From Camden we have a supremely capable chronicler of the Queen's life, reign, final illness and death. So filled with life, Elizabeth struggled to process the details of dying. Aware that monarchs command actions that they must answer for to God she reflected upon her sins most of all. In the end, she wanted only to pray for forgiveness.
The Queen, who had hitherto enjoyed her Health without Impairment, by reason ot her Abstinence from Wine and observing a temperate Diet, (which she usually laid was the noblest part of Physick,) being now in her Climacterical Year, to wit, the Seventieth Year of her Age, began, to be sensible of some Weakness and indisposition both of Health and Old-age,
which the Badness of the Weather increased, whilst upon the last of January, which was a very windy and rainy day, she removed from Westminster to Richmond there to enjoy and refresh herself in her Old age, and more freely to attend the Serving of God. Upon which day (whether thinking on her Death, or presaging what would ensue,) she happened to say, to the Lord Admiral, whom she always dearly affected, My Throne hath been the Throne of Kings, neither ought any other than he that, is my next heir to succeed me. And the Courtiers observed , that she never before more frequented Prayers and the Service of God than |now. Who also report, that she then commanded that Ring where with she had been as it were joyned in Marriage to her Kingdom at her Inauguration, and had never since taken off, to be filed off from her Finger, because it was so grown into the Flesh, that it could not be drawn off. Which was taken as a sad Omen, as if it portended that her Marriage with the Kingdom , contracted by that Ring would now be dissolved. In the beginning of her Sickness the Almonds in her Throat swelled, and soon abated again; then her Appetite failed by degrees ; and withall she gave herself over wholly to Melancholy, and seemed to be much troubled with a peculiar Grief for some Reason or other: whether it were through the Violence of her Disease; or for the Want of Essex, (as Essex his Friends persuaded themselves;) or that after so great Expenses in the Irish War, she was prevailed with to pardon the Rebel Tir-Oen; or that she had heard some Whisperings, and had also been advertised by the French King, that many of the Nobility did by underhand Letters and Messengers seek to curry Favour with the King of Scots, that they adored him as the rising Sun, and neglected her as being now ready to set. Which (as the female Sex and Old age are apt to be suspicious) she easily believed, and that not without good Cause: for some.of the Lords of the Court, (tosay nothing of the Ladies,) who had the least Reason of all to. have done it, ungratefully in a manner forsook her, whilst: she altered not from herself, but they from their Opiniqn of her, and Respect to her; either because they saw her now very aged; or were, weary of her long Government, (for things of long Continuance, though never so good, are tedious;) or out of a credulous Desire of Novelty and Change, hoping for better Times, despising the present, and forgetting Favours past, (the Remembrance whereof is a Burthen to Unthankfull persons;) finding Fault with the state of things , haply out of a Mystery and Art of Court, to win Favour, with her Successour, falsely believing that the Dispraise of the Predecessour is a gratefull and delightfull hearing to the Successour. And this they did so openly, that they quarrelled one with another about It: and others propounded to have the, Successour sent for, whilst her Recovery was yet doubtfull; so as they seemed to have fled over to him in their Hearts, though their Bodies stayed at Home in England. Hereupon she looked upon herself as a miserable forlorn Woman, and her Grief and Indignation extorted from her such Speeches as these: They have yoaked my Neck ; I have none whom I can trust; My Condition is strangely turned upside down. And, to increase this her Grief and Dissatisfaction, they made her believe that her Authority among the People sensibly decayed: whereas the People (in whom there is always a murmuring and querulous Dislike of such as are in Authority) complained of nothing so much as that the Power of some near the Queen, if not above her, was grown too great; and that others were too hasty in catching and snatching for themselves (as is usual in such cases) now they saw her grown old.
When the Report now grew daily stronger and stronger that her Sickness increased upon her, and that, as she had done always before in the prime of her Age, so now much more she refused all Help of Physick, incredible it is with what great Speed the Puritans, Papists, Ambitious persons and Flatterers of all kinds, and other forts of men, all of them prompted by their particular Hopes, poasted night and day by Sea and Land into Scotland, tq adore the rising King, and get into his Favour. Whose Title to the Succession the Queen (though out of Prudence she declared it not openly, yet) always really and from her Heart favoured, as Justice and Equity required: the like did all men of all Degrees and Qualities, who with great Satisfaction and Content had fixed their Eyes and Hearts upon him as her undoubted Heir; though false Rumours were spread abroad of a Marriage of the Lady Arbella his Uncle's Daughter; and the French Embasladour did what he could to raise Disturbances, lest the two yet divided Kingdoms of Britain, England and Scotland, should be united into one. In the beginning of March an heavy Dulness, with a Frowardness familiar to Old age, began to seize upon her, insomuch as she would sit silent, refrain from Meat, fixing her Mind wholly upon her Meditations, and would not endure any Talk unless it were with the Archbishop of Canterbury, with whom she often prayed with great Fervency and Devotion, until by little and little her Speech failed her; and after she willingly heard him praying by her. About this time the Lord Admiral
telling the rest of the Privy Council what the Queen at her departing from Westminster had said to him by the Bye concerning her Successour, they all thought good that he with the Lord Keeper and the Secretary should wait upon her, and put her in Mind thereof, and acquaint her that they were come in the name of the rest of the Council to understand her Pleasure touching her SuccefTour. The Queen made Answer with a gasping Breath, I said that my Throne was a throne of Kings, that I would not have any mean person succeed me. The Secretary asking her what she meant by those words; I will (said she) that a King succeed me : and who should that be but my nearest Kinsman, the King of Scots? Then being put in mind by the Archbishop to think upon God; That I do, (said she) neither doth my Mind at all wander from him. And when she could no longer pray with her Tongue, with Hands and Eyes lift up she directed the Thoughts of her pious Heart to God; and in this very thing she prayed, by sorrowing inwardly that she could not pray, as was plainly to be gathered by some Signs observed by the Standers-by.
1 Camden, William. The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth Late Queen of England (4th Ed., 1688). 658-63.
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