Lady Margaret Douglas, Poet and "Progenitor of Princes"

Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox (christened 8 October 1515)

Margaret Douglas was the daughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's older sister--the Tudor princess's first marriage had been to James IV of Scotland. After the king's death, the queen dowager had married Archibald Douglas, the earl of Angus. Margaret Douglas was the only child of Margaret Tudor's second marriage.

Margaret Douglas,
c. 1560-65

As a widowed queen, Margaret Tudor struggled to maintain her role as regent for her young son, who at seventeen months old succeeded his father as James V of Scotland in 1513, after the king's death at the battle of Flodden.

But when the queen dowager married her second husband secretly in 1514, she lost her regency and her guardianship of her two royal sons, the child-king, and his younger brother, Alexander, born in 1514, after his father's death.

In 1515, heavily pregnant with Angus's child and deeply embroiled in the violent political struggles of the Scottish lords, the former queen left the country, undertaking a desperate escape to England.

She took refuge in Harbottle Castle (Northumberland), where her daughter, Margaret Douglas, was born on 8 October 1515. The elder Margaret, too ill after childbirth to travel south to join her brother's court, remained in the castle with her daughter until she recovered enough to make the journey.

In late April of 1516, mother and daughter were finally able to move on to the safety of Henry's court, where they were greeted by Henry's queen, Katherine of Aragon, who had just given birth to a daughter of her own, Mary Tudor, in February. 

But after a year in England, with her husband Angus refusing to join his wife and daughter, Margaret Tudor returned to Scotland and her husband, taking Margaret Douglas with her. The turbulent marriage of Margaret and Angus, despite their brief reconciliation, was not to last.

Back in Scotland, Margaret was allowed to have some contact with her son, James V, but her difficult marriage disintegrated, and by the time the younger Margaret was three, her parents were engaged in a long and bitter struggle. 

Though the two would continue in their attempts at reconciliation, primarily at the urging of Henry VIII, by 1527 the marriage was irretrievably broken, and it was at last annulled by Clement VII--while declaring Margaret Tudor's second marriage invalid, the pope nevertheless declared Margaret Douglas legitimate. (Margaret Tudor would go on to marry a third time, to Henry Stewart, first lord Methven--but that's another story.)

At some point between 1525 and 1528, Angus removed his daughter from her mother's guardianship--although some historians have referred to this as a kidnapping or even an abduction, Angus had every legal right to take possession of his child. Now in her father's custody, Margaret, began to identify not as English but Scottish.

Angus continued to involve himself in the struggle to control the Scottish throne and the person of the young king. By 1528, Angus was not only back in Scotland but once again regent--though he quickly lost power. By the end of the year, the young king escaped from Angus's control and joined his mother. 

Attainted and finding his lands confiscated, Angus managed a truce and fled to England, taking his daughter with him, recognizing her value as a significant political pawn. While Margaret Tudor's son, James V, might be considered an heir to the English king, he was at least technically debarred by reason of his Scottish birth. Margaret's daughter, on the other hand, faced no such bar. She was English--born in Northumberland. 

But once in England, Margaret Douglas was removed from her father's custody and joined the household of her godfather, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, her residence established in Berwick Castle. She remained there until the spring of 1530; after Wolsey's death, she was summoned to her uncle's court.

Her proximity to the throne would shape her turbulent life. In 1530, she was made a lady-in-waiting to her cousin, Mary, whose residence was at the royal palace at Beaulieu. The two would remain lifelong confidantes. 

But in 1533, with the English king's marriage to Anne Boleyn, Margaret Douglas was transferred to the new queen's court, once again appointed as lady-in-waiting. After Elizabeth Tudor's birth, Margaret was a lady of honor to the princess. 

While at the court of Henry and Anne, she met and fell in love with Lord Thomas Howard, the queen's uncle. The two seem to have entered into a contract for marriage. When King Henry discovered the relationship between the two, he regarded it as a dangerous attempt by Howard to gain control of the throne. On 8 June 1534, Henry had the pair arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Howard was attainted for treason, his position becoming increasingly dire after Anne Boleyn's fall and execution in 1536, but he was not tried and executed--he eventually fell ill as a result of the harsh conditions he suffered while imprisoned in the Tower.

For her part, Margaret also fell ill, but she was transferred from the Tower into the custody of the abbess of Syon Abbey.  She was finally released on 29 October 1537, but she would not be reunited with her lover--he died in the Tower just two days later.

The poems that Howard and Margaret Douglas exchanged during their calamitous affair are now part of the collection known as the Devonshire Manuscript--an anthology of courtly lyric poetry composed and compiled by members of the royal court, many of them women. In addition to its significance as a repository of sixteenth-century poetry, the manuscript collection "also provides a unique insight into the precarious position of Renaissance women in, or close to, power."

A leaf from the Devonshire Manuscript

As a result of his niece's actions, the king altered the Act of Succession to make any attempt to "espouse, marry or deflower being unmarried" a female claimant to the throne an act of treason.

Margaret Douglas was released from her confinement in Syon in order to attend the funeral of Jane Seymour, Henry's third queen. Fearing that his long-desired son's legitimacy might be questioned by the Catholic church, given his complicated marital history, Henry VIII had his niece Margaret declared illegitimate--on he grounds that her mother's marriage to Angus had been entered into clandestinely, 

Although legally debarred from the throne, Margaret was welcomed back to court. In 1539, she was appointed as a member of the household of Anne of Cleves, serving as one of the English women who would greet the future queen on her arrival in England. The Cleves married was annulled in 1540.

By that time, Margaret had involved herself in yet another disastrous romantic entanglement, this time with Sir Charles Howard, the brother of Henry's fifth queen, Catherine Howard. (Charles Howard was also the nephew of Margaret's earlier love, Thomas Howard.)

Margaret once again found herself in disgrace, though on this occasion she avoided the Tower and went immediately back to Syon. (For his part, Charles Howard escaped to the continent.) But she was quickly released after Catherine Howard's fall and execution, once more back at court and appointed to the household of Henry's last queen, Katherine Parr.

In 1544, Margaret Douglas at last found a marital prospect of whom the English king approved, and she married the Scottish exile Matthew Stewart, earl of Lennox. Although they remained in England, the couple had many interests (and intrigues) in Scotland. (Still fearful of Margaret's claims to the English throne, Henry VIII excluded her from the succession in his will.)

Now the countess of Lennox, Margaret Douglas quickly gave birth to eight children, but only two survived, two sons, Henry Stuart, lord Darnley, in 1545, and Charles Stuart, earl of Lennox, in 1555. Meanwhile, during the brief reign of Edward VI, the staunchly Catholic Margaret and her more religiously opportunistic husband largely stayed away from court.

By contrast, she remained at the English court throughout the reign of Queen Mary (1553-58). The first English queen reportedly told Simon Renard, Habsburg ambassador to the English court, that her cousin was "best suited" to succeed her on the English throne.

But after Mary's death, Margaret retired to Yorkshire. Her northern household was a center for Catholic intrigue and numerous political plots. 

Margaret involved herself in many of them--notably angling for the marriage of her son, Darnley, to the widowed Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland. In the midst of her scheming, she was again arrested and imprisoned--unlike her husband, who was sent to the Tower, Margaret was moved south but placed under house arrest at Sheen (the former Carthusian monastery, not far from the palace of Westminster).

The two were held for a year, but by 1563, Margaret Douglas was accepted back at court, perhaps because she could be kept under Elizabeth's watchful eye. But after Darnley's marriage to the Scottish queen, Margaret Douglas found herself once more in the Tower, where she remained until Darnley's murder in 1567.  

Released by Elizabeth, Margaret Douglas witnessed the fulfillment of many of her aspirations when she saw her grandson, Darnley's child, become James VI after his mother, Mary Stuart, was forced to abdicate on 24 June 1567. Margaret's husband, the earl of Lennox, was at last able to return to Scotland, serving as regent for his grandson--at least until his murder on 4 September 1571.

Still the indomitable countess was not to be stopped. With the redoubtable Bess of Hardwick, she conspired to marry her second son, Charles, to Bess's daughter, Elizabeth--this couple would give birth to the unfortunate Arbella Stuart. (As noted at the British Library website, "Douglas's disastrous love affair [with Thomas Howard] in turn foreshadowed her granddaughter Arbella Stuart’s experiences almost 75 years later.") In 1574, after the marriage was accomplished, a furious Queen Elizabeth ordered Margaret to the Tower once more.

Having achieved this last marriage, Margaret Douglas "retired" from her political intrigues and matchmaking, dying just a few years later on 9 March 1578. Although she died in poverty, she was given an extravagant tomb in Westminster Abbey, funded by her cousin and adversary, Queen Elizabeth.

The tomb of Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox,
Westminster Abbey

Margaret Douglas did not live to witness her ultimate dynastic triumph, when her grandson James VI of Scotland would ascend to the English throne in 1603, after the death of Elizabeth, becoming James I of England. 

For an excellent essay, I recommend "King Henry's Niece," by Leanda De Lisle. (In her essay she calls Margaret the "progenitor of princes," which I have quoted in the title of this post.)

Margaret Cavendish Blazes Through the World

Margaret Lucas Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle (died 15 December 1673)

If you’ve encountered Margaret Cavendish before, it may be the same place I first did--in the pages of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. There, after her discussion of the fictional Shakespeare’s sister, Woolf describes several Englishwomen writing before the eighteenth century, Margaret Cavendish among them.

Woolf’s profile of Cavendish is memorable, but not kind. “What a vision of loneliness and riot the thought of Margaret Cavendish brings to mind!” Woolf exclaims, “as if some giant cucumber had spread itself over all the roses and carnations in the garden and choked them to death.”

Margaret Cavendish,
duchess of Newcastle

Woolf acknowledges Cavendish’s “passion for poetry,” but she concludes that her writing is “disfigured and deformed.” Disfigured and deformed by her “rage,” disfigured and deformed because “no one taught her.” 

When the students in my literature classes read Woolf’s description of Margaret Cavendish--disfigured and deformed, a kudzo-like vine devouring everything in its path--they would laugh. At least until they realized that they would be reading Cavendish later in the semester.

In 1623, Margaret Lucas was born into a wealthy, aristocratic family, the daughter of Sir Thomas Lucas and his wife, Elizabeth Leighton. Like so many of the women about whom I've posted this year, she received no formal education, and she was keenly aware of this deficiency. 

Reflecting on her childhood, she would later write that she was educated “according to my birth, and the nature of my sex.” That is, she “only learned to read and write at home, taught by an ancient decayed gentlewoman, whom my mother kept for that purpose.” She also learned music and was instructed in needlework, but “rather for formality than for benefit.” 

She was, nevertheless, a great reader, even in her childhood, and Shakespeare was her favorite author. Just as Moderata Fonte had done, a century earlier, the young Margaret Lucas supplemented her meager education by consulting her brother John, whom she said was “a great scholar.” As she later described the process, “when I read what I understood not, I would ask my brother . . . the sense or meaning thereof.” 

The Lucas family's social position secured for their daughter a place as lady-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta-Maria, the French-born wife of King Charles I; when the queen fled the strife-torn country in 1644, Margaret Lucas left England with the her. 

In Paris with the English court-in-exile, Lucas met and married William Cavendish, marquess (then later duke) of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a widower some thirty-four years her senior. The young Margaret was noted for her extreme shyness and her beauty, William for his wealth and his loyal service to the king. After their marriage, the couple spent the remaining years of the English Civil War and the period of the Commonwealth on the continent, moving to Antwerp in 1648; after the execution of Charles I in 1649, William Cavendish was barred from returning to England, and his estates were confiscated. (As an interesting note, William Cavendish was the grandson of a woman we've met before, Bess of Hardwick.)

Margaret Cavendish returned to London in 1651, where she worked tirelessly with her husband’s younger brother to save some of the Cavendish family’s wealth. She went back to Antwerp in 1653 and remained there with her husband until the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 allowed them to return to England. 

William Cavendish and his younger brother, Charles, would both contribute to Margaret Lucas Cavendish's education. They read to and with her, engaged with her and challenged her, and fostered her interests in a broad range of topics, including politics, science, and scientific experimentation. She was later to characterize herself as an “apprentice” to her husband, who in his role as teacher became her “master.” In her estimation, “I have learned more of the world from my lord’s discourse, since I have been his wife, than I am confident I should have done all my life, should I have lived to an old age.” She was an “apt” student, “industrious” enough to remember everything her husband taught her.

Cavendish’s literary career began in 1653, with the publication of her first poems and “philosophical fancies” and continued until her death in 1673. Unlike most women of her day and certainly of her class, she published what she wrote, she made sure her authorship was proclaimed on the title-pages of her books, and she displayed engraved images of herself in frontispieces inside the covers.

She did not limit herself by writing only in genres “acceptable” for those few women who did publish in the early seventeenth century, lyric poems, devotional works, and personal letters, for example. 

In the twenty years between 1653, when she published two volumes, Poems and Fancies and Philosophical Fancies, and her death in 1673, she published fourteen books, including two volumes of plays; a number of philosophical and scientific works, including Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1663), Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (1668), and Grounds of Natural Philosophy (1668); a utopian romance, The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World (1666), that has often been called the first work of science fiction in English, a biography of her husband, the 1667 Life of William Cavendish, and her own autobiography, A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life. 

As her recent biographer, Kate Whitaker, notes, “In the first forty years of the [seventeenth] century fewer than eighty books by women had been published in England—making up only one-half of 1 percent of all books.” Margaret Lucas Cavendish wrote and published as if she were trying to make up the difference all by herself. 

She died at age fifty, survived by her much older husband, who buried her in Westminster Abbey and then published a tribute to her, Letters and Poems in Honor of the Incomparable Princess Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle in 1676.

But by the middle of the eighteenth-century, most of Cavendish's work had disappeared. She had published second editions of a few of her books, most notably of The Blazing World, originally published in 1666, with the second edition appearing in 1668, but she did not reprint her plays. After Cavendish’s death in 1673, Whitaker reports that her “original volumes had become so rare and so expensive” that a would-be biographer, George Ballard, intent on compiling information about Cavendish for his 1752 Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain Who Have Been Celebrated for their Writings of Skill in the Learned Languages, Arts, and Sciences, had great difficulty finding many of them.

Today Margaret Cavendish's many interests and accomplishments have blazed back into view. You can read about Cavendish "The Scientific Revolutionary" at the website of Epigenysys, an educational organization funded by the European Community ("our public education mission will communicate the science in an accessible and interesting fashion while awakening young pupils' interest in research").*

You can read about Cavendish the philosopher in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (in the entry on Cavendish, topics include "Arguments for Materialism," "The Intelligibility of the Capacities of Matter," "Occasional Causation and the Orderly Behavior of Bodies," "God," and "Social and Political Philosophy") or in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which divides Cavendish's philosophical work into two major topics, natural philosophy and political philosophy.

You can read about Cavendish the poet at the Poetry Foundation website and read a sample of her poetry there. You will also find her work in print, published by Penguin, Cambridge University Press, Johns Hopkins, and Routledge Press. 

And you can always catch up with the latest news about Margaret Cavendish on Facebook.

*Update, 14 December 2022: Publication on this site was suspended in January. (Be careful--the old Epigenesys website now seems to have been taken over by someone selling sketchy "prescription" drugs.) The link I’ve provided here is to the original article, as it has been preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.    

Arbella Stuart--She Might Have Been Queen?

Lady Arbella Stuart (died 25 September 1615)

The unfortunate Arbella Stuart was born to great potential, but her life ended in great tragedy. She might have become queen of England. Instead, she died in the Tower of London.

Lady Arbella Stuart,
c. 1589 
Hardwick Hall Collection

Arbella was the great granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's elder sister: queen of Scotland, mother of James V of Scotland and, by her second marriage, mother of Margaret Douglas.*

Lady Margaret Douglas married Matthew Stewart, earl of Lennox, who was himself a descendant of James II of Scotland; when her son Henry, lord Darnley married Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, uniting and reinforcing these claims, Lady Margaret Douglas was imprisoned. 

Undauted, in 1574 Margaret Douglas arranged for her younger son, Charles, earl of Lennox, to marry Elizabeth Cavendish, the daughter of Elizabeth Hardwick, then countess of Shrewsbury; Queen Elizabeth sent Lady Margaret to the Tower once more. She was released by November of the next year, however, when she wrote to her niece Mary Stuart, the queen of Scotland, to announce the birth of a granddaughter, Arbella.

Little is known about the early period of Arbella Stuart's life. Her father died in April of 1576, when she was about six months old; in 1582, when her mother died, she was sent to live with her grandmother Elizabeth Hardwick.

Arbella Stuart aged twenty-three months,
1577, 
Hardwick Hall Collection

Elizabeth Hardwick's fourth husband, George Talbot, had been Mary Stuart's "guardian" while she was imprisoned in England, but there is no surviving evidence about any relationship between Arbella and her aunt, the exiled queen. Even so, Sara Jayne Steen, who has written extensively about her, concludes that Arbella's subsequent "letters and actions suggest that she was influenced by [the queen of Scotland's] trial and execution." Arbella was eleven years old when Mary Stuart was executed in 1587.

Throughout her childhood, Arbella Stuart was "useful" to Queen Elizabeth as a "marrigeable property": "As a claimant who could bring the dowry of a crown, she was a commodity, one of high worth on the matrimonial market," Steen writes, but her status as a claimant "fluctuated with English and European politics and the rise and fall of Elizabeth's favor." 

Margaret Tudor's descendants had been cut out of the succession by Henry VIII and his son, Edward VI, but Queen Elizabeth had also acted to bar the descendants of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's younger sister, from the throne. In such a complicated situation, James VI of Scotland, Mary Stuart's son, seemed to have the best claim to the English throne: he was the oldest unquestionably legitimate male descendant of Henry VII and Henry VIII. But he was also unquestionably a foreigner, and foreign birth was generally regarded as a bar to the English succession. 

After James VI, Margaret Tudor's daughter, Lady Margaret Douglas, might be considered "next in line" for the English crown. She had been born in England and had spent much of her life at the English court, but as Steen notes, she was older than Elizabeth Tudor and "unlikely to outlive" her. Lady Margaret's oldest son, Darnley, had married Mary Stuart, but he died in 1567; her younger son, Charles, was thus next in line for the throne, after James VI. After Charles's death in 1575, his daughter Arbella would inherit his claim. 

When Arbella was still a child, her grandmother had promised her to the four-year-old son of Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, who, perhaps fortunately for Bess of Hardwick, died; the queen had been angered by the proposal and took upon herself the task of arranging Arbella's future.

As queen, Elizabeth used Arbella as a "bargaining chip in foreign policy, tantalizing continental nobility with the prospect of marriage accompanied by the declaration of succession." At various times those prospective alliances included Esmé Stuart, who had inherited Arbella's Lennox title and lands after her father's death; the king of Scotland himself, James VI; Rainutio Farnese, the son of the duke of Parma; Henry IV, king of France; the prince of Condé; and the duke of Nevers. Various alliances with members of the English nobility were also proposed, including Robert Cecil.

But none of these marriages ever took place. Arbella came briefly to court in 1587 and again in 1588, but she was sent away in disgrace for some offense. At the time it was rumored, on the one hand, that her presumption had resulted in her dismissal, on the other that a romance with the earl of Essex had precipitated her removal from court. Arbella herself, writing about the incident later, indicated that at first she had enjoyed the queen's approval. Queen Elizabeth had examined the young woman for herself when she arrived at court and "by trial did pronounce me an eaglet of her own kind . . . worthy . . . even yet to carry her thunderbolt." 

It wasn't until 1591 that Arbella was recalled to court, during the period when her marriage to the son of the duke of Farnese was being discussed. She remained with the court into the summer of 1592, but when the duke died and marriage negotiations failed, she was once again dismissed. She was with her grandmother later in that year when a plot to abduct her came to light. A Catholic priest revealed a plan to kidnap Arbella and then marry her to a foreign Catholic noble, who would invade England and claim the throne on the young woman's behalf. Arbella was not implicated in the plot, but neither was she recalled to court by the queen. 

Despite the dazzling array of marriages proposed for Arbella, the queen was no more interested in finding a husband for Arbella than she was in finding one for herself. Instead, she left the young woman in the care of her grandmother. Arbella was well educated, but she was completely isolated, and she came to regard her seclusion as an imprisonment rather than a retirement. 

Life at Hardwick Hall grew intolerable. A twenty-seven-year-old woman, Arbella still slept in her grandmother's bedroom and had her nose "tweaked" for punishment. After a decade of being cut off from court and court contacts, in 1602 Arbella sought permission from Bess of Hardwick to "present" herself to the queen, but even that "small and ordinary liberty" was denied to her, at which she "despaired."

At last she took matters into her own hands. Arbella proposed a marriage with Edward Seymour, Lady Catherine Grey's grandson and thus, himself, a claimant to the English throne--despite the fact that Elizabeth I had declared Catherine Grey's marriage invalid and the children of that marriage illegitimate. On Christmas Day Arbella sent a message to Seymour's grandfather, the earl of Hertford, indicating that she would be interested in an alliance with his grandson. If the earl approved, he should send his grandson to her in disguise so that they could meet one another and, after having met, "see how they could like."

But Arbella's plot failed. The earl of Hertford forwarded her message to Sir Robert Cecil, and within days Henry Brounker was sent to Hardwick Hall to investigate. By January he had cleared things up to his own satisfaction and the queen's. Arbella apologized in a letter to the queen, expressing her sorrow for having given "the least cause of offense"; "I humbly prostrate myself at Your Majesty's feet," she wrote, "craving pardon" and hoping that, out of "princely clemency," the queen would "signify" her "gracious remission" to Arbella's grandmother, whose "discomfort" she, Arbella, would be until then. 

Arbella was "forgiven," but her restrictions were "redoubled." "Educated for command," as Steen notes, Arbella "seemed powerless, politically and personally enclosed: chaste, with no opportunity to be otherwise; silenced, forbidden unmonitored conversations or letters; and obedient, under the very real threat of the Tower or death." Although she acknowledged herself as a "poor silly infant and wretch," Arbella insisted that she had taken as "great care" to preserve the queen's "royal lineage from any blot as any whosoever"; she would, she wrote, have judged herself "unworthy of life" if she had "degenerated from the most reknowned stock whereof it is my greatest honor to be a branch."

Despite her apologies, Arbella's efforts to escape her confinement continued. She fabricated another marriage plot, used her poor health to effect a move to another residence, and ultimately attempted to escape. The escape failed, however, and early in March Arbella was once more at Hardwick Hall, under investigation. This time her apologies were less abject: 

When it shall please Her Majesty to afford me those ordinary rights which other subjects cannot be debarred of justly, I shall endeavor to receive them as thankfully now as if they had been in due time offered.

She would bear her yoke, she wrote, "as long as I think good to convince them that impose it of hardness of heart," and then "shake it off when I think good to take my Christian liberty." If it were "denied" her, the "whole world" would be "made judge upon what cause, or color, or how justly given or taken and by whom." If she could be left to be her "own woman," then everyone's "trouble" would cease.

I thought this was a portrait of
Arbella Stuart . . . but maybe not?
(see comments, below)

Queen Elizabeth died on 24 March 1603, just days after Arbella's letter was written. Arbella acknowledged the authority of the queen's successor, James VI of Scotland, now James I of England, and she was once more welcomed at court.

Again rumors about a prospective marriage for her circulated, but in July two plots against the new king were discovered, one of which included a plan to place Arbella on the English throne. She was cleared of suspicion, and while in the years that followed she was able to exert a certain amount of influence and patronage, she remained both unmarried and without adequate financial support. 

By the end of 1609 she was again under guard; "rumors abounded" about her political plans, her religious preferences, and her marriage prospects. She was investigated once more, cleared of suspicion once more, and restored to favor once more. By 1610 she had taken her destiny into her own hands, secretly arranging to marry. 

Arbella Stuart married William Seymour, Edward Seymour's younger brother, on 22 June. By early July, both were imprisoned and under investigation, Seymour in the Tower and Arbella in a private residence in Lambeth. In a letter to her husband written shortly after their arrest, Arbella wrote that she had heard he was not well, suggesting his illness represented the "sympathy" between them since she herself had been sick at the same time. She looked forward to a return of the king's favor, however, and wanted to make sure that Seymour's "grief of mind" did not "work" upon his body. If they were not "able to live to" the return of the king's favor, she wrote, "I for my part shall think myself a pattern of misfortune in enjoying so great a blessing as you so little a while." 

Arbella's belief that James would restore the pair to favor derived at least in part from her conviction that the king had given her permission to marry a husband of her own choice. In a letter to the king she wrote that his "neglect" of her and her lack of money "drove" her to her "contract" with Seymour before she informed the king of her intentions; nevertheless, she wrote, 

I humbly beseech Your Majesty to consider how impossible it was for me to imagine it could be offensive unto Your Majesty, having few days before given me your royal consent to bestow myself on any subject of Your Majesty's (which . . . likewise Your Majesty had done long since), besides never having been either prohibited any or spoken to for any in this land by your Majesty these seven years that I have lived in Your Majesty's house I could not conceive that Your Majesty regarded my marriage at all.

Despite Arbella's hopes, in January 1611 William Seymour was condemned to life imprisonment, and she was exiled to the north of England, where she was to live out her life guarded by the bishop of Durham. She attempted to fight the decision, at first by law, but when the courts failed her, she again fell ill. As Steen notes, she "became--whether by policy, from illness, or some combination of the two--too weak to travel."

She was sent on her way north on 21 March, but she traveled only six miles before stopping. There she remained until 1 April, when King James had her examined by a physician, who determined that she was, as she claimed, too weak to travel. By the end of April James was insisting that Arbella be forced to leave for Durham, but again she appealed, using her continued illness. She was granted an extension until 5 June, but on 3 June she escaped from custody, dressed in men's clothing

Her husband had escaped from the Tower, and the pair planned to be reunited in France. Arbella reached Calais on 5 June, but she was caught immediately and returned to England, this time to imprisonment in the Tower. Seymour, meanwhile, remained in France. He returned to England five months after Arbella died, restored to the king's favor. 

It is generally claimed that while she was imprisoned in the Tower, Arbella became insane. "The primary source for the idea that Stuart became deranged," Steen writes, "was court observer and letter-writer John Chamberlain, who in 1613 and 1614 repeatedly commented on Stuart's distraction; in April 1613, for example, he wrote that she was said to be 'cracked in her brain.'" The Lieutenant of the Tower, too, described Arbella's "fits of distemper and convulsions." 

Most later historians have accepted the diagnosis that Arbella Stuart "lost her sanity," but Steen effectively disputes the notion that she spent the last years of her life "as a lunatic prisoner." The evidence does "suggest that Stuart indeed was distressed, perhaps even intermittently delusional," suffering from illnesses that were "physiological, strategic, or a combination of the two," but also that Arbella "remained active on her own behalf." 

Definitely a portrait of
Arbella Stuart, c. 1605
National Galleries Scotland

Throughout the period of her supposed madness, Arbella Stuart continued to manage her financial affairs. Her relatives and friends continued to work for her release, and various political supporters continued to focus on her as a replacement for King James. At least one rescue attempt was made, and at least one plot to place her on the throne dates from this period, unlikely efforts if she were "irrecoverably deranged": 

The phrase "went insane" conveniently labels Stuart a female hysteric, a woman exhibiting the mental instability and melancholia often attributed to learned women, thus allowing observers such as John Chamberlain to dismiss her transgressions of the code of appropriate female behavior as "madness," without calling the system into question. Those who were acquainted with and attended Stuart consistently characterized her illnesses either as intentionally deceitful and obstinate or as psychosomatic in origin . . . , as arising from her grief of her unquiet mind.

James and his examiners may well have used "madness" as a way of explaining Arbella's gender "transgressions," but such a determination was an effective political tool. If Arbella Stuart were "cracked in her brain," her continued "imprisonment" in the Tower could be justified, and she could more effectively be eliminated as a rival or as a threat. 

Arbella's story parallels those of other women whose claims to the throne for themselves or their children resulted in their containment as nuns, lunatics, exiles, or prisoners. In Spain, for example, Juana la Beltraneja was discredited as illegitimate and compelled to become a nun, while Juana of Castile was declared insane and secluded (or imprisoned) at Tordesillas. 

In England, Margaret of Anjou had fought to maintain the crown for her son; having lost her son, she was defeated, discredited, and exiled. Lady Jane Grey was imprisoned in the Tower after her brief rule, but no further action was taken against her; it was only after an unsuccessful rebellion against Queen Mary that her imprisonment was not enough, and she was executed. Her sisters Catherine and Mary were both imprisoned in the Tower as well. 

The potential threats offered by such women could be controlled in other ways, however, if they were willing to accept more traditional and subordinate female roles. Elizabeth of York offered no challenge to the new Tudor king because he married her. She became a queen consort rather than a queen regnant, her own claims to the succession united with her husband's in their children. And having worked to secure her son's succession throughout her lifetime, Margaret Beaufort was certainly no challenge to his kingship; she was, as we have seen, able to exert considerable influence in her "natural" role as his mother. 

But Arbella Stuart was either incapable of or unwilling to accept a subordinate role. She died in the Tower of London on 25 September 1615, her death almost certainly complicated by her refusal to eat.  

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).

I have quoted here from Sara Jayne Steen's The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, a volume in the Oxford Women Writers in English, 1350-1850 series.

Bess of Hardwick: Upwardly Mobile through Marriage (and Brains)

Elizabeth Hardwick (married [second marriage] 20 August 1547)

One of the most remarkable women in a period of remarkable women, Elizabeth Hardwick married four times, with each marriage improving her economic and social status. At a time when women couldn't improve themselves by upward mobility through ecclesiastical, educational, military, or legal institutions, Bess of Hardwick, as she came to be called, could use the institution of marriage to great effect.

The earliest portrait of Bess of Hardwick,
c. 1560, Hardwick Hall

Although the date of her birth is unknown, Elizabeth was probably born in the year 1527, the fourth daughter and fifth child of John Hardwick of Derbyshire and his wife, Elizabeth Leake, the daughter of Thomas Leake of Hasland.

The Hardwicks were minor gentry--but by the time Elizabeth Hardwick died in 1608, she had become a countess (the countess of Shrewsbury) and was one of the richest women in England, her notable building projects including Chatsworth House and Hardwick New Hall.

Indeed, in her excellent biography of Elizabeth Hardwick, Mary Lovell uses the subtitle "Empire Builder" to describe this remarkable woman. She built a lasting empire in blood, stone--and silk thread.

Elizabeth's father died in January of 1528, when she was still an infant, leaving his widow with six children (another daughter was born after John Hardwick's death). In his will, Hardwick left his lands and property to his son and small marriage portions for each of his daughters. 

Hardwick's widow had difficulties with the Court of Wards, however, and her son's wardship was taken out of her hands and her income severely reduced. She rather quickly remarried, probably when Bess was about two years old, and thereafter gave birth to three more daughters. 

In the mean time, there are simply no details about Bess's education, nothing, in fact, until she is about twelve, when she is placed into the London household of Anne Gainsford, lady Zouche. By the time she was about fifteen, probably in May of 1543, she married Robert Barlow, a thirteen-year-old boy who was also a member of the household.  Barlow died in December 1544.

Although Bess should have received a widow's dower, one-third of the income from her husband's estates, this was refused, and she had to go to court to fight for what she believed was her due. (In court documents, Bess explained that she couldn't expect any support from her mother, since her mother's second husband was in debtor's prison!)--her mother, she said, was "very poor and not able to relieve herself," much less her own widowed daughter. She finally received her widow's rights but only after several years of court wrangling.

In the mean time, she married William Cavendish on 20 August 1547--and I've used that date as the reason for posting today. It's one of the only specific, irrefutable dates for her life to this point. Cavendish was a member of Tudor court, a member of the privy council of the new king, Edward VI, and his Treasurer of the King's Chamber. At once, Elizabeth Hardwick Barlow became Lady Cavendish.

Bess of Hardwick as countess of Shrewsbury,
c. 1590

In the next ten years, until William's death in 1557, Bess gave birth to eight children, six of whom survived infancy. But when William died, she found herself once more in financial difficulties--her husband had been accused of stealing royal revenues. Bess refused to sell off her husband's properties, including Chatsworth, to pay off his debts. Instead, she chose to build--and to marry again.

Bess's third husband was Sir William St. Loe, a member of Queen Elizabeth's court, Bess herself became a lady-in-waiting to the queen. St. Loe proved to be a wealthy and generous husband. But Bess found herself (briefly) imprisoned in the Tower in 1561--her involvement with Catherine Grey, a sister of Lady Jane Grey, brought Bess under suspicion. (Like her sister, Catherine Grey had royal connections, and a claim to the throne--she had married without the queen's permission.)

When William St. Loe died in 1565, Bess became a widow for the third time, but she was no longer a poor widow. She was enormously wealthy and, back in Elizabeth's favor, had become a member of the queen's bedchamber.

Her fourth marriage, in 1568, was to George Talbot, the earl of Shrewsbury, reputedly the richest man in England. This marriage also brought her the title of countess of Shrewsbury. It was a true family affair: at the same time that Bess married Shrewsbury, their children also married--two of his children married two of hers. Bess's daughter Mary Cavendish married Shrewsbury's eldest son, while Shrewsbury's daughter married Bess's son, Henry Cavendish. (Here's another one for the whole "traditional marriage" thing--Mary Cavendish was twelve when she was married, Shrewsbury's daughter only eight.)

A few years later, in 1574, Bess was able to arrange yet one more marriage to further her climb up the social ladder--one of her daughters, Elizabeth Cavendish, was married to Charles Stuart, the son of Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox (Margaret Douglas was the daughter of Margaret Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII who had married the king of Scotland; her elder son, Charles's brother, was Henry Stuart, lord Darnley--the one who married Mary, Queen of Scots--got all that?)

This marriage, too, resulted in trouble for Bess. For their involvement with this marriage plot, which involved claims to the throne, both Margaret Douglas and Bess wound up in the Tower. By January 1575, Bess of Hardwick was released--there was no evidence that the two women were engaged in treason when they engineered the marriage of their children.

But there is no doubt that Bess of Hardwick hoped that her granddaughter, Arbella Stuart, would one day be queen.

Bess of Hardwick is also notable for her artistic achievements in the medium of needlework. She amassed an extraordinary collection of tapestries, hangings, and carpets for her great houses.

Bess of Hardwick's needlework,
Hardwick Hall

As countess of Shrewsbury, Bess of Hardwick found herself as a companion and guard for Mary, Queen of Scots, while she was a royal prisoner.

Together the women produced worked cushions, bed hangings, and wall coverings, their needlework stitches including emblems, flowers, and animals.

As Susan Frye writes, "the two became intensely involved in creating textile works that embodied more personal expressions of identity than tapestries produced in professional workshops." Frye concludes that, in her work, Bess moved from being a "skilled needleworker" into "a textile artist."

Bess of Hardwick died on 15 February 1608. 

Bess of Hardwick's letters (more than 200 of them) are all available online at a wonderful site, Bess of Hardwick's Letters. Complete transcripts are available, as is a range of wonderful background material.

On her needlework, Susan Frye's work, quoted here, is Pens and Needles: Women's Textualities in Early Modern England. For the pictures, there's Santina Levey's The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall: A Catalogue--it is very expensive if you just want a peek at the embroidery, so maybe inter-library loan?

For a biography, I like Mary S. Lovell's Bess of Hardwick: Empire Builder.

Hardwick Hall