Life of Elizabeth I (86 page)

The next day would be Sunday, and 
she gave command that the Great Closet should be prepared for her to go to chapel the next morning. The next day, all things being in readiness, we long expected her coming. After eleven o'clock, one of the grooms came out and bade make ready for the Private Closet; she would not go to the Great. There we stayed long for her coming, but at last she had cushions laid for her in the Privy Chamber, hard by the Closet door, and there she heard service. From that day forwards, she grew worse and worse.

The main trouble seemed to be slight swellings - probably ulcers - in the throat, accompanied by a cold. By the beginning of March, a fever had developed, and she could not sleep or swallow food easily. On 9 March, according to de Beaumont, 'she felt a great heat in her stomach and a continual thirst, which obliged her every moment to take something to abate it, and to prevent the hard and dry phlegm from choking her. She has been obstinate in refusing everything prescribed by her physicians during her illness.' These problems, which may have been symptomatic of influenza or tonsillitis, were exacerbated by her depression, although when her courtiers asked what the matter was, she told them 'she knew nothing in the world worthy to trouble her'.

Cecil, realising that the Queen might die, knew that it would fall to him to ensure James VI's peaceful and unchallenged succession to the throne. At the end of February, he ordered Robert Carey to hold himself in readiness to take the news of his accession to the Scottish monarch the moment the Queen ceased to breathe.

On 11 March, the Queen rallied for a day, then had a relapse, descending into 'a heavy dullness, with a frowardness familiar to old age'. She was, according to de Beaumont, 'so full of chagrin and so weary of life that, notwithstanding all the importunities of her councillors and physicians to consent to the use of proper remedies for her relief, she would not take one'. With a flash of her old spirit, she told Cecil and Whitgift, who had begged her on their knees to do as her physicians recommended, 'that she knew her own strength and constitution better than they, and that she was not in such danger as they imagine'. Nor would she eat anything, but spent her days lying on the floor on cushions, lost in 'unremovable melancholy' and unwilling to speak to anyone. It was obvious that she had lost the will to live.

'The Queen grew worse and worse, because she would be so, none about her being able to persuade her to go to bed,' recorded Robert Carey.

Cecil insisted, 'Your Majesty, to content the people, you must go to 
bed.' But she retorted, 'Little man, the word "must" is not to be used to princes. If your father had lived, you durst not had said so, but ye know that I must die, and that makes thee so presumptuous.'

Her throat felt as if it were closing up. Nottingham came to see her: having retired from court to mourn his wife, he had returned to cheer the Queen. He told her to have courage, but she said, 'My Lord, I am tied with a chain of iron around my neck. I am tied, I am tied, and the case is altered with me.' She complained of'a heat in her breasts and a dryness in her mouth, which kept her from sleep frequently, to her disgust'. This suggests that she had now developed either bronchitis or pneumonia.

Nottingham tried also to get her to retire to bed, but she refused, telling him, 'If you were in the habit of seeing such things in your bed as I do when in mine, you would not persuade me to go there.' She added that 'she had a premonition that, if she once lay down, she would never rise'.

One day, she had herself lifted into a low chair. When she found herself unable to rise from it, she commanded her attendants to help her to her feet. Once in that position, by a supreme effort of will and a determination to defy mortality, she remained there unmoving for fifteen hours, watched by her appalled yet helpless courtiers. At length, fainting with exhaustion, she was helped back on to her cushions, where she remained for a further four days.

By 18 March, her condition had deteriorated alarmingly; de Beaumont reported that she 'appeared already in a manner insensible, not speaking sometimes for two or three hours, and within the last two days for above four and twenty, holding her finger continually in her mouth, with her eyes open and fixed to the ground, where she sat upon cushions without rising or resting herself, and was greatly emaciated by her long watching and fasting'. She had now been lying there, in her day clothes, for nearly three weeks.

On 19 March, she was so ill that Carey wrote informing James VI that she would not last more than three days; already, he had posted horses along the Great North Road, ready for his breakneck ride to Scotland. On the following day, Cecil sent James a draft copy of the proclamation that would be read out on his accession. All James hoped for now was that Elizabeth would not linger, 'insensible and stupid, unfit to rule and govern a kingdom'.

In order to avoid any public demonstrations or panic, Cecil vetoed the publication of any bulletins on the Queen's health, but the French ambassador deliberately spread word of her condition. 'Her Majesty's life is absolutely despaired of,' reported Scaramelli. 'For the last ten days she has become quite silly [i.e. pitiable]. London is all in arms for fear of 
the Catholics. Every house and everybody is in movement and alarm.' Camden recorded that, 'as the report now grew daily stronger and stronger that her sickness increased upon her', it was astonishing to behold with what speed the Puritans, Papists, ambitious persons and flatterers posted night and day, by sea and land, to Scotland, to adore the rising sun and gain his favour'.

At last, on 21 March, 'what by fair means, what by force', Nottingham persuaded Elizabeth to go to bed. After lying there for some hours, an abscess or ulcer in her throat burst and she declared she felt better, and asked for some of her restorative broth to be made. Scaramelli reported that rose water and currants were also placed on a table by her bedside, 'but soon after she began to lose her speech, and from that time ate nothing, but lay on one side, without speaking or looking upon any person, though she directed some meditations to be read to her'. Archbishop Whitgift and her own chaplains were from then on in constant attendance on her, whilst her musicians played softly in the background to soothe her.

Her councillors knew she could not last much longer. On the 23rd, her chaplain Dr Parry held a special service of intercession in the royal chapel, offering such fervent prayers for Her Majesty 'that he left few dry eyes'. The diarist John Manningham learned in the Privy Chamber that the Queen

hath been in a manner speechless for two or three days, very pensive and silent, yet she always had her proper senses and memory, and yesterday signified [to Dr Parry], by the lifting of her hand and eyes to Heaven, that she believed that faith which she had caused to be professed, and looked faithfully to be saved by Christ's merits and mercy only, and by no other means. She took great delight in hearing prayers, would often at the name of Jesus lift up her hands and eyes to Heaven. She would not hear the Archbishop speak of hope in her longer life, but when he prayed or spoke of Heaven and those joys, she would hug his hand.

It seems she might have lived if she would have used means, but she would not be persuaded, and princes must not be forced. Her physicians said she had the body of a firm and perfect constitution, likely to have lived many years.

That day, Nottingham, Egerton and Cecil asked Elizabeth to name her successor, but she was beyond speech. Instead - as was afterwards alleged- she used her hands and fingers to make the sign of a crown above her head, which they took to mean that she wanted King James to succeed her.

Scaramelli, returning to Richmond 'found all the palace, outside and in, full of an extraordinary crowd, almost in uproar and on the tiptoe of expectation'. It was now known that the end could not be far off.

At six o'clock, feeling her strength ebbing away, the Queen signed for Whitgift to come and to pray at her bedside. Robert Carey was one
of
those kneeling in the bedchamber on this solemn occasion, and was moved to tears by what Whitgift's arrival portended.

Her Majesty lay upon her back, with one hand in the bed and the other without. The Archbishop kneeled down beside her and examined her first of her faith; and she so punctually answered all his questions, by lifting up her eyes and holding up her hand, as it was a comfort to all the beholders. Then the good man told her plainly what she was and what she was come to: though she had been long a great Queen here upon Earth, yet shortly she was to yield an account of her stewardship to the King of Kings. After this, he began to pray, and all that were by did answer him.

Whitgift remained at her bedside, holding her hand and offering her spiritual comfort until his knees ached, but as he made to rise, blessing the Queen, she gestured to him to kneel again and continue praying. He did so for another 'long half hour', but still Elizabeth would not let him go. So he prayed for half an hour more, 'with earnest cries to God for her soul's health, which he uttered with that fervency of spirit, as the Queen, to all our sight, much rejoiced thereat, and gave testimony to us all of her Christian and comfortable end. By this time it grew late, and everyone departed, all but her women who attended her.'

Around ten o'clock that evening, with heavy rain pattering against the windows, Elizabeth turned her face to the wall and fell into a deep sleep from which she would never wake. With Dr Parry, who 'sent his prayers before her soul', and her old friends Lady Warwick and Lady Scrope by her side, she passed to eternal rest, 'mildly like a lamb, easily, like a ripe apple from a tree', shortly before three o'clock in the morning of Thursday, 24 March, 'as the most resplendent sun setteth at last in a western cloud'.

Epilogue

As soon as she realised that her mistress had died, Lady Scrope, as prearranged, removed a sapphire ring from the late Queen's finger and dropped it through a window to her brother, Robert Carey, who was waiting below, ready saddled to ride to Scotland. King James knew that, when he received that ring, he would be King
of England
in truth.

Later that morning, the accession of King James I was proclaimed at Whitehall and in Cheapside. There was 'no great shouting', and Manningham felt that 'the sorrow for Her Majesty's departure was so deep in many hearts, they could not so suddenly show any great joy'. Nevertheless, that evening saw some muted celebrations, as bonfires were lit and bells rung in honour of a new king, a new dynasty, and a new era. Slowly, it was beginning to dawn on people that the great Elizabethan age was over.

Three days later, Carey arrived in Edinburgh, just as the King had retired for the night. Muddied and dusty as he was after his long ride, he fell to his knees and saluted James as King of England, Scotland, Ireland and France. Then he gave him Queen Elizabeth's ring.

At Richmond, now virtually deserted after the court had returned to London, 'The Queen's body was left in a manner alone a day or two after her death, and mean persons had access to it.' No post mortem was carried out, and it was left to three of her ladies to prepare the corpse for burial. Then it was embalmed, wrapped in cere-cloth and 'enshrined in lead'.

After five days, the coffin was taken at night, on a barge lit by torches, to Whitehall, where it lay in state in a withdrawing chamber, attended round the clock by many lords and ladies. It was then moved to Westminster Hall, where it lay 'all hung with mourning; and so, in 
accordance with ancient custom, it will remain, until the King gives orders for her funeral'.

On 28 April, more than a month after her death, Elizabeth's body was taken in procession to Westminster Abbey. It was an impressive occasion: the hearse was drawn by four horses hung with black velvet, and surmounted by a life-sized wax effigy of the late Queen, dressed in her state robes and crown, an orb and sceptre in its hands; over it was a canopy of estate supported by six earls. It was followed by her riderless palfrey led by Elizabeth's Master of Horse, and the Marchioness of Northampton, who as the senior noblewoman acted as chief mourner and led the peeresses of the realm in their nun-like mourning hoods and cloaks, and a thousand other black-clad people: lords, councillors, gentlemen, courtiers, heralds, and servants, as well as 276 poor persons. The Lord Mayor and his brethren were there, as were the Children of the Chapel Royal, and in the rear marched Raleigh with the Gentlemen Pensioners, their halberds pointed downwards. The solemnity was overlaid with gorgeous pageantry as colourful banners and standards fluttered in the breeze and trumpets sounded.

Thousands lined the funeral route: Stow says that 'Westminster was surcharged with multitudes of all sorts of people in their streets, houses, windows, leads and gutters, that came to see the obsequy, and when they beheld her statue lying upon the coffin, there was such a general sighing, groaning and weeping as the like hath not been seen or known in the memory of man, neither doth any history mention any people, time or state to make like lamentation for the death of their sovereign.'

With Whitgift officiating, Elizabeth 1 was buried in the north aisle of the Henry VII Chapel in the Abbey; after her coffin had been placed above that
of
her sister Mary in the vault, the chief officers of her household, as was customary, broke their white staves of office and cast them down on the coffin, to symbolise the termination of their allegiance. The vault was then sealed.

James I ordered a magnificent tomb to be erected to his predecessor's memory. It was designed by Maximilian Colt, at a cost of 765, and was completed in 1606. Colt's white marble effigy of the Queen portrays an old woman, and it has been conjectured that he may have worked from a death mask. The effigy was painted by Nicholas Hilliard and gilded by John de Critz, although all traces of colour and gilding have long since disappeared. A Latin inscription on the tomb would have pleased Elizabeth greatly, for it describes her as 'The mother of this her country, the nurse of religion and learning; for perfect skill of very many languages, for glorious endowments, as well of mind as of body, a prince incomparable.'