been, 'Where is my dear sister?' (Gardiner, ii. 158). The funeral was swiftly followed by her wedding. Mrs. Green is of opinion that the stanzas printed (in Nugæ Antiquæ, ii. 411) as 'written by the Princess Elizabeth,' and by her 'given to Lord Harington of Exton, her preceptor, were composed under the influence of her great sorrow. Her wedding was fixed for the first day of the carnival week of 1613. Nearly every prominent writer of the day contributed to the rejoicings, among them experienced authors of masks, such as Chapman, Beaumont, Campion, and Heywood; besides Donne and Wither, and of course university wits innumerable. Ben Jonson was absent in France, but his co-operation was not indispensable to Inigo Jones, and Sir Francis Bacon and John Taylor, the Water-Poet, 'contrived' their devices themselves. But there was some anxiety in the midst of these festivities; nor was it a wholly idle curiosity which noted that there was missing among the representatives of foreign powers invited to the wedding the Spanish ambassador, who 'was, or would be sick.' (For ample accounts of the wedding festivities and subsequent festivities in England and Germany, and a bibliography of the literature of the subject, see Nichols, Progresses of James I, ii. 463-626, and the other authorities cited by Mrs. Green.)
At last, towards the end of April 1613, the young electress and her husband found themselves on board the Prince Roval, and made a joyous entrv into Heidelberg 17 June of the same year. For many a day afterwards Elizabeth's life continued to be one of festivities, masquerades, banquets, and huntings. The fashions of life which she brought with her, and the rate of her and her husband's expenditure, effected something like a revolution in the social life of the palatinate (see Häusser, Pfalz, i. 270 seqq.) Her personal establishment, numbering 374 souls, was unheard of in its vastness, and her income caused only less astonishment than her extravagance. Her husband had inherited a tendency to self-indulgence, and a love of building in particular. Yet there was much of real refinement in the life of the young electoral couple, who moreover set a consistent example of conjugal affection. On 2 Jan. 1614 their eldest son was born. One sickly life alone stood between this child, Frederick Henry, and the thrones of the three kingdoms; fifteen years afterwards, when his parents were exiles in Holland, he was drowned in his father's presence off Haarlem in the Zuider Zee. Their second son, Charles Lewis (afterwards elector palatine), was born at Heidelberg 24 Dec. 1617, and their eldest daughter, Elizabeth, 26 Dec. 1618. On the death of the Emperor Matthias the Bohemian estates, after deposing Archduke Ferdinand of Styria from the Bohemian throne as successor to which he had been previously accepted, chose in his place the Elector Palatine Frederick V. This occurred 26 Aug., only two days before Ferdinand himself was elected emperor at Frankfort. Frederick afterwards accounted for his acceptance of the Bohemian crown by describing himself as having taken this step in obedience to an inner voice, which he thought spoke the will of God. But it has. generally been supposed that it was the Electress Elizabeth who determined her husband's action. The assumption is altogether unsupported by evidence (see Opel, p. 294; Soltl, i. 153; Feder, Sophie Churfürstinn von Hannover, 2). As to her having taken any part in the deliberations which preceded Frederick's acceptance of the crown, we possess the unexceptionable testimony of her grand-daughter Elizabeth, duchess of Orleans, the most candid of women, to the fact that at the time of the offer of the Bohemian crown to her husband the electress 'knew nothings whatever about the matter, and in those days, thought of nothing but plays, masquerades, and the reading of romances' (see the quotation from her Letters ed. Menzel, ap. Häusser, ii. 311 n.) On the other hand, when consulted by the elector before the step was actually taken, she wrote to him that she left the decision in his hands, but at the same time declared her readiness, should he accept, to follow the divine call, and she added that she would willingly in case of need pledge her jewels and everything else she possessed in the world (Söltl, u.s.)
Her difficulties began at Prague, where she arrived with her husband 31 Oct. 1619 and was crowned three days after him, 7 Nov. There is no direct proof that she had any share in the mistakes of commission by which King Frederick made his mistakes of omission more glaring. Her court chaplain, Alexander Scapman (Pescheck, Geschichte der Gegenreformation in Böhmen, 1844, i. 381 n.), is not stated to have given his sanction to the iconoclasm instigated or encouraged by her husband's spiritual director, Abraham Scultetus (Schulz); in fact, there is nothing to show that she ever adopted Calvinistic views. Though in the days of her exile her children were instructed in the Heidelberg catechism, she had the services of a church of England chaplain (see her Unpublished Letters of 1656, ed. Evans, pp. 242-3). Such offence as she gave at Prague was probably due to an inborn levity which she never learnt altogether to restrain; but for political diffi-
