful; and her very portrait, ambiguous as her life, is neither the one nor the other. She is said to have been a poetess, and not a single verse substan. tiates her claim to the laurel. She is said not to have been re. markable for her intellectual accomplishments, yet I have found a Latin letter of her composition in her manuscripts. The materials of her life are so scanty that it cannot be written, and yet we have sufficient reason to believe that it would be as pathetic as it would be extraordinary, could we narrate its involved incidents, and paint forth her delirious feelings. Acquainted rather with her conduct than with her character, for us the Lady Arabella has no historical existence; and we perceive rather her shadow than herself! A writer of romance might render her one of those interesting personages whose griefs have been deepened by their royalty, and whose adventures, touched with the warm hues of love and distraction, closed at the bars of her prisongrate a sad example of a female victim to the state!

"Through one dim lattice, fring'd with ivy round, Successive suns a languid radiance threw, To paint how fierce her angry guardian frown'd, To mark how fast her waning beauty flew!? Seymour, who was afterwards permitted to return, dis. tinguished himself by his loyalty through three successive reigns, and retained his romantic passion for the lady of his first affections; for he called the daughter he had by his second lady by the ever-beloved name of Arabella Stuart.

DOMESTIC HISTORY OF SIR EDWARD COKE.

Sir Edward Coke-or Cook, as now pronounced, and occasionally so written in his own times-that lord chiefjustice whose name the laws of England will preservehas shared the fate of his great rival the Lord Chancellor Bacon-for no hand worthy of their genius has pursued their story. Bacon, busied with nature, forgot himself; Coke, who was only the greatest of lawyers, reflected with more complacency on himself; for among those thirty books which he had written with his own hand, most pleasing to himself, was a manual which he called Vade Mecum, from whence, at one view, he took a prospect of his life past.' This manuscript, which Lloyd notices, was among the fifty which, on his death, were seized on by an order of council, but some years after were returned to his heir, and this precious memorial may still be disinterred.*

* This conjecture may not be vain; since this has been writ.

Coke was the oracle of law,' but, like too many great lawyers, he was so completely one, as to have been no thing else; armed with law, he committed acts of injustice, for in how many cases, passion mixing itself with law Summum Jus becomes Summa Injuria. Official violence brutalized, and political ambition exunguished, every spark of nature in this great lawyer, when he struck at his victims, public or domestic. His solitary knowledge, per haps, had deadened his judgment in other studies; and yet his narrow spirit could shrink with jealousy at the celebrity obtained by more liberal pursuits than his own. The errors of the great are instructive as their virtues, and the secret history of the outrageous lawyer may have, at least, the merit of novelty, although not of panegyric. Coke, already enriched by his first marriage, combined power with added wealth, in his union with the react of Sir William Hatton, the sister of Thomas, Lord Burleigh. Family alliance was the policy of that prudent age of po litical interests. Bacon and Cecil married two sisters; Walsingham and Mildmay two others; Knowles Essex, and Leicester, were linked by family alliances. Eliza. beth, who never designed to marry herself, was anxious to intermarry her court dependants, and to dispose of them so as to secure their services by family interests.* Ambition and avarice, which had instigated Coke to form this alliance, punished their creature, by mating him with a spirit haughty and intractable as his own. It is a remarkable fact, connected with the character of Coke, that this great lawyer suffered his second marriage to take place in an illegal manner, and condescended to pead ignorance of the laws! He had been married in a private house, without banns or license, at a moment when the archbishop was vigilantly prosecuting informal and irregu lar marriages. Coke, with his habitual pride, imagined that the rank of the parties concerned would have set him above such restrictions; the laws which he administered he appears to have considered had their indulgent exceptions for the great. But Whitgift was a primitive Christian; and the circumstance involved Coke, and the whole family, in a prosecution in the ecclesiastical court, and nearly in the severest of its penalties. The archbishop appears to have been fully sensible of the overbearing temper of this great lawyer; for when Coke became the attorney-general, we cannot but consider, as an ingenious reprimand, the archbishop's gift of a Greek Testament, with this message, that He had studied the common law long enough, and should henceforward study the law of God!'

The atmosphere of a court proved variable, with so stirring a genius; and as a constitutional lawyer, Coke, at times, was the stern assertor of the kingly power, or its intrepid impugner; but his personal dispositions led to predominance, and he too often usurped authority and power with the relish of one who loved them too keenly.

You make the laws too much lean to your opinion, whereby you show yourself to be a legal tyrant,' said Lord Bacon, in his admonitory letter to Coke.

In 1616, Coke was out of favour for more causes than one, and his great rival Bacon was paramount at the coun cil table. Perhaps Coke felt more humiliated by appear ing before his judges, who were every one inferior to him as lawyers, than by the weak triumph of his enemies, who received him with studied insult. The queen inform ed the king of the treatment the disgraced lord chief-jus tice had experienced, and, in an angry letter, James declared, that he prosecuted Coke ad correctionem, not ad destructionem; and afterwards at the council, spoke of Coke with so many good words, as if he meant to hang ten, I have heard that the papers of Sir Edward Coke are still preserved at Holkham, the seat of Mr Coke; and I have also heard of others in the possession of a noble family. Mr Rosco whose elegant genius it were desirable should be otherwise di rected, is preparing a beautiful embellished catalogue of the Holkham library, in which the taste of the owner will rival his munificence.

A list of those manuscripts to which I allude, may be discovered in the Lambeth MSS, No 943, Art. 369, described in the catalogue as 'A note of such things as were found in a trunk of Sir Edward Coke's by the king's command, 1634,' but more particularly in Art. 871, A Catalogue of Sir Edward Coke's papers then seized and brought to Whitehall."

*Lloyd's State Worthies, art. Sir Nicholas Breon.

+ Miss Aikin's Court of James the First appeared two years after this article was written; it has occasioned no alteration. I refer the reader to her clear narrative, vol. ii. p. 30, and p. 63; but secret history is rarely discovered in printed books.