He professed to them his firm belief in the truth of the Christian religion, and received the sacrament from their hands with great seriousness.

The antechambers were crowded all night with lords and privy councillors.

He ordered several of them to be called in, and exerted himself to take leave of them with a few kind and cheerful words.

Among the English who were admitted to his bedside were Devonshire and Ormond.

But there were in the crowd those who felt as no Englishman could feel, friends of his youth who had been true to him, and to whom he had been true, through all vicissitudes of fortune; who had served him with unalterable fidelity when his Secretaries of State, his Treasury and his Admiralty had betrayed him; who had never on any field of battle, or in an atmosphere tainted with loathsome and deadly disease, shrunk from placing their own lives in jeopardy to save his, and whose truth he had at the cost of his own popularity rewarded with bounteous munificence.