According to some authorities it was at Richmond that the aged sovereign received the news that her beloved Earl of Essex had been executed, a tragedy she had hoped to have prevented, though she had signed his death-warrant, by her promise that she would pardon him at the last moment, however great his crime, if he sent back to her a ring she had given him. Unfortunately there is no reliable historical proof of the truth of the touching story that he did entrust the ring to be given to the queen to the Countess of Nottingham, who kept it back, only confessing the truth on her death-bed to Elizabeth, who shook her violently, declaring that God might forgive her, though she never would; but there is no doubt that the tragic end of the earl hastened her own death. She knew full well that she was doomed soon to follow her favourite to the grave, and often made covert allusions to her conviction, as when she {239} said to Lord Howard, 'I am tied with a chain of iron round my neck, all is changed with me now.' The last few months of her life were spent at Richmond, and she passed peacefully away, after declaring she had no wish to live longer, on March 24, 1603, according to tradition, for which there seems, however, to be no convincing evidence, in a small room still in existence above one of the entrance-gates of the palace. Her body was taken down the river to Whitehall in the very barge she had so often used in life, and never again was Richmond the scene of a great historic pageant. James I. cared little for his property there, and gave it to his eldest son, Henry, of whom, as is well known, he was extremely jealous, preferring that he should not reside at court.