WITH

ITH the last years of the sixteenth century, the curtain was about to fall on the brilliant reign in which so much had happened for England-the reign which had witnessed so many and such great changes, and had seen the marvellous development of English power and greatness at home and abroad. In all these changes and developments queen Elizabeth, during her long and, on the whole, prosperous

reign, had borne the principal part. She had been rarely favoured throughout its long-drawn-out course with the help of a most illustrious company of assistants in every department of church and state, generally splendidly loyal, and singularly devoted to their royal mistress. No sovereign that had ever sat on the throne of England could boast of such a group of far-seeing faithful statesmen as Cecil and Bacon, Walsingham and Hunsdon; such a

company of soldiers and sailors, among whom the names of Philip Sidney, Drake, Howard of Effingham, will be for ever especially illustrious. Yet more famous in English story are the names of the chiefs of literature, who won for our country the first rank in the world of letters-Lyly and Sidney, Spenser, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, and Bacon; while in the department with which we are more especially concerned in our history of the Church of England, a singularly wise, learned, and statesmanlike group of ecclesiastics surrounded the queen all through her eventful career-men like Parker and Jewel, Guest, Sandys and Cox, Grindal and Whitgift, and-last in rank but first in fame and in enduring influence the judicious Hooker. the end was come at last.

But

It was the melancholy destiny of the splendid queen that she outlived all her friends and faithful advisers, with perhaps the solitary exception of her favourite church counsellor and archbishop, Whitgift, who, however, only survived his royal mistress for one short year. "The great men who had upheld her throne in the days of peril, dropped one by one into the grave. Walsingham died soon after the defeat of the Armada; Hunsdon, Knollys, Burleigh (Cecil), Drake, followed at brief intervals, and their mistress was left by herself, standing, as it seemed, on the pinnacle of earthly glory, yet in all the loneliness of greatness, and unable to enjoy the honours which_Burleigh's policy had won for her. The first place among the Protestant powers, which had been so often offered her and so often refused, had been forced upon her—' she was

the head of the name,' but it gave her no pleasure. She was the last of her race: no Tudor would sit again on the English throne. Her own sad prophecy was fulfilled, and she lived to see those whom she most trusted turning their eyes to the rising sun. Old age was coming upon her, bringing with it perhaps a consciousness of failing faculties; and solitary in the midst of splendour, and friendless among the circle of adorers who swore they lived but in her presence, she grew weary of a life which had ceased to interest her."

Not a few of those who had long been the foremost figures of Elizabeth's brilliant court lay in the neighbouring abbey of Westminster, where slept the mighty ancestors of the queen; some in that solemn royal ring around the remains of the Confessor, some in the yet more sumptuously adorned chapel of Henry VII., where Elizabeth herself was so soon to be laid. The monuments of the Elizabethan magnates, who died well-nigh all before their mistress, are with us still, at once the glory and disfigurement of the abbey. As illustrations of one of the most brilliant chapters of our island story, they possess an undying interest, while at the same time, in their huge and often tasteless magnificence, they disfigure the beauty of the fairest church in Christendom. The most conspicuous of these memorials of Elizabeth's courtiers are those of her kinsman and "rough and honest" chamberlain, lord Hunsdon, and of the Cecils.

Burleigh himself-the first of the two Cecils-though his funeral was celebrated in the abbey, lies in Stamford; but the mighty tomb over the graves of his wife * Froude: "History," vol. xii., conclusion.

1598-1603.]

and daughter is at Westminster. "It expresses the great grief of his life, which but for the earnest entreaties of the queen would have driven him from his public duties altogether. If anyone ask, says Cecil's epitaph, who is that aged man on bended knees, venerable from his hoary hairs, in his robes of state, and with the Order of the Garter? the answer is, that we see the great minister of Elizabeth, his eyes dim with tears for the loss of those who were dearer to him beyond the whole race of womankind." Burleigh died in 1598. On his death-bed the queen often visited him. Never had a sovereign been served so long and so faithfully. His great services to the Church of England during the anxious period of the settlement, have been already dwelt upon. Dying, he wrote to his son, to whom the queen entrusted many of his father's offices, "Serve God by serving the queen, for all other service is indeed bondage to the devil." Elizabeth, though at times she resented Cecil's wise and moderate counsels, thoroughly recognised the grandeur of his intellect and his unswerving loyalty, and spoke of him in the following remarkable terms: "Her comfort had been in her people's happiness, and their happiness in his discretion." After his death the queen could not hear his name without shedding tears. Within four years, however, she followed him into the land beyond the veil.

We have an interesting description of the magnificent but lonely queen from the pen of a German traveller, illustrative of her splendour in these last years, as she ap

* Dean Stanley: "Memorials of Westminster Abbey, chap. iv.

447

peared in the chapel of her palace of Greenwich. "The presence chamber was richly hung with tapestry and strewn with rushes. In it were assembled the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of London, and the chief officers of the crown. The queen appeared, preceded by gentlemen, barons, earls, knights of the garter, all richly dressed. Next came the lord chancellor, bearing the seal in a red silk purse between two, one of whom carried the royal sceptre, the other the sword of state. Next came the queen, very majestic, her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled, her eyes small, jet black and pleasant, her nose a little hooked, her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to from their too great use of sugar). She had in her ears two pearls. Her hair was of an auburn colour, but false; upon her head she wore a small Her air was stately, and her manner of speech gracious. She was dressed in white silk bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a mantle of silk shot with silver thread; her train was very long, the end of it borne by a marchioness. As she went along

crown.

She

in all this magnificence, she spoke very graciously to foreign ministers and others, in English, French, and Italian-whoever speaks to her kneels. The ladies of the court followed her, dressed in white. was guarded on each side by the gentlemen pensioners, fifty in number, with gilt halberds. . . While she was at prayers, we saw her table set with the following solemnity." Then follow more details of court ceremony: "It would seem," said

* Quoted by Bishop Creighton: "Queen Elizabeth," chap. viii.

her biographer, "that as years went on, Elizabeth fenced herself round with greater state, and by an increase of magnificence in apparel, tried to hide from herself and others the ravages of time. Certainly she objected to any reference to her age. When the bishop of St. David's preached a sermon on the text: 'Lord, teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom,' Elizabeth, instead of thanking him, according to her custom, told him that he might have kept his arithmetic for himself; but I see that the greatest clerks are not the wisest men." But all this outward magnificence could not hide the signs of oncoming old age; somewhat premature perhaps, for she was not yet seventy years of age; but the lonely queen was literally worn out with a long life of restless work, ceaseless anxieties, and continued excitement. It was in vain that she kept up a poor show of outward gaiety; in vain that she pretended to enjoy life as in old days. "She hunted, "She hunted, she danced, she jested with her young favourites; she coquetted, and scolded, and frolicked (just as she had done so forty years before). The queen,' wrote a courtier, a few months before her death, 'was never so gallant these many years, nor so set upon jollity.' She persisted, in spite of opposition, in her gorgeous progresses from country house to country house; she clung to business as of old." On the May day of 1602, "she went amaying in the woods of Lewisham." She even gave the Scottish king a hint that his succession to her crown was yet in the dim distance, by keeping his ambassador waiting in a passage where he might see her dancing in her chamber. "But death

crept on, her face became haggard, and her frame shrank almost to a skeleton. At last, even her taste for finery disappeared, and she refused to change her dress for a week together. A strange melancholy settled down upon her; gradually her mind gave way, she lost her memory .. her very courage seemed to fail her. She called for a sword to lie constantly beside her, and thrust it from time to time through the arras, as if she heard murderers stirring there. Food and rest became alike distasteful.”

A touching letter from Sir John Harrington to his wife, giving the particulars of an interview with the queen, tells us something of her melancholy condition during the last months. "Our dear queen," wrote Sir John, "my royal godmother, 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 we shall get by her releasement from pain and misery. It was not many days since I was bidden to her presence. I blessed the happy moment, and found her in a most pitiable state." On an allusion to the dead Essex, the queen dropped a tear, and smote her bosom. The writer proceeds: "She held in her hand a golden cup, which she often put to her lips, but in sooth her heart seemeth too full to lack more filling." Alluding to some verses Sir John had written, she smiled once and said, "When thou dost feel creeping time at thy gate, these fooleries will please thee less. I am past my relish for such matters. Thou seest my bodily meat doth not suit me well; I have eaten but one ill-tasted cake since yesternight."

* Green: "History," chap. vii., sect. viii.