Her funeral took place with much state, but the only real mourners were
the priests and monks, who feared for their own fate. Mary had
entreated that she might not be buried in royal array. Her crown had
brought her no happiness, she said, and she did not wish to be
encumbered by it now. Behind her coffin rode her ladies, with black
trains so long that they swept the ground. Mass was said before the
High Altar for the last time, while Fakenham, the last Abbot of
Westminster, as he himself well knew, preached a great sermon on the
dead queen, and, in a voice trembling with deep feeling, told how she
was too good for earth, a veritable angel, who had found the realm
poisoned with heresy, and had purged it.
But his words found no echo in the heart of those around, and the
funeral ended in a scene of disorder, for the people had no respect for
the dead, and plucked down all the hangings and draperies, while the
Archbishop of York, "in the midst of the hurly-burly, pronounced that a
collation was prepared," whereupon the lords, ladies, and knights, with
the bishops and Abbot Fakenham, hurried to another part of the building
for dinner.
And no monument was erected to the memory of her who was the last queen
of the old faith to be buried in the Abbey.
*CHAPTER XI*
*IN THE CHAPEL OF HENRY VII.*
On November 17, 1558, Mary died, and that very day Parliament met in old
Westminster Palace "to proclaim without further halt of time the Lady
Elizabeth as queen of this realm." Shouts of "God save Queen Elizabeth"
resounded through the walls, and outside the cry "Long live our Queen
Elizabeth" was taken up with heartfelt intensity by the people, who
believed, and not in vain, that with her their deliverance had come.
She had suffered, they had suffered, both in the same great cause, and
now together they were standing in the dawn of a day which promised to
be fair and radiant. The Spanish influence, which they hated
passionately, as Englishmen have ever been wont to hate foreign
interference, had received its death-blow, for here was a queen, "born
mere English, here among us, and therefore most natural to us," who
understood them, and whom they could freely trust. No wonder that there
were no signs of mourning for the dead queen, only irrepressible joy and
relief at the accession of the new sovereign they were prepared to love
so loyally. But no wonder either that the echoes of the cheers which
reached the Abbey fell on some hearts which could not respond to them.
To Fakenham, with his handful of monks, those shouts of joy were as a
death-knell, though the Abbot himself may have had some hopes that
Elizabeth would remember how he had pleaded with Mary for her freedom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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