“Some few days before the feast of our Lord’s nativity, she found herself indisposed. I will not say that of this affliction she had any formal presage, but yet there was something that looked like an immediate preparation for it. I mean her choosing to hear read more than once a little before it, the last sermon of a good and learned man (now with God) upon this subject: ‘What, shall we receive good from the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ This indisposition speedily grew up into a dangerous distemper; as soon as this was understood, the earliest care of this charitable mistress was for the removing of such immediate servants, as might by distance, be preserved in health. Soon after this she fixed the times of prayers in that chamber to which her sickness had confined her. [Sidenote: TENISON.] “On that very day she showed how sensible she was of death, and how little she feared it. She required him who officiated there to add that collect in the Communion of the Sick, in which are these words, ‘That whensoever the soul shall depart from the body, it may be, without spot, presented unto Thee.’ ‘I will,’ said she, ‘have this collect read twice every day. All have need to be put in mind of death, and Princes as much as anybody else.’ “On Monday the flattering disease occasioned some hopes, though they were but faint ones. On the next day, the festival of Christ’s birth, those hopes were raised into a kind of assurance, and there was joy, a great joy seen in the countenances of all good people. That joy endured but for a day, and that day was closed with a very dismal night. The disease showed itself in various forms, and small hopes of life were now left. Then it was that he who performed the holy offices, believed himself obliged to acquaint the good Queen of the small hopes all had of any likelihood of her recovery. She received the tidings with a courage agreeable to the strength of her faith. Loath she was to terrify those about her; but for herself, she seemed neither to fear death, nor to covet life. It was, you may imagine, high satisfaction to hear her say a great many most Christian things, and this among them: ‘I believe I shall now soon die, and I thank God I have, from my youth, learned a true doctrine, that repentance is not to be put off to a death-bed.’ That day she called for prayers a third time, fearing she had slept a little, when they were the second time read; for she thought a duty was not performed if it was not minded. [Sidenote: 1695.]