The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

24 March 1603

Elizabeth�s tired eyes opened and, through blurred vision, she saw the intense, questioning faces, black-garbed and white-ruffed, watching like vultures for the moment when her spirit would pass from her body and an era of English history would draw to its close.

�Your Majesty, the succession?� The question was reverently whispered this time, but it was the same plea, the same issue, which had haunted her all her life.

Her eyes slowly closed as her ears caught some of the muffled mutterings of her Privy Councilors (so �privy� that she couldn�t even die without them in close attendance) ... "the King of Scots" ... "Why won�t she declare it?" ... "the horses are ready to ride to Edinburgh". From her first breath to her last, she had been embroiled in the deadly politics of the Crown of England, and the succession.

Her birth had been a disappointment, a deadly one for her mother. She should have been a boy. Had she been born male, the stillbirth of her mother�s next child would have mattered little, and Anne might have been spared the accusations of treason, the trial, and death by the sword of a French executioner. Others would follow the mother she never knew - brought to a bloody end by ambitions which centred on either promoting Elizabeth, or deposing her.

The fervent mutterings of the grandees of her realm faded from her mind. The sun shone, birds sang. She was young again. No aches, no pains, a teenager blossoming into womanhood. Full of vibrant energy, but breathing heavily from exertion as she was playfully chased round the gardens of her home by her guardians, Thomas and Catherine Seymour. Only a few years before, Catherine had been Queen of England, her father�s last wife. And Thomas, oh Thomas � what a handsome man, what a great wit, what a gallant Lord Admiral. What a fool! He played too much, flirted with the king�s young sister, even while his wife lived. After her death, he played even harder, and pressed too hard for marriage, and for power. If ever Elizabeth doubted the deadly risks of her very existence, Thomas Seymour put those doubts to rest. For his ambition and desires, he lost his head to an axe, and Elizabeth had to summon all her canny skill and intelligence to keep herself from censure and worse - accusations of treason. Being the daughter of a king in turbulent times was a dangerous business. And men were dangerous creatures, for all the passions they could arouse and charms they could exude.

The hushed voices of men surrounded her now. They looked at her tired and aged face, not as Thomas, or her beloved Robert Dudley, had looked, but with eyes of concern for their own futures, of expectation of their new master with whom she was sure some had been in secret communication, although she had yet to openly confirm that he would be her heir. She had never wanted to name an heir. Being an heir was dangerous, and so was having an heir, especially when religions clashed.

�You must accept the true faith�, her sister had demanded nearly half a century ago, but Elizabeth couldn�t accept the Papism to which Queen Mary was so devoted. It wasn�t true; it was a corruption controlled by foreign princes in clerical robes. Elizabeth�s own status depended on it being untrue, for if the Pope�s authority prevailed, her mother had never truly married her father, and the bastardy which the English Parliament had conferred on her could never be undone. Nevertheless, for a time she tried; she asked for instruction in the Catholic faith, but her heart was never in it. Mary�s counsellors knew it, and so did the men who resorted to armed rebellion in an attempt to put Elizabeth on the throne and restore the Protestant order. Once more, Elizabeth was implicated in treason by the actions of others. Once more, she faced the axe if she was found guilty, as many men around the Queen surely wished, and once more she had to fight with words and wit to stay alive and to free herself from incarceration in the dreaded Tower, where her mother and her guardian had met their maker.

Two Queen Mary's. She was successor to one, and another would seek to be her successor, with just as deadly consequences. Both Catholics, who felt that she, the daughter of Henry VIII, should not occupy the throne of England because she was Protestant. One bowed to the inevitable, having failed to produce a Catholic child to succeed her. The other bowed before the executioner's block, having plotted Elizabeth's overthrow. Would God forgive her for killing an anointed queen? She would know soon enough. It wasn't her doing. She had been pressured, cajoled, into signing the death warrant, by Cecil and others, and it had been dispatched without her consent.

Cecil's voice intruded into her painful thoughts. But it was not the voice of her wise and faithful counsellor of earlier years. This was his son, Robert. Skillful, wily, but not the man his father was.

"Is it to be King James, Madam?". His voice betrayed exasperation.

How she had exasperated poor William! Ever faithful, but not convinced at first that a woman could rule for long, and fearful for the fate of England if she should die childless. How many suitors had he found for her? Dull ones, serious ones, handsome and ugly ones, and that delightful clown the duc d'Alen�on! She found reasons to reject them all, or all those who didn't simply give up after her prolonged prevarication. She wasn't going to have a man trying to rule her, or upsetting her delicate balancing act with the disputatious factions of her court and council; nor would she have a son grow up to become a focus of opposition. She was married to England; she might have wished to marry the man she most dearly loved, Robert Dudley, but such a match would have been divisive, and she would have found it more difficult to control his headstrong ways.

Not only did her counsellors press her to marry, but so too did her parliaments. Try as she might, she could not persuade the knights and burgesses of the Commons to leave such royal matters to her. Time and time again they pleaded for assurances on the succession, and she had to charm, manipulate and even bully them into leaving the question alone, while still retaining their devotion and loyalty. They were scared; all England was scared, for their future if the Queen should die without an undoubted her.

And die she nearly did. As the old Elizabeth lay, surrounded by her servants of state, expecting her imminent end, it was not a new experience for her. Only four years into her reign she had been struck down by the dreaded smallpox, which had already killed so many that year. Her life hung by a thread, and there was no agreement on who would care for the realm if the thread snapped. Factionalism pervaded her entire council, some wanting Catherine Grey, others Lord Huntingdon, while she failed to persuade them to entrust the realm to her beloved Dudley, as Lord Protector. Most feared of all was her heir by hereditary right, the Queen of Scots, recently returned to Scotland - Catholic, dowager Queen of France, who could rely on the assistance of the French and other Catholic nations in pressing her right, driving England into civil war. How different things would have been if Elizabeth tenuous hold on life had failed then! She would have been the short-lived queen whose selfish determination to have no rival in power had plunged England into conflict and misery!

This time there was no holding on to life. The years had sapped it from her. But those years had allowed her to keep England together, to defeat her enemies one by one, so that everyone now knew that the Protestant son of the Catholic Mary Stuart would unite the crowns of England and Scotland. It didn�t prevent civil war and conflict, though. It merely delayed it.

The insistent whisper intruded into her wandering thoughts again.

�James, madam; is it to be James?�

She felt the life drain from her. Thoughts, years of conflict, loves, danger, all mingled, swirled, then faded. Her back failed to support her even propped by overstuffed cushions and she slumped, weakness overtaking her. Her head dropped, she tried to raise it, it dropped again, in what looked like a tired nod.

A few hours later, Elizabeth's eyes closed forever. The Privy Council declared that she had nominated her successor, and James VI of Scots became James I of England.

- Paul James