Lady Arbella Stuart

Who was Lady Arbella Stuart?

Lady Arbella Stuart was a noblewoman who was for some time considered a possible successor to Queen Elizabeth I of England.

Born in England, Arbella Stuart was the only child of Charles Stuart, 1st Earl of Lennox, and Elizabeth Cavendish. She was a grandchild of Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, and Lady Margaret Douglas, who was, in turn, the daughter of Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus and Princess Margaret Tudor. Arbella was therefore a great great granddaughter of Henry VII of England and in line to the English throne – something to which she did not herself aspire.

Her paternal grandparents, the 4th Earl of Lennox and Margaret Douglas, had two sons: Arbella's father Charles and his older brother, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who became the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the father of Arbella's cousin James VI and I of Scotland, England and Ireland. Her maternal grandparents were Sir William Cavendish and Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, nowadays better known as "Bess of Hardwick".

In her final days, as a prisoner in the Tower of London, Lady Beauchamp, refusing to eat, fell ill, and died on 25 September 1615. She was buried in Westminster Abbey on 29 September 1615. In the 19th century, during a search for the tomb of James I, Arbella's lead coffin was found in the vault of Mary, Queen of Scots, placed directly on top of that of the Scots queen.