Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier

by Charles Spencer

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  When Rupert’s parents married, in 1613, it was the conclusion of his mother’s exhaustive search for a suitable husband. By the standards of the age, Elizabeth’s clean features and height marked her out as handsome. Her lineage and charm persuaded people, somewhat against the evidence of her portraits, to declare her a great beauty. There was, however, no doubting her personality. Elizabeth had a confidence and sparkle inherited from her charismatic grandmother, Mary Queen of Scots. Unfortunately, Elizabeth would also match her tragic ancestress for heartbreak.

  The princess was seven when her father left Scotland to assume the English throne. It had been left vacant by the death of the girl’s godmother, Elizabeth I. From the start young ‘Lady Elizabeth’ was hugely popular, provoking delighted admiration and praise from all who met her. James believed that royal children prospered better if kept away from the distractions of court life, so Elizabeth was handed over to an aristocratic couple, Lord and Lady Harington — ‘persons eminent for prudence and piety’[3] — for a strict education. The reports from their residence at Combe Abbey, near Coventry, were consistently enthusiastic: ‘With God’s assistance’, Lord Harington wrote, ‘we hope to do our Lady Elizabeth such service as is due to her princely endowments and natural abilities; both which appear the sweet dawning of future comfort to her royal father.’[4]

  This princess of rare qualities was celebrated throughout the kingdom. If the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 had been successful in blowing up James and his sons, the conspirators had intended to kidnap Elizabeth, have her crowned, and bring her up a Catholic. ‘What a queen should I have been by this means!’ she said when told of the plan, ‘I had rather have been with my Royal Father in the Parliament House, than wear his Crown on such condition.’[5]

  As womanhood approached Elizabeth’s hand became much sought after overseas. The French ambassador met the princess when she was 11 and was captivated by her poise. ‘I assure you’, he reported to Paris, ‘that it will not be her fault if she is not dauphiness — and she might have worse fancies — for she is not at all vexed when it is mentioned to her.’[6] Sir Walter Raleigh thought Elizabeth ‘by nature and education endowed with such princely perfections, both of body and mind, as may well deserve to be reputed a worthy spouse for the greatest monarch in Christendom’.[7] Her lengthy list of failed suitors included the kings of Sweden and Spain, the Dauphin of France, and Maurice of Nassau, the Dutch leader.

  The collapse of the Spanish suit helps to explain Elizabeth’s eventual choice of husband. James I had hoped that such a union would underline the end of hostilities between England and Spain, and advertise his wise and peace-loving kingship. However, his heir, Prince Henry, spoke for the majority of Englishmen when loudly rejecting his sister’s sacrifice to Popery. ‘The prince hath publicly said’, the Spanish ambassador was shocked to note, ‘that whosoever should counsel his father to marry his sister to a Catholic prince, were a traitor, and that it cannot be but to kill him and his brother, and make the succession theirs; he is a great heretic!’[8]

  The most obvious Protestant match was the gifted Swedish prince, Gustavus Adolphus. However, Sweden was at war with Denmark, and the Danish king was Elizabeth’s maternal uncle, so this option fell away. Of the other choices, Frederick V, Count Palatine, was the candidate who stood out. He was the Palsgrave, or ‘Palace Count’, a role his family had filled since the tenth century. As such, he was the senior Protestant prince of the Holy Roman Empire — that hotchpotch of 300 Germanic, Bohemian, Lowland, and Italian lands, which was among the largest realms in Europe. The Count Palatine was one of the seven electors (the other six electors were the Archbishops of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier, and the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg) charged by a fourteenth-century Papal Bull with the appointment of the Emperor. However, since the late Middle Ages, the throne — along with those of Hungary and Bohemia — had effectively become the possession of the Habsburg dynasty.

  Frederick’s upbringing had more breadth to it than Elizabeth’s cloistered childhood. He had completed his education in Sedan, at the house of his uncle, the Duke of Bouillon. French was the main language spoken at Heidelberg, so this was an opportunity to progress to faultless fluency. His tutor was Tilenus, a Calvinist who stressed the need to guard against the evils of Catholicism. He planted in his pupil the lifelong conviction that the Pope, his Jesuit foot soldiers, and his Spanish Habsburg allies, were conspiring to undermine the rest of Europe for their own gain.

  Religion was the cornerstone of a varied education. Frederick became a fine dancer, an adept swordsman, and an accomplished rider. By the time that he inherited the electorate, on his father’s death in 1610, Frederick had the makings of the perfect prince: he was devout, polished, and manly. The following year, when James I took discreet soundings about Frederick’s character and prospects from Bouillon, he received an enthusiastic critique: a perfect physique, a dark complexion and handsome face; a natural athleticism, particularly on horseback; a serious faith and pure morals; a wonderful portfolio of houses, including exquisite hunting lodges; and, when he came of age, arguably the most important electorate of the Holy Roman Empire. Eligibility was not a problem.

  However, many in England had expected Elizabeth to marry a king. A prince, albeit one of Frederick’s fine pedigree, was considered too humble a match for the ‘Pearl of Britain’. Protestant supporters of the marriage felt it necessary to stress the importance of the Palatinate to the disappointed: ‘Now for his Highness’s Country’, wrote one of James I’s chaplains, ‘it is neither so small, unfruitful, or mean, as is by some supposed. It is in length about 200 English miles, the lower and the upper country. In the lower the Prince hath 26 walled towns, besides an infinite number of good and fair villages, 22 houses; and the land is very fruitful of wine, corn, and other comfortable fruits for man’s use, having the Rhine and the Neckar running through it. The upper Country hath not so many walled towns and princely houses, but those that are, be generally fairer than in the lower, especially Amberg and Newmarket [sic].’[9]

  It was Frederick’s devotion to Protestantism, and his tolerance of all its forms, that ultimately secured Elizabeth’s hand. Since 1555, the rulers of each part of the Holy Roman Empire had been permitted to choose their territory’s official religion. This concession helped to defuse the tension between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Since 1562, with one short-lived aberration, the count’s family had been solidly Calvinist, while its capital, Heidelberg, was known for its religious and intellectual enlightenment. ‘We have to bless God’, wrote an English translator of Palatine scriptures, in 1614, ‘for the religious care of our dread sovereign, in matching his only daughter, a princess peerless, with a Prince of that soundness of religion as the Prince Elector is.’[10]

  Although the princess’s mother, Anne of Denmark, was a Catholic sympathiser, her father’s succession to the English throne had been conditional on his promise to uphold Anglicanism. The English Establishment, which had so hurriedly welcomed James, already viewed him with concern. Nobles were appalled by his sale of hereditary titles, which introduced rich parvenus to the aristocracy. Furthermore, his rampant homosexuality was considered troubling in a king, partly on moral grounds, but more practically because his good-looking young favourites bypassed the conventional channels of patronage to gorge themselves on ill-deserved honours.

  A sure way for James to regain some popularity was to play the religious card: in 1612 he took England into the Protestant Union, a defensive confederation of nine German principalities and seventeen imperial cities formed by Frederick’s father, and which the young Palsgrave now led. The same year, he agreed that Elizabeth should wed Frederick. The public preacher in Bristol — England’s second city and a place that was to play an important role in Rupert’s adult life — welcomed the betrothal: ‘Unto you happy Prince, and sent of God to increase our happiness’, he said in an open letter, ‘Come in thou blessed of the Lord, for whom t
he choicest pearl in the Christian world is by God himself prepared. The Lord makes her like Leah and like Rahel [sic], which two builded the house of Israel. Let her grow into thousand thousands, and let her seed possess the gate of his enemies.’[11]

  It was expected for princes and princesses to make dynastic marriages. Rupert’s parents were unusual in that theirs was a genuine love match, whose romantic pulse never slowed. Frederick made a sublime impression, on arriving in England. His ‘well-becoming confidence’[12] was noted, as was his ‘wit, courage and judgement’.[13] Elizabeth was relieved to be marrying such a dashing young man: when Prince Maurice of Nassau had been presented as a possible mate, she had been repelled by the physical decay of his advanced middle age. By contrast, she fell quickly and completely in love with her handsome, youthful suitor.

  The 16-year-old couple, only four days apart in age, married in Whitehall Chapel on St Valentine’s Day, 1613. Elizabeth wore a gold crown, her white dress and loosely hanging hair advertising her virginity. Despite the bride’s simplicity, James managed to spend nearly £100,000 on the celebrations, prompting one of his courtiers to offer a cheerless supplication: ‘God grant money to pay debts.’[14] However, the revelry was not only about fleeting extravagance: William Shakespeare offered an enduring wedding gift, writing a play for the couple. The Tempest was performed fourteen times by the King’s Men during the festivities, for which the players received £150. The Archbishop of Canterbury summed up the hopes of all who witnessed the match: ‘The God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob bless these nuptials, and make them prosperous to these kingdoms and to his Church.’[15]

  Frederick left for home ahead of his bride so that he could be in the Palatinate to receive her. Elizabeth travelled with a train of supporters that, by the time it reached the outskirts of Heidelberg, consisted of 12 princes, 30 earls, 1,000 gentlemen, and 2,000 soldiers. Her arrival was greeted with volleys of musket shot and salvoes of cannon fire from the Palatine army. ‘Then they marched altogether orderly in good array,’ wrote an eyewitness, ‘conducting her to Heidelberg, where the citizens wanted no expressions of joy, love, and duty in hearty welcoming of her, & praying for her; all windows being replenished with people of all ages and degrees, and the streets thronged with multitudes of people, drawn thither from all parts, not so much to see the Pageants that were erected to further this honourable entertainment, as to have their eyes filled in beholding of her Highness, whom all honoured and admired.’[16]

  Frederick and Elizabeth enjoyed six happy years in Heidelberg. The prince enlarged the pink, sandstone castle for his wife, adding a suite of ten rooms — ‘the English wing’ — to welcome her to her new home. The castle’s floors were made of porphyry, while the cornices were inlaid with gems. Elizabeth’s drawing room was hung with silver decorations, against a background of white marble. The library, with its priceless codices, housed one of the greatest book collections in Europe.

  Outside, the Electress’s passion for animals found expression in a monkey-house and a generously proportioned menagerie. The palace garden, the Tiortus Palatinatus’, was famous throughout the Continent, delighting visitors with its system of fountains, its fine statues, and its intricate network of flowerbeds. When an heir, Frederick Henry, was born, Frederick showed his delight by planting an extension to the garden under his wife’s bedroom window: it was laid out with English flowers, to remind the princess of home. Two more children quickly appeared, Elizabeth and Charles Louis, before she fell pregnant with Rupert.

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  The Palatine shared a border with Bohemia. In July 1617, Ferdinand of Austria, a Habsburg prince, was appointed king-elect. The crown was supposedly decided by a vote of the Bohemian nobles, but they felt bypassed and believed that Ferdinand had been foisted on them through trickery. The intensity of Ferdinand’s Catholic faith soon became clear: the new king’s daily routine included several hours in religious meditation and attendance at two masses. Ferdinand reneged on previous assurances and brought in a raft of measures to root out Protestantism in Bohemia, including control of the printing presses. To English diplomats, this made him ‘a silly Jesuited soul’,[17] but his leading subjects declined to regard his actions with such lightness. Catholic fanaticism had no place in Prague: the city had produced the fifteenth-century martyr John Hus, burnt to death for questioning Roman orthodoxy. Hus had left behind a tradition of religious tolerance, independence, and diversity: the Hussite majority harmoniously co-existed with Catholics, Calvinists, and even the extreme Church of the Bohemian Brethren.

  In May 1618 Ferdinand went too far, ordering the destruction of two Protestant churches in the capital. This prompted a rebellion, led by the Bohemian nobility. Their representatives cornered the two Habsburg regents and their secretary in the council chamber of Hradcany Castle and hurled them from its upper windows. One of the victims, the hefty Jaraslas Martinitz, called out ‘Jesu Maria! Help!’ as he was ejected. The second, Vilem Slavata, clung onto the sill for his life, only loosening his grip when knocked unconscious. Their secretary, Philipus Fabricius, was so terrified by the violence he had witnessed that he put up barely a struggle.

  Astonishingly, all three men survived the 80-foot drop, prompting Catholics to celebrate the miraculous intervention of the Blessed Virgin. In fact, salvation had arrived in a more humdrum form: the trio’s billowing cloaks had acted as parachutes, and slowed their fall, before a slurry-pit had cushioned their landing. ‘The Defenestration of Prague’ was a suitably dramatic prelude to the horrors of the ensuing conflict, the Thirty Years’ War.

  As Ferdinand arranged avenging armies, the Bohemians sought a new king. After refusals from their first choices, they turned to Frederick to fill the void. He agonised about the decision: his Huguenot and Dutch uncles, his chancellor, as well as his spiritual sense of duty, all told him to consent, but his mother and his father-in-law strongly advised against. The Palsgrave’s family motto was: ‘Rule me, Lord, according to your word.’ Frederick became convinced that God expected him to grasp the opportunity placed before him, for His sake. However, when he eventually agreed to accept the crown, he did so with a sense of deep foreboding. On a dull day in October 1619, waved off by his tearful mother, Frederick rode out with the heavily pregnant Elizabeth by his side, accompanied by young Frederick Henry. It was the last time any of them would see Heidelberg.

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  The omens were initially favourable: the people of Prague noted that the arrival of their new rulers coincided with several days when none of the capital’s civil population died. However, it soon became apparent that Frederick had underestimated the risk he was taking by overestimating the level of support for his cause. Beside his Palatine army of 15,000 men, he had assumed he could also rely on the troops of the Protestant Union. This network of religious allies included several Germanic lands, England, the Dutch United Provinces, Venice, Denmark, and Sweden. But within days of the start of Frederick’s rule, all his calculations were in disarray, for Ferdinand was elected Holy Roman Emperor. This altered everything. The Palsgrave, the Imperial right-hand man, now found himself in armed conflict with his feudal overlord. Many of his German allies found they could not draw their sword against their sovereign master.

  Frederick had the opportunity to back down, but two months later he confirmed his acceptance of the crown. Ferdinand, initially unsure of his strength, persisted in urging Frederick to withdraw from Bohemia and return to Heidelberg. If he failed to do this by 1 June 1620, Ferdinand promised, he would attract an Imperial ban. This would place him, and anyone who assisted him, outside the law. Frederick could now be in no doubt: by accepting the throne that wiser men had rejected, and by challenging the orthodoxy of which he was supposed to be the champion, he had raised the possibility of losing everything.

  The conduct of Frederick’s allies ushered cataclysm closer. In July, French diplomats persuaded the Protestant Union to remain neutral, while Bohemia faced the consequences of its rebellion alone. Meanwhile, the timin
g of Frederick’s call for help could not have reached the Dutch United Provinces at a worse time: after decades of fighting for their survival, they were now in the final stages of a truce with Spain, and were gearing up for renewed warfare with the old enemy on their borders. The United Provinces did little more than cheer Frederick on from the sidelines, hoping that his bid for power would succeed, while unable to lend adequate support: some money and 1,500 troops was all they could spare. Similarly, the Swedes and their warrior king, Gustavus Adolphus, were embroiled in a struggle with Poland: they sent Frederick just eight cannon; a pitiful contribution, but more than the Danes and the Venetians mustered between them. In the meantime Bethlem Gabor, Rupert’s supposed protector and Frederick’s sworn ally, chose to pursue his own campaign in Hungary, rather than redirect his forces to help in Bohemia.

  The greatest disappointment was James I’s response. He had discouraged his son-in-law from taking the crown of another monarch, and had underlined his disapproval by refusing to send an ambassador to either Frederick or Elizabeth’s coronations. James remained adamant that, as a divinely appointed monarch, he could not raise an army to help a usurper — even if that usurper was his son-in-law. James’s finances were so weak that the task of funding a foreign army was probably beyond him. However, the king’s unhelpfulness was out of kilter with public sentiment: the English held collections for their popular princess and her handsome husband, seeing their cause as fundamentally important in blocking Papist aggression in Europe. These raised £80,000 and produced a small army of 2,250 men. For the Palsgrave, this was nothing like enough.