Elizabeth I died in 1603, though her tomb says 1602

Elizabeth I died at Richmond Palace on 24 March 1603, aged 69, and her crown passed to James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England. She left no children, so the Tudor line that had held the throne since 1485 ended with her.

Her reign is usually given as 45 years, though it was shorter. Elizabeth became queen in November 1558, so she ruled for 44 years and four months: she died in the 45th year of her reign, which is how her tomb counts it.

Why her tomb says she died in 1602

The Latin inscription on her monument in Westminster Abbey dates her death to the 24th of March, Anno 1602. That is not a mistake. In England the legal year then began on 25 March, Lady Day, not 1 January, so she died on the last day of 1602 by English reckoning. Modern references convert the date to 1603. The old system survived until 1752, and its ghost lingers in the UK tax year, which still begins in April.

Her final weeks were bleak. Royal Museums Greenwich relays accounts that she lay speechless for four days on a floor her ladies had covered with cushions and, having lost the power of speech, signalled her assent to James as heir by drawing a circle around her head with her hands. That is a reported story, not a formal nomination. A courtier, Sir Robert Carey, also recorded her weeping over the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, James’s mother. She refused a post-mortem, so the cause of death is still argued over.

The union that followed was of crowns, not countries. England and Scotland shared a king from 1603 but remained separate kingdoms, each with its own parliament, until those parliaments merged in 1707; Scotland kept its own legal system even after that. Elizabeth’s funeral procession, on 28 April 1603, drew crowds that one contemporary account said produced “such a general sighing, groaning and weeping as the like hath not been seen or known in the memory of man”.