Early in James’s reign many eminent prisoners were brought to the Tower in connection with a plot, as the timid King thought, to place the Crown on the head of Lady Arabella Stuart, his first cousin on the mother’s side. In May 1611 Lady Arabella had married young William Seymour. This event brought both bride and bridegroom into royal disfavour. The husband was shut up in the Tower, and the wife kept in captivity at Lambeth Palace. But this did not daunt them. Lady Arabella, on being taken north on the way to Durham, pleaded illness when scarcely out of sight of London. In disguise she escaped to Blackwall and took ship at Leigh-on-Sea, there to await her husband, who had succeeded in getting out of the Tower by dressing as a labourer and following out a cart laden with wood. From the wharf, Seymour sailed to Leigh, but found that the French vessel in which his wife had sought shelter had gone down the river some hours before. He managed to cross to Ostend, but Lady Arabella was caught in mid-channel and conveyed back to Tower walls, which she never left again. In her latter years she became insane, and, dying in 1615, was buried at midnight beside Mary Queen of Scots in the Abbey. Seymour allowed unmerited punishment to fall on his young wife, remained abroad until the storm was over, married again, and lived long enough to see the Restoration. The conspiracy of 1603 had been the cause of the execution of George Brook, brother of Lord Cobham, and two priests went to death with him. Lord Cobham himself, and Lord Grey de Wilton, were brought to the steps of the scaffold not many days after, for participation in the same plot. Before the headsman had done his work a reprieve arrived, and they were sent back to their place of captivity.
In 1604 the Guy Fawkes conspiracy necessitated a fresh batch of captives being lodged in the Tower, and during our visit to the dungeons beneath the White Tower we shall learn something of their fate, and of the fate, also, of another prisoner of this period, Sir Thomas Overbury, poisoned in the Bloody Tower. Felton, the rogue responsible for the assassination of Buckingham, had bought the knife with which he did the deed on Tower Hill at a booth there. He was brought to the Tower on his arrest and confined until the day of his hanging at Tyburn. They were not always, however, political offences that filled the Tower cells at this period; a private quarrel was the cause of Lords Arundel and Spencer being given quarters in the prison, and Lord Audley was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1631 for committing crimes which were so revolting as to encourage the belief that he was insane.