Long after the grave had closed over the sorrows of the ill-fated Arabella Stuart, her sorrowing widower, Seymour, was induced to take a second wife, and in her society endeavour to forget the sad tragedy in which he had been an actor. What decided him to seek the hand of the daughter of Viscount Howard, of Bindon, second son of the Duke of Norfolk, is not recorded; but she does not seem to have been remarkable for any qualities which made her worthy to replace the royal wife of Hertford, except her good-nature made up for the vanity and folly for which she is eminently conspicuous. Pity, perhaps, and a certain sympathy for a young and lovely creature, who had lost two near relatives on the scaffold, caused the melancholy Seymour to choose her for his bride.

Some strange circumstances of her very early life had made her the wife of a person in a condition of life immeasurably beneath her own, for she had married one Prannell, the son of a wealthy vintner of London. It is not known whether their union was a stolen one, or whether the riches of the husband had induced her family to consent to such a degradation of their high blood; but at all events Prannell died very soon after the event, and left the lovely Frances free to flirt and choose as her fancy dictated.