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Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Pauline Link to this
1596-1662
1634 portrait by Gerard Honthorst:
http://www.boughtonhouse.org.uk/htm/gallery2/pa...
Paul Timbrell Link to this
Charles the Second's great aunt, exiled to London, where she died in a house in Leicester Square.
Lynn Link to this
Charles the Second's Aunt
(correction to above)
Pauline Link to this
1596-1662. Eldest daughter of James I of Great Britain and Anne of Denmark.
Interesting life story:
http://52.1911encyclopedia.org/E/EL/ELIZABETH_1...
language hat Link to this
She was known as the Winter Queen.
To summarize the story told in Pauline's link: In February 1613 (at sixteen) she married Frederick V, the Elector Palatine (ruler of the Palatinate, a major German state on the Rhine, and one of the seven men who traditionally elected the Holy Roman Emperor); when he was offered the crown of Bohemia by the Czechs rebelling against the Catholic Habsburgs in 1619 he accepted (against the advice of friends and relatives -- how else was he going to become a king?), and after his troops were defeated by the Catholic armies at the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620 he and his wife lost everything: mockingly referred to as the "Winter" king and queen (their reign had lasted less than a year), they were forced into exile in Holland where they were dependent on the kindness of their hosts and occasional subventions from other Protestant rulers. The Holy Roman Emperor, who also happened to be the head of the House of Habsburg, stripped Frederick of the Palatinate, transferred the electorate to Bavaria, and allowed the Spanish army to occupy his territories, where he died during a secret visit in 1632.
Meanwhile his wife (who was remarkable for having survived 20 childbirths in just under 20 years of marriage) was left to bring up the half of the children who made it through to adolescence. After the peace of Westphalia in 1648 a part of her husband's domains, the Rhenish Palatinate, was restored to her eldest son, Karl Ludwig, who became an elector like his father, but he didn't want his mom around, and her other children deserted her as well. (Her daughter Sophia married Ernst August, the Elector of Hanover, and their son became George I of England in 1714.) Her Dutch pension ceased in 1650. There was popular sentiment in her favor in England, but Charles II showed no desire to receive her; eventually she sailed for England anyway in May 1661 and was granted a pension. "On the 8th of February 1662 she removed to Leicester House in Leicester Fields, and died shortly afterwards on the 13th of the same month, being buried in Westminster Abbey."
An interesting fact is that if Charles I had been at home in 1641 when plague broke out near Whitehall (he'd just left for Scotland) and had died, Elizabeth would have inherited the throne, and her son would presumably have become King of England rather than Elector Palatine.
language hat Link to this
The Winter Queen
There is a historical novel by Jane Stevenson, The Winter Queen, about a (non-historical) romance between Elizabeth and "a former African prince and freed slave," Pelagius van Overmeer; it's gotten good reviews and may be worth investigating:
http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/tit...
JonTom Kittredge Link to this
"If Charles I had died [of the plague, in 1641], Elizabeth would have inherited the throne, and her son would presumably have become King of England."
I don't get this. Charles I's son Charles (later Charles II) was ten in 1641 (and had four younger siblings, by my reckoning). Why wouldn't he have succeeded if Charles I had died then?