Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/242

  this would probably have been forgiven. The hostile annalist (, Annales Ferdinandei, ix. 662) relates how after the wives of the citizens at Prague had excited the derision of the young court by their traditional offerings of the triumphs of bakery, they were at pains to avail themselves of the next occasion for presenting a more suitable gift. This was the golden cradle presented for the use of Prince Rupert, Elizabeth's third and perhaps favourite child, born. 26 Dec. 1619 amidst rumours and forebodings of the impending struggle.

Naturally enough, when in 1620 this struggle approached its crisis, the queen's spirits occasionally sank, and her husband, writing from his camp, had to exhort her affectionately not to give way to melancholy, but to be prepared for the worst (the letters dated 22 Oct. and 1 Nov. 1620 in Royal Letters, pp. 7-11, certainly give the impression that at this time Frederick's mood was firmer than his wife's). But when, 8 Nov., the battle of Prague had been fought, and there only remained the question whether the palatinate could be preserved, Elizabeth showed her courage. From Breslau, whither she had accompanied her husband after quitting Prague on the evening of the battle, she wrote to her father praying him to take pity on her and hers, but adding that for herself she had resolved not to desert her husband (see the letter in, Original Letters, 1st ser. iii. 112-14). The narrative of an Englishman attached to the Bohemian army, or court (ib. 114), describes both the king and the queen, 'the queen especially,' as exhibiting great self-control and devotion. By Christmas time 1620 she found a momentary shelter, which her husband's brother-in-law, the Elector George William, would have much preferred to deny her, in the Brandenburg fortress of Küstrin; and here was born, on 10 Jan. 1621, her fifth child, Maurice. On the arrival of her husband at Küstrin, where the queen and her followers had hardly been provided with sufficient food, they had to move on to Berlin. Here they found themselves neither welcome nor secure, though a refuge was offered at the Elector George William's court to their children. Thus it came to pass that the early training of Elizabeth's eldest daughter and namesake (afterwards the learned and pietistic abbess of Herford) fell into the hands of her grandmother, Louisa Juliana, a daughter of the great William Orange, and herself soon afterwards a fugitive at Berlin. Frederick and Elizabeth journeyed on separately to Wolfenbüttel, meeting again in Holland, where, 14 April 1621, they were jointly received by Maurice of Orange in the midst of a brilliant assemblage. But the Stadholder had his hands full, and the hopes of the fugitives were still chiefly directed to England, where their cause was extraordinarily popular. While, however, King James contented himself with sending Lord Digby to Brussels and then to Vienna in order to see that in the hoped-for peace provision might, if possible, be made for the restoration of the palatinate, the protestant union was dissolving itself (April 1621), and the emperor was preparing to order the execution of the ban under which Frederick had been placed by him. The greater part of the palatinate was in the hands of the Spaniards, and the upper palatinate was seized by Maximilian, duke of Bavaria, to whom, not long afterwards, Frederick's electorate was transferred at the conference of princes held at Ratisbon (1622-3).

It was about this time that the Queen of Hearts, by which name, according to a contemporary (James Howell to his father, 19 March 1623, see Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, edition 1754, p. 91), the queen of Bohemia was called 'for her winning princely comportment,' found an unselfishly devoted knight in the person of her cousin, Duke Christian of Brunswick, the administrator of the bishopric of Halberstadt, a young soldier who was her junior by three years. It is possible that he had first met the fugitive queen at Wolfenbüttel, but there is no actual evidence of Christian having ever set eyes upon her before he began his campaigns in her cause. On the other hand, in an extant letter from Elizabeth to her frequent correspondent, the diplomatist Sir Thomas Roe (cit. ap., 367), she states that 'he hath ingaged himself onelie for my sake in our quarell.' One letter from him to the queen, quoted at length by Mrs. Green, is signed by him as your most humblest, most Constant, most faithful, most affectionate, and most obedient slave, who loves you, and will love you, infinitely and incessantly to death.' It thus becomes superfluous to inquire very closely into the authenticity of the story of his having placed one of her gloves in his helmet, with a vow that he would return it to her within the walls of her reconquered Bohemian capital; which story it appears cannot be traced further back than 1646 (, whose essay on Christian and Elizabeth in the Zeitschrift für preusstsche Geschirhte, &c., 1869, is cited by, traces it back to the Annales Trevirenses of 1670, but according to , Herzog Christian von Braunschweig; und die Stifter Münster und Paderborn, 1884, these Annals are based on Lotichius, 1670). From