r on
certain conditions which he had propounded some months before. At that
time, Cecil had once prevailed upon her majesty, for the sake of
avoiding the intolerable expense of a further prosecution of the Irish
war, to sign the rebel's pardon;--but she had immediately retracted the
concession, and all that he was able finally to gain of her, by the
intercession of the French ambassador, was a promise, that if Tyrone
were not taken by the lord deputy before winter, she would consent to
pardon him. About Christmas her council urged upon her the fulfilment of
this engagement; but she replied with warmth, that she would not begin
at her age to treat with her subjects, nor leave such an ill example
after her decease[143].

[Note 143: Carte.]

The importunities of her ministers, however, among whom Tyrone is said
to have made himself friends, finally overpowered the reluctance of the
queen; and she authorized the deputy to grant the rebel his life, with
some part of the terms which he asked; but so extreme was her
mortification in making this concession, that many have regarded it as
the origin of that deep melancholy to which she soon after fell a
victim. The council apprehended, or affected to apprehend, that Tyrone
would still refuse to surrender on the hard conditions imposed by the
queen; but so desperate was now his situation, that without even waiting
to receive them, he had thrown himself at the feet of the deputy and
submitted his lands and life to the queen's mercy. Ministers more
resolute, or more disinterested, might therefore have spared her the
degradation, as she regarded it, of treating with a rebel. The news of
his final submission, which occurred four days only before her death,
she never learned.

* * * * *

The closing scene of the long and eventful life of queen Elizabeth is
all that now remains to be described; but that marked peculiarity of
character and of destiny which has attended her from the cradle, pursues
her to the grave, and forbids us to hurry over as trivial and
uninteresting the melancholy detail.

Notwithstanding the state of bodily and mental indisposition in which
she was beheld by Harrington at the close of the year 1602, the queen
had persisted in taking her usual exercises of riding and hunting,
regardless of the inclemencies of the season. One day in January she
visited the lord admiral, probably at Chelsea, and about the same time
she removed to