Arabella Stuart and William Seymour

Both Elizabeth and James I were peculiarly sensitive on the question of royal marriages. Any attempt to involve a member of the Blood in a secret, or unsolicited, marriage brought an immediate blast of reprobation, and the road to the Tower was wide open.

William Seymour was born in 1588. His father, Lord Beauchamp, had been born in the Tower where William’s grandfather (Lord Hertford) had found himself as a result of a clandestine marriage with Katherine Grey, who after the execution of her sister Jane was, under Henry VIII’s will, the heir apparent to the throne. William was a highly intelligent young man, who had graduated from Oxford with distinction in 1607, and was destined to become Chancellor of that University.