"I used the best words I could to persuade her from this melancholy humour; but I found by her it was too deep rooted in her heart, and hardly to be removed. This was upon a Saturday night, and she gave command that the great closet should be prepared for her to go to chapel the next morning. The next day, all things being in a readiness, we long expected her coming. After eleven o'clock, one of the grooms came out and bade make ready for the private closet, she would not go to the great. There we stayed long for her coming, but at last she had cushions laid for her in her privy-chamber hard by the closet door, and there she heard service.
"From that day forward 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.... The queen grew worse and worse because she would be so, none about her being able to go to bed. My lord-admiral was sent for, (who by reason of my sister's death, that was his wife, had absented himself some fortnight from court;) what by fair means what by force, he gat her to bed. There was no hope of her recovery, because she refused all remedies.
"On Wednesday the 23rd of March she grew speechless. That afternoon by signs she called for her council, and by putting her hand to her head when the king of Scots was named to succeed her, they all knew he was the man she desired should reign after her.
"About six at night she made signs for the archbishop and her chaplains to come to her; at which time I went in with them and sat upon my knees full of tears to see that heavy sight. Her majesty lay upon her back with one hand in the bed and the other without. The bishop kneeled down by her and examined her first of her faith; and she so punctually answered all his several questions, by lifting up her eyes and holding up her hand, as it was a comfort to all the beholders.... After he had continued long in prayer, till the old man's knees were weary, he blessed her; and meant to rise and leave her. The queen made a sign with her hand. My sister Scrope, knowing her meaning, told the bishop the queen desired he would pray still. He did so for a long half hour after, and then thought to leave her. The second time she made sign to have him continue in prayer. He did so for half an hour more, with earnest cries to God for her soul's health, which he uttered with that fervency of spirit, as the queen to all our sight much rejoiced thereat, and gave testimony to us all of her christian and comfortable end. By this time it grew late, and every one departed, all but her women that attended her.... Between one and two o'clock of the Thursday morning, he that I left in the cofferer's chamber brought me word that the queen was dead."
A Latin letter written the day after her death to Edmund Lambert, whether by one of her physicians or not is uncertain, gives an account of her sickness in no respect contradictory to Robert Cary's.
"It was after laboring for nearly three weeks under a morbid melancholy, which brought on stupor not unmixed with some indications of a disordered fancy, that the queen expired. During all this time she could neither by reasoning, entreaties, or artifices be brought to make trial of any medical aid, and with difficulty was persuaded to receive sufficient nourishment to sustain nature; taking also very little sleep, and that not in bed, but on cushions, where she would sit whole days motionless and sleepless; retaining however the vigor of her intellect to her last breath, though deprived for three days before her death of the power of speech."
Another contemporary writes to his friend thus.... "No doubt you shall hear her majesty's sickness and manner of death diversly reported; for even here the papists do tell strange stories, as utterly void of truth as of all civil honesty or humanity.... Here was some whispering that her brain was somewhat distempered, but there was no such matter; only she held an obstinate silence for the most part; and, because she had a persuasion that if she once lay down she should never rise, could not be got to go to bed in a whole week, till three days before her death.... She made no will, neither gave any thing away; so that they which come after shall find a well-furnished jewel-house and a rich wardrobe of more than two thousand gowns, with all things else answerable[144]."
That a profound melancholy was either the cause, or at least a leading symptom, of the last illness of the queen, so many concurring testimonies render indisputable; but the origin of this affection has been variously explained. Some, as we have seen, ascribed it to her chagrin on being in a manner compelled to grant the pardon of Tyrone;—a cause disproportioned surely to the effect. Others have imagined it to arise from grief and indignation at the neglect which she began to experience from the venal throng of courtiers, who were hastening to pay timely homage to her successor. By others, again, her dejection has been regarded as nothing more than a natural concomitant of bodily decay; a physical rather than a mental malady. But the prevalent opinion, even at the time, appears to have been, that the grief or compunction for the death of Essex, with which she had long maintained a secret struggle, broke forth in the end superior to control, and rapidly completed the overthrow of powers which the advances of old age and an accumulation of cares and anxieties had already undermined. "Our queen," writes an English correspondent to a Scotch nobleman in the service of James, "is troubled with a rheum in her arm, which vexeth her very much, besides the grief she hath conceived for my lord of Essex's death. She sleepeth not so much by day as she used, neither taketh rest by night. Her delight is to sit in the dark, and sometimes, with shedding tears, to bewail Essex."
A remarkable anecdote first published in Osborn's Traditional Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth, and confirmed by M. Maurier's Memoirs,—where it is given on the authority of sir Dudley Carleton the English ambassador in Holland, who related it to prince Maurice,—offers the solution of these doubts. According to this story, the countess of Nottingham, who was a relation, but no friend, of the earl of Essex, being on her death-bed, entreated to see the queen; declaring that she had something to confess to her before she could die in peace. On her majesty's arrival, the countess produced a ring, which she said the earl of Essex had sent to her after his condemnation, with an earnest request that she would deliver it to the queen, as the token by which he implored her mercy; but which, in obedience to her husband, to whom she had communicated the circumstance, she had hitherto withheld; for which she entreated the queen's forgiveness. On sight of the ring, Elizabeth instantly recognised it as one which she had herself presented to her unhappy favorite on his departure for Cadiz, with the tender promise, that of whatsoever crimes his enemies might have accused him, or whatsoever offences he might actually have committed against her, on his returning to her that pledge, she would either pardon him, or admit him at least to justify himself in her presence. Transported at once with grief and rage, on learning the barbarous infidelity of which the earl had been the victim and herself the dupe, the queen shook in her bed the dying countess, and vehemently exclaiming, that God might forgive her, but she never could, flung out of the chamber.
Returning to her palace, she surrendered herself without resistance to the despair which seized her heart on this fatal and too late disclosure.—Hence her refusal of medicine and almost of food;—hence her obstinate silence interrupted only by sighs, groans, and broken hints of a deep sorrow which she cared not to reveal;—hence the days and nights passed by her seated on the floor, sleepless, her eyes fixed and her finger pressed upon her mouth;—hence, in short, all those heart-rending symptoms of incurable and mortal anguish which conducted her, in the space of twenty days, to the lamentable termination of a long life of power, prosperity and glory[145].