Childhood
Arbella's father died in 1576 when she was still an infant. She was raised by her mother Elizabeth Cavendish until 1582. The death of her mother left seven-year-old Arbella an orphan, whereupon she became the ward of her grandmother Bess, rather than Lord Burghley the Master of the Court of Wards, as might have been expected.
During most of her childhood she lived in the protective isolation of Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire with her grandmother, who had married George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury in 1568. There were, apparently, periodic visits to the court and to London, including court visits during the summers of 1587 and 1588 and one that lasted from November 1591 to July 1592.
Starting in early 1589 or thereabouts "one Morley ... attended on Arbell and read to her", as reported in a dispatch from Bess of Hardwick to Lord Burghley, dated 21 September 1592. Bess recounts Morley's service to Arbella over "the space of three years and a half". She also notes he had hoped for an annuity of some £40 a year from Arbella based on the fact that he had "been so much damnified by leaving the University". This has led to speculation that Morley was the poet Christopher Marlowe, whose name was sometimes spelled that way.
Read more about this topic: Lady Arbella Stuart
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“Ah happy hills! ah pleasing shade!
Ah fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood stray’d,”
—Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
“The route through childhood is shaped by many forces, and it differs for each of us. Our biological inheritance, the temperament with which we are born, the care we receive, our family relationships, the place where we grow up, the schools we attend, the culture in which we participate, and the historical period in which we live—all these affect the paths we take through childhood and condition the remainder of our lives.”
—Robert H. Wozniak (20th century)
“... all the cares and anxieties, the trials and disappointments of my whole life, are light, when balanced with my sufferings in childhood and youth from the theological dogmas which I sincerely believed, and the gloom connected with everything associated with the name of religion, the church, the parsonage, the graveyard, and the solemn, tolling bell.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)