Arbella Stuart
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Arbella Stuart (or "Arabella" and/or "Stewart") (1575 - 27 September 1615), Duchess of Somerset, was the only child of Elizabeth Cavendish (daughter of Bess of Hardwick) and Charles Stuart, 1st Earl of Lennox (younger brother of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who was the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots).
Throughout Arbella's girlhood, there was talk of an appropriate marriage. It would have suited the Catholic Church for her to marry a member of the House of Savoy (descended from one of Edward IV of England's many bastards) and then take the English throne, leaving James king of only Scotland (which would make the king of France happy). A marriage was mooted with Rainutio, the son of Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza. According to Isaac D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, this scheme originated from the Pope who ("in his infallibility," says D'Israeli) eventually settled on his own brother, a Catholic Cardinal, as a suitable husband for Arbella. To eliminate that impediment, the Pope defrocked his brother, freeing him to marry "Arbelle" (as the Italians spelled her name) and thus become king of England. Nothing came of this plan, and in fact nobody was ever sure if Arbella was a Catholic or a Protestant — it appears that everyone who talked with her thought her to be of the same religion as they were.
In the closing months of Elizabeth's reign, Arbella got into trouble through reports of an ill-advised marriage with a member of the Seymour family. This was reported to the queen by the Earl of Hertford, whose grandson was the intended groom. Arbella denied having attempted to marry without the queen's permission. Neither would King James allow her to marry, once he was king of England and had children of his own, because her children would have had a claim to the throne. In 1603, right after James came to the English throne, there was a plot (in which Sir Walter Raleigh was involved) to overthrow him and put Arbella on the throne, but when she was invited to participate by writing to the king of Spain agreeing to it, she reported it to James instead, and that was the end of that. In 1604 the king of Poland sent an ambassador to England to ask for Arbella to be his queen. This offer was also rejected.
There are some indications that she tried to elope in about 1604 and fell out of favour with King James because of it; she was certainly out of sight until 1608, when she was restored to his good graces. In 1610 she was in trouble again for planning to marry William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset, grandson of Lady Catherine Grey, a younger sister of Lady Jane Grey. Although the couple at first denied that any arrangement existed between them, they later married in secret on 22 June 1610 at Greenwich Palace. For that, King James imprisoned them: Arbella in Sir Thomas Perry's house in Lambeth and Seymour in the Tower of London; they had some liberty within those buildings, and some of her letters to him and to the king during this period survive. When the king found out about her letters to Seymour, however, he transferred Arbella to the custody of the bishop of Durham, but Arbella claimed to be sick, so her departure for Durham was delayed.
The couple used that time to plan their escape. She dressed as a man and got away to Lee (in Kent), but Seymour did not meet her there before their getaway ship had to sail for France. Seymour did escape from the Tower, but by the time he got to Lee, she was gone, so he caught the next ship he could and sailed to Flanders. The ship Arbella was on was overtaken by King James's men just before it reached Calais (France), and she was taken back and imprisoned in the Tower of London. She never saw her husband again, and she died in the Tower in 1615.
In 1993 a collection of more than a hundred of Arbella's letters was published, edited by Sara Jayne Steen, providing details of her activities and ideas.ru:Стюарт, Арабелла