Lady Arbella Stuart was an English noblewoman who was considered a possible successor to Queen Elizabeth I of England. During the reign of King James VI and I, she married William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset, another claimant to the English throne, in secret. King James imprisoned William Seymour and placed her under house arrest. When she and her husband tried to escape England, she was captured and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where she died at age 39.
Lady Arbella Stuart
Arbella Stuart as a child
Arbella Stuart
William, 2nd Duke of Somerset.
William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset
William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset, was an English nobleman and Royalist commander in the English Civil War.
William Seymour, Marquess of Hertford, later 2nd Duke of Somerset (1588–1660), portrait attributed to Gilbert Jackson (c. 1595/1600–1648), private collection
Lady Arbella Stuart (d.1615), Seymour's first wife
Frances Devereux, by Anthony van Dyck