After Elizabeth: The Death of Elizabeth and the Coming of King James. Leanda Lisle de

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СКАЧАТЬ from the crown. It had since fallen on ordinary people. The price of starch, for example, had tripled over the three years that Cecil had held the monopoly on it.⁶² He railed in the Commons against those ‘that have desired to be popular without the house for speaking against monopolies’ and Ralegh defended his monopoly in tin so vehemently that it almost brought the debate to a halt. Elizabeth, however, was sufficiently concerned by the attacks on her prerogative to promise to abolish or amend them by royal proclamation.⁶³ When the news was announced MPs wept and cheered.

      A few days later Elizabeth received a deputation in the Council Chamber at Whitehall. Once they had delivered their thanks, she took the opportunity to remind them of what was later seen as the central philosophy of her reign.

      Mr Speaker, We perceive your coming is to present thanks to us. Know I accept them with no less joy than your loves can have desire to offer such a present, and do more esteem it than any treasure or riches; for these we know how to prize, but loyalty, love and thanks, I account them invaluable. And although God hath raised me high, yet this I account the glory of my crown, that I have reigned with your loves … Of myself I must say this: I never was any greedy, scraping grasper, nor a strict, fast-holding prince, nor yet a waster; my heart was never set upon worldly goods but only for my subjects good. What you do bestow on me, I will not hoard up, but receive it to bestow on you again; yea, my own properties I account to be yours, to be expended for your good, and your eyes shall see the bestowing of it for your welfare.⁶⁴

      They were described as ‘golden words’ but Elizabeth was only too aware that things had changed and when Parliament was dissolved in December she recalled the bitter truth of ‘so many and diverse stratagems and malicious practises and devises to surprise us of our life’.⁶⁵ That spring, Elizabeth began complaining of an ache in one of her arms. A doctor suggested that her discomfort was rheumatism and might be helped with ointments. She reacted furiously, telling him he was mistaken and ordering him from her presence, but it was soon reported that ‘The ache in the Queen’s arm is fallen into her side.’ She was ‘still thanks to God, frolicy and merry, only her face showing some decay’, yet sometimes she felt so hot she would take off her petticoat while at other times she would shake with cold.⁶⁶ Depression dogged her and in June Elizabeth was overheard complaining desperately to Cecil about ‘the poverty of the state, the continuance of charge, the discontentment of all sorts of people’.⁶⁷ She told the French ambassador, the Comte de Beaumont, that she was weary of life. Then, sighing as her eyes filled with tears, she spoke of Essex’s death, how she had tried to prevent it and failed.⁶⁸

      By August Elizabeth’s pains had gone to her hip. Defiantly she continued to hunt every two or three days but a Catholic spy writing under the name ‘Anthony Rivers’ reported that a countrywoman who saw her on her progress had commented that the Queen looked very old and ill. A guard terrified the woman by warning that ‘she should be hanged for those words’. Courtiers, however, were less easily intimidated and whispers about the succession were on everyone’s lips.⁶⁹ The spy described how James’s agents were working hard to gather support from powerful families offering ‘liberty of conscience, confirmation of privileges and liberties, restitution of wrongs, honours, titles and dignities, with increase according to desert etc’. Individuals were responding with shows of affection: ‘for the most part it is thought rather for fear than love’. He named Cecil as one such, adding, ‘all is but policy it being certain he loves him as little as the others’.⁷⁰ It is now believed that the spy ‘Rivers’ was William Sterrell, Secretary to the Earl of Worcester, which would have placed him at the heart of Elizabeth’s court.⁷¹ His letters to Persons and others make it clear that few actively wanted a Scots king and he reported that a group of courtiers were planning to marry Arbella Stuart to Beauchamp’s seventeen-year-old elder son, Edward Seymour ‘and carry the succession that way’. To all outward appearance, however, it was business as usual.

      In October 1602, Cecil entertained Elizabeth at his new house on the Strand and presented her with ten gifts, mostly jewels. She left in excellent spirits, refusing any help to enter the royal barge. As she climbed aboard, however, she fell and bruised her shins badly. It left her in considerable pain. She began to talk of moving from Whitehall to the comforts of Richmond Palace, but in the end the lassitude of depression had kept her at Whitehall where Harington had found her weeping at Christmas.

      Now that Elizabeth’s godson was certain she was dying he intended to follow the Tract on the Succession sent to James in Scotland with a New Year’s gift, the traditional time for giving presents. He designed a lantern constructed as a symbol of the dark times of Elizabeth’s last years and the splendour that was to come with James’s rising sun. It was engraved with the words: ‘Lord remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom,’ and a little underneath, ‘After the cross, light.’⁷²

* Elizabeth, who was conservative in religious matters, wanted a single man as her senior cleric. After Whitgift’s appointment Harington recalled how Whitgift had always cut a dashing figure. When he was Bishop of Worcester, he would arrive at Parliament attended by large numbers of retainers in tawny livery. When another bishop asked how he could afford so many menservants he quipped ‘it was by reason he kept so few women’ – a reference to the fact he had remained unmarried (Harington, State of the Church, pp. 7–8).

* Thomas Wilson had also observed that the law against foreigners inheriting the English throne need not apply to James if it ‘be alleged that the King of Scots is no alien, neither that Scotland is any foreign realm, but a part of England, all be it the Scots deny it’ (Wilson, State of England in 1600, p. 8).

* It was, perhaps, because Elizabeth was seriously ill with smallpox in 1562 that she did not think to ensure that Edward and Catherine were kept apart in the Tower. In consequence another ‘illegitimate’ child, Thomas, was born on 10 February 1563. Edward was fined £15,000 and Elizabeth saw to it that he never saw Catherine again.

* Mary Grey married in 1565. Within months it was discovered and she was placed in custody until her husband died, after which she lived an impoverished and childless life until her own death in 1578.

* The subsequent ruin of many Catholics was remembered in the 1930s as the Vatican considered how best to confront Adolf Hitler. Voices recalled the terrible effects of the bull and the Pope backed off from issuing a condemnation of Nazism (Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, p. 334).

* Puritans wanted to see the restitution and continuation of Edward VI’s reforms, dispensing with ‘papist’ rituals such as the cross in baptism and instituting sermons in order to achieve a more godly church and society.

* Though the bleeding from the stomach might equally have been caused by stomach cancer or an ulcer, or a result of porphyria inherited through his mother Eleanor Brandon.

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