G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

REVISED AND CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR,

WITH AN INTRODUCTORY PREFACE.

"D'autres auteurs l'ont encore plus avili, (le roman,) en y mêlant les tableaux dégoutant du vice; et tandis que le premier avantage des fictions est de rassembler autour de l'homme tout ce qui, dans la nature, peut lui servir de leçon ou de modèle, on a imaginé qu'on tirerait une utilité quelconque des peintures odieuses de mauvaises mœurs; comme si elles pouvaient jamais laisser le cœur qui les repousse, dans une situation aussi pure que le cœur qui les aurait toujours ignorées. Mais un roman tel qu'on peut le concevoir, tel que nous en avons quelques modèles, est une des plus belles productions de l'esprit humain, une des plus influentes sur la morale des individus, qui doit former ensuite les mœurs publiques."—Madame De Stael. Essai sur les Fictions.

"Poca favilla gran flamma seconda: Forse diretro a me, con miglior voci Si pregherà, perchè Cirra risponda."

Dante. Paradiso, Canto I.

VOL. XIX.

ARABELLA STUART.

LONDON:

SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.

STATIONERS' HALL COURT.

M DCCC XLIX.

ARABELLA STUART:

A Romance

FROM ENGLISH HISTORY.

BY

G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

LONDON:

SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.

STATIONERS' HALL COURT.

M DCCC XLIX.

CONTENTS

TO REAR-ADMIRAL SIR GEORGE F. SEYMOUR, C.B. G.C.H. &c. &c. &c.

My Dear Sir,

If the dedication of a work like the present could afford any adequate expression of high respect and regard, I should feel greater pleasure than I do in offering you these pages; but such things have become so common, that, though every one who knows you will understand the feelings which induce me to present you with this small tribute, yet I cannot but be aware that it is very little worthy of your acceptance. You will receive it, however, I know, with the same kindness which you have frequently displayed towards me, as a mark, however slight, of my gratitude for the interest you have always shown in myself and my works, and as a testimony of unfeigned esteem from one, who can fully appreciate in others higher qualities than he can pretend to himself.

Although I am inclined to believe that the public may judge this one of the most interesting tales I have written, I can take but little credit to myself on that account; for all the principal events are so strictly historical, that little was left to the author but to tell them as agreeably as he could. The story of the fair and unfortunate Arabella Stuart is well known to every one at all acquainted with English history; and has called forth more than one poem of considerable merit, though, I believe, as yet, has never been made the foundation of a romance. From that story, as it has been told by contemporaries, I have had but very little occasion to deviate, merely supplying a few occasional links to connect it with other events of the time.

In depicting the characters of the various persons who appear upon the scene, however, I have had a more difficult task to perform, being most anxious to represent them as they really were, and not on any account to distort and caricature them. The rudeness of the age,—the violent passions that were called into action,—the bold and erratic disregard which thus reigned of all those principles which have now been universally recognised for many years, rendered it not easy to give the appearance of truth and reality to events that did actually happen, and to personages who have indeed existed; for to the age of James I. may well be applied the often repeated maxim, that "Truth is stranger than Fiction."

Difficulties as great, and many others of a different description, have been overcome in the extraordinary romance called "Ferrers;" but it is not every one who possesses the powers of vigorous delineation which have been displayed by the Author of that remarkable work; and I have been obliged to trust to the reader's knowledge of history, to justify me in the representation which I have given of characters and scenes, which might seem overstrained and unnatural, to those who have been only accustomed to travel over the railroad level of modern civilization.

The character of James I. himself has been portrayed by Sir Walter Scott with skill to which I can in no degree pretend—but with a very lenient hand. He here appears under a more repulsive aspect, as a cold, brutal, vain, frivolous tyrant. Nevertheless, every act which I have attributed to him blackens the page of history, with many others, even more dark and foul, which I have not found necessary to introduce. Indeed, I would not even add one deed which appeared to me in the least degree doubtful; for I do believe that we have no right to charge the memory of the dead with anything that is not absolutely proved against them. We must remember, that we try them in a court where they cannot plead, before a jury chosen by ourselves, and pronounce a sentence against which they can make no appeal: and I should be as unwilling to add to the load of guilt which weighs down the reputation of a bad man, as to detract from the high fame and honour of a great and good one. My conviction, however, is unalterable, that James I. was at once one of the most cruel tyrants,

and one of the most disgusting men, that ever sat upon a throne.

In the account I have given of Lady Essex, I shall probably be accused of having drawn an incarnate fiend; but I reply, that I have not done it. Her character is traced in the same colours by the hand of History. Fortunately, it so happens that few have ever been like her; for wickedness is generally a plant of slow growth, and we rarely find that extreme youth is totally devoid of virtues, though it may be stained with many vices. Such as I have found her, so have I painted her; suppressing, indeed, many traits and many actions which were unfit for the eye of a part, at least, of my readers. Dark as her character was, however, its introduction into this tale afforded me a great advantage, by the contrast it presented to that of Arabella Stuart herself; bringing out the brightness of that sweet lady's mind, and the gentleness of her heart, in high relief; and I hope and trust, tending to impress upon the minds of those who peruse these pages, the excellence of virtue and the deformity of vice.

Upon the character and fate of Sir Thomas Overbury there has always hung a degree of mystery. I do not know whether these pages may tend at all to dispel it; but, at all events, I have not written them without examining minutely into all the facts; and, probably, the conclusions at which I have arrived are as accurate as those of others. I must reserve, however, one statement, for which I find no authority, but which was necessary to the construction of my story, namely, that which refers to Overbury's proposal of a marriage between Rochester and the Lady Arabella.

I need not tell one so intimately acquainted with English History as yourself, that all the other characters here introduced, with one or two exceptions amongst the inferior personages, are historical; and I have endeavoured, to the best of my power, to represent them such as they really were.

Having said thus much, I shall add no more; for, in submitting the work to you, though I know I shall have an acute judge, yet I shall have a kind one; and trusting that you will, at all events, derive some amusement from these pages, I will only further beg you to believe me,

My dear Sir,

Your most faithful servant,

G. P. R. JAMES.

The Oaks, near Walmer, Kent, 1st December, 1843.

CHAPTER I.

There was a small, old-fashioned, red brick house, situated just upon the verge of Cambridgeshire, not in the least peculiar in its aspect, and yet deserving a description. The reader shall know why, before we have done. As you came along the road from London you descended a gentle hill, not very long, and yet long enough to form, with an opposite rise, one of those sweet, calm valleys which are peculiarly characteristic of the greater part of this country. When you were at the top of the hill, in looking down over some hedge-rows and green fields, the first thing your eye lighted upon in the bottom of the dale was a quick-running stream, which seemed to have a peculiar art of catching the sunshine wherever it was to be found. Its course, though almost as rapid as if it had come down from a mountain,—having had, it is true, a pretty sharp descent about a mile to the westward,—was nevertheless, at this spot, directed through soft green meadows, and between flat and even banks. The water was of some depth also, not less in general than from five to six feet,

though not in most places above four or five yards in width. Where it crossed the road, however, there being no bridge, and the highway somewhat raised, it spread itself out into a good broad shallow stream, which, in the deepest part, only washed your horse's feet a little above the pastern.

Having carried it thus far, reader, we will leave it, without pursuing its course on towards the sea, which it reached somehow, and somewhere, by ways and through channels with which we have nothing to do.

The eye of the traveller, however, on the London road, in tracing this stream farther up, came upon a clump of tall old trees disencumbered of all brushwood, spreading wide at the top, but ungarnished by boughs or green leaves below, and affording habitation to a multitude of busy rooks, whose inharmonious voices—when joined together in full chorus, and heard from a distance—formed a peculiar kind of melody, connecting itself with many memories in the hearts of almost every one, and rousing soft and pensive imaginations from its intimate connexion with those country scenes, and calm pleasures, amongst which must lie all man's sweetest associations. From the top of the hill on which we have placed ourselves, a number of chimney tops, somewhat quaint and fantastic in their forms, appeared to be actually rising from the very heart of the rookery; but if you stopped to let your horse drink at the stream in the bottom of the valley, and looked up its course to the left, you perceived that the house to which those chimneys belonged, lay at the distance of more than two hundred yards

from the trees, and had a large garden with a long terrace, and a low wall between it and them.

The mansion was of no great extent, as we have already hinted, and might belong to a gentleman of limited means, though moving in the better ranks of life; the windows were principally of that peculiar form which was first introduced under the Tudors, as the pointed arch of a preceding epoch began to bow itself down towards the straight line in which it was extinguished not long after. The whole building might have risen from the ground somewhat more than half a century before the period of which we now speak, perhaps in the reign of Mary Tudor, perhaps in that of her brother Edward; and yet I will not take upon myself to say that the bloody and ferocious monster, their father, might not have seen it as he travelled down into Cambridgeshire. The colouring, indeed, was of that soiled and sombre hue, which bespoke long acquaintance with the weather; and though originally the glowing red bricks might have shown as rubicund a face as any newly painted Dutch house at the side of a canal, they were now sobered down with age, and grey with the cankering hand of time.

Although the garden was neatly kept, and somewhat prim, according to the fashion of the day, and a bowling-green just within the terrace was as trim and neatly shaved as if the scythe passed over it every morning, nevertheless about the building itself were some signs and symptoms of decay, the work of neglect, rather than of time. Instead of neat and orderly pointing, the brickwork displayed, in various places, many an unstopped joint; and though, doubtless, weather-tight within, the stone coping was here and there broken, while one or two of the chimneys, which were gathered into groups of four set angularly, displayed the want of a brick in various places, which destroyed their fair proportions, without perhaps affecting their soundness.

It was in the year 1603, two hundred and forty years ago; reader, a long time for you and me to look back to, but yet the men and women of those days were the same creatures that we see moving round us at present, with this slight difference, that they had been less inured to restrain their passions, and conceal their feelings, than we are in a more polished and civilized state of society. Two hundred and forty years! What a lapse of time it seems; and yet to each of the many whose lives have filled up the intervening period, their own allotted portion, when they have looked back from the end of existence to the beginning, has seemed but a mere point—a moment out of the long eternity. To each, too, the changes which have taken place, and which to us in the aggregate appear vast and extraordinary, have been so slow and gradual, that he has scarcely perceived them, any more than we notice the alteration which fashion effects in our garments as we go on from year to year. Customs and manners, indeed, were very different in those days, though human beings were the same; but we

must not stop to dwell upon minute particulars, or to detail forms and ceremonies, for it is not so much our object to depict the fashions and habits of that age, as to sketch a sad and extraordinary part of its history.

Between six and seven o'clock on an evening in the month of May, while the sky overhead was just beginning to be tinged with the hues of the declining sun, and the old trees of the rookery, covered with their young green leaves, looked almost autumnal in the various tints with which spring had decked them, a gentleman of fifty-eight or fifty-nine years of age walked slowly up and down upon the terrace which ran along before the building. He was upright in figure, well made though spare in form, rather below than above the middle height, calm and sedate in his step, thoughtful and perhaps sad in the expression of his countenance. His hair was quite white, soft, silky, and hanging, as was then customary, in curls upon his neck. His eyebrows, which like his hair and beard were colourless, were somewhat bushy and arched. His mustachios were neatly trimmed, and his beard pointed, not very long, but yet not cut round, as was the fashion with the younger men of the day. He was dressed in black velvet, with shoes bearing large black rosettes, a small hat with a single feather, and had no

ornament whatsoever about his person, unless the buttons of jet which studded his doublet, and the clasp of the same material which fastened his short cloak, deserved that name.

He was, indeed, altogether a very grave and serious looking personage, with much mildness and benevolence as well as sagacity in his countenance; and yet there was a certain slight turn of the lip, an occasional twinkle of the eye, and a drawing up of the nostril, which seemed to indicate the slightest possible touch of a sarcastic spirit, which had, perhaps, at an earlier period been more unruly, though it was now chastened by the cares, the sorrows, the anxieties, and the experience of life.

He walked up and down, then, upon the terrace for some minutes, each time he turned, whether at the one end or the other, gazing down the course of the stream between the slopes of the hills towards the spot where the road from London crossed the valley, and then again bending his eyes upon the ground in meditation. Occasionally, however, he would look up to the sky, or down into the bowling-green; and, after one of the latter contemplations, he descended a flight of four stone steps which led down to the greensward, with the same calm and sedate step which had distinguished his promenade above; and taking up the large, round, wooden ball which lay on the grass, he held it in his hand for a moment, and then bowled it deliberately at a set of skittles which had remained standing at the other end of the green. The ball hit the pin at which it was aimed, which in its fall overthrew a number of others, while the gentleman whose hand had despatched the messenger of mischief on its errand, looked on with a grave smile. There was evidently something more in the expression of

his countenance than mere amusement at seeing the heavy pieces of wood tumble over one another, and he murmured to himself as he turned away,—

"Thus it is with human projects—ay, the best intended and most firmly founded; some accidental stroke overthrows one of our moral ninepins, and down go the whole nine!"

So saying, he returned to the terrace, and raising his voice he cried, "Lakyn, Lakyn!" upon which a stout old serving-man, with a badge upon his arm, came out unbonneted to receive his master's commands.

"Take away those ninepins, Lakyn," said the gentleman, "they have no business on the bowling-green; and put the bowls, too, under shelter. It will rain before morning."

"God bless your worship," replied the servant, looking up to the sky, "you are as weatherwise as a conjuror."

"Or a shepherd," replied the gentleman, resuming his walk; and the old man proceeded to gather up the implements of the good old game of our ancestors, muttering to himself, "Who would have thought it would rain before morning with such a sky as that. He knows more than other men, that's certain."

While he was busy with the bowls, his master's eye, glancing down again as before to the spot where the road and the stream met, rested on the figure of a single horseman coming from the direction of London.

"There, Lakyn, Lakyn!" he exclaimed; "run in, and never mind the bowls. Tell Sharpe to go round and take Mr. Seymour's horse at the garden gate. I will meet him there."

The old man hastened to obey, and, with his usual composed step, Sir Harry West—for such was the gentleman's name—proceeded from the terrace, through the garden which we have mentioned, to the angle next to the rookery, where he waited, leaning upon a little gate, till the horseman he had seen on the road arrived at the spot. At the same moment another old servant dressed in grey ran down panting, and doffing his bonnet to the stranger with lowly reverence, held the bridle while he dismounted.

The horseman then at a quick pace advanced to the gate, which was by this time open to receive him, and with a look of glad and well satisfied reverence kissed the hand of the master of the house. Sir Harry West, however, threw his arm around him affectionately, and gazed in his face, saying, "Welcome, my dear William, welcome! So you are back from Flanders at length. 'Tis eighteen months since I have seen you."

"'Tis a long time indeed, sir," replied the visitor; "but time has made no change in you, I am glad to see."

"It has in you, William," answered Sir Harry West; "a great change, but a good one—though why in our boyhood we should desire man's estate I know not. 'Tis but a step to the grave. However, you are a man now both in years and appearance, though you left me but a youth;" and once more he gazed over the young gentleman's face and form, as we look at a country we have known in our early years on returning after a long absence, tracing the changes that have been made therein, and sometimes perhaps regretting even the improvements.