''It is Arbella they would proclaim Queen if her mistress should happen to die'' Sir William Stanley, 1592
Niece to Mary, Queen of Scots, granddaughter to the great Tudor dynast Bess of Hardwick, Lady Arbella Stuart was brought up in the belief that she would inherit Elizabeth I''s throne. Her very conception was dramatic: the result of an unsanctioned alliance that brought down the wrath of the authorities.
Raised in restricted isolation at Hardwick, in the care - the ''custody'' - of the forceful Bess, Arbella was twenty-seven before, in 1603, she made her own flamboyant bid for liberty. She may also have been making a bid for the throne. If so, she failed. But the accession of her cousin James thrust her into the colourful world of his court, and briefly gave her the independence she craved at the heart of Jacobean society.
Then, aged thirty-five, Arbella risked everything to make her own forbidden marriage. An escape in disguise, a wild flight abroad and capture at
