Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia

Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, forms the connecting link between the ancient royal families of England and Scotland and the present reigning dynasty. Daughter of James VI. of Scotland and I. of England, she was born in the palace of Falkland, 19th August 1596, educated in England, and in 1613 married to Frederick V. (q.v.), Elector Palatine, who in 1619 was chosen by the Bohemian estates to fill the throne of Bohemia. The following year the army of the ‘Winter King’ was routed by the forces of the Catholic League, and the royal family took refuge in Holland, where they had to endure sore poverty. Of the thirteen children of Elizabeth, mention may be made of Charles Louis, who was restored to the hereditary electorate at the close of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648; Rupert, the ‘mad cavalier;’ Maurice, who also fought in England during the Civil War; and Sophia, who was married to Ernest Augustus of the House of Brunswick, afterwards Elector of Hanover. After the Restoration Elizabeth went to England, where she died February 13, 1662. When in 1701 the question of succession to the crown of Great Britain was debated, it was found that all the descendants of James I. were either dead or were Roman Catholics, except Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and her family. By act of parliament the crown was accordingly secured to her and her descendants, ‘being Protestants;’ and in virtue of this Act of Settlement, on the death of Queen Anne Sophia would have ascended the throne, but she predeceased the queen three months, and her son became king of Great Britain as George I., August 12, 1714. In this extraordinary and unforeseen manner did the unfortunate queen of Bohemia originate the dynasty of the reigning monarch. In her prosperity fond of luxury and magnificence, in adversity a devoted wife and mother, she was always resolute and vivacious, and exercised a singular charm over her contemporaries. See her Life in Mrs Everett Green’s Lives of the Princesses of England (1851); Gardiner’s History of England; and the Memoirs of Sophia, Electress of Hanover (trans. 1888).