Stuart was born in 1575 in Nottinghamshire, England. Arbella's father died in 1576 when she was still an infant. She was raised by her mother Elizabeth Cavendish until 1582. The death of her mother left seven-year-old Arbella an orphan, whereupon she became the ward of her grandmother Bess, rather than Lord Burghley the Master of the Court of Wards, as might have been expected.
Stuart studied several languages and could play the lute, viol and virginals.
For some time before 1592, Arbella was considered one of the natural candidates to succeed her first cousin twice removed, Queen Elizabeth I. However, between the end of 1592 and the spring of 1593, the influential Cecils - Elizabeth's Lord Treasurer, Lord Burghley, and his son, Secretary of State Sir Robert Cecil - turned their attention away from Arbella towards her cousin James VI of Scotland, regarding him as a preferable successor.
In 1603, after James's accession as James I of England, those involved in the Main Plot allegedly conspired to overthrow him and put Arbella on the throne. When she was invited to participate by agreeing in writing to Philip III of Spain, however, she immediately reported the invitation to the king.
Owing to Arbella's status as a possible heir to the throne, there were discussions of appropriate marriages for her throughout her childhood. It would have suited the Roman Catholic Church for her to marry a member of the House of Savoy and then take the English throne. A marriage was also mooted with Ranuccio, eldest son of Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma and Maria of Portugal. This scheme originated with the Pope, who eventually settled on his own brother, a cardinal, as a suitable husband for Arbella. The Pope defrocked his brother, freeing him to marry "Arbelle" (as the Italians spelled her name) and thus claim the English crown. Nothing came of this plan, and in fact the only direct evidence of Arbella's religion is her taking Protestant communions while at Shrewsbury House in Chelsea.
In the closing months of Elizabeth's reign, Arbella fell into trouble through reports that she intended to marry Edward Seymour, a member of the prominent Seymour family. This was reported to the Queen by the supposed groom's grandfather, Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford. Arbella denied having any intention of marrying without the Queen's permission, which was required for any marriage to be legal.
In 1588, it was proposed to James VI of Scotland that Ludovic Stuart, 2nd Duke of Lennox, should be married to Arbella, but nothing seems to have come of this suggestion either. In 1604, Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland, sent an ambassador to England to ask for Arbella to be his wife. This offer was rejected.
In December 1609 she planned an escape with Sir George Douglas to Scotland, apparently with a view of arranging a marriage with Stephen Bogdan, pretender to Moldavia, and on the scheme being discovered she was arrested. She was, however, restored to favour, granted a pension of £1600 a year by James, and given 10, 000 crowns to pay her debts.
In 1610, Arbella, who was fourth in line to the English throne, was in trouble again for planning to marry William Seymour, then known as Lord Beauchamp, who later succeeded as 2nd Duke of Somerset. In the circumstances, the King could be pardoned for wondering whether the marriage was the prelude to an attempt to seize the Crown itself.
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 marrying without his permission, King James imprisoned them: Arbella in Sir Thomas Perry's house in Lambeth and Seymour in the Tower of London. Her application for a writ of habeas corpus was refused, and on the 16th of March she left London, progressing however, on account of illness and prostration, only as far as Barnet. Meanwhile her husband had also effected his escape and was sailing towards the French coast.
Soon afterwards the unfortunate Arabella was captured and brought back to the Tower, where she spent the rest of her unhappy career. James was deaf to all intercession in her favour, and is reported to have answered the queen when pleading for her that "she had eaten of the forbidden fruit. "
In November 1613 a new plot for her escape failed. She never saw her husband again and died in the Tower on 25 September 1615 from illnesses exacerbated by her refusal to eat.
There appears to be no support for the statement that a child was born to her. Her husband, after awaiting her in vain at Ostend, went on to Paris.
Stuart was for some time a possible successor to Queeb Elizabeth I of England.
Stuart secretly married William Seymour on 22 June 1610 at Greenwich Palace. It is said that the couple may have had a child, Mary. This cannot be confirmed or denied since it is believed that Arbella died with no issue, but the birth would have been in secret since it would have angered the King even more than the marriage already had.
He was an English nobleman and Royalist commander in the English Civil War.
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