The great queen was now near her end. All her contemporaries, both friends and foes, had passed away already. Philip of Spain had died, a prey to religious melancholy, and racked by a loathsome disease, in 1598. That same year saw the end of the great minister, William Cecil, Lord Burleigh. His colleague Walsingham had sunk into the grave some years earlier, in 1590. Leicester, whom the queen had loved till his death-day, had perished of a fever in 1588, the year of the Armada. A younger generation had arisen, which only knew Elizabeth as an old woman, and forgot her brilliant youth. To them the vivacity and love of pleasure which she displayed on the verge of her seventieth year seemed abnormal and even unseemly.
"Monopolies" declared illegal.
To the last she kept her talent for dealing with men. There was no greater instance of her cleverness shown in all her life than her management of her Parliament in 1601. The Commons had been growing more resolute and strong-willed as the queen grew older, and though Elizabeth often chid them, and sometimes even imprisoned members who displeased her, yet she knew when to yield with a good grace. The Parliament of 1601 was raging against "monopolies"—grants under the royal seal to individuals, permitting them to be the sole vendors or manufacturers of certain articles of trade. Seeing their resolution, Elizabeth came down in person to the House, and addressed the members at length, so cleverly that she persuaded them that she was as much opposed to the abuse as they themselves, and won enormous applause when she announced that all monopolies were at once to be withdrawn and made illegal.
Death of Elizabeth.
Eighteen months after this strange scene Elizabeth died, in her seventy-first year. On her death-bed she assented to the designation of James of Scotland as her successor—a thing she would never suffer before, for she held that "an expectant heir is like a coffin always in sight."
The Elizabethan age.
In spite of the many unamiable points in her character, Elizabeth was always liked by her subjects, and well deserved their liking. She had guided England through forty-five most troublous years, and left her subjects wealthy, prosperous, and contented. Her failures had always been upon the side of caution, and such mistakes are the easiest to repair and the soonest forgotten. Both in her own day and in ages to come, she received the credit for all the progress and prosperity of her reign. The nation, groaning under the unwisdom of the Stuarts, cried in vain for a renewal of "the days of good Queen Bess." The modern historian, when he recounts the great deeds of the Englishmen of the latter half of the sixteenth century, invariably speaks of the "Elizabethan age." Nor is this wrong. When we reflect on the evils which a less capable sovereign might have brought upon the realm in that time of storm and stress, we may well give her due meed of thanks to the cautious, politic, unscrupulous queen, who left such peace and prosperity behind her.