At the beginning of March 1603 she became much worse. There was some disease of the throat, attended with swelling and a distressing formation of phlegm, which made speaking difficult. The only relatives about her were Robert Carey and his sister Lady Scrope, watching keenly that they might be the first to inform James of her death. She could not be brought by any of her Council to take food or go to bed. When in bed she had been troubled by a visual illusion; “she saw her body exceedingly lean and fearful in a light of fire.” At last Nottingham, the Admiral, who was mourning the recent death of his wife, was sent for. He was a second cousin of Anne Boleyn, and was the one person to whom the dying Queen seemed to cling with some trust. He induced her to take some broth. “For any of the rest,” says her maid-of-honour, Mistress Southwell, “she would not answer them to any question, but said softly to my Lord Admiral’s earnest persuasions that if he knew what she had seen in her bed he would not persuade her as he did. And Secretary Cecil, overhearing her, asked if her Majesty had seen any spirits; to which she said she scorned to answer him so idle a question. Then he told her how, to content the people, her Majesty must go to bed. To which she smiled, wonderfully contemning him, saying that the word _must_ was not to be used to princes; and thereupon said, ‘Little man, little man, if your father had lived ye [he?] durst not have said so much: but thou knowest I must die, and that maketh thee so presumptuous.’ And presently commanding him and the rest to depart her chamber, willed my Lord Admiral to stay; to whom she shook her head, and with a pitiful voice said, ‘My Lord, I am tied with a chain of iron about my neck.’ He alleging her wonted courage to her, she replied, ‘I am tied, and the case is altered with me.’” At last, “what by fair means,” says Carey, “what by force, he got her to bed.”