The Henrician legend revived: the Palatine couple and its public image in early Stuart England

Abstract

By exploring the nature of the Palatine myth in Early Stuart England this article contributes to the debate on the religious and political polarisation in Europe in the decades before the Thirty Years War. In the battle of words that preceded the armed conflict of men, references to the national past and greatness were used and misused by the opposing sides as influential instruments of propaganda. The paper sets out to answer two basic questions. In what way was Frederick, the Palatine Elector, put within the context of English Protestant mythology? How did the public image of the Palatine Couple change after the disaster at the White Mountain?

Notes

See, for instance, Roy Strong Henry, Prince of Wales and England's Lost Renaissance, London, 1986; idem, The Cult of Elizabeth, London, 1999; Frances A. Yates, Astrea‐The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century, London–Boston, 1975; Arthur B. Ferguson, The Chivalric Tradition in Renaissance England, Washington–London–Toronto, 1986; R. Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England, Philadelphia, 1987, esp. pp. 15–42.

Of the many studies of the dynastic policy of James I, see for example T. Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution‐English Politics and the Coming of War 1621–1624, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 12–20.

Strong, Henry, Prince of Wales, p. 176.

‘Egy Vilhelmus Curtius nevu öreg német úrral is ismerkedtem volt itt meg, aki Fridericus V. cseh király tanácsa volt, nagy tudós ember, ezt adta volt Isten nékem itt atyául. Mint könyörgésemben is említem, én mind a reszegségre, mind a paráznaságra szintén vetemedni kezdek vala. Sok szép intéssel intett, menjek el onnét, mert tudja, az o ura Fridericus mátkaságában mennyi sok jó erkölcsu ifjak vesztek ott lelkekben, testekben el az Anglikák miatt…’, E. Windisch, ed., Kémeny János és Bethlen Miklós müvei, Budapest, 1980, p. 587.

Conrad Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments‐English History 1509–1660, Oxford, 1971, p. 281.

The Marriage of Prince Fredericke and the Kings Daughter, the Lady Elizabeth upon Shrove‐Sunday last, London, 1613; J. Taylor, Heavens Blessing, and Earths Ioy. Or, A true relation, of the supposed Sea‐fights and Fire‐workes, as were accomplished, before the Royall Celebration of the al‐beloved Mariage of the two peerlesse Paragons of Christendome, Fredericke and Elizabeth. With Triumphall Enconomiasticke Verses, etc., London, 1613.

The Marriage of Prince Fredericke, unpaginated.

See, for instance, G. Roberts, ed., Diary of Walter Younge, Esq. Justice of Peace, and M.P. for Honiton, written at Colyton and Axminster, co. Devon, from 1604 to 1628, London, 1848, p. 24.

D.J.H. Clifford, ed., The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford, Thrupp–Stroud, 1998, p. 261.

The Magnificent, princely, and most Royall Entertainments given to the High and Mightie Prince, and Princesse, Frederick, Count Palatine, Palsgrave of the Rhyne, and Elizabeth, sole Daughter to the High and Mighty King of England, Iames, our Souveraigne Lord, London, 1613. See the German original, Beschreibung der Reiss: Empfahung dess Ritterlichen Ordens: Vollbringung des Heyraths: und gluecklicher Heimfuehrung: Wie auch der ansehnlichen Einfuehrung, gehltener Ritterspiel und Frewdenfests. Des Durchleuchtigsten, hochgebornen Fuersten und Herrn Herrn Friderichen dess Fuenften, Pfaltzgraven bey Rhein, dess Heiligen Roemischen Reichs Ertztruchsessen und Churfuersten Hertzogen in Bayern etc. Mit der auch durchleuchtigsten, hochgebornen Fuerstin und koeniglichen Princessin Elizabethen dess Grossmechtigsten Herrn Herrn Iacobi des Ersten Koenigs in GrossBrittannien Einigen Tochter, 1613.

Strong, Henry, Prince of Wales, pp. 175–82.

More to the pan‐Protestant ideas in Early Stuart Britain: W.B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom, Cambridge, 1997.

Strong, Henry, Prince of Wales, pp. 71–85.

Henry Stuart as the successor to Henry IV at the head of the ‘Christian Princes’ is most clearly visible in The French Herald summoning all true Christian Princes to a generall croisade, for a holy warr against the great enemy of Christendome, and all his slaues, London, 1611.

See J.W. Williamson, The Myth of the Conqueror‐Prince Henry Stuart: A Study of 17th‐Century Personation, New York, 1978, pp. 171–93.

William Fennor, ‘Fennors Descriptions, or A True Relation of Certaine and Diuers speeches, spoken before the King and Queenes most excellent Maiestie, the Prince his highnesse and the Lady Elizabeth's Grace’, London, 1616, pp. C1–C2.

Two Elegies, Consecrated to the never‐dying Memorie of the most worthly admyred, most hartily loued, and generaly bewayled Prince Henry, Prince of Wales, London, 1613, p. B3.

Williamson, The Myth, pp. 171–82.

Great Brittans Mourning Garment. Given To all faithfull sorrowfull Subiects at the Funerall of Prince Henry, London, 1612, p. C2.

M. Ioannes Marya de Franchis, Of the most auspicious Marriage: betwixt The High and Mightie Prince Frederick, Count Palatine of Rheine, chiefe Sewer to the Sacred Roman Empire, Prince Elector, and Duke of Bavaria, etc. and The most illustrious Princesse, the Ladie Elizabeth her Grace, sole Daughter to the high and mightie IAMES, King of great Brittaine, etc. in III. bookes, London, 1613, unpaginated; see the epilogue.

Epithalamia sive Lusus Palatini in nuptias celsissimi principis domini Friderici comitis palatini ad Rhenum etc. et serenissimae Elizabethae Iacobi potentissimi britanniae regis filiae primogenitae, Oxford, 1613, unpaginated.

On Žerotín's journey to England in the entourage of Frederick of the Palatinate, see Otakar Odložilík, Cesty z Čech a Moravy to Velké Británie v letech 1563–1620 [Journeys from Bohemia and Moravia to England, 1563–1620], Brno, 1935 (offprint from Matice Moravská, 1935), p. 63.

See Jennifer Woodward, The Theatre of Death: The ritual management of royal funerals in renaissance England, 1570–1625, Woodbridge, 1997, p. 155.

See, for example, Frances A. Yates, ‘Elizabethan Chivalry: The Romance of the Accession Day Tilts’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XX/1957, pp. 4–25; idem, Astraea, esp. pp. 56–111; Graham Parry, The Golden Age restor'd, Manchester, 1985; David Norbrook, ‘The Masque of Truth: Court Entertainments and International Protestant Politics in the Early Stuart Period’, The Seventeenth Century, 2 (1986), pp. 81–110; Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth, esp. pp. 114–91.

Simon Adams, The Protestant Cause: Religious Alliance with the West European Calvinist Communities as a Political Issue in England, 1585–1630, Oxford, 1973, unpublished PhD thesis, p. 219.

See Alvin Kernan, Shakespeare, the King's Playwright: Theater in the Stuart Court 1603–1613, New Haven–London, 1995, p. 150.

Alexander Leggatt, Jacobean Public Theatre, London–New York, 1992, pp. 11–23.

Ibid., p. 28.

Henry Glapthorne, The Tragedy of Albertus Wallenstein, London, 1639.

For ‘political Puritanism’ see Adams, The Protestant Cause, p. 2.

Most recent edition in Thomas Middleton, A Game at Chess, ed. T.H. Howard‐Hill, Manchester, 1993.

A.B. Worden, ‘Literature and Political Censorship in Early Modern England’, in A.C. Duke & C. A. Tamse, Too Mighty to be Free: Censorship and the Press in Britain and the Netherlands, Zutphen, 1987, pp. 49–50.

See, for example, ibid., pp. 45–59; also Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre, Cambridge, 1980, pp. 38–39, 46; Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation. The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England, Wisconsin, 1984, pp. 17–63.

Print of 1615. Wentworth Smith (?), The Hector of Germany or the Palsgrave, Prime Elector, London, 1615, unpaginated. On drama in the context of Anglo–German relations see Hans Werner, ‘The Hector of Germanie, or the the Palsgrave, Prime Elector’ and ‘Anglo–German relations of early Stuart England: the view from the popular stage’, in The Stuart Court and Europe, ed. R. Malcom Smuts, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 113–32.

Hans Werner identifies the hero, Robert, with Ruprecht II, a contemporary of the Black Prince. Ibid., p. 119, n. 28.

Smith, The Hector.

On the chivalric iconography of the Elizabethan and Stuart period see J.S.A. Adamson, ‘Chivalry and Political Culture in Caroline England’, in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, eds Kevin Sharpe & Peter Lake, London, 1994, pp. 161–97.

Henry Peacham, ‘Prince Henrie Revived or a Poeme Upon the Birth, and in Honor of the Hopefull Yong Prince Henrie Frederick’, London, 1615.

Ibid.

See, for instance, George Wither, Prince Henrie Obsequies or Mournfull Elegies upon his Death, London, 1612.

Adams, The Protestant Cause, p. 220.

For an assessment of the state administration in Jacobean England before 1618 see Josef Polišenský, Anglie a Bílá Hora [England and the White Mountain], Praha, 1949, pp. 25–37.

Ibid., pp. 34–36. See also the Dictionary of National Biography under the appropriate headings.

Leggatt, Jacobean, p. 19.

Werner, The Hector, p. 115. On the image of Elizabeth as a Protestant martyr and saint see Cogswell, The Blessed, pp. 95–96.

Philip Massinger, The Virgin Martyr, London, 1844.

Ibid., p. 78.

Ibid., pp. 99–100.

Ibid., p. 142.

S.R. Gardiner, ed., Letters and other Documents illustrating the relations between England and Germany at the commencement of the Thirty Years' War, 2, London, 1868, p. 148.

Evelyn M. Albright, Dramatic Publication in England, 1580–1640, New York, 1927, pp. 119–20.

For Catholic pamphleteering against Frederick see for example W. Harms, Deutsche illustrierte Flügblätter des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, 4 vols, Tübingen, 1987; M. Bohatcová, Irrgarten der Schicksale, Praha, 1966. Most recently, J. Hubková, ‘Exil Fridricha Falckého v letácích jeho doby’ [The Exile of Frederick of the Palatinate in Contemporary Pamphlets], in Víra nebo vlast? Exil v èeských dı`jinách rahého novovı`ku [Faith or Country? Exile in Early Modern Bohemian History], Ústí nad Labem, 2001, pp. 184–97.

‘Dess Pfaltzgrafen Urlaub’, 1621. Engraving and text in J. Scheible, ed., Die Fliegenden Blätter des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts, Hildesheim, 1972, pp. 270–73.

James I, ‘The Peacemaker, or Great Brittaines Blessing’, London, 1619.

S.R. Gardiner, ‘The Political Element in Massinger’, Contemporary Review, XXVIII (1876), p. 495.

A.B. Worden pointed out Gardiner's mistaken dating: A.B. Worden, ‘Literature and Political Censorship in Early Modern England’, in Duke & Tamse, eds, Too Mighty to be Free, pp. 55, 59.

Philip Massinger, The Maid of Honour, London, 1877, p. 1120.

Ibid., p. 1121.

Ibid., p. 1121. For interpretations of the play, Albright, Dramatic Publication in England, p. 125; A. Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation. The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England, Wisconsin, 1984, p. 80.

‘The King and Queen of Bohemia’, in The Pepys Ballads, I, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins, Cambridge, MA, 1929, p. 215.

Ibid., p. 216.

Most recently Simon Groenveld, ‘Könige ohne Staat: Friedrich V. und Elizabeth als Exilierte in Den Haag 1621–1632–1661’, in Der Winterkönig: Friedrich V. der letzte Kurfürst aus der Oberen Pfalz, ed. Peter Wolf, Augsburg, 2003, pp. 162–87.

See for example Michael G. Finlayson, Historians, Puritanism, and the English Revolution: the Religious Factor in English Politics before and after the Interregnum, Toronto–Buffalo–London, 1985, pp. 86–88; Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments, pp. 292–300.

Brennan C. Pursell, ‘James I, Gondomar and the Dissolution of the Parliament of 1621’, History, 85/279 (2000), pp. 428–'445; idem, ‘War or Peace? Jacobean Politics and the Parliament of 1621’, in Parliament, Politics and Elections 1604–1648, ed. Chris R. Kyle, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 149–78.

Finlayson, Historians, Puritanism, and the English Revolution, p. 89.

Dictionary of National Biography, under the appropriate headings.

Thomas Scott, Vox Populi or Newes from Spayne, translated according to the Spanish coppie. Which may serve to forwarn both England and the United Provinces how farre to trust to Spanish pretences, London, 1620.

Sabrina A. Baron, ‘The guises of dissemination in early seventeenth‐century England’, in The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, eds Brendan Dooley & Sabrina A. Baron, London/New York. 2001, p. 43.

Adams, The Protestant Cause, pp. 450–51.

Thomas Scott, Digitus Dei, Utrecht, 1623, pp. 33–37.

Idem, ‘Vox Regis’, in, idem, Workes, Amsterdam/New York, 1973, facsimile copy.

Ibid., p. 24.

Idem, The Second Part of Vox Populi, or Gondomar appearing in the likenes of Mitchiauell in a Spanish Parliament, wherein are discouered his treacherous & subtile Practises To the ruine as well of England, as the Netherlandes. Faithfully Translated out of the Spanish Coppie by a well‐willer to England and Holland, Gorcum, 1624.

Idem, ‘A briefe Information of the affaires of the Palatinate, the which consist in foure principall heads, which be 1. The acceptation of the Crowne of Bohemia 2. The difference and controuersie which hath ensued thereof, between the emperour FERDINAND, and the King FREDERICK. 3. The proscription and bloudy proceeding that hath ensued thereof. 4. And the interposition of the King of great BRITTAINE, and with that which hath happened in the meane space', in idem, Workes, pp. 1–59.

See the catalogue of titles from 1618–21 referring to the Bohemian War in Jaroslav Miller, Falcký mýtus: Fridrich V. a obraz české války v raně stuartovské Anglii, [Palatine Myth: Frederick V and the Image of Bohemian War in Early Stuart England], Praha, 2004 (in print).

Votivae Angliae or the Desires and Wishes of England, London, 1624.

Adams, The Protestant Cause, p. 460.

Ibid.

Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution, pp. 95–96.

A Briefe and True Relation of the Murther of Mr Thomas Scott, London, 1628.

A.J. Hoenselaars, Images of Englismen and Foreigners in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: A Study of Stage Characters and National Identity in English Renaissance Drama, 1558–1642, London–Toronto, 1992, pp. 183–84.

Adams, The Protestant Cause, p. 454.

Ibid., p. 461.

Ibid., p. 462.

Nicolette Mout, ‘Der Winterkönig im Exil’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, 15 (1988), pp. 261–62.

Dictionary of National Biography, under the appropriate headings.

See, for example, The New Starr of the North, Shining upon the Victorious King of Sweden, London, 1632, pp. 35–26.

See, for instance, Epigrammata Dicata Virtuti, Honori, et Felicitati Serenissimi, Potentissimique Principis ac Domini, Domini Gustavi Adolphi, Suecorum, Gothorum, et Wandalorum Regis, etc. In Pralium ad Lipsiam commissum etc. Contantiae itidem ac Magnitudini animi Serenissimi, Potentissimique Principis D. Friderici Palatini, Bohemorum Regis, etc. Aliorumque Herum Epigrammata Sacrata, a diuersis autoribus, Frankfurt, 1632, esp. pp. 30–34; or anonymous pamphlet signed Von B.S.P. Vertriebenen Pharrhern im Nahmen aller Exulierenden Churpfältz. Kirchen Diener, Vivat Rex Sveciae. Schwedischer Triumph unnd Dancksagung, 1631, unpaginated.

The Pallatinates ioy or the meeting of the King of Bohemia with the King of Sweden, London, 1632; A Mournefull Lamentacion on the death of the king of Sweden and king of Bohemia, in Hyder E. Rollins, ed., ‘An Analytical Index to the Ballad‐Entries (1557–1709) in the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London’, Studies in Philology, 21 (1924), p. 160, no. 1830.

John Taylor, ‘An English‐mans love to Bohemia: with a friendly Farewell to all the noble Souldiers that goe from great britaine to that honourable Expedition. As also, The names of the most part of the Kings, Princes, Dukes, Marquisses, Earles, Bishops and other friendly Confederates, that are combined with the Bohemian part’, London, 1620.

On the ballad see also Josef Polišenský, Anglie a Bílá Hora [England and the White Mountain], Praha, 1949, pp. 128–29.

‘Gallants to Bohemia’, in Hyder E. Rollins, ed., A Pepysian Garland, Cambridge, 1922, p. 418. For a concise analysis of the ballad, Josef Polišenský, ‘Gallants to Bohemia’, Slavonic and East European Review, 25 (1947), pp. 391–404.