Unlike some of the early modern women explored in this volume, the Lady Arbella Stuart offers abundant material on which an author can draw for biography or biofiction. Hundreds of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century letters, official papers, dedications, and poems document her life. And she has long been a subject for biography and fiction. Although not as widely known as her kinswomen who reigned, Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth, the Lady Arbella across centuries has been re-created in biographies, poems, ballads, romances, novels, drama, television, and through editions of her letters. Portraits of Arbella and members of her family exist, as do objects such as her Hebrew/Syriac/Greek Bible. At Hardwick Hall, visitors can see Arbella's room and can walk the gallery where she was interrogated by one of Queen Elizabeth's commissioners. On 17 November of 2018, I attended a performance of a new biodrama, Ralegh: The Treason Trial, performed in the Great Hall in Winchester, knowing that Arbella was present there 415 years earlier when Sir Walter Ralegh was convicted of conspiracy to remove King James and place her on the throne. Could anyone not imagine what she might have felt?

Arbella's story of a noblewoman who defied two sovereigns is dramatic. A descendant of Henry VII and thus a member of the royal family, Arbella grew up under the supervision of her grandmother Bess of Hardwick and was educated and guarded as a potential queen. When she was eleven, her aunt Mary Queen of Scots was executed for conspiring with Catholics against Queen Elizabeth.