Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [40]
In 1619 Frederick accepted the crown of Bohemia, on behalf of Protestant Europe, and in direct opposition to the wishes of Hapsburg Spain. He and Elizabeth were crowned in Prague in December 1619, but their glittering reign as King and Queen was abruptly brought to a halt early the following year, after only one winter in power, when Spain issued a declaration of war (hence their lasting title of ‘Winter King and Queen’). By October 1620 Catholic forces had advanced on Prague, and on 8 November Frederick’s army suffered a devastating defeat at the battle of the White Mountain. The royal couple fled via Breslau, Berlin and Wolfenbüttel to the United Provinces. They arrived in The Hague in April 1621, and the States General granted Frederick, Elizabeth and their five children asylum and generous financial support, providing them with a residence in keeping with their (by Dutch standards) elevated royal status. Although Frederick continued to try to regain possession of his Palatinate territories – seized by the Spanish after his loss of the crown of Bohemia – these were only eventually partially returned to his son Karl Ludwig (Charles Lewis or Louis to the English) under the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648.
The continuing indulgence of the States General of the United Provinces towards the Winter King and Queen’s lifestyle and its excessive costs depended to no small extent on the fact that until the birth of Prince Charles (later Charles II) in 1630, Elizabeth and her determinedly Protestant family were next in line to the English throne. Hers was also a family which included – unusually for the Stuarts – four healthy sons (though the eldest died in a boating accident in 1629). Throughout the 1620s, Elizabeth and Frederick continued to live in The Hague ‘with all the trappings of royalty and little regard to the costs this entailed’.8 Hunting, dances and spectacles dominated life at the Palatine court in exile. Elizabeth was an enthusiastic supporter of Netherlandish artists, and had herself and her family painted by some of the leading Dutch portrait painters of the period, in particular Gerrit van Honthorst and Michiel van Mierevelt. Many of the portraits were sent as gifts to her supporters in the Netherlands and abroad, spreading the fashion for Dutch portraiture across Europe.
After Frederick’s death in 1632, the dowager Winter Queen remained in the United Provinces, dividing her time between her home in The Hague and the castle she and Frederick had built together at Rhenen in the province of Utrecht. In both places Elizabeth continued to hold court in her accustomed style, and during and after the Civil Wars, her court became a refuge for English exiles, including the exiled Charles II and close members of his entourage.
She had received a substantial pension from Charles I before the outbreak of civil war in England, which (somewhat surprisingly) the Commonwealth administration had continued to pay right up to the King’s execution – after which the horrified Elizabeth refused to accept financial support from her brother’s murderers. Thereafter she was dependent on the generosity of the States General and the Stadholder. Nevertheless, those who returned to England from her court reported admiringly the continuing sophistication of life in the milieu of the Winter Queen. Accounts survive of court masques and musical performances in the 1650s which in their dramatic and musical conception and execution match those to which she was accustomed in her childhood at the court of her father James I – the court which had formed the social