Daughters of the Winter Queen
Page 1
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Nancy Goldstone
Author photograph by Emily Goldstone
Cover design by Lauren Harms; art (clockwise from top left): Henriette Marie, Princess Palatine (oil on panel, 17th century), Gerard van Honthorst (1592–1656) / courtesy Wikimedia Commons; Elizabeth, Princess Palatine (oil on panel), Gerrit van Honthorst (1590–1656) / Private Collection / Photo © Philip Mould Ltd., London / Bridgeman Images; Princess Louise Hollandine (oil on panel, 1642), Gerard van Honthorst (1592–1656) / courtesy Wikimedia Commons; Elizabeth of Bohemia, The Winter Queen (oil on panel, early 1620s), Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt (1567–1641) / Private Collection / Photo © Philip Mould Ltd., London / Bridgeman Images; Sophia of the Palatinate (colored engraving), studio of Gerrit van Honthorst (1590–1656) / Private Collection / © Look and Learn / Elgar Collection / Bridgeman Images
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ISBN 978-0-316-38788-0
E3-20180303-JV-PC
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Map
Selected Genealogy of the Stuart Family
Introduction
PART I
Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen, Granddaughter of Mary, Queen of Scots 1. A King’s Daughter
2. (An Almost) Royal Wedding
3. Goodwife Palsgrave
4. Queen of Bohemia
5. The Winter Queen
6. Queen of Hearts
PART II
The Daughters of the Winter Queen: Princess Elizabeth, Louise Hollandine, Henrietta Maria, and Sophia 7. A Royal Refugee
8. Child of Light and Dark
9. Lilies and Roses
10. A Royal Education
11. The Visiting Philosopher
12. A Scandal in Bohemia
13. Honor and Duty
14. Royal Sense and Sensibility
15. A Lesson on the Passions
16. A Desperate Plan
17. The Electress, Two Dukes, and the Lady-in-Waiting
PART III
The Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots 18. Abbess of Herford
19. Abbess of Maubuisson
20. A Scandal in Hanover
21. The Triumph of the Winter Queen
Epilogue
Discover More Nancy Goldstone
Photos
Acknowledgments
About the Author
By Nancy Goldstone
Selected Bibliography
Illustration Credits
Notes
Newsletters
To Lee and Larry, with all my love
Nor shall less joy your regal hopes pursue
In that most princely maid, whose form might call
The world to war, and make it hazard all
Its valor for her beauty; she shall be
Mother of nations, and her princes see
Rivals almost to these.
—A prescient description of fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Stuart, the future Winter Queen, in a poem by Ben Jonson, June 1610
She has bin long admir’d by all the Learned World as a Woman of incomparable Knowledge in Divinity, Philosophy, History, and the Subjects of all sorts of Books, of which she has read a prodigious quantity. She speaks five Languages so well, that by her Accent it might be a Dispute which of ’em was her first.
—John Toland, secretary to the English embassy to Hanover, reporting on the character of Sophia, youngest daughter of the Winter Queen, September 1701
SELECTED GENEALOGY OF THE STUART FAMILY
Introduction
The castle at Fotheringhay, about sixty miles northwest of London, Wednesday, February 8, 1587
THE DAY HAD DAWNED INCONGRUOUSLY fair, the soft rays of the winter sun gradually diffusing the darkness to illuminate the forbidding aspect of the vast medieval fortress, nearly five centuries old, that dominated the surrounding landscape. But the warming light did nothing to lift the spirits of those sequestered behind the citadel’s impregnable walls, for on this morning, Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, was to be executed.
She had been convicted four months earlier of treason against her cousin the English queen Elizabeth I. At a trial eerily reminiscent of the inquisition of Joan of Arc, against all protocol, Mary had been denied counsel and forced to face her accusers alone. Her crime lay not so much in the details of the charges against her but in the unshakable constancy of her faith. In an effort to intimidate her, her interrogators, all men well versed in the complexities of English law, thundered their impatient questions at her so rowdily that it was impossible for her to answer them all. It was critical that Mary acknowledge her guilt, but her bold responses and repeated protestations of innocence denied her judges the confession they sought. In length alone did the queen’s ordeal differ materially from the saint’s. It had taken the inquisition months to condemn Joan, a simple peasant girl, to the stake. Mary, once queen of France as well as Scotland, was convicted and sentenced to beheading in just ten days.
The delay between verdict and punishment was attributable to Elizabeth I’s obvious reluctance to sign her cousin’s death warrant. It was not simply a matter of weighing the probable consequences of the act on the kingdom’s foreign policy. Elizabeth’s ambassadors had already sounded out Mary’s only child, James, king of Scotland, and confirmed that, provided his mother’s execution in no way adversely influenced his own prospects of succeeding to the English throne, James would undertake no reprisals should Elizabeth decide on this final, irrevocable step. And although the Catholic kings of France and Spain protested vociferously through envoys against the brutality of the sentence, Elizabeth’s ministers had concluded that their opposition did not extend to the point of armed intervention in Mary’s favor. But still, Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, wavered. It was a grave matter to behead a fellow monarch. It set a sinister precedent. Mary herself recognized this. “Please do not accuse me of presumption if, about to abandon this world and preparing for a better one, I bring up to you that one day you will have to answer for your charge,” she wrote keenly to Elizabeth from her cell at Fotheringhay.
But by degrees, the queen of England had allowed herself to be convinced of the necessity for ruthlessness by her Protestant councillors, and on February 1, 1587, she added the authority of the Crown to the judgment against Mary by signing the death warrant. Four days later, on February 5, this document was secretly dispatched to Fotheringhay by courier, and on the eveni
ng of February 7, as she prepared for bed, Mary was brusquely informed that she would meet her death the following morning at eight o’clock.
The Queen of Scots’ reaction to the news of her imminent execution was tempered not only by the extreme duration of her captivity—she had been confined under house arrest for more than eighteen years—but by her profound belief that her martyrdom at Elizabeth’s hands would benefit the Catholic cause in Europe. Consequently, she made no scene, not even when she was refused the services of a priest and the solace of last rites. Rather, she was tranquil and dignified throughout. She spent her last hours composing her will, making bequests, and comforting her servants. She dispensed the few personal items that remained of her once magnificent equipage. She knelt in prayer. All the while, she and her attendants could hear the sound of the wooden platform that would hold the block on which she would lay her head in preparation for decapitation being noisily constructed in the castle’s great hall.
She was summoned to her ordeal at a little after eight in the morning. She appeared in full court dress, accompanied by her small household, one of her manservants holding a crucifix aloft before her. Her flowing gown was of black satin and velvet, highlighted by hints of purple, symbol of royalty. Her trademark red-brown curls—a wig now, as the forty-four-year-old queen’s real hair was gray—were draped by a floor-length white lace veil, signifying purity. A throng of people, both officials of the royal court and local gentry, crowded the hall, having been invited to witness the spectacle of the queen’s beheading. They took their places around the raised dais as Mary, with quiet majesty, mounted the steps to her fate. A heavy stone ax, instrument of her death, “like those with which they cut wood,” an eyewitness later reported, was displayed prominently on the stage.
The ceremony of state execution began. A Protestant clergyman who had been engaged to sermonize the queen began a lengthy discourse. Mary countered by praying aloud, first in Latin and then in English, for the protection and advancement of the Catholic Church. The competing religious devotions having concluded, the queen of Scotland was then divested of her veil and outer gown, as was customary. Her underskirt and bodice were of russet burgundy, another deliberate choice, representing the blood of martyrs. In this costume, she was led to the block and there knelt upon the pillows placed in front of it for that purpose. Weeping softly, her oldest and most loyal maidservant gently bound her mistress’s eyes in white silk and arranged her hair so as to leave her neck bare. Then Mary laid her head upon the block.
Although horrifyingly gruesome by modern standards, decapitation was actually the elite method of execution in the sixteenth century. Because it was over in one quick stroke, suffering was assumed to be minimal, so only those of very high rank were granted the privilege of dying in this manner. Criminals and commoners, by contrast, were almost always hanged, which took much longer. If the offense committed was of sufficient gravity, a culprit might be subjected to the torture of being drawn and quartered. The most excruciating punishment—burning at the stake—was reserved for cases of witchcraft or heresy, as an effective means of discouraging others who might be tempted to follow the profane teachings of the condemned.
But however humanely intended, any diminution of pain was of course entirely dependent on the dexterity of the person wielding the ax, and Mary was not fortunate in her practitioner. The first stroke missed her neck completely and landed on the back of her head. Despite the presence of the blindfold, those spectators close to the stage could see the queen’s expression change and her mouth open and close in shock, reportedly forming the words “Lord Jesus, receive my soul.” The executioner was forced to extract his bloody instrument and raised his arms to try again. The second blow fell with more success—he hit her neck—but failed to cleave all the way through. Rather than lift the weapon a third time and admit his ineptitude, her killer simply hacked at the remaining tissue until at last the queen’s head tumbled from her body. Her lips were still moving when he raised his ghastly prize high for all to see, and continued to move, as though struggling to speak, for ten minutes more, before finally coming to rest.
“Such be the end of all the Queen’s, and all the Gospel’s enemies” was the final verdict solemnly intoned by the presiding magistrate, and with that concluded the formal ritual of death. No witness present in the great hall of Fotheringhay that February morning doubted that Elizabeth had utterly vanquished her rival and that the name Mary Stuart would from that day forth pass into infamy.
But history has a way of confounding even the most seemingly infallible expectations. For it would not be the descendants of the renowned queen Elizabeth I who survived to rule England. Rather, through a series of astonishing twists and turns of fate, through danger, adventure, courage, heartbreak, and, ultimately, triumph, it was Mary’s legacy that prevailed through the fearless person of her granddaughter Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen, and her four daughters, Princess Elizabeth, Louise Hollandine, Henrietta Maria, and Sophia. It is from the female line of this family that every English monarch beginning with George I, including the memorable Victoria and the indomitable Elizabeth II, all the way down to the wildly popular children born to the present-day duke and duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Kate Middleton, has sprung in an unbroken line.
But theirs is so much more than the legacy of a single realm. Together, these women formed the loom upon which the great tapestry of Europe was woven. The lives of Elizabeth Stuart and her daughters were intricately entwined with all the major events of their day, not only political contests, but also the religious, artistic, and philosophic movements that would dominate the period and set the stage for the Enlightenment to come. It is simply not possible to fully understand the seventeenth century in all of its exuberant, glorious complexity without this family.
This is their story.
PART I
Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen
Granddaughter of Mary, Queen of Scots
Elizabeth Stuart
Mary, queen of Scots
1
A King’s Daughter
That princess rare, that like a rose doth flourish.
—James Maxwell, The Life and Death of Prince Henry, 1612
ELIZABETH STUART WAS BORN ON August 19, 1596, at Dunfermline Palace, her mother’s preferred summer residence, in Fife, just across the bay from Edinburgh. Her father was James VI, only offspring and heir of Mary, queen of Scots; her mother was Queen Anne, daughter of the king of Denmark. Elizabeth was her parents’ second child. An older brother, christened Frederick Henry but known simply as Henry, had been born two years earlier.
Unlike the wild, spontaneous public celebrations that had greeted her brother’s arrival—“moving them to great triumph… for bonfires were set, and dancing and playing seen in all parts, as if the people had been daft for mirth,” as one eyewitness noted—the news that Queen Anne, suspected of Catholic leanings, had been successfully delivered of a daughter was received with stony indifference by the unruly Protestant population. The Presbyterian ministers of nearby Edinburgh, the most outspoken and radical element of Scottish society, incensed by James’s recent decision to allow two formerly exiled Catholic earls to return to the realm, sent an emissary, not to congratulate the new father but to bait him, insultingly calling James “God’s silly vassal,” among other choice put-downs, to his face.
There were not too many kingdoms in Europe where a subject could address his sovereign lord in this fashion without risking imprisonment or execution, but fiercely implacable, wayward Scotland was one of them. The Scottish aristocracy was hopelessly, almost comically fractured by geography, ancestry, religion, and politics. Jealous of one another’s privileges, constantly engaging in conspiracies and treachery or jostling for advantage, about the only quality the various clans had in common was a tendency to take offense at the slightest provocation, a predilection that more often than not quickly escalated to violent civil unrest. To be king of Scotland at the turn of the s
eventeenth century was not an especially enviable employment. “Alas, it is a far more barbarous and stiff necked people that I rule over,” James observed morosely.
Exacerbating the country’s political woes was its extreme poverty. Trained almost from birth in the habits of frugality, James had become adept at sidestepping unnecessary expenses. To reduce costs, Elizabeth’s christening was held on November 28, when bitter cold and inclement weather would ensure that attendance at the ceremony was kept to a minimum. Those guests who did accept the royal invitation were instructed to bring their own dinners. Ever on the lookout for ways to squeeze a profit from events, to ingratiate himself with his far more affluent neighbor to the south, James fawningly named his daughter for the venerable queen of England. He further nominated Elizabeth I as godmother to the child, as he had done for his son two years earlier, expecting by this means to receive a handsome present. But although the English queen had acknowledged the birth of James’s son with “a cupboard of silver overgilt, cunningly wrought,” as well as a set of magnificent golden goblets, this time no similarly expensive gift—in fact, no gift at all—arrived to commemorate his daughter’s christening. The notoriously stingy Elizabeth I knew a thing or two about thrift herself.
Even before the ceremony, the infant Elizabeth had been removed from her mother’s care and sent to Linlithgow Palace, about fifteen miles west of Edinburgh, to be raised by guardians. Queen Anne, who did not wish to be separated from her daughter, had objected vehemently to this arrangement, as she had two years previously when her firstborn, Henry, had been unceremoniously wrenched from her in similar fashion, but James, citing Scottish custom, had insisted. The king, who had himself been brought up by custodians when political upheaval forced Mary Stuart to abdicate, evidently did not consider a mother to be a necessary or even particularly helpful component in child rearing.*