The Death of the Winter Queen

Elizabeth Stuart, the widow of Frederick of the Palatinate, died on February 13, 1662 in England at Leicester House. Lisa Jardine contributed comments about her on the BBC's A Point of View page in 2013:

. . . in late 1619, Frederick and Elizabeth were crowned King and Queen of Bohemia (today part of the Czech Republic) at the invitation of the Bohemian Confederacy, to prevent a Catholic incumbent ascending the throne - only to be driven from their court in Prague and deprived of all their Palatinate lands the following year by the Hapsburg Emperor Ferdinand.

The "Winter King and Queen" - so called because their reign had lasted a single winter - sought refuge back in the Netherlands, in The Hague.

Frederick died in 1632, but Elizabeth lived on in the Dutch Republic for a further 30 years, returning to England in 1661, a year before her death and a year after the restoration of her nephew Charles II.

It was to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the wedding of the Winter King and Queen that I came to be in the Hague last week, walking through heavy snow past the Mauritshuis to the grand opening of a glorious exhibition of 17th Century paintings of the couple and their family.

The Hague's glitterati were there, as was the British ambassador to the Netherlands. This was, after all, at its heart, a very British occasion, even if the speeches were in Dutch.

As I listened to our host praising the enduring political power and influence of Elizabeth of Bohemia, Holland's queen of hearts, I asked myself why there had been no equivalent celebration in the UK?

How had we missed the opportunity to mark the appearance on the royal scene of a couple who in their own day had matched the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for glamour, and who at the time of their marriage were similarly destined to achieve international power and influence?

How, above all, have we all but forgotten the Winter Queen? Many readers will never even have heard of her.

Jardine goes on to discuss her efforts to regain the Palatinate for her son and to marry her other children off well--read the rest here. One of Elizabeth's daughters, however, Louise Hollandine became a Catholic and a Cistercian nun in France. Another daughter, Elizabeth, also became a nun--but as a Calvinist Abbess-Princess at the Hertford Abbey in Saxony. Elizabeth corresponded with Descartes.

According to the Westminster Abbey site, Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia

is buried in the same vault as her brother Henry and son Rupert. Her parents had been buried in another part of the chapel. [The Lady Chapel] The inscription on her coffin plate reads:

"The remains of the Most Serene and Puissant Princess Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, relict of Frederick, by the grace of God King of Bohemia, Chief Steward and Elector Palatine of the Holy Roman Empire, only daughter of James, sister of Charles I and aunt of Charles, the second of that name, kings of Great Britain, France and Ireland. She fell asleep most piously in the Lord at Leicester House, on Thursday 13 Feb., year of Christ's Nativity 1661 in the 66th year of her age"

The date is given in Old Style dating. Her name and date of death were inscribed, with others, above the vault in the 19th century. The stone is between the monuments of Mary Queen of Scots and the Countess of Lennox in the chapel.

The Birth of Elizabeth Stuart, Future Winter Queen of Bohemia

Elizabeth, eldest daughter of King James VI and I and Anne of Denmark, was born on August 19, 1596 in Scotland. She was the daughter the Gunpowder Plotters intended to kidnap and name Queen of England and Scotland after blowing up the Houses of Parliament. She was only nine years old at the time so Catesby and the other plotters planned to have Henry Percy, the "Wizard Earl" of Northumberland serve as her Protector--her Catholic Protector.

Elizabeth became Queen of Bohemia on November 7, 1619. She had married Frederick V, Elector of the Palatine on February 14, 1613. The purpose of the marriage was to strengthen James's ties to Protestant rulers on the Continent, easing Parliamentary fears that he was too conciliatory to Catholic rulers. But as might be indicated by their wedding date, it was a romantic and true marriage.

She is called the Winter Queen because her reign as Queen of Bohemia was brief. Frederick was defeated at the Battle of the White Mountain on November 8, 1620. The royal family fled and lived in exile for their rest of their lives. Frederick and Elizabeth had 13 children: seven boys and six girls. Frederick died in 1632, so Elizabeth lived many years as a widow. Two of their sons, Maurice and Rupert, served the Royalist cause during the Civil War. Elizabeth returned to England during the reigns of both her brother (Charles I) and her nephew (Charles II), dying in 1662 on February 12 in London.

One of her daughters provided the path to Protestant succession in 1701: Sophia, who had married the Elector of Hanover, Ernest Augustus. Sophia died just before Anne, James II's younger daughter died in 1714. Thus, George I established the Hanoverian dynasty and the current line of succession.

One of her other daughters, Louise Hollandine of the Palatinate, became a Catholic nun with the assistance and encouragement of King Louis XIV. She was a Cistercian Abbess at Maubuisson in the Val-d'Oise in the Ile-de-France, north of Paris. Elizabeth's sixth son, Edward, Count Palatine of Simmern also became a Catholic after marrying Anna Gonzaga of Mantua in 1645. Except for his Catholicism, his heirs could have succeeded to the throne of England.