Elizabeth of Bohemia

For other people with the same name, see Elisabeth of Bohemia (disambiguation).
Elizabeth Stuart
Queen consort of Bohemia
Tenure 4 November 1619 – 8 November 1620
Coronation 7 November 1619
Spouse Frederick V, Elector Palatine
Issue
Prince Henry Frederick
Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine
Elizabeth, Abbess of Herford
Prince Rupert
Princess Louise Marie
Prince Maurice
Edward, Count Palatine of Simmern
Princess Henriette Marie
Sophia, Electress of Brunswick-Lüneburg
House House of Palatinate-Simmern
House of Stuart
Father James VI of Scotland and I of England
Mother Anne of Denmark
Born 19 August 1596
Falkland Palace, Fife
Died 13 February 1662(1662-02-13) (aged 65)
England

Elizabeth of Bohemia (19 August 1596 – 13 February 1662) was the eldest daughter of King James VI and I, King of Scotland, England, Ireland, and Anne of Denmark. As the wife of Frederick V, Elector Palatine, she was Electress Palatine and briefly Queen of Bohemia. Due to her husband's short reign in Bohemia, Elizabeth is often referred to as the Winter Queen.

With the demise of the Stuart dynasty in 1714, her descendants, the Hanoverian rulers, succeeded to the British throne.

Contents

Birth and early life

Elizabeth was born at Falkland Palace, Fife.[1] At the time of her birth, her father had yet to succeed to his later realms, and was King of Scots only. She was named in honour of Queen Elizabeth I of England. During her early life in Scotland, Elizabeth was brought up at Linlithgow Palace.[2] When Elizabeth was six years old, in 1603, Elizabeth I of England died and her father James succeeded to the thrones of England and Ireland. When she came to England, her governess was the Countess of Kildare,[1] until she was consigned to the care of Lord Harington, with whom she spent the years of her happy childhood at Combe Abbey in Warwickshire.[1]

Part of the intent of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was to kidnap the nine-year-old Elizabeth and put her onto the throne of England (and, presumably, Ireland and Scotland) as a Catholic monarch, after assassinating her father and the Protestant English aristocracy.[1] However, this never happened as Guy Fawkes was caught by the King's soldiers before he was able to ignite the powder.[3]

Among Elizabeth's suitors was King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, but she was eventually betrothed to the Elector Palatine in 1612.[1]

Marriage

On 14 February 1613, she married Frederick V, then Elector of the Palatinate in Germany. The event took place in England at the royal chapel at the Palace of Whitehall and was celebrated in John Donne's poetic masterpiece Epithalamion, or Mariage Song on the Lady Elizabeth, and Count Palatine being married on St. Valentines Day. Afterwards she joined the Electoral court in Heidelberg. Frederick was the leader of the association of Protestant princes in the Holy Roman Empire known as the Protestant Union, and Elizabeth was married to him in an effort to increase James's ties to these princes. Despite this, the two were considered to be genuinely in love, and remained a romantic couple throughout the course of their marriage.[4] Elizabeth's new husband transformed his seat at Heidelberg Castle, creating an "English wing" for her, a monkey-house, a menagerie and the beginnings of a new garden in the Italian Renaissance style popular in England at the time.[5] The garden, the Hortus Palatinus, was constructed by Elizabeth's former tutor, Salomon de Caus[6] and was dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World" by contemporaries.[7]

In 1619, Frederick was offered and accepted the crown of Bohemia from the Estates of the kingdom. Elizabeth was crowned Queen of Bohemia on 7 November 1619, three days after her husband was crowned King of Bohemia.[8] Due to the opposition of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, who was the rightful King of Bohemia through birthright, Frederick's rule was brief. Ferdinand's forces routed Frederick at the Battle of White Mountain on 8 November 1620, and he was forced into exile along with this wife. This is how Elizabeth came to be known as the "Winter Queen" ("zimní královna" in Czech), even though she and her husband held court in Prague and controlled the government of Bohemia for months after the end of the winter of 1619-1620. After the defeat at White Mountain, the couple took up residence in The Hague, where Frederick died in 1632. Elizabeth remained in Holland even after her son, Charles I Louis, regained his father's Electorship in 1648. Following the Restoration of the English and Scottish monarchies, she travelled to London to visit her nephew, Charles II, and died while there.

Elizabeth's youngest daughter, Sophia of Hanover, married Ernest Augustus, the future Elector of Hanover, in 1658. Sophia became the nearest Protestant heir to the English and Irish crowns (later British crown). Under the English Act of Settlement, the succession was settled on Sophia and her issue, so that all monarchs of Great Britain from George I are descendants of Elizabeth.

Ancestry

Of Elizabeth's fourteen great-great-grandparents, five were German, four were Scottish, two were French, and one each was of Danish, Polish and English parentage. She thus claimed a thoroughly cosmopolitan background typical of royals at that time due to constant intermarriage among the European royal families.

Children

  1. Henry Frederick, Hereditary Prince of the Palatinate (1614–1629); drowned
  2. Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine (1617–1680); married Charlotte of Hesse-Kassel, had issue; Marie Luise von Degenfeld, had issue; Elisabeth Hollander von Bernau, had issue
  3. Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine (1618–1680)
  4. Rupert, Duke of Cumberland (1619–1682); had two illegitimate children
  5. Maurice (1620–1652)
  6. Louise Marie of the Palatine (18 April 1622 – 11 February 1709)
  7. Louis (21 August 1624 – 24 December 1624)
  8. Edward, Count Palatine of Simmern (1625–1663); married Anna Gonzaga, had issue
  9. Henriette Marie of the Palatinate (7 July 1626 – 18 September 1651); married Prince Sigismund of Siebenbuergen on 16 June 1651
  10. John Philip Frederick (26 September 1627 – 15 December 1650); also reported to have been born on 15 September 1629
  11. Charlotte (19 December 1628 – 14 January 1631)
  12. Sophia, Electress of Hanover (14 October 1630 – 8 June 1714); married Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover, had issue including King George I of Great Britain
  13. Gustavus Adolphus (14 January 1632–1641)

Legacy

The Elizabeth River in Southeastern Virginia was named in honour of the princess, as was Cape Elizabeth, a peninsula and today a town in the U.S. state of Maine. John Smith explored and mapped New England and gave names to places mainly based on the names used by Native Americans. When Smith presented his map to Charles I, he suggested that the king should feel free to change the "barbarous names" for "English" ones. The king made many such changes, but only four survive today, one of which is Cape Elizabeth.[9]

According to legend, William the first Earl of Craven built Ashdown House in Berkshire, England, in honour of Elizabeth, although she died before the house was completed.

Fiction

In W. G. Sebald's novel Vertigo (1990), a woman appears whom the narrator, travelling through Heidelberg by train in 1987, recognises instantly "without a shadow of a doubt" as Elizabeth when she enters his carriage.

The Winter Queen also plays a seminal role in Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle by giving birth to many children.

A Polish baroque poet Daniel Naborowski wrote a short poem praising Elizabeth's eyes.[10] He saw her in 1609, when he visited London on a diplomatic mission.

Scottish writer Nigel Tranter has Elizabeth appear in several chapters of his book The Young Montrose (1972–3, originally two volumes), about the life of the heroic James Graham, Earl of Montrose.

See also

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Emery Walker, Historical Portraits 1600–1700, READ BOOKS, 2007
  2. ^ Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, vol. vii, 10 (1891), 521.
  3. ^ [1]
  4. ^ Spencer, p.6.
  5. ^ Spencer, p.7.
  6. ^ Turner, p.149.
  7. ^ Kassel, p.482.
  8. ^ Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland; Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland; Museum, 2001
  9. ^ Stewart, George R. (1967) [1945], Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States (Sentry edition (3rd) ed.), Houghton Mifflin, p. 38 
  10. ^ http://staropolska.pl/barok/D_Naborowski/wybor_19.html

External links

Elizabeth of Bohemia
Born: 19 August 1596 Died: 13 February 1662
Preceded by
Louise Juliana of Nassau		 Electress Palatine
1613–1623		 Succeeded by
Elisabeth of Lorraine
Vacant
Title last held by
Anna of Tyrol		 Queen consort of Bohemia
4 November 1619 – 9 November 1620		 Vacant
Title next held by
Eleonor Gonzaga
British royalty
Preceded by
Charles I of England		 Heir to the English, Scottish and Irish Thrones
as heiress presumptive
27 March 1625 – 29 May 1630		 Succeeded by
Charles II of England