Note 65 — COMBE ABBEY, WARWICKSHIRE.
Reading edition
The Princess Elizabeth was married to the Elector Palatine at the early age of sixteen. Her virtues, talents, and sweetness of temper, combined with exceeding gaiety of disposition, together with her personal charms, made her almost an object of idolatry with the cavaliers of her age. She was usually styled “the queen of hearts;” and it was to her that Sir Henry Wotton addressed the elegant lines commencing—
“You meaner beauties of the night, That weaklie satisfie our eies, More by your number than your lighte, Like common people of the skies, What are you when the moon doth rise?”
Immediately after her marriage to the Elector, they proceeded to their palace at Heidelberg, which became the focus of the chivalry of the period.
This scene of their enjoyment and happiness they quitted when the Elector became king of Bohemia, and thenceforward evil destiny pursued their steps. The deposed sovereign died of a broken heart, at the early age of thirty-six; and after his death the queen remained at the Hague, living in privacy and poverty, but exerting the energies of her fine mind to educate her children, of whom she had several. The management of her affairs she confided entirely to her gallant defender the Earl of Craven, who had entered the military service of the states to be near her, and to whom she is understood to have been privately married. On the Restoration she was invited by her nephew, Charles II., to pass the remainder of her life in England, a proposal which she gladly accepted. She arrived in London on the 17th of May, 1661, with Lord Craven, and took up her residence at his house in Drury Lane, where she remained till the following February, on the 8th of which month she removed to Leicester House, and died there on the 13th, only five days after she had entered it. She was buried in Westminster Abbey, in a vault made for the interment of her brother Henry, prince of Wales.
That her ambition principally induced the downfall of her husband, there is little doubt. On this subject we borrow an eloquent passage from Mrs. Jamieson: “One of the most interesting monuments of Heidelberg, at least to an English traveller, is the elegant triumphal arch raised by the Palatine Frederick V., in honour of his bride—this very Elizabeth Stuart. I well remember with what self-complacency and enthusiasm our chief walked about in a heavy rain, examining, dwelling upon every trace of this celebrated and unhappy woman. She had been educated at his country seat; and one of the avenues of his magnificent park yet bears her name. On her fell a double portion of the miseries of her fated family. She had the beauty and the wit, the gay spirits the elegant tastes, the kindly disposition of her grandmother, Mary of Scotland; her very virtues as a wife and woman, not less than her pride and feminine prejudices, ruined herself, her husband, and her people. When Frederick hesitated to accept the crown of Bohemia, his spirited wife exclaimed, ‘Let me rather eat dry bread at a king’s table than feast at the board of an elector.’