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It was these successive ailments of Elizabeth, CHA P. which, by creating the uncertainty whether she or Mary would survive each other, kept the Protestant majority of the nation in continual dread of a Catholic succession, or of a fierce contest to prevent it. Her cabinet council partook of the same anxiety, and it was a frequent subject of lord Burghley's forboding fears. Her serious indisposition in 1562, occasioned her parliament to communicate to her the impression of the evils which would arise, if she died without a known heir':' and another alarming indisposition affecting her in 1566,8 a more earnest representation of the national apprehensions was addressed to her consideration." Her penetrating eye perceived that there was something in the conduct of the leaders, in this new urgency, beyond the feelings of the general public. She saw

'a thing, which as I have by experience found hurtful to myself when I was of your years; so you will find in time many incommodities, if you do not in time break it off. Your years will better wear out any little indisposition, by good order of exercise and abstinence, with some other little moderation in diet, than abide to be corrected by physic; the use whereof altereth nature much: yea, maketh a new nature, if it be without great cause used in younger years.' Lett. in Dr. Birch's Mem. v. 1. p. 14.

He expresses these in several of his MS. papers and letters printed by Haines, Forbes and Murdin.

7 The speaker of the Commons, on 5 Nov. 1562, on presenting to her their petition on her marriage, and on the succession, after remarking that Heaven, 'to our great terror and dreadful warning lately touched your highness, with some danger of your most noble person by sickness; then suggested the 'great dangers, the unspeakable miseries of civil wars; the perilous intermingling of foreign princes, with seditious, ambitious, and factious subjects at home; the waste of noble houses; the slaughter of people; subversions of towns; unsurety of all men's possessions, lives and estates; and daily interchange of attainders and treasons,' which would follow if she were taken from them without known heir.' D'Ewes' Journal, p. 81. See before, p. 58, note 17.

9 D'Ewes' Journal, p. 127; 130–2.

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BOOK that the appointment of a successor was more their object, than her marriage in order to obtain one; and that some were forming designs to have Mary named by her as such, tho she had already claimed the present possession of her crown. A rational mistrust aroused her circumspection, and she not only forbad two of them, who had been unduly active on this occasion, altho members of her own council and household, Leicester and Pembroke, from her presence; 10 but answered the parliamentary deputation on this topic with an unusual excitation of displeasure and rebuke." She did not then know how just her anger was, nor the insidious treachery of the application. But most of these same lords were then forming a confederacy, in conjunction with Pius V., to substitute Mary on her throne, upon her deposition, as we have already narrated. But she saw enough to rouse her suspicions that their motive was evil, and she expressed

10 See before, p. 407-8, notes 33, 35, and 36.

"The French ambassador's letter of 27 October 1566, in Mr. Murray's MSS. reported her speech to his sovereign. The treasurer, duke of Norfolk, and other nobles, besides the speaker, having pressed the matter to her, 'She told those of the third estate that they were tres rebelles; and that they would not have dared to have undertaken such things in her father's lifetime; that it was not for them to control her in her own affairs, nor did it belong to a subject to command his prince; and that what they asked was only digging her grave before she was dead.'

Turning then to the peers, she said, My lords! do yourselves what you choose; but as to myself, I will only act as I think proper. All the orders you may make, can have no force without my consent and authority. What you desire is of too great importance to be declared to a collection of brains so light. It well deserves that I should take the counsel of men who understand the rules of public right and the laws, as I am determined to do. I shall select half a dozen of the most competent which can be found in my kingdom to consult with them, and after such a conference, I will communicate to you my will.' On this she dismissed them in great displeasure. Murray's MSS.

without hesitation her dissatisfaction at their conduct.12

Of the various fluctuations of her health, which afterwards occurred, altho they were sufficient to attract the notice of other powers, and to alarm her chief counsellor,13 yet none really brought on a crisis likely to be mortal, till her sixtieth year. Her departure appears then to have been so fully expected,"

12 Elizabeth appears to have early settled her mind to lead a single life, and at no period of her long reign did her real intentions seem to be otherwise. The marriages of both her sister and of the queen of Scots presented no happiness to her contemplation, to tempt her to the formation of a similar union; and in her regal business, court, and literary enjoyments, she felt sufficiently happy without it. Allusions to some personal infirmities, which occasionally occur, might afford us a more explanatory cause; but these are not elucidated by any documents which have descended to us. Yet as such a notion is not likely to have been gratuitously invented, we may be induced to imagine that it originated from private information, of which no particulars have been disclosed.

13 In September 1571, Du Foix wrote, 'I found her ill in bed, where she is still, but without danger, and daily mending.' Murray's MSS. In the April of next year, Charles IX. desires his ambassador to congratulate her on her 'cure and convalescence.' ib. In October of that year, Burghley expressed to Walsingham his alarm at a sudden sickness which had come upon her: You must think that such a matter would drive men to the end of their wits; but God is the stay of all that put their trust in him.' Digges, 146. Her illness at this time, her thirty-sixth year, was the small pox, which, on 22d Oct. 1572, she herself thus described to earl Shrewsbury: We were about thirteen days past distempered, as commonly happeneth in the beginning of a fever; but after two or three days, without any great inward sickness, there began to appear certain red spots in some parts of our face, likely to prove the small-pox; but, contrary to the expectation of our physicians, the same so vanished away, as within four or five days past no token almost appeared. At this day we are so free from any token or mark of any such disease, that none can conjecture any such thing. No beholder would believe that I had ever been touched with such a malady.' Lodge's Illust. v. 2. p. 79, 80. Her illness in July 1580 was but slight. The queen, being persuaded by her physicians, did enter a bath on Sunday last, and either by taking cold, or other accident, did presently fall sick, and so did continue two days, but now is very well recovered again.' ib. 233. Lord Bacon describes her general health as valetudo maxime prospera. p. 184.

14 On 15th March 1596, Camden wrote to sir Robert Cotton: 'I know you are, as we all here have been, in melancholy and pensive cogitation. This auna, or sleepless indisposition of her majesty, is

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BOOK that the state council resorted to strong measures of precaution and violent government, to prevent any public disorders or foreign aggressions on the change. She recovered from this severe attack, to live seven years more; when the fatal hour arrived that removed her from a throne, which her debility was unfitting her to occupy with her former efficiency and credit.16

It was in the beginning of March 1603, that the mortal illness came on; at first in the form of a rheumatic gout in her arms and fingers, which diminished her usual sleep, but the pain of which she bore with firmness, and was desirous not to notice. Light became unpleasant to her; and her mind turned on depressing recollections, especially that she had consented to bloodshed, in the execution of lord Essex." The hectic indisposition continued

now ceased, which, being joined with inflammation from the breast upward, did more than terrify us all, especially the last Friday in the morning.' Ellis, v. 3. p. 179.

15 He added, Which moved the lords of the council, when they had providently caused all the vagrants hereabouts to be taken up and shipped for the Low Countries, to draw some munition to the court; and the great horses from Reading, to guard the receipt at Westminster; to take order for the navy to lie in the narrow seas; and to commit some gentlemen, hunger-starved for innovations, as sir Edward Bainham, Catesby, Tresham, two Wrights, &c. and afterward the count Arundel, to a gentleman's house, for speeches used by the foresaid turbulent spirits as concerning him; or for that he hath lately made some provision of armor.' Ellis, p. 179.

16 In the autumn of the year before her death she was so well, that lord Henry Howard wrote to the earl of Mar, in September 1602, The queen was never so gallant many years; nor so set upon jollity. Her council and others had persuaded her to give up the progress into the west for this year, but she is come about again to hold it on as far as lord Hertford's, which is fifty miles from hence, hunting or disporting, in the meantime, every other day.' Secret Corresp. of sir Robert Cecil, p. 231.

17 Not long before her death, she was divers times troubled with the gout in her fingers, whereof she would never complain, seeming better

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a fortnight, without assuming the form of a decided CHAP. fever; 18 and the nervous melancholy and general decline increased," accompanied by symptoms, which indicated that the heart was diseased, and by a labored and convulsive respiration.20 She was anxious to attend the public service of her chapel, in her usual seat; but when the hour came, she was unable to go into it, and was compelled to be content to hear it, in a helpless state, in an adjoining

pleased to be thought insensible of the pain, than to acknowlege the disease.' Ellis MS. p. 193. The Scots nobleman's account, mentioned by Dr. Birch, was, Our queen is troubled with rheum in her arm, which vexeth her very much. 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 of tears to bewail Essex.' Birch's Mem. v. 2 p. 506.

'that she

18 On 19th March, the French ambassador's dispatch was, had been very much indisposed for fourteen days past, having scarce slept at all during that time, and eat much less than usual, being seized with such a restlessness, that, tho she had no formed fever, she felt a great heat in her stomach, and a continual thirst, which obliged her to take something every moment to abate it, and prevent the hard and dry phlegm from choking her.' Birch, ib. 506.

19 About three weeks before her death, her sleep decaying, she began to fall into a melancholy passion.' Ellis's MS. ib. This depression of spirits has been too hastily ascribed to some supposed remorse of conscience; but the same MS. expressly adds, in order to avert misconstruction of its nature, Melancholy diseases, as physicians tell us, proceed not always from the indisposition of the mind, but sometimes from the distemperature of humor in the body, causing a kind of numbness and stupidity of the senses.' Ellis's MS. p. 194. It is an affection of the body in its dying illness, which is not unfrequent. 20 Sir Robert Carey, earl of Monmouth, fully describes this condition: When I came to court, I found the queen ill-disposed; she kept her inner lodging; yet, hearing of my arrival, she sent for me. I found her 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. She took me by the hand, and wrung it hard, and said, No, Robin! I am not well;' and then discoursed to me of her indisposition, and that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days. In her discourse she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs. I was grieved at the first to see her in this plight, for in all my lifetime before I never knew her fetch a sigh, but when the queen of Scots was beheaded.' Mem. p. 116.