Note 366 — Chapter X

Charles Louis, elector palatine, elder brother of the Princes Rupert and Maurice, gave cause to suspect that he was looking towards the throne. He left the king's quarters where he had been at the commencement of the war, and retired to Holland; whence he wrote, as well as his mother, the Queen of Bohemia, to the parliament, disclaiming and renouncing Prince Rupert, and begging their own pensions might be paid. He came over to London in August 1644, took the covenant, and courted the parliament. They showed, however, at first, a good deal of jealousy of him; and intimated that his affairs would prosper better by his leaving the kingdom. Whitelock, 101; Rush. Abr. xv. 359. He did not take this hint, and obtained next year an allowance of £8000 per annum. Id. 145. Lady Ranelagh, in a letter to Hyde, March 1644, conjuring him by his regard for Lord Falkland's memory to use all his influence to procure a message from the king for a treaty, adds: "Methinks what I have informed my sister, and what she will inform you, of the posture of the prince elector's affairs are in here, should be a motive to hasten away this message." Clar. State Papers, ii. 167. Clarendon himself, in a letter to Nicholas, Dec. 12, 1646 (where he gives his opinion that the independents look more to a change of the king and his line than of the monarchy itself, and would restore the full prerogative of the Crown to one of their own choice), proceeds in these remarkable words: "And I pray God they have not such a nose of wax ready for their impression. This it is makes me tremble more than all their discourses of destroying monarchy; and that towards this end, they find assistance from those who from their hearts abhor their confusions." P. 308. These expressions seem more applicable by far to the elector than to Cromwell. But the former was not dangerous to the parliament, though it was deemed fit to treat him with respect. In March 1647, we find a committee of both houses appointed to receive some intelligence which the prince elector desired to communicate to the parliament of great importance to the protestant religion. Whitelock, 241. Nothing farther appears about this intelligence; which looks as if he was merely afraid of being forgotten. He left England in 1649, and died in 1680.