Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester

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“Elizabeth both in her nature and her fortune was a wonderful person among women, a memorable person among princes.”

“On 17th April [French ambassador, Antoine] Noaille’s reports were ‘Elizabeth having since her imprisonment been very closely confined, is now more free. She has the liberty of going all around the Tower, but without daring to speak to any but her appointed guard. As they cannot find her implicated, it is thought she will not die.“ On the 4th May he reported “She is treated better. The queen, in speaking of her, is said to call her ‘sister’, which she has not done since her imprisonment, and has replaced her picture next to her own in her gallery.””

“An informant of Mendoza’s reported, ‘She was so grieved that for some days she shut herself in her chamber alone, and refused to speak to anyone until the Treasurer and other Councillors had the doors broken open and entered to see her’. Possibly this was an exaggeration, but certainly she did seclude herself for a while, for on 7 September Walsingham told a correspondent it was impossible to do business with the Queen by ‘reason that she will not suffer anybody to [have] access unto her, being very much grieved with the death of the Lord Steward’. Her emotion showed plainly in a letter she wrote to her ‘very good old man’, the Earl of Shrewsbury, in reply to one of his that had both congratulated her for the defeat of the Spaniards, and offered condolences for her recent bereavement. Having thanked him for his felicitations, the Queen went on brokenly, ‘As for the other matter contained in your said letters, although we do therein accept and acknowledge your careful mind and good will, yet we desire rather to forbear the remembrance thereof as a thing whereof we can admit no comfort, otherwise for submitting our will to God’s inevitable appointment, who, notwithstanding his goodness by the former prosperous news, hath nevertheless been pleased to keep us in exercise by the loss of a personage so dear unto us.’ To the end of her life she treasured the note Leicester had sent her from Rycote, reverently inscribing upon it, ‘HIS LAST LETTER’. In November it was observed that the Queen was, ‘much aged and spent, and very melancholy’, and those who knew her best affirmed that Leicester’s death was to blame.”