Daughters of the Winter Queen

by Nancy Goldstone

  Elizabeth’s mother, Anne of Denmark

  Her mother’s criticisms aside, these first two weeks of courtship were everything a romance should be. There were many banquets and festivities in honor of the young couple, and all the talk at court was of their coming marriage and its preparation. “The Palatine has surpassed expectation, which, on the King’s part, was not great,” the Venetian envoy observed drily.

  The only small impediment to the general merrymaking was a slight indisposition of Henry’s, a nagging headache and low-grade fever that he couldn’t quite shake through the month of September and on into October. But it wasn’t enough for real worry, and anyway, Henry was determined not to allow a tiresome fatigue to ruin his sister’s fun or even to change his athletic routine. Tennis being one of his passions, he arranged to play a week after Frederick’s arrival with a member of his future brother-in-law’s suite, who promised to give him a good game. “Above all the rest, one great Match they had at Tennis, on Saturday the 24th of October,” recalled Henry’s treasurer, “where his [Henry’s] undaunted Courage, negligently, carelessly, and willfully (neither considering the former weak State of his Body, Danger, nor Coldness of the Season) as though his Body had been of Brass, did play in his shirt, as if it had been in the Heat of Summer; during which Time, he looked so wonderful ill and pale, that all the Beholders took Notice thereof, muttering to one another what they feared.” But the prince rallied and made light of his weakness to reassure the bystanders. “He (the Match being ended) carried himself so well, as if there were no such Matter, having all this while a reasonable good stomach to meat, yet this Night, at his going to Bed, complaining more than usual of his Laziness and Headache,” his treasurer continued, worried.

  The next day, Sunday, Henry rose and heard a sermon, but later that afternoon he was gripped by chills and a high fever and was forced to retreat to his bed. And even though his symptoms abated enough the next morning for him to dress and play cards with his brother Charles for an hour, by evening the headache and fever, now accompanied by a “great thirst,” had returned, and it was clear that the heir to the throne of England was seriously ill.

  Doctors crowded around, offering the usual seventeenth-century remedies. They debated bleeding him, forced nasty purgatives on him to make him vomit, and, to relieve the headache, shaved his head and had “Pigeons and Cupping-Glasses applied to lessen and draw away the Humor.” Alas, none of these cures, helpful though they might have been in other circumstances, were of any use to poor Henry, who most likely had contracted typhoid fever. Delirium seized him; convulsions racked his body; his tongue turned black.

  In the beginning his family had been allowed to visit him, but by the third of November, a mere ten days after that fateful tennis match, even the king was turned away. On the fifth of November, James was informed that his son was without hope. He begged the lead doctor to chance whatever he could to keep Henry alive, no matter how dangerous the treatment, but the doctor, knowing that nothing could be done and fearing to take the blame, refused, “saying that it should never be said in after Ages, that he had killed the King’s eldest Son.” And so, strong, handsome Henry, budding warrior and statesman, the pride and promise of the realm, died in agony in the cold blackness of the early morning hours of November 6, 1612. He was just eighteen years old.

  The kingdom’s grief was very great. “Our Rising Sun is set ere scarce he had shone,” lamented a member of the highest nobility. The mourning spread to the prince’s birthplace. “When the women in Scotland, even unto this day, do lament the death of their dearest children, to comfort them it is ordinarily said, and is passed into a proverb, ‘Did not good Prince Henry die?’” wrote a later historian. James and Anne were devastated. Whatever friction had developed between Henry and his father was buried with the tragedy. “The King is doing all he can to forget his grief, but it is not sufficient,” reported the Venetian ambassador. “For many a time it will come over him suddenly and even in the midst of the most important discussions he will burst out with: ‘Henry is dead, Henry is dead.’”

  But no one suffered more than Elizabeth. “The Princess has gone two days without food and cries incessantly,” reported the Venetian. Elizabeth had tried several times to get in to see Henry during the throes of the disease, even masking herself in an attempt to disguise her identity, but had been denied admittance by the doctors. She never had a chance to soothe him or to say good-bye. Worse, she knew that Henry had wanted her with him, had asked for her, and she couldn’t get to him! “The Lady Elizabeth is much afflicted with this loss, and not without good cause,” observed a member of James’s government. “For he did extraordinarily affect her, and the last words he spoke in good sense, they say, were ‘Where is my dear Sister?’”

  “The Succession to this Crown,” the Venetian ambassador gravely informed his master, the doge, “now rests on one single child of ten years, the Duke of York [Charles], though it is true the law does not exclude the Princess.”*

  POOR FREDERICK FOUND HIMSELF in a very awkward position. It was obviously not the best time to press for a wedding, what with his intended and all of her family, friends, and subjects prostrate with grief. Yet if he did not act soon, he stood in danger of losing Elizabeth altogether. Already there were murmurings at court that the princess should not leave England as it was likely that she would inherit the Crown. True, her younger brother Charles was next in line, but Charles’s prospects were questionable. If Henry, who had been so strong and fit, could be taken so suddenly, what chance did Charles, sick and stunted from birth, have of surviving to adulthood, let alone of succeeding to the throne?

  But Frederick had a strong ally in James, who, deprived of his eldest child, kept this endearing future son-in-law near him during the dark days after Henry’s death as something of a salve against the pain. He was such a nice boy, and Elizabeth clearly loved him. After an appropriate period of mourning, plans for the wedding went ahead.

  In addition to James’s fondness for the Palatine, there seems to have been more to this alliance than appeared on its face—a sort of concealed agenda that came out slowly in the wake of Henry’s demise. “He [Henry] meant to have conducted her [Elizabeth] on her way into Germany, to the uttermost bounds of the States dominions, which purpose he kept very secret; and it came abroad but since his death,” a courtier informed an English ambassador on November 12. Soon, more details of the plan leaked out. Henry and his forces, it seemed, were to have helped Frederick assume a throne. But which throne? “On Tuesday I took occasion to go to court because I had never seen the Palsgrave, nor the Lady Elizabeth near hand for a long time,” wrote the same nobleman. “I had the full view of them both, but will not tell you all I think but only this, that he owes his Mistress nothing if he were a King’s son, as she is a King’s Daughter. The worst is, methinks he is much too young and small-timbered to undertake such a task,” he warned. Whatever this task was, it involved soldiering and not romance, for certainly Frederick was capable of performing his marital duties.

  Christmas came gloomily, with the court still in mourning. To brighten the holiday, gifts were exchanged—Frederick’s to Elizabeth included a necklace, tiara, and drop earrings all glittering with diamonds, plus two magnificent pearls “for bigness, fashion, and beauty, esteemed the rarest that are to be found in Christendom”—and a ceremony was held to celebrate the couple’s official engagement. Anne, still not reconciled to the match, refused to make an appearance. “The Affiancy of the Palsgrave and the Lady Elizabeth was solemnized in the great Banqueting-room on Sunday (the 27th) before dinner, in the presence of the King and a great store of Nobility, but the Queen was absent, being troubled, as they say, with the gout,” the same courtier reported.*

  It was this obstinacy of the bride’s mother that brought the clandestine scheme out into the open at last. Piqued by what he perceived to be Anne’s slighting of her future son-in-law, the count of Shomberg, Frederick’s close friend and top administrator who had
come over from Germany with him to take charge of his retinue, disclosed the truth. “The Queen is noted to have given no great grace nor favor to this match, and there is no doubt will do less hereafter, for that upon these things Shomberg (that is chief about him) is said to have given out, that his master is a better man than the King of Denmark, and that he is to take place of him in the Empire, at leastwise of a greater King than he, the King of Bohemia.”

  The kingship of Bohemia was ostensibly an elected position but in reality had been held by the Holy Roman emperor for centuries. This, then, seems to have been what Henry intended by accompanying Elizabeth back to Germany: he meant to help place Frederick on that throne and raise him to her rank, thereby expanding Protestant influence in the empire and securing England’s interests in the region. Nor did this ambition die with Henry. To take over Bohemia, which bordered the Upper Palatinate—this perhaps was the task the courtier worried that Frederick was too young and small to undertake.

  From a closely guarded secret known to only a small group of intimates surrounding Henry, Frederick, and, it appears, James, the pursuit of Bohemia now became so public that even the Spanish ambassador, whose master was allied with the emperor, picked up on it. After noting that whenever the king of England was questioned about the disparity in rank between Elizabeth and Frederick, he would invariably reply “that he doubted not but that his son-in-law should have the title of a King within a few years,” the Spaniard launched an investigation whereby he “procured to learn, whereupon this speech might be grounded, and findeth it to be in respect of the crown of Bohemia, because they pretend it to be elective, and the Palatine hath great intelligence there… and he heareth that France secretly furthereth and helpeth that negotiation.”*

  Whether James fully understood the implications of his tacit approval for this project is not clear. It’s quite possible that the king thought it a nice idea in general that Frederick should become sovereign of Bohemia and humored him in the ambition, believing that to have such a goal was an indication of spirit that could do no harm, and that perhaps his son-in-law might after all achieve the realm one day. But it is unlikely that Frederick—or later Elizabeth, as her husband confided in her completely after their marriage—grasped that nuance. There is little doubt that the couple believed they had her father’s full support and the enthusiasm of the Protestant majority for this quest. And behind the king and this majority stood the formidable financial resources and military might of England itself.

  And so the princess and the Palatine were married. The wedding, which was preceded by three days of festivities that included a stunning fireworks display, took place, appropriately enough, on Valentine’s Day, 1613. There was great rejoicing. Even Anne, bowing to circumstances beyond her control, relented and took part in the celebrations, oohing and aahing at the brilliance of the fireworks from the balcony with the rest of the royal family and attending the nuptials with good humor. The ceremony was as opulently staged and its participants as richly clothed as would have occurred had the bride been pledged to the most important sovereign in Europe. Elizabeth was resplendent in “a gowne of white satin, richly embroidered… upon her head a crown of refined gold, made Imperial by the pearls and diamonds thereupon placed, which were so thick beset that they stood like shining pinnacles upon her amber-coloured haire.” The princess’s red-gold curls, always a source of admiration, were mentioned on this occasion as being particularly magnificent. Piled atop her head, individual strands had been painstakingly woven with “gold-spangles, pearls, rich stones, and diamonds; and withal, many diamonds of inestimable value, embroidered upon her sleeves, which even dazzled and amazed the eyes of the beholders.” Behind her swept a train supported by a bevy of ladies, some fifteen in all, also wearing white satin “adorned with many rich jewells.”

  The archbishop of Canterbury solemnly officiated, the king gave his daughter away, and the choir sang a benediction set to the strains of a melody composed specially for the bride by John Bull. Afterward, the entire company repaired to the Banqueting House to prepare for the wedding feast. After so much sorrow, so much heartbreak, there was no mistaking the popularity of this union. As the newlyweds made their first entrance into society as a married couple, the hundreds of assembled guests rose to their feet as one and a great cry rang out: “God give them joy, God give them joy!”

  Elizabeth in her wedding dress

  (Princess Elizabeth, Later Queen of Bohemia by Robert Peake the Elder: Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Gift of Kate T. Davison, in memory of her husband, Henry Pomeroy Davison, 1951)

  A little more than two months later, on April 25, 1613, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth found herself on board a ship, her husband by her side, bound first for the Netherlands and from there to her new home in faraway Germany.

  3

  Goodwife Palsgrave

  IT TOOK MORE THAN A month for Elizabeth to reach Heidelberg, site of her husband’s primary residence. The slowness of her progress was by design; the trip was as much a goodwill initiative as a honeymoon journey. To ensure that his daughter was treated with the respect she merited as a member of the English royal family, James had attached a party of senior government officials to the bride’s entourage. “The commissioners that accompany her have the titles of ambassadors, to give them preceding… in any encounters with Almaigne [German] princes,” explained one of James’s ministers in a letter to a friend.

  Consequently, everywhere she went, Elizabeth was feted by the local nobility and treated, not as the spouse of the Count Palatine, but as a royal representative of the king of England. To announce her arrival at the port of Flushing (present-day Vlissingen), her first stop after leaving the English coast, the lord admiral of the navy, who had personal command of the ships that bore the couple across the North Sea to Holland, set off a deafening barrage of 400 cannons “to make Heaven and Earth echo forth from the report,” a flourish that was answered by a suitably impressive volley of 200 guns from the shore. At Flushing there were fireworks; at Rotterdam, feasts and plays; at The Hague, hunting and “costly shows.” Elizabeth was showered with wedding presents: a coronet sparkling with thirty diamonds, a pearl pendant and necklace, a diamond hairpin, tapestries, fine table linens, furniture, dishes—everything a discriminating young housewife could possibly need to get started in life. A contemporary pamphleteer conservatively estimated the value of this haul at £10,000.

  Nor was the bride’s cultural education neglected. As she made her way south from Amsterdam to Utrecht and from there into Germany, every municipality, eager to meet so exalted a visitor, made sure to point out areas of interest to help familiarize the English princess with her new surroundings. In the small village of Overwinter, for example, Elizabeth learned of a tower where “the people of the country report that the devil walks, and holds his infernal revels!” In Brobgech she passed “that Castle in which by report a German Bishop was eaten up by the rats.”

  Finally, on June 10, 1613, Elizabeth reached the outskirts of Heidelberg. Frederick had gone ahead to ensure that all was in readiness for her arrival and to organize an appropriately magnificent reception. Significantly, he chose to welcome his English wife to her new home with a display of the region’s martial capabilities. Twenty-five cannons, the sum total of the Palatinate’s artillery, were rolled out and fired in her honor. The couple were reunited in the presence of a thousand knights on horseback, “all Gentlemen of the country, very richly attired and bravely furnished with armor, and other warlike habiliments,” supplemented by sixteen companies of foot soldiers drawn from the lower classes. Together this force assumed military formation and paraded Elizabeth home to Frederick’s château in Heidelberg, where his mother, surrounded by all the principal ladies of the neighborhood, was waiting to greet her. There followed three days of jousting, feasting, hunting, spectacles, and comic performances, much to the delight of the local burghers and their families.

  And then, on the fourth day, those who remained of Eliza
beth’s personal entourage (with the exception of Lord and Lady Harrington, who had accompanied their ward at their own expense, and her maid of honor) said a tearful good-bye and departed for England, and she was left alone with her husband and mother-in-law to begin her new life.

  BY ALL ACCOUNTS, the castle of Heidelberg was absolutely charming. It was built of stone and stood high on a hill surrounded by gardens. Frederick did everything he could to please Elizabeth, designing rooms and terraced plantings in the English style for her so she would feel at home. Elizabeth, in turn, did her best to accommodate herself to the customs and expectations of her husband and his family and friends.

  But there were inevitable frictions caused by her elevated rank. Before she left for Germany, James had insisted that Elizabeth be recognized, not as the Electress Palatine, but as a princess of England. This meant that, like James’s ambassadors, she would take precedence over every baron in Germany, no matter how wealthy or influential, including her husband. As there was no pressing political need for this, it was likely that the king was simply attempting to justify his decision to marry his daughter to someone of lower rank by pretending that it had no effect on her social standing. To have one’s wife so publicly occupy a position of superiority over oneself was hardly a prescription for a happy marriage. Nonetheless, Frederick, supported in this decision by his principal administrator, the count of Shomberg, who was relying heavily on the alliance with England, felt he had no choice but to adhere to this condition.