In the Life of Haydon the painter,[268] we have the following letter from him to Keats, (March 1, 1818:) “My dear Keats, I shall go mad! In a field at Stratford-upon-Avon, that belonged to Shakspeare, they have found a gold ring and seal, with the initials W. S. and a true lover’s knot between. If this is not Shakspeare’s, whose is it?—a true lover’s knot! I saw an impression to-day, and am to have one as soon as possible: as sure as you breathe and that he was the first of beings, the seal belonged to him.
“O Lord! B. R. Haydon.”
Let us now turn to the ring that Queen Elizabeth gave to the handsome, brave and open-hearted Devereux, Earl of Essex; and which was probably worn by him, when, on his trial, he was desired to hold up his right hand, and he said that he had, before that time, done it often at her majesty’s command for a better purpose. The story of this ring has been discarded by some authors; but we see no reason to doubt it. We take our account from Francis Osborn’s Traditional Memoirs on the Reign of Queen Elizabeth.[269] “Upon this,” says he, “with a great deal of familiarity, she presented a ring to him, which after she had, by oaths, endued with a power of freeing him from any danger or distress, his future miscarriage, her anger or enemies’ malice could cast him into, she gave it him, with a promise that, at the first sight of it, all this and more, if possible, should be granted. After his commitment to the Tower, he sent this jewel to her majesty by the then Countess of Nottingham, whom Sir Robert Cecill kept from delivering it. But the Lady of Nottingham, coming to her death-bed and finding by the daily sorrow the Queen expressed for the loss of Essex, herself a principal agent in his destruction, could not be at rest till she had discovered all and humbly implored mercy from God and forgiveness from her earthly sovereign; who did not only refuse to give it, but having shook her as she lay in bed, sent her, accompanied with most fearful curses, to a higher tribunal.” This reads like truth; and what a picture it presents! Mark the fury of such an overbearing, half-masculine Queen; and, the repentant passiveness of the dying Countess!
Dr. Birch, in his Memoirs, says: the Queen observed, “God may forgive you, but I never can.”
We are inclined to believe that Elizabeth swore pretty roundly on this occasion, as it is known she could; and that there was a violence on the occasion is even shown by Dr. Birch: he says—“The Countess of Nottingham, affected by the near approach of death, obtained a visit from the Queen, to whom she revealed the secret; that the Queen shook the dying lady in her bed, and thenceforth resigned herself to the deepest melancholy.”
The melancholy continued; and this haughty woman was soon smitten; refusing to rest on a bed, from a superstition that it would be her death couch, she became almost a silent lunatic, and crouched upon the floor. There sat she, as did another queen, who cried—
“Here I and sorrow sit,
Here is my throne;”
neither rising nor lying down, her finger almost always in her mouth, her eyes open and fixed on the ground.[270] But her indomitable will did not leave her in her death hour. She had declared she would have no rascal to succeed her; and when she was too far gone to speak, Secretary Cecil besought her, if she would have the King of Scots to reign after her, to show some sign unto them. Whereat, suddenly heaving herself up, she held both her hands joined together, over her head, in manner of a crown. Then, she sank down, and dozed into another world.
The Chevalier Louis Aubery de Maurier, who was many years the French Minister in Holland, and said to have been a man of great parts and unsuspected veracity, gives the following story of the Essex ring:[271]