A Most Curious Account of the Funeral of Queen Elizabeth I: April 28, 1603.

Restored wax effigy from the funeral
procession of  Queen Elizabeth I,
 together with the corset it wore.

A matter of hours after Queen Elizabeth’s death, on March 24, 1603, Robert Cecil, representing the members of the Queen’s Privy Council, publicly proclaimed King James VI of Scotland as “James I of England, Scotland, France and Ireland”.  Cecil, Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, had been in communication with James during the final years of the aging Queen’s life, in order to arrange the most peaceful possible transfer of power.

Cecil had clearly been a very busy man during those last days.  He had arranged for the proclamation to be witnessed en masse by the most powerful nobles and gentlemen of England that were then in the city.  At the end they cried out, on cue, as a single voice: “God save King James!”[1]

As the Queen had lain dying, the Councilors agreed upon a story that Elizabeth, unable any longer to speak, and barely able to move, had indicated by blinking on cue that she appointed James as her successor.  She had had no children and would never agree to that point to name a successor.  Whether or not she actually blinked, at the last, is academic.  English history was filled with extended dynastic conflicts following a throne without an heir.  The possibility of civil war was not the vain imagining of timid men.  As her end approached, Cecil secretly and deftly arranged the matter.

As it became clear that the dreaded civil chaos had indeed been avoided, Shakespeare himself briefly noted the events, entering them into literary history:

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage;

Incertainties now crown themselves assured,

And peace proclaims olives of endless age.[2]

The Queen, who had so often during her life been symbolized by the Moon, or by one or another of its classical goddesses, had passed away.  The decades of desperate Court politics to convince her first to marry, and, after children were no longer possible, to declare an heir, had utterly failed.  Nevertheless, the horror at the thought of dynastic battles for the empty throne that she would leave behind did not materialize.

Scads of colorful information and entertainment.

As these matters resolved themselves, the body of Elizabeth was coffined and privately transported to the palace at Whitehall.  There she was watched over in shifts by her Ladies-in-Waiting.

Once it was clear that James I would face no serious challenges, Cecil and the others could begin to give attention to the matter of the Queen’s funeral.  Secure in his throne, James I’s immediate responsibility was to make his progress from Scotland a leisurely one such that he would not arrive until after the funeral.  He may himself have felt that he could not bless the funeral of the woman who executed his own mother, in 1588, with his presence or any of his words in eulogy.

On April 28, then, the Queen who had served the Realm so ably in most respects was buried in Westminster Abbey with the utmost pomp and ceremony.  Her funeral cortege wound its way through weeping crowds.

Now the Cittie of VVestminster was surcharged with multitudes of all sorts of people, in their streetes, houses, windows, leads and gutters, that came to see the obsequie; and when they beheld her statue or picture lying uppon the coffin, set forth in Royall robes, having a crowne uppon the head thereof, and a ball and scepter in either hand, there was such a generall sighing, groning and weeping, as the like hath not beene seene or knowne in the memorie of man; neyther doth any historie mention any people, time or date, to make like lamentation for the death of their souveraygne.[3]

The statue mentioned above was a wax funeral effigy, by John Colt.  Such effigies were a common feature in the funerals of great personages.

The effigy was found, in an advanced state of decay, in 1760,[4] and restored by order of the Chapter of Westminster Abbey for installation in a new wax museum.[5]  Augustus Hare’s description of the figure may have involved a smidgin of literary license.  Still, our picture of the cortege and subsequent history lacks an important detail without it.

The waxwork figures (admission threepence on Mondays and Tuesdays, on other days sixpence) are of the deepest interest, being effigies of the time of those whom they represent, robed by the bands of those who knew them and their characteristic habits of dress. The most interesting of the eleven existing figures is that of Elizabeth, a restoration by the Chapter, in 1760, of the original figure carried at her funeral, which had fallen to pieces a few years before. She looks half-witch and half-ghoul. Her weird old head is crowned by a diadem, and she wears the huge ruff laden with a century of dust, the long stomacher covered with jewels, the velvet robe embroidered with gold and supported on panniers, and the pointed high-heeled shoes with rosettes, familiar from her pictures. The original effigy was carried from Whitehall at her funeral, April 28, 1603.[6]

The corset that graced the original figure also survives in the museum.

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[1] Nichols.  Progresses… of King James the First (1824),  26.  Citing Howe’s continuation of Stowe’s Chronicle.

[2] Sonnets of Shakespeare, 107.

[3] Stowe’s Chronicle, 815.

[4] Hare, Augustus. Walks in London (1894), 225 “A winding stair leads to the chamber above the Islip Chapel, which contains the few remains of the exceedingly curious wax work effigies which were carried at the public funerals of great personages in the Abbey.”

[5] Hare, 225.  “The exhibition of the waxwork figures formerly produced valuable addition to the small income of the minor canons, though it was much ridiculed as 'The Ragged Regiment' and ' The Play of Dead Volks.'”

[6] Hare, 225-6.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Queen Elizabeth I’s Heart and the French Ambassador.  April 3, 2019.  “…the Queen of England, with the permission of her physicians, has been able to come out of her private chamber, she has permitted me… to see her…”
• Lady Southwell on the Final Days of Queen Elizabeth I.  March 24, 2019.  “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.”
• Hedingham Castle 1485-1562 with Virtual Tour Link.  January 29, 2019. “Mr. Sheffeld told me that afore the old Erle of Oxford tyme, that cam yn with King Henry the vii., the Castelle of Hengham was yn much ruine,…”
• The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. “The answers to the post-Oxford dilemma, of course, are three.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the Queen Elizabeth I Biography Page for many other articles.