The death of the great Queen (1603) was as sad as her life had been
brilliant. Her favorite, Essex, Shakespeare's intimate friend, had
been beheaded for an attempted rebellion against her power. From that
time she grew, as she said, "heavy-hearted." Her old friends and
counselors were dead, her people no longer welcomed her with their
former enthusiasm. She kept a sword always within reach. Treason had
grown so common that Hentzner, a German traveler in England, said that
he counted three hundred heads of persons, who had suffered death for
this crime, exposed on London Bridge. Elizabeth felt that her sun was
nearly set; gradually her strength declined; she ceased to leave her
palace, and sat muttering to herself all day long, "Mortua, sed non
sepulta!" (Dead, but not buried).
At length she lay propped up on cushions on the floor,[1] "tired," as
she said, "of reigning and tired of life." In that sullen mood she
departed to join that "silent majority" whose realm under earth is
bounded by the sides of the grave. "Four days afterward," says a
writer of that time, "she was forgotten."
[1] See in the works of Delaroche his fine picture of "The Death of
Queen Elizabeth."
One sees her tomb, with her full-length, recumbent effigy, in the
north aisle of Henry VII's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, while in the
south aisle he sees the tomb and effigy of her old rival and enemy,
Mary Queen of Scots (S397). The sculptured features of both look
placid. "After life's fitful fever they sleep well."