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
Among others... 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 Stuart, Queen of Bohemia (19 August 1596 – 13 February 1662) was the eldest daughter of King James VI and I, King of Scotland, England and 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.

Birth and early life

Princess Elizabeth, 1606, by Robert Peake the Elder.

Elizabeth was born at Falkland Palace, Fife. 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. 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, 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.

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. However, this never happened as Guy Fawkes was caught by the King's soldiers before he was able to ignite the powder.

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

Marriage

Elizabeth as a widow, 1642

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. 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. The garden, the Hortus Palatinus, was constructed by Elizabeth's former tutor, Salomon de Caus and was dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World" by contemporaries.

Elizabeth by Nicholas Hilliard

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. 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.

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. 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.

The young Elizabeth Stuart is the subject of Christie Dickason's novel The King's Daughter (2009). As the older, exiled Elizabeth of Bohemia she also makes an appearance in Dickason's novel, A Noble Assassin (2011).

See also

• Czech: Alžběta Stuartovna
• Thirty Years' War

Bibliography

• Gorst-Williams, Jessica (1977), Elizabeth, the Winter Queen, London: Abelard, ISBN 020072472X 
• Hart, Vaughan (1994), Art and Magic in the Court of the Stuarts, London: Routledge.
• Ross, Josephine (1979), The Winter Queen: The Story of Elizabeth Stuart, New York: St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0312882327  (alternative ISBN 0-297-77603-7)
• Kassel, Richard (2006), The Organ: An Encyclopedia, London: Routledge.
• Oman, Carola (2000), The Winter Queen: Elisabeth of Bohemia, London: Phoenix Press, ISBN 1842120573 
• Spencer, Charles (2008) Prince Rupert: the Last Cavalier, London: Phoenix.
• Stevenson, Jane (2002), The Winter Queen: A Novel, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0618149120  (alternative ISBN 0-618-38267-4)
• Yates, Frances (1972), The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, ISBN 0710073801 , devotes its early chapters to describing her 1613 wedding and the reputation she and her husband had in Europe at the time.

External links

• Archival material relating to Elizabeth of Bohemia listed at the UK National Register of Archives

Elizabeth of Bohemia House of Stuart 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