efforts for her deliverance,
unhappy for herself, and fatal to others, she found the rigors of
confinement daily multiplied upon her; and at length carried to such a
height, that it surpassed the bounds of all human patience any longer to
endure them; that she was cut off from all communication, not only with
the rest of mankind, but with her only son, and her maternal fondness,
which was now more enlivened by their unhappy sympathy in situation, and
was her sole remaining attachment to this world, deprived even of
that melancholy solace which letters or messages could give: that the
bitterness of her sorrows, still more than her close confinement, had
preyed upon her health, and had added the insufferable weight of bodily
infirmity to all those other calamities under which she labored: that
while the daily experience of her maladies opened to her the comfortable
prospect of an approaching deliverance into a region where pain and
sorrow are no more, her enemies envied her that last consolation, and
having secluded her from every joy on earth, had done what in them lay
to debar her from all hopes in her future and eternal existence: that
the exercise of her religion was refused her; the use of those sacred
rites in which she had been educated, the commerce with those holy
ministers, whom Heaven had appointed to receive the acknowledgment of
our transgressions, and to seal our penitence by a solemn readmission
into heavenly favor and forgiveness: that it was in vain to complain of
the rigors of persecution exercised in other kingdoms; when a queen and
an innocent woman was excluded from an indulgence which never yet, in
the most barbarous countries, had been denied to the meanest and most
obnoxious malefactor: that could she ever be induced to descend from
that royal dignity in which Providence had placed her, or depart from
her appeal to Heaven, there was only one other tribunal to which she
would appeal from all her enemies; to the justice and humanity of
Elizabeth's own breast, and to that lenity which, uninfluenced by
malignant counsel, she would naturally be induced to exercise
towards her: and that she finally entreated her to resume her natural
disposition, and to reflect on the support, as well as comfort, which
she might receive from her son and herself, if, joining the obligations
of gratitude to the ties of blood, she would deign to raise them from
their present melancholy situation, and reinstate them in that li