She died a wretched, lonely woman, conscious of her utter failure.
"My oppressed heart is pierced by many wounds," she said bitterly at the last.
Her funeral took place with much state, but the only real mourners were the priests and monks, who feared for their own fate. Mary had entreated that she might not be buried in royal array. Her crown had brought her no happiness, she said, and she did not wish to be encumbered by it now. Behind her coffin rode her ladies, with black trains so long that they swept the ground. Mass was said before the High Altar for the last time, while Fakenham, the last Abbot of Westminster, as he himself well knew, preached a great sermon on the dead queen, and, in a voice trembling with deep feeling, told how she was too good for earth, a veritable angel, who had found the realm poisoned with heresy, and had purged it.
But his words found no echo in the heart of those around, and the funeral ended in a scene of disorder, for the people had no respect for the dead, and plucked down all the hangings and draperies, while the Archbishop of York, "in the midst of the hurly-burly, pronounced that a collation was prepared," whereupon the lords, ladies, and knights, with the bishops and Abbot Fakenham, hurried to another part of the building for dinner.
And no monument was erected to the memory of her who was the last queen of the old faith to be buried in the Abbey.
On November 17, 1558, Mary died, and that very day Parliament met in old Westminster Palace "to proclaim without further halt of time the Lady Elizabeth as queen of this realm." Shouts of "God save Queen Elizabeth" resounded through the walls, and outside the cry "Long live our Queen Elizabeth" was taken up with heartfelt intensity by the people, who believed, and not in vain, that with her their deliverance had come. She had suffered, they had suffered, both in the same great cause, and now together they were standing in the dawn of a day which promised to be fair and radiant. The Spanish influence, which they hated passionately, as Englishmen have ever been wont to hate foreign interference, had received its death-blow, for here was a queen, "born mere English, here among us, and therefore most natural to us," who understood them, and whom they could freely trust. No wonder that there were no signs of mourning for the dead queen, only irrepressible joy and relief at the accession of the new sovereign they were prepared to love so loyally. But no wonder either that the echoes of the cheers which reached the Abbey fell on some hearts which could not respond to them. To Fakenham, with his handful of monks, those shouts of joy were as a death-knell, though the Abbot himself may have had some hopes that Elizabeth would remember how he had pleaded with Mary for her freedom.