Life of Elizabeth I (85 page)

There was an epidemic of smallpox in 1602, which claimed many lives, but the Queen was nevertheless planning a long progress to Bristol. However, the weather was again wet and stormy, and she was persuaded that entertaining her would cause hardship to her people, who had already suffered seven years of famine. In the event, the weather improved and the harvest was a good one, signalling the end of the period of dearth. Trade began to revive, and the people's spirits with it.

In August, Elizabeth announced that she was in better health than for the past twelve years. In a single day, she rode ten miles on horseback, then went hunting. She arrived home shattered, but took care to go for a long walk on the following day, lest her courtiers guessed she had been exhausted by her activities. At this time, Cecil presented her with a jewel set with rubies and topazes to match 'the life of her eyes and the colour of her lips'; it was still the fashion for men to maintain the fiction that she was some eternally youthful goddess of beauty. 

That month, Elizabeth left Greenwich for Chiswick, then visited Lord Keeper Egerton at Harefield Park in Middlesex, where, despite constant rain, she was lavishly entertained and lauded as 'the best housewife in all this company'. There were banquets, masques, musical interludes, a rustic feast, allegorical pageants and a lottery which was rigged so that the Queen would win the prize. Printed pamphlets describing the festivities were on sale days later and avidly bought by the public. Because of the rain and the smallpox, however, the progress was curtailed, and the Queen settled for a time at Oatlands.

In September, she celebrated her sixty-ninth birthday, and was observed by the Duke of Stettin walking in the garden at Oatlands 'as briskly as though she were eighteen years old'. He was told she had been 'never so gallant many years, nor so set upon jollity'. Lord Worcester informed Lord Shrewsbury, 'We are frolic here at court; much dancing in the Privy Chamber of country dances before the Queen's Majesty, who is exceedingly pleased therewith.' Only rarely did she herself dance in public nowadays, although she was occasionally espied in her private apartments, dancing to pipe and tabor when she thought she was not observed.

That September, Fulke Greville informed Lady Shrewsbury, 'The best news I can yet write Your Ladyship is of the Queen's health and disposition of body, which 1 assure you is excellent good. I have not seen her every way better disposed these many years.'

Her sense of humour was still lively. She noticed that the Countess of Derby was wearing a locket containing Cecil's portrait, and, snatching it away, laughingly tied it on his shoe, then his elbow, so that all could see it. He took it in good part, commissioned some verses about it, and had them set to music and sung to the Queen, who was much amused. She could be alarmingly familiar with her subjects. When an Englishman who had lived abroad for some years was brought before her, kneeling, she 'took him by the hair and made him rise, and pretended to give him a box on the ears'.

Yet there were signs that her memory was failing. On 8 October she moved to Greenwich, where, four days later, some courtiers arrived to pay their respects to her. Although she could remember their names, she had to be reminded of the offices she herself had bestowed upon them. She was finding it harder to concentrate on state business, and this was exacerbated by failing eyesight. Cecil warned the Clerk of the Council that he must read out letters to her.

On T7 November, Elizabeth celebrated Accession Day at Whitehall 'with the ordinary solemnity and as great an applause of multitudes as if they had never seen her before'. Her fool, Garret, rode into the tiltyard 
on a pony the size of a dog, and 'had good audience with Her Majesty and made her very merry'. On 6 December, she dined with Cecil at his new house on the Strand, and afterwards watched a 'pretty dialogue' between a maid, a widow and a wife on the respective advantages each enjoyed; predictably, the virgin was deemed the most fortunate. When the Queen left, she appeared 'marvellously well contented, but at her departure she strained her foot'. We hear no more of this, so it cannot have been serious. Later in the month she was entertained by both Hunsdon and Nottingham at their London houses.

Around this time, a deep depression descended on Elizabeth, who was beginning to realise that she would not win this constant battle with advancing age. It became obvious to all that time was running out for her. Harington, up for Christmas, was shocked at the change in her, and wrote to his wife:

Our dear Queen, my royal godmother and this state's most natural mother, doth now bear show of human infirmity; too fast for that evil which we shall get by her death, and too slow for that good which she shall get by her releasement from pains and misery. I find some less mindful of what they are soon to lose, than of what they may perchance get hereafter. Now, I cannot blot from my memory's table the goodness of our Sovereign Lady to me: her affection to my mother, her bettering the state of my father's fortune, her watching over my youth, her liking to my free speech and admiration of my little learning and poesy, which I did so much cultivate on her command. To turn aside from her condition with tearless eyes would stain and foul the spring and fount of gratitude.

Because the Queen was 'in most pitiable state', and hardly eating anything, he tried to cheer her by reading out some of his humorous verses, but although she managed a weak smile, she bade him desist, saying, 'When thou dost feel creeping time at thy gate, these fooleries will please thee less. I am past my relish for such matters.'

Harington was startled when she asked him if he had ever met Tyrone. 'I replied with reverence that I had seen him with the Lord Deputy [Essex]; she looked up with much grief and choler in her countenance saying, "Oh, yes, now it mindeth me that you was one that saw this man elsewhere.'" But she was very distressed by the lapse, and 'dropped a tear and smote her bosom'. Harington was concerned about the implications of her failing memory. 'But who shall say, Your Highness hath forgotten?' he asked his wife.

The Queen kept Christmas at Whitehall with her former accustomed splendour, and seemed in better spirits. 'The court hath flourished more 
than ordinary. Besides much dancing, bear-baiting and many plays, there hath been great golden play' - Cecil lost 800 at cards. Then came further heartening news from Ireland: Tyrone had offered to surrender if the Queen would spare his life. Mountjoy urged her to accept this condition, and so bring the Irish war to an end.

Although Elizabeth refused to name her successor, speculation on the matter had increased as she grew older. Most people wanted James of Scotland because he was a Protestant and a married man with two sons. Despite their affection for, and admiration of, Elizabeth, few members of the nobility and gentry desired another female sovereign: the feeling still persisted that it was shameful for men to be subject to a woman's rule. It was also feared that 'we shall never enjoy another queen like this'. As for the claims of the Infanta Isabella or any of the other European descendants of John of Gaunt, such as the Dukes of Braganza and Parma, nobody in England took them seriously, nor was Philip III sufficiently interested to pursue them.

Of the English claimants, most people discounted the claims of Katherine Grey's son, whose legitimacy was questionable, nor were they interested in Arbella Stewart, mainly on account of her sex.

Arbella had come to court in 1587, but Elizabeth, offended by the girl's arrogance, had promptly sent her home to her grandmother, Bess of Hardwick, with whom she had lived ever since. She was now twenty-eight, neurotic and unstable, and still unmarried. She hated Bess, who was a harsh and critical guardian, and by the end of 1602 was so desperate to escape from what she regarded as a prison, that she sent a message to Lord Hertford, Katherine Grey's widower, offering herself as a bride for his grandson. Hertford, who had recently been in trouble for attempting to have his marriage to Katherine declared valid, informed the Council at once, knowing that on no account would Elizabeth have permitted these two young people, in whom flowed the blood royal of England, to marry each other.

When a royal deputation came to question Arbella, an enraged Bess, who had known nothing of her granddaughter's scheme, could hardly refrain from beating the girl; instead, she lashed out with her tongue. She also wrote to Elizabeth, assuring her that she had been 'altogether ignorant' of Arbella's 'vain doings' and pleading to be relieved of the responsibility of the girl, adding, 'I cannot now assure myself of her as I have done.' But Elizabeth insisted that Arbella must remain with her grandmother, who must make a better effort to control her. Two months later, Arbella was caught trying to run away, but Elizabeth was by then beyond such concerns.

Yet although her people of all classes were uniced in their anxiety as 
to what would happen after Elizabeth's death, the succession remained a taboo subject. 'Succession!' exclaimed one gentleman. 'What is he that dare meddle with it?'

On 17january 1603, Elizabeth, who was looking 'very well', dined with Lord Thomas Howard, her 'good Thomas', younger son of the executed Norfolk, at the Charterhouse, and created him Lord Howard de Walden. Four days later, on the advice of Dr John Dee, who had cast Elizabeth's horoscope and warned her not to remain at Whitehall, the court moved from Whitehall to Richmond, 'her warm winter box', stopping on the way at Putney so that the Queen could have dinner with a clothier, John Lacy, whom she had known for years. The weather was wet and colder than it had been for years, with a sharp north-easterly wind, but the Queen insisted on wearing 'summer-like garments' and refused to put on her furs. Thomas, Lord Burghley, warned his brother Cecil that Her Majesty should accept 'that she is old and have more care of herself, and that there is no contentment to a young mind in an old body'.

During the journey to Richmond, Nottingham, riding beside the royal litter, presumed upon Elizabeth's familiar manner towards him and asked her bluntly if she would name her successor. She answered, 'My seat hath been the seat of kings, and I will have no rascal to succeed me; and who should succeed me but a king?' Nottingham, and others, took this to mean that she wanted James VI to succeed her, but she would neither confirm nor deny it.

On 6 February, the Queen, now suffering badly from rheumatism, made her last public appearance when she received Giovanni Scaramelli, an envoy from Venice, the first ever to be sent to England during her reign. Seated on a dais, surrounded by her courtiers, she was wearing an outdated, full-skirted, low-necked gown of silver and white taffeta edged with gold, and was laden with pearls and jewels, with her hair 'of a light colour never made by Nature' and an imperial crown on her head. Scaramelli noticed in her face traces of her 'past, but never quite lost, beauty'. When he bent to kiss the hem of her dress, she raised him and extended her hand to be kissed.

'Welcome to England, Mr Secretary,' she said in Italian. 'It is high time that the Republic sent to visit a Queen who has always honoured it on every possible occasion.' She rebuked the Doge and his predecessors for not having acknowledged her existence for forty-five years, and said she was aware that it was not her sex that 'has brought me this demerit, for my sex cannot diminish my prestige, nor offend those who treat me as other princes are treated'. Aware that she had pulled off a brilliant diplomatic coup by overcoming the prejudices of the Doge, 
who had hitherto been tearful of offending the Papacy, the ambassador accepted her reproaches in good part, and expressed his delight at finding her 'in excellent health', pausing to give her a chance to agree with him, but she ignored this and angled instead for another compliment, saying, 'I do not know if I have spoken Italian well; still, I think so, for I learnt it when a child, and believe I have not forgotten it.'

Ten days later, after much bullying on Cecil's part, the Queen wrote to Mountjoy, agreeing that he might accept Tyrone's submission and offer him a pardon, on the strictest terms. She might be an old, 'forlorn' woman, but she was going to end her reign with this final triumph.

In the middle of February, Elizabeth's cousin and closest woman friend, the Countess
of
Nottingham, who had been the late Lord Hunsdon's daughter, died at Richmond. The Queen was present at the deathbed, and her grief was such that she ordered a state funeral and sank into a deep depression from which she never recovered. At the same time, her coronation ring, which had become painfully embedded in the swollen flesh of her finger, had to be sawn off- an act that symbolised to her the breaking of a sacred bond, the marriage of a queen to her people. She knew her own death could not be far off, and wrote sadly to Henry IV of France, 'All the fabric of my reign, little by little, is beginning to fail.'

On 26 February, when the French ambassador, de Beaumont, requested an audience, the Queen asked him to wait a few days on account of the death of Lady Nottingham, 'for which she has wept extremely and shown an uncommon concern'. Nor did she appear again in public. 'She has suddenly withdrawn into herself, she who was wont to live so gaily, especially in these last years of her life,' observed Scaramelli.

There arrived at court at this time the Queen's cousin, Robert Carey, youngest son of the late Lord Hunsdon and brother to Lady Nottingham. Being a relative, he was admitted one Saturday night to the private apartments, where he found Elizabeth

in one of her withdrawing chambers, sitting low upon her cushions. She called me to her. I kissed her hand and told her it was my chiefest happiness to see her in safety and in health, which I wished might long continue. She took me by the hand and wrung it hard, and said, 'No, Robin, I am not well,' and then discoursed with me of her indisposition, and that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days; and in her discourse she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs. I was grieved at the first to see her in such plight, for in all my lifetime before I never knew her fetch a sigh but when the Queen of Scots was beheaded.