THE Queen told friends she had no regrets just five days before her death.
She also joked about sending a top cleric to the Tower of London.
The Queen was pictured smiling in an official photograph days before she died
Rt Rev Dr Iain Greenshields, moderator of the Church of Scotland, stayed at Balmoral the weekend before she died.
He told ABC News in the US that Her Majesty’s Christian faith was fundamental to her reign.
He added: “She said right at the beginning of her time when she was becoming Queen that she was going to ask God for wisdom.
“And that’s something which persisted throughout her life.
“When I was chatting to her about her faith she said she had no regrets at all.
“She had power but she used it in a way that was beneficial to others by serving her country and by doing it so well.”
Dr Greenshields recalled how there were no signs she was facing her final days.
He added: “It seemed just astonishing that the woman who had been so vital, so alive, so engaging, should be all of a sudden, dead and away from us.
“She was 96. And you could see her fragility.
“But as soon as she started talking, a very different kind of person emerged.
“Somebody whose memory was exceptional, somebody who knew everything about you, so she’d done her homework.
““I was staying in the Tower Rooms and she said, ‘Your Queen is sending you to the Tower!’
“And she just smiled at me as she said that — she made sure that I understood that I got the joke rather than it being too serious.”
