He laments the Elizabethan golden age and recalls how England's joy was suddenly eclipsed by Elizabeth's death.
[4] Dekker recalls how the announcement of Elizabeth's death "tooke away hearts from millions" and plunged her subjects into grief.
[5] He recalls the widespread lamentation at her death and includes in his work some of the epigrams written for her funeral at Whitehall.
[7][8] Dekker then turns to the accession of James I: he says that the "holesome receipt of a proclaymed King" temporarily cured the grief caused by Elizabeth I's death.
The remainder of The Wonderfull Yeare recounts the horrors of the plague epidemic in 1603, both in London and the surrounding countryside.