Elizabeth in her last Hours.
Elizabeth grows worse.
The private chapel and the closets.
It was a cold and stormy day in January when she went to Richmond; but, being restless and ill at ease, she would not be deterred by that circumstance from making the journey. She became worse after this removal. She made them put cushions again for her upon the floor, and she would lie upon them all the day, refusing to go to her bed. There was a communication from her chamber to closets connected with a chapel, where she had been accustomed to sit and hear divine service. These closets were of the form of small galleries, where the queen and her immediate attendants could sit. There was one open and public; another—a smaller one—was private, with curtains which could be drawn before it, so as to screen those within from the notice of the congregation. The queen intended, first, to go into the great closet; but, feeling too weak for this, she changed her mind, and ordered the private one to be prepared. At last she decided not to attempt to make even this effort, but ordered the cushions to be put down upon the floor, near the entrance, in her own room, and she lay there while the prayers were read, listening to the voice of the clergyman as it came in to her through the open door.
The wedding ring.
One day she asked them to take off the wedding ring with which she had commemorated her espousal to her kingdom and her people on the day of her coronation. The flesh had swollen around it so that it could not be removed. The attendants procured an instrument and cut it in two, and so relieved the finger from the pressure. The work was done in silence and solemnity, the queen herself, as well as the attendants, regarding it as a symbol that the union, of which the ring had been the pledge, was about to be sundered forever.
The queen's friends abandon her.
She sunk rapidly day by day, and, as it became more and more probable that she would soon cease to live, the nobles and statesmen who had been attendants at her court for so many years withdrew one after another from the palace, and left London secretly, but with eager dispatch, to make their way to Scotland, in order to be the first to hail King James, the moment they should learn that Elizabeth had ceased to breathe.