Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/243

 the evidence of his letters one can hardly doubt that the 'madman,' as he was called, had conceived a genuine passion for the unfortunate queen, and that a kindly regard on her part was not wanting in return. In this it is pleasant to know that her husband shared (see, Royal Letters, 20). Christian's efforts were ineffective, but his willingness to serve the cause of Elizabeth had by no means been exhausted when in 1626 a fever put an end to his turbulent life.

Neither the tardy awakening of Elizabeth's father to the manoeuvres of Spain, nor the intervention of her uncle, Christian IV of Denmark, brought about the recovery of the palatinate. The accession of her brother, Charles I, brought no help. Frederick and Elizabeth had in the meantime, after remaining for some time at the Hague, found that their supplies ran short, more especially when money was with difficulty obtainable in England. Thus, as their family continued to increase (their seven younger children, of whom Sophia was the last but one, were born in tolerably regular succession between 1623 and 1632),they chiefly resided at Rhenen, a retired place on the Rhine not very far below Arnheim. Evelyn describes their residence there as 'a neate palace or country house, built after the Italian manner as I remember' (Diary, s.d. 29 July 1641). Here Elizabeth's ardent nature and quick temper had to learn to command themselves as best they might. The enthusiasm which in these earlier years of her exile she excited in such persons as Dudley Carleton and Sir Henry Wotton, and the mirth occasionally displayed in her very businesslike correspondence with Sir Thomas Roe, prove her spirits to have remained unbroken; to this healthy condition of mind the strong bodily exercise of hunting and riding which she continued to affect may be supposed to have contributed. All her fortitude was needed, for in 1629 she lost her eldest son. Not long afterwards, in 1631 and 1632, the victories of Gustavus Adolphus aroused fresh hopes. But in the vast designs of the Swedish conqueror the restoration of the elector palatine was a merely secondary incident. Frederick's inheritance was liberated from the enemy, but he wrote despondently to his wife, for he was obliged to follow the Swedish king like a vassal without being allowed a separate command. In 1632 Gustavus Adolphus fell at Lützen, and a few days afterwards (29 Nov.) Frederick himself died at Mainz. In the previous year (1631) Elizabeth had lost another of her children, Charlotte, aged three years.

During the sixteen years following upon her loss of her husband her life may be described as a continual effort on behalf of her children. On receiving the news of Frederick's death, Charles I invited his sister to England, but she for the time declined his hospitality, informing him with much dignity that the custom of her late husband's country demanded that during the course of a year she should make no change in her establishment. She, however, strove to induce her brother to use his influence on behalf of the heir to the palatinate, her eldest surviving son, Charles Lewis, for whom in 1633 she levied a small army, and in 1634 she sent him to England to sue for his uncle's alliance (, ii. 266). But the peace of Prague (1635) again jeopardised the prospects of her house; and notwithstanding all the efforts of Charles Lewis and his mother (which may be pursued in detail in, vol. ii. bks. iii. and iv.), it was only in the peace of Westphalia (1648) that part of his inheritance, the Rhenish Palatinate, was definitively restored to him as an eighth electorate of the empire. During this period Elizabeth, to whom the States-General had after her husband's death generously continued the allowance made to him, nevertheless found herself in straits which gradually became less and less endurable. The intermittent aid which she received from England finally, under the pressure of the civil war, altogether stopped. The generosity of the house of Orange came to an end when rather later (1650), the male line of that house was reduced to a single infant; with some of their female relatives of that house the exiled queen and her daughters seem to have been on terms the reverse of pleasant (see Memoiren der Herzogin Sophie, Leipzig, 1879, p. 40). As early as 1645 one of her sons describes her court as vexed by rats and mice, but worst of all by creditors; and her daughter Sophia satirically records that her mother's banquets were more luxurious than Cleopatra's, because diamonds as well as pearls had been sacrificed for the providing of them (ib. 43). And yet she continued to be the recipient of the bounty of the most faithful of her English friends, Lord Craven, who had first come to the Hague in 1632, and had fought by the side both of her husband and her son Rupert, with whom he had been taken prisoner in the action at Lemgo [see, first earl of].

Elizabeth's relations to her children are the theme of warm admiration on the part of some of her biographers; but on this head there is room for scepticism. Her daughter Sophia says that she could not abide young children, to whom she much preferred her dogs and monkeys, so that she made it a practice to have her daughters educated at Leyden till they had fairly grown up