[Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY FROM THE NORTH.]
The Elector arrived. But already Prince Henry was seriously ill. However his "pluck," as we should say now, carried him on for a time. He removed with his court to St. James's to receive the young Elector, for whom he conceived a great friendship. He even played a tennis match with his future brother-in-law on the twenty-fourth of October. But the next day he was much worse, and could with difficulty manage to go to church (it was a Sunday), and dine afterwards with the king. This was the last time he went out; for in the afternoon he was seized with sudden faintness and sickness and had to take his leave. That night he was in a burning fever. The ignorant physicians of those days mismanaged him hopelessly. Some of their remedies to lower the fever sound almost too absurd to be treated seriously--such as a cock, newly-killed, split down the back and applied all reeking hot to the soles of his feet. Raleigh from his prison sent him a cordial, which the old hero's enemies of course pretended was poison. However after it had been duly tested, the prince was allowed to take it, and it gave him temporary relief. But nothing availed. He grew worse and worse. His faithful friend, Archbishop Abbot, came to him and prayed with him. The fever increased in violence. And on the fifth of November, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, the archbishop told the prince of his extreme danger, and asked him if he should die, "whether or no he was well pleased to submit himself to the will of God?" To which the prince replied, "with all his heart."
A few hours later the end was near. Henry was past speaking; and the archbishop, leaning over him, called upon him to believe, to hope and trust only in Christ. He then spoke louder:
Sir, hear you me? hear you me? hear you me? If you hear me, in certain sign of your faith and hope in the blessed resurrection, give us, for our comfort, a sign by lifting up your hands. This the prince did, lifting up both his hands together.
And the archbishop with bitter tears, poured out by his Highness's bedside, a most pathetic prayer. At a quarter before eight that evening the hopes of the country were gone. Henry, Prince of Wales, was dead, who, had he lived, might have changed the whole course of events in English history during the seventeenth century. And the heir to the crown was Charles, Duke of York, destined within forty years to die upon the scaffold.