death-bed are all forged." Echard, Rapin, and a long
string of historians, make her say faintly (so faintly indeed that it
could not possibly be heard), "I will that a king succeed me, and who
should that be but my nearest kinsman, the King of Scots?" A different
account of this matter will be found in the following memoirs. "She was
speechless, and almost expiring, when the chief councillors of state
were called into her bedchamber. As soon as they were perfectly
convinced that she could not utter an articulate word, and scarce could
hear or understand one, they named the King of Scots to her, _a liberty
they dared not to have taken if she had been able to speak_; she put her
hand to her head, which was probably at that time in agonising pain.
_The lords, who interpreted her signs just as they pleased_, were
immediately convinced that the _motion of her hand to her head was a
declaration of James the Sixth as her successor_. What was this but the
unanimous interpretation of persons who were adoring the rising sun?"

This is lively and plausible; but the noble editor did not recollect
that "the speeches made by Elizabeth on her death-bed," which he deems
"forgeries," in consequence of the circumstance he had found in Cary's
Memoirs, originate with Camden, and were only repeated by Rapin and
Echard, &c. I am now to confirm the narrative of the elder historian, as
well as the circumstance related by Cary, describing the sign of the
queen a little differently, which happened on Wednesday, 23rd. A
hitherto unnoticed document pretends to give a fuller and more
circumstantial account of this affair, which commenced on _the preceding
day_, when the queen retained the power of speech; and it will be
confessed that the language here used has all that loftiness and brevity
which was the natural style of this queen. I have discovered a curious
document in a manuscript volume formerly in the possession of Petyt, and
seemingly in his own handwriting. I do not doubt its authenticity, and
it could only have come from some of the illustrious personages who were
the actors in that solemn scene, probably from Cecil. This memorandum is
entitled

"Account of the last words of Queen Elizabeth about her Successor.

"On the Tuesday before her death, being the twenty-third of March, the
admiral being on the right side of her bed, the lord keeper on the left,
and Mr. Secretary Cecil (afterwards Earl of Salisbury) at the bed's
feet, all stand