The House of Tudor (53 page)

Harington thought this anecdote deserved noting, ‘as being both wise and pleasant’. In fact, of course, it reveals much of the secret of Elizabeth’s success. Her loving relationship with her good people, which enabled one woman to rule a tough, independent-minded, quarrelsome nation virtually by the force of her personality, was no accident. Like all relationships it had to be worked for, and all her long reign Elizabeth Tudor never once forgot that - never took the goodwill of all her husbands for granted. In that one simple fact lay the essence of her genius.

Elizabeth remained astonishingly fit and active almost to the very end. In August 1602 Robert Cecil noted that she had not been in better health for twelve years and was still riding every day and hunting. In September the Earl of Worcester wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury: ‘We are frolic here at court; much dancing in the Privy Chamber of country dances before the Queen’s majesty who is exceedingly pleased therewith’. Later in the month, another correspondent was telling the Countess of Shrewsbury, ‘The best news I can yet write your ladyship is of the Queen’s health and disposition of body, which I assure you is excellent good. And I have not seen her every way better disposed these many years.’ Elizabeth had been fortunate in inheriting her father’s splendid constitution and, unlike him, had never abused it She had always been extremely fastidious in matters of personal hygiene; had always taken plenty of fresh air and exercise and been notably abstemious over food and drink. She had also, wisely, avoided the ministrations of the royal physicians whenever possible. Perhaps, though, the real reason for her continued physical well-being was that she had been lucky enough to spend her life doing something she thoroughly enjoyed and was supremely good at.

But not even Elizabeth was immortal - though to James of Scotland it sometimes seemed as if she might be. She was now in her seventieth year, a great age for her times, and had lived considerably longer than any other member of her house, but when John Harington came to Court in December he was shocked at the change he saw in her. ‘Our dear Queen, my royal godmother and this state’s most natural mother, doth now bear show of human infirmity’, he wrote to his wife. Elizabeth seemed very depressed and when Harington, in an attempt to cheer her up, read her some of his witty verses, she smiled but said, ‘When thou dost feel creeping time at thy gate, these fooleries will please thee less. I am past my relish for such matters.’ She was eating hardly anything now and, for the first time, there were signs that her memory was beginning to fail. ‘But who’, wrote her godson sadly, ‘shall say that “your Highness hath forgotten”?’

Harington must have seen her on a bad day, for she rallied again. Christmas was spent with all the usual gaieties and in January the Queen was said to be in excellent health. On the twenty-first the Court moved down to Richmond. The weather had turned very cold, but Elizabeth insisted on wearing ‘summer-like garments’. On 6 February she received the new Venetian ambassador, dressed in white and silver, her hair ‘of a light colour never made by nature’ and apparently in good spirits. She addressed Scaramelli in his own language and said at the end of the audience - ‘I do not know if I have spoken Italian well; still I think so, for I learnt it when a child and believe I have not forgotten it.’ Elizabeth was still in harness, busy with Irish affairs but finding her daily routine more and more of a strain. Towards the end of February her closest woman friend, the Countess of Nottingham, died. The Queen’s mood of depression returned and this time she did not recover.

Early in March her young relative, Robert Carey, grandson of her aunt Mary Boleyn, came down to Richmond to see her and found her in one of her withdrawing chambers, ‘sitting low upon her cushions’. ‘She took me by the hand’, he wrote, ‘and wrung it hard and said, “No, Robin, I am not well”; and then discoursed with me of her indisposition, and that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days, and in her discourse she fetched forty or fifty great sighs. I was grieved at the first to see her in this plight, for in all my lifetime before I never knew her fetch a sigh, but when the Queen of Scots was beheaded.’ Carey did his best ‘to persuade her from this melancholy humour’, but found ‘it was too deep-rooted in her heart and hardly to be removed.’ This was on a Saturday evening. Next day the Queen was unable to go to church as usual and instead heard the service lying on cushions in her privy chamber. ‘From that day forwards’, says Robert Carey, ‘she grew worse and worse. She remained upon her cushions four days and nights at the least. All about her could not persuade her either to take any sustenance or go to bed.’

Elizabeth had always said that she did not desire to live longer than would be for her subjects’ good. Now it seemed as if she felt her task was done. She had outlived her century, outlived nearly all her friends and her usefulness to her beloved country, and she wanted to make an end. Recently the coronation ring, the outward and visible token of her symbolic marriage to the kingdom of England which, for nearly forty-five years, had never left her finger, had grown into the flesh and had to be cut away. It was an omen. ‘The Queen grew worse and worse’, said Robert Carey significantly, ‘because she would be so.’ Still no one could persuade her to go to bed. Eventually her cousin, the Lord Admiral, was sent for and partly by persuasion, partly by force, he succeeded in getting her off her cushions and into bed. There, temporarily, she felt a little better and was able to take some broth. But ‘there was no hope of her recovery, because she refused all remedies.’

The immediate physical cause of Elizabeth’s last illness seems to have been some kind of throat infection which made swallowing difficult and painful, but soon pneumonia set in and she lay speechless and semi-conscious, her eyes open, one finger in her mouth. The story which had begun so long ago in blood and battle under the fiery banner of the red dragon was ending now in the great, richly furnished bedchamber at Richmond Palace where a tired old woman waited for her release.

Elizabeth died in the small hours of Thursday, 24 March 1603 - ‘mildly like a lamb, easily like a ripe apple from the tree’ - and Robert Carey, who had been standing by with a horse ready saddled, dashed away through the night on the first stage of his wild ride north to tell Margaret Tudor’s great-grandson that the waiting was over. Hempe was spun and England done and the last English sovereign of the English nation lay at peace.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All possible care has been taken in tracing the ownership of copyright material used in this book and making acknowledgment for its use. If any owner has not been acknowledged the author and publishers apologize and will be glad of the opportunity to rectify the error.