It’s been 420 years, but experts believe they’ve figured out how Queen Elizabeth I died.
The ‘Virgin Queen’ was said to have suffered from sorrow in the closing weeks of her life after losing her adviser and numerous close friends.
At the same time, she was suffering other unpleasant conditions, such as rotten teeth that had resulted to abscesses in her mouth, pus-filled glands, a swollen hand that required the removal of her coronation ring, and mental health issues that forced her to withdraw from public life.
However, a modern-day autopsy performed by Home Office pathologist Dr. Brett Lockyer ruled that pneumonia was the cause of her death.
Professor Alice Roberts previously assisted in the investigation of the cause of death for King Charles II in the second and final episode of Sky History’s Royal Autopsy, with tonight’s programme focused on the last Tudor king.
While looking into the evidence left behind, they discovered many health conditions that may have killed her.
Prior to this study, Elizabeth I’s cause of death at the age of 69 remained unknown, and while blood poisoning was suspected, she made it plain before she died that she did not want a post-mortem.
Professor Roberts studied how Elizabeth was preoccupied with portraying a youthful appearance in order to keep power, and how the white make-up she wore, which was popular at the time, may have been harmful.
‘She put this onto her face for years…it was a poisonous metal,’ she revealed in the episode.
Dr. Lockyer stated that the Queen had been suffering from the consequences of chronic lead poisoning, which had resulted in severe hair loss and rotten teeth.
‘They were in awful shape, with tooth abscess and gingivitis,’ Dr. Lockyer added.
‘The Queen’s final months must have been pain,’ says one observer. Professor Roberts continued.
The two also speculated that germs from diseases in her mouth may have had a role in her death.
‘It does cause a lot of pain because infection was building up and it was not going to have made talking or swallowing very easy for her,’ Dr. Lockyer said.
‘It’s an end-of-life condition effectively. Her body is slowing down and closing down.’
It was a symptom that she was dying, but it was not the reason. A bulge in her left hand showed that her heart was not working correctly.
Because of the severity of the swelling, her coronation ring had to be removed after 45 years on the throne, prompting the two specialists to wonder if sepsis developed as a result.
Elizabeth was thin and malnourished by the time she died; an autopsy performed based on her symptoms revealed that she had fluid buildup in her lungs and her heart was not working efficiently.
Dr. Lockyer, on the other hand, declared he was certain that what killed her on March 24, 1603, was pneumonia.
‘That was the reason she died. I think the infection in her lungs possibly entering into her system gave her blood poisoning,’ he said.
‘The heart failure could have very well of been tipped over. Her heart was working to a point until it encounters something which meant it had to work harder to get blood around the system, so the cause of death is going to be the bronchial pneumonia, without a shadow of a doubt, but the heart failure had an added role.’
Professor Roberts noted that while there were several “red herrings” in the research, we now know what murdered the last ruler of the Tudor House hundreds of years later.
Royal Autopsy airs on Tuesday at 9pm on Sky History./ STREAMING ON SKY IF AFTER