Lady Southwell on the Final Days of Queen Elizabeth I

In this series:

• Lady Southwell on the Final Days of Queen Elizabeth I. 
• Queen Elizabeth I’s Heart and the French Ambassador.
• William Camden to Sir Robert Cotton. March 15, 1603 [1602 O.S.].
• Scaramelli, Venetian Secretary in England, to the Doge and Senate; March 20, 1603
• Sir Robert Carey’s Account of the Death of Queen Elizabeth
• Scaramelli, Venetian Secretary in England, to the Doge and Senate; March 27, 1603.

Queen Elizabeth I died on this day in 1603.  While there is a fair bit of detail on her last days, no account is so colorful as that of the Lady Southwell. Some details from the Lady’s account first appeared in Agnes Strickland’s Lives of the Queens of England [1] and were carried over into her later Life of Queen Elizabeth.

It was a 17th century manuscript the full text of which had appeared in the 1840 edition of Dodd’s Church History of England, edited and expanded by the Rev. M. A. Tierney.[2]  It is filled with the wildest superstition.  

In it apparitions are everywhere to be seen.  The first such apparition had appeared over a month before:

her majesty told [Lady Scrope] (commanding her to conceal the same ) that she saw, one night, in her bed, her body exceeding lean, and fearful in a light of fire. This sight was at White hall, a little before she departed thence to Richmond, and may be testified by another lady, who was one of the nearest about her person

But this particular apparition takes on an interesting possibility viewed in another light.  This was seen before the Queen abruptly removed to Richmond Palace (her “warm winter-box”) on January 14^th:

On the 14th of January[3], the queen having sickened two days before of a cold, and being forewarned by Dee, who retained his mysterious influence over her mind to the last, to beware of Whitehall, removed to Richmond, which she said, " was the warm winter-box to shelter her old age."[4]

Many an angry commentator has disparaged John Dee as a quack and a charlatan and suggested that Elizabeth’s escape, during inclement weather[5], to the palace at Richmond, was the blow that would finish her off after the two months struggle that followed.  Like nearly every legitimate scientist of the time, he was a genuine practitioner and a quack both at the same time.

The other extremely superstitious claims of Lady Southwell’s account must each be evaluated on their separate merits.  Among the facts that may support them, as the Queen aged she became ever more subject to paranoia and superstition herself.  This could easily have found expression in the accounts of her more impressionable Ladies-in-Waiting.  Thus there could be an informative mix of subjective and objective truth in Southwell's account.

While the Queen remained mentally sharp until the last month or so of her life, she viewed the politics of her world from a position of personal decline.  Young vultures had always been around her, on every side, and she was mentally still up to the battle, but her body had never been so close to being a corpse.

Elizabeth seemed to recover from the severe cold of mid-January but come mid-February she had one that was even worse.  Her body was rapidly succumbing and it was taking her brain along with it.  She seems to have called to see herself in a mirror:

in the melancholy of her sickness, she desired to see a true looking-glass, which, in twenty years before, she had not seen, but only such a one which of purpose was made to deceive her sight : which glass being brought her, she fell presently exclaiming at all those which had so much commended her, and took it so offensively, that all those, which had before flattered her, durst not come in her sight.

It is difficult to understand what kind of magic glass Elizabeth could possibly have been looking into all the previous years.  The Lady Southwell had not been one of the most intimate Ladies-in-Waiting who populated the Queen’s private chambers.  She may merely have taken a mental image of a magical mirror from the more intimate Ladies’ talk about the Queen wishing not to see herself as decaying with age.  References over the years suggest that as she aged she refused to look at her reflection, ever, and that the Ladies knew better than to rouse her fury by making a mistake against this rule.

Elizabeth had begun to panic at the approach of death.  She may have looked for someone to blame from time to time as had been her habit on particularly stressful occasions throughout her reign. 

Lady Southwell recounts that she spent 3 days continuously sitting on her stool (her toilet).  If true, the queen may have been experiencing long periods of extreme, dehydrating diarrhea.  Night terrors prevented her from sleeping.  She believed that once she slept she would never wake again.  She soon stopped eating.  She now sat all day on cushions, silently staring at the floor and sucking on her index finger.

Eventually the Queen gave in.  Her bishops were called in order to give her comfort, and, next, the last rites.  She lost the power of speech at the end though she gave ready signs of understanding[6] all that was going on around her.

Queen Elizabeth died in her chamber, at Richmond Palace, during the  early morning hours of March 24^th, 1603 [1602 Old Style].

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[1] Strickland, Agnes.  Lives of the Queens of England (1860), III, 223 ff.  It would appear that Lady Southwell’s account did not appear in the first edition of 1846.  The Life Queen Elizabeth (1910), 704 ff.

[2] “A True Relation of what succeeded in the sickness and death of queen Elizabeth”.  Dodd’s Church History of England (1840).  Tierney, ed.  71-4.

[3] Nichols, Progresses and Processions of Queen Elizabeth, III, 602,  cites Chamberlain from a letter of January 27, giving the 21^st as the date of removal.

[4] Strickland, 694, quoting “The queen's last sickness and death.” Cotton MS. Titus, c. vii. folio 46.  Also, Nichols, III., 607, quoting the same.  “On the 14th of January the late Queen who had two days before sickened with a cold (being ever forewarned of Dr. Dee to beware of Whitehall), removed to Richmond.”

[5] Nichols, III., 602.  ‘Jan 27, 1602-3. "The Court removed hence to Richmond the 21st of this month in very foul and wet weather: but the wind suddenly changing to the North-east, hath made here ever since the sharpest season that I have lightly known….”’

[6] Her understanding and gestures in answer to questions may have been a convenient story from her counselors who claimed she had given them final instructions.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare’s Barnacles.  March 3, 2016.  “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
• Hedingham Castle Fact Sheet with Virtual Tour Link.  January 20, 2019. “The modern entrance to the keep is on the first floor by way of a stone stair, discharging through the W. wall, where a fore-building used to stand.”
• Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke?  August 03, 2014. "In October of 1601 De Vere begins to complain of his health again in letters to his brother-in-law, Robert Cecil, who was representing him in certain legal matters at Court."
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time.