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grief in privacy, for the sight of doole (mourning) was as distasteful to queen Elizabeth as to her father. She was aware that those about her anticipated a fatal termination to her present malady, and felt in herself the unmistakeable symptoms of the slow, but sure approach of death, and though she had, with sighs and tears, acknowledged herself weary of life, there was a fearful shrinking manifested, when she found herself actually poised on the narrow threshold that divides time from eternity; and, as if she thought that her reluctance to cross that awful bound would alter the immutable decree, that had gone forth against her, she refused to admit her danger, or to do anything which bore the appearance of death-bed of death-bed preparations.1

The archbishop of Canterbury and Cecil entreated her to receive medical aid, but she angrily told them, “that she knew her own constitution better than they did, and that she was not in so much danger as they imagined." The admiral came, and knelt beside her, where she sat among her cushions, sullen and unresigned; he kissed her hands, and, with tears, implored her to take a little nourishment. After much ado, he prevailed so far, that she received a little broth, from his hands; he feeding her with a spoon. But when he urged her to go to bed, she angrily refused, and then, in wild and wandering words, hinted of phantasma, that had troubled her midnight couch. "If he were in the habit of seeing such things in his bed," she said, “as she did when in hers, he would not persuade her to go there." Secretary Cecil, overhearing this speech, asked, "If her majesty had seen any spirits?" A flash of Elizabeth's mighty mind, for an instant, triumphed over the wreck of her bodily and mental faculties; she knew the man, and was aware he had been truckling with her successor. He was not in her confidence, and she answered, majestically, "she scorned to answer him such a question!" But Cecil's pertness was not subdued by the lion-like mien of dying majesty, and he told her, that "to content the people, she must go to bed." At which she smiled, wonderfully contemning him, observing, "the word must was not to be used to princes," adding, "Little man, little man, if your father had lived, ye durst not have said so much, but ye know I must die, and that makes ye so presumptuous. She then commanded him and the rest to depart out of her chamber,

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all but lord-admiral Howard, to whom, as her near relation and fast friend through life, she was confidential to the last, even regarding those unreal phantasms, which, when her great mind awoke for a moment, it is plain she referred to their proper causes. When Cecil and his colleagues were gone, the queen, shaking her head piteously, said to her brave kinsman, "My lord, I am tied with a chain of iron about my neck."

The lord-admiral reminded her of her wonted courage, but she replied, despondingly, "I am tied, I am tied, and the case is altered with me." ." The queen understood that secretary Cecil had given forth to the people that she was mad, therefore, in her sickness, she did many times say to him, Cecil, I know I am not mad; you must not think to make queen Jane of me." She evidently alluded to the unfortunate queen-regnant of Castille, the mad Joanna, mother of Charles V., whose sad life, as a regal maniac, was fresh in the memory of her dying contemporary.

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Since the publication of the first edition of this volume, I have had the gratification of seeing, during my late visit to Paris, Paul de la Roche's grand historical painting of the scene here described-a subject well suited to the pencil of that great artist, and which he has treated with all the tragic power of his mighty genius. The dying queen is reclining on the floor of her presence-chamber, among the fringed and embroidered scarlet cushions that have been taken from the throne for that purpose; we see it in the back-ground empty and denuded of its trappings. Elizabeth is represented in her royal robes, and loaded with her usual profusion of pearls and jewels, but evidently impatient of their weight. Her elaborately braided perriwig, with its jewelled decorations, is disordered and pushed back from her feverish brow. The grey, corpselike tint of her complexion, and the glassy fixture of her expanded eye, where wrath and latent frenzy appear struggling with the weakness of sinking nature, are finely expressed. The artist has taken the moment when, roused by the importunity of Cecil from the lethargic stupor of despair, she rallied the expiring energies of her haughty spirit to awe him into silence. The terror and concern of her ladies-the youth, beauty, and feminine softness of the two who are bending over her—afford a

pleasing contrast to the infuriated countenance of the queen, and the diplomatic coolness of the lords of the council. The costume of the picture is admirable in all its details.

Lady Southwell, however, bears firm witness of her sanity, "for," says she, "though many reports, by Cecil's means, were spread of her distraction, neither myself, nor any other lady about her could ever perceive that her speeches, ever well applied, proceeded from a distracted mind.” Partly by the admiral's persuasions, and partly by force, she was at length carried to bed, but there she lay not long, for again the French ambassador informs the king, his master, "that the queen continued to grow worse, and appeared in a manner insensible, not speaking above once in two or three hours, and at last remained silent for fourand-twenty, holding her finger almost continually in her mouth, with her rayless eyes open, and fixed on the ground, where she sat on cushions, without rising or resting herself, and was greatly emaciated by her long watching and fasting.

Some attempt appears to have been made to charm away the dark spirit, that had come over the queen, by the power of melody, at this dread crisis; for Beaumont says, "This morning, the queen's music has gone to her." He sarcastically adds, "I believe she means to die as gaily as she has lived." In his next report, he says, "The queen hastens to her end, and is given up by all her physicians. They have put her to bed, almost by force, after she had sat upon cushions for ten days,' and has rested barely an hour each day in her clothes." After she was undressed, and placed more at her ease, in a recumbent posture, she revived, and called for broth, and seemed so much better, that hopes were entertained of her, but soon after she became speechless. When she found herself failing, she desired some meditations to be read to her, and named those of Du Plessis de Mornaye. Yet more, alas! of superstition than devotion appears to have attended the last days of this mighty victress-mighty queen; and gloomy indeed were the clouds in which she, who had been proudly styled "the western luminary," set at last. If we may credit the details of lady Southwell, who has recorded every circumstance of her royal mistress's last illness, with graphic

This must be a great exaggeration, since Carey and lady Southwell only

say four.

minuteness, some singular traits of weakness were exhibited by Elizabeth, and before the testimony of this daily witness of the occurrences of that epoch be rejected, the reader must bear in mind Elizabeth's well-authenticated practices with the astrologer, Dee.

Lady Southwell affirms, "that the two ladies in waiting discovered the queen of hearts, with a nail of iron knocked through the forehead, and thus fastened to the bottom of her majesty's chair, they durst not pull it out, remembering that the like thing was used to the old countess of Sussex, and afterwards proved a witchcraft, for which certain persons were hanged, as instruments of the same." It was perfectly inconsequential whether the queen of hearts or any other bit of card, was nailed at the bottom of the queen's chair; but the fantastical idea of putting it there, and the terror of the poor ladies who would, but durst not, remove it, because of the horrid sacrifice of human life that attended all suspicion of witchcraft, are lively illustrations of the characteristics of that era. As the mortal illness of the queen drew towards its close, the superstitious fears of her simple ladies were excited almost to mania, even to conjuring up a spectral apparition of the queen while she was yet alive. Lady Guildford, then in waiting on the queen, and leaving her in an almost breathless sleep in her privychamber,' went out to take a little air, and met her majesty, as she thought, three or four chambers off. Alarmed at the thoughts of being discovered in the act of leaving the royal patient alone, she hurried forward, in some trepidation, in order to excuse herself, when the apparition vanished away. Lady Guildford returned, terrified, to the chamber, but there lay queen Elizabeth still in the same lethargic, motionless slumber, in which she had left her.

On the 24th of March, Beaumont, the French ambassador, made the following report of the state of the departing monarch:-"The queen was given up three days ago; she had lain long in a cold sweat, and had not spoken. A short time previously she said, 'I wish not to live any longer, but desire to die.' Yesterday and the day before, she begun to rest, and found herself better after, having been greatly relieved by the bursting of a small swelling in the throat. She takes no medicine whatever, and has only 1 Lady Southwell's MS

kept her bed two days; before this she would on no account suffer it, for fear (as some suppose) of a prophecy that she should die in her bed. She is, moreover, said to be no longer in her right senses; this, however, is a mistake; she has only had some slight wanderings at intervals.”

Carey reports the last change for the worse to have taken place on Wednesday, the previous day :-" That afternoon," says he, "she made signs for her council to be called, and, by putting her hand to her head, when the king of Scotland was named to succeed her, they all knew he was the man she desired should reign after her." By what logic the council were able to interpret this motion of the dying queen, into an indication that such was her pleasure, they best could explain. Lady Southwell's account of this memorable scene is more circumstantial and minute. She says of the queen:

"Being given over by all and at the last gasp, keeping still her sense in everything, and giving apt answers, though she spake but seldom, having then a sore throat, the council required admittance, and she wished to wash (gargle) her throat, that she might answer freely to what they demanded, which was to know whom she would have for king?" A servile and unconstitutional question, which it is well no sovereign is expected to answer in these better days. "Her throat troubling her much, they desired her to hold up her finger when they named who she liked; whereupon they named the king of France, (this was to try her intellect,) she never stirred; the king of Scotland-she made no sign; then they named lord Beauchamp-this was the heir of Seymour, whose rights were derived from his mother, lady Katharine Gray, one of the most unfortunate of Elizabeth's victims: anger awakened the failing mind of the expiring queen, she roused herself at the name of the injured person, whom she could not forgive, and said, fiercely, "I will have no rascal's son in my seat, but one worthy to be a king." How sad is the scene-what a dismal view of regality the various versions of this death-bed present! where the interested courtiers sat watching the twitchings of the hands, and the tossing of the arms of the dying Elizabeth, interpreting them into signs of royalty for the expectant heir. In her last struggles, the clasping of her convulsed

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