Brutal, indeed, were the age and the time. If Plantagenets, Yorkists, and Lancastrians were frankly murderous, Tudors and Stuarts had more refinement of cruelty, dignifying it, more or less, under the name of law. The accession of each fresh sovereign was the signal for arrests, life-long imprisonments, and executions. Favourites, now deposed from favour, paid here the penalty for a few years of feverish greatness; here suffered not only men of unscrupulous self-seeking, but also those whose chief fault was, like Cæsar's, ambition, and who were condemned to answer for it as grievously as Cæsar. Nor did past affliction teach present mercy. The Princess Elizabeth narrowly herself escaped a tragic fate in early youth; yet her former imprisonment in the "Bell" Tower made her scarcely less cruel, in the after-time, to her real or imaginary enemies. Partly in self-defence, partly as a question of faith, partly in revenge, both rivals, and also those suspected of possible rivalry, were effectually suppressed. Even continuation of the hated race of rivals seemed prohibited. Thus, Lady Jane Grey's poor sister, Katherine, was imprisoned till her death for the crime of secret marriage with the Earl of Hertford; Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, was executed for having aspired to the hand of the Queen of Scots; Lady Arabella Stuart, James I.'s unhappy cousin, having married, "with the love that laughs at privy councils," Sir William Seymour, was caught while escaping with him through Calais Roads, and languished here for four years, till her mind left her, and she died. The elder D'Israeli tells the story: "What passed in that dreadful imprisonment cannot perhaps be recovered for authentic history; but enough is known, that her mind grew impaired, that she finally lost her reason; and if the duration of her imprisonment (four years) was short, it was only terminated by her death. Some loose effusions, often begun and never ended, written and erased, incoherent and rational, yet remain in the fragments of her papers. In a letter she proposed addressing to Viscount Fenton, to implore for her his Majesty's favour again, she says, 'Good my lord, consider the fault cannot be uncommitted; neither can any more be required of any earthly creature but confession and most humble submission.' In a paragraph she had written, but crossed out, it seems that a present of her work had been refused by the king, and that she had no one about her whom she might trust."