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This chapter explores the later decades of the 19th century, when women's factory labor was no longer a novelty, and industrial and class tensions were becoming increasingly the focus of reforming writers. While working women continued to seek lives that satisfied the needs of body and spirit, middle-class women novelists and male fiction writers for the Knights of Labor offered them literary models of religious sublimation rather than the more secular salvation of intellectual culture. Educated and more affluent women, like Rebecca Harding Davis, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Louisa May Alcott — who sympathized keenly with working women's material deprivation, and who struggled to vindicate their own creative ambitions — nevertheless recommended Christianity and its otherworldly rewards rather than the mental and artistic subjectivity they were themselves trying to assert. One notable exception to the consolations of religion was Marie Howland's utopian and communitarian novel, The Familistere (1874), which challenged not only religious piety as a female virtue but also conventional attitudes towards sexuality, capitalism, and private property. In doing so, she anticipated some of the more radical working-class attitudes of the generation of immigrant women who followed her.

In order to prevent the ex-patriate community from becoming radicalised, Laud sent his protégé Sampson Johnson to The Hague to replace Griffin Higgs as Elizabeth’s chaplain. Johnson was to undermine the Puritan Samuel Balmford’s authority at the English Church at The Hague. Roe was sent to Hamburg as ambassador to ratify the Franco-Stuart treaty, where he would negotiate for two years, accomplishing little – secret negotiations, facilitated by Sir Balthazar Gerbier, whom Elizabeth used as her intelligencer but who betrayed her in this instance, were ongoing at Brussels, designed to persuade Charles to enter into league with the Habsburgs. Learning of the negotiations, the French and Swedish ambassadors at Hamburg refused to take Roe’s offers seriously. The French even took Charles Louis prisoner in October 1639, when he was en route to take command of the late Bernard of Saxe-Weimar’s army. The Bishops' Wars began in Scotland amidst much anti-Catholic fervour. William II married Mary Stuart, the French released Charles Louis. Elizabeth’s son, Gustavus Adolphus, died, and the Prinsenhof was finally closed. Elizabeth sent Charles Louis to England in the hope of drumming up support for the Palatinate – Parliament was in session. Parliament’s power struggle with Charles continued with the execution of Strafford. Imperial Diet at Ratisbonne comes with the promise from Charles, underlined by English and Scottish parliament, that if this failed, he would go to war. Roe sent as ambassador. Rupert released. Rupert sails to England to fetch Mary and Henrietta Maria. The Wars of the Three Kingdoms began.

1626 was a dangerous year for those wedded to Elizabeth’s cause. The first major loss was Christian of Brunswick, who succumbed to illness aged 26. Elizabeth bore this badly, lapsing into a melancholy exacerbated by the ill-health of her most recent child, Henriette. Having lost one champion, another, Bethlen Gabor of Transylvania, made peace with the Emperor. To make matters worse, Mansfeld’s battered body also gave up the fight. When Christian IV was defeated at Lütter, everyone blamed Buckingham for diverting resources from The Hague Alliance. Buckingham had compounded the Cadiz debacle, supporting the Huguenots under siege at Isle de Rhé. Intending to forge a coalition with the French, he merely precipitated a Franco-Stuart war. While Charles I tried to bolster Danish forces, Buckingham’s subsequent assassination surprised nobody. Elizabeth employed Miereveldt and Honthorst to help charm Charles with politically motivated portraiture. Charles opened peace talks with the French and the Spanish; his wife Henrietta Maria finally produced a male heir. Frederick took his firstborn Frederick Henry to view a Spanish treasure ship recently captured by the Dutch, but his barge capsized and Frederick Henry drowned. But as the Franco-Stuart war was ended by treaty and the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus opened a new phase in the Thirty Years War, landing at Usedom and winning a string of dramatic victories against Imperial forces, the Palatinate was within touching distance. Frederick joined Gustavus in battle, but as his inferior. Just as Elizabeth opened new negotiations to recover her dower Frankenthal, Gustavus died.

Compelled to try to find alternative ways to raise money and placate the Swedes, Elizabeth concocted two schemes: claiming her share of their Danish grandmother's inheritance promised her by Charles; pressuring the Landgrave of Hesse to protect Heidelberg & Frankenthal because of her previous assistance in keeping his regiments together. Both failed; the French moved in. Roe advised her to seek Laud’s support. Elizabeth sent Charles Louis to the Stuart court to ensure that he reached his majority, and thus the Electorship, in full view. Rupert followed soon after. Their true aim, to raise an army, failed, and Charles refused them permission to return to the Republic to gain military experience with the Prince of Orange. Arundel led an embassy to Ratisbonne and Vienna, but refused to countenance a partial restitution – the Protestant Princes had signed the Peace of Prague which ignored the interests of the House Palatine, so Elizabeth frustrated all negotiations. Arundel viewed Honthorst’s ‘Triumph’. Charles tried to neutralise Rupert and Charles Louis by proposing expeditions to the Caribbean and Madagascar (he could fund fleets without recourse to Parliament), but finally ‘released’ his two nephews in June 1637, after the Franco-Stuart treaty was signed. Princess Elisabeth’s Polish match was broken off. Frederick Henry finally won Breda. Charles Louis sought to lead the Hessian army, and Elizabeth spent her cash reserves buying Meppen for him. Charles Louis joined with Lieutenant-General King's army, but they were crushed at Vlotho/Lemgo, with Rupert and Craven captured.

Frederick V’s unexpected death was accompanied by fear that Elizabeth’s grief would overcome her, and that the Palatinate would never be recovered from the Swedes. Charles I sent for her, but she refused the invitation, citing familial obligations. Now a widow, Elizabeth needed to fight for her children to save the Palatinate alone, and asserted her position through art and diplomacy, but she had a rival – Amalia von Solms, once her lady-in-waiting, now Princess of Orange. The two courts struggled for dominance. Elizabeth created a cult of widowhood, dressing in black for the rest of her life, and from this moment would fight her battles via her secretaries, also absorbing Frederick's secretariat into her own, doubling its size. The Swedes demanded 6,000 Imperial dollars for her dower Frankenthal as compensation for war expenses. Sir Francis Nethersole, her secretary for foreign affairs, attempted to raise a voluntary contribution in England for this purpose. Charles, troubled that this contribution was not kept more low-key and afraid public knowledge would put pressure upon him to recall parliament, attacked Nethersole. Nethersole was first pardoned, but thereafter incarcerated when Elizabeth again tried to raise money to buy back the Palatinate in order to avoid embracing the French protection. She was forced to dismiss Nethersole to obtain his release. Her supporters such as Sir Thomas Roe felt threatened and her other secretaries became pariahs at the Stuart court. By incapacitating her secretaries, Charles drew the sting from her party's implicit challenge to his authority.

Her ally the Landgravine of Hesse died, but Elizabeth could not afford mourning clothes. The Hague had become a centre of elite entertainment under Elizabeth's influence, with masques (Ballet de la Carmesse, with soldiers of the Dutch Army dancing) and literary salons (such as L'Ordre de l'union de la Joye, with Huygens and Johan de Witt). Many of the Stuart contingent nevertheless left The Hague, feeling less than welcome following the outbreak of the First Anglo-Dutch War. Rupert and Maurice were surprised by a hurricane close to the Virgin Islands - Maurice drowned; Elizabeth hung onto her hope that he had survived for years. Elizabeth believed she could return to Germany, if not to Frankenthal than to Heidelberg Castle, where rooms were being prepared for her. In 1653 she informed the States of Holland of her plans, and 164 creditors presented their accounts. Another embassy was sent to parliament with the request to clear her debts. In 1654, the States of Holland finally granted her a pension. Elizabeth did not want to leave without settling her debts, or retrieving her jewels from the pawnshops. Charles Louis wanted to empty Rhenen yet further. Louise Hollandine converted to Catholicism. Cromwell died. Elizabeth abandoned plans to return to Germany as Charles Louis had so many domestic troubles (he was asking for a divorce to marry below his station). After spending a week with her nephews in Brussels, she wanted to return to England, now that the stage for the Restoration had been set.

In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Americans’ vision of heaven changed dramatically, from one centered on God to one focused on humans. The subjects of heavenly recognition, the fellowship of the saints with loved ones and the heroes of the Bible and church history, and infant salvation received much more emphasis than in earlier (and later) periods. The picture of heaven as a celestial home, largely modeled on the most cherished features of the Victorian home, became widely accepted. Personal identity, warm communion, and pleasurable interactions of family and friends loomed large in the biblical analyses of Henry Harbaugh and other ministers and the imagined worlds of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, and other novelists. Almost all mid-nineteenth-century Protestants agreed that in order to spend eternity with God, individuals must repent of their sins and accept Jesus as their savior.

After five months on the run, Frederick and Elizabeth arrived in The Hague where the States General rented them a house - for three days. The couple, however, stayed put, showing no sign of leaving for England: the Stuart resident ambassador, Sir Dudley Carleton, was under instructions to keep them in the Dutch Republic. They furnished their court with leftovers from the English Royal Wardrobe, as well as items bought in Amsterdam. For Frederick, The Hague was the base from which he could organise his military campaigns and expedite a return to the Palatinate, if not Bohemia. Frederick put up a diplomatic facade, signing an armistice while on the run as James demanded, while simultaneously engaging mercenaries who had no truce with the Emperor and could fight under their different banners. The two most important of these, Ernest von Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick, did not get along, but their joint efforts soon led to results: by April 1622, Frederick had travelled in disguise to the Palatinate to join his men, while Elizabeth gave birth to another daughter, Louise Hollandine. A series of disasters followed: the Battle of Höchst in which Elizabeth’s lady-in-waiting Elizabeth Dudley lost her husband of weeks, and the losses of Heidelberg and Mannheim. Meanwhile, to make matters even worse in Elizabeth’s eyes, James had started negotiations with Isabella Clara Eugenia, the governess of the Spanish Netherlands, to give Elizabeth’s dower Frankenthal into her protection. When Frederick returned to The Hague, beaten, only Frankenthal remained.

This introductory chapter discusses how Elizabeth Stuart is misrepresented in historiography, with biographers often taking her words or the words of those who knew her out of context, or simply parroting Catholic propaganda. It also reflects on what it entails to write a woman’s biography. In the early modern period, royal women wielded a lot of power, yet still had to operate within tight constraints. The queen may have set events in motion, but their ultimate agency would have to be asserted through men, usually kin. This means that writing the biography of a woman such as Elizabeth, one ends up writing shadow biographies of several men: that of her father James VI/I, her brother Charles I, her husband Frederick V, her kin and mercenaries, Christian of Brunswick and Ernest, Count of Mansfeld. Mary Anne Everett Green’s biography has been invaluable as a source and as a template, but Nadine Akkerman has, through the years spent in editing The Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, assembled a far more substantial body of letters and documents than either she or any of Elizabeth’s other biographers had to draw from: for instance, over 1,000 letters were previously untranscribed, while 125 letters written in code had never before been deciphered. This has allowed Akkerman to paint an entirely new picture of Elizabeth Stuart as the politically active, savvy, and witty individual she was. Rather than repeating the malign cliché of calling her the Winter Queen, Akkerman shows how she was, in truth, the Queen of Hearts.

Elizabeth Stuart was crowned Queen of Bohemia in Prague on 7 November 1619, three days after she had watched her husband Frederick V become the country’s king. Frederick spent his time collecting oaths of allegiance from across the region, leaving Elizabeth alone in Prague for at least half of their reign. The chapter then details the events that led to their coronation, including the Defenestration of Prague and the Bohemian rebellion. The death of the incumbent King of Bohemia, and Holy Roman Emperor, Matthias, precipitated a diplomatic crisis within the Empire as Frederick, asserting his power and obligation as Elector Palatine and Imperial Vicar, sought to ensure that Matthias’s successor as King of Bohemia, Ferdinand, was not automatically installed as Emperor. A combination of Ferdinand’s behaviour and Frederick’s refusal to sanction the turning of the Imperial throne into a de facto hereditary monarchy, even though he accepted that Ferdinand would be elected Emperor, had unexpected consequences. The Bohemians de-selected Ferdinand and asked Frederick to be their King. He accepted, much against the advice and wishes of Elizabeth’s father, James, and without the urging of Elizabeth, as is so often assumed. Though their accession was broadly popular, owing to the sense that they were at last fulfilling their destiny as the saviours of European Protestantism, it was not without its problems – not least the fact that in accepting the crown, Frederick had turned a localised, Bohemian rebellion into an Imperial affair. They were now at war with the Emperor.

This short coda discusses how the Civil War figures in the narrative of chance’s rise in America. Though often taken to announce the broad emergence of chance in American thought and culture, the Civil War is actually less of a dramatic break, not only because discourses of chance had already emerged (and indeed, shaped experiences of the War) but also because providential thinking powerfully survived in the postbellum period. Taking Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s The Gates Ajar as a case study, the coda suggests how America continues to grapple with the possibilities of chance.

On 25 February 1623, at Ratisbonne, the Emperor publically announced that the Palatinate Electorship had been transferred to Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria. On 29 March 1623, James signed Frankenthal away to Isabella with a clause that she would return it after 18 months if there was not a full peace treaty between Frederick and the Spanish. Charles and Buckingham began their infamous trip to Spain to fetch the Spanish Infanta, Charles’s intended bride under the Spanish Match, back to England. In doing so, Charles exposed himself to the possibility of injury, kidnap or worse, not least as his sister was still at war with Spain. Rumours began that Elizabeth was being suggested as a replacement for the ailing James and the absent Charles, and several of the more politically active ladies of the Stuart court made surreptitious trips to The Hague – James was refusing requests for permission to visit his daughter, so they asked for permission to visit Spa to take the waters instead. With the Spanish Match apparently concluded and Frankenthal lost, Frederick and Elizabeth made plans to settle permanently in the United Provinces, establishing a combined court and academy for their children, the Prinsenhof in Leiden. But the Spanish Match collapsed, an event celebrated by a masque written by Constantijn Huyghens, and promptly rewritten by Elizabeth herself, and by other celebrations which led to Elizabeth being accused from the pulpit of licentious behaviour, and of this behaviour leading to the failure of a dyke and several fatalities.

Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria, was afraid of Habsburg expansionism and proposed a counter offer to the Palatine-Imperial match: instead of Frederick Henry, heir of the Palatinate, marrying a daughter of the Emperor, he should marry Bavaria’s niece. The monk Francesco della Rota took this proposal straight to London instead of to The Hague. It floundered. Parliament voted in favour of war with Spain, on condition that it would be a purely naval conflict. The Dutch were keen to support such a war against their enemy, with ships sailing out under Elizabeth’s flag, if the Stuart kingdoms indeed gathered their own fleet. James’s declaration of war never came, however. Meanwhile, having convinced Louis XIII of France to subsidize his military actions in the Palatinate as long as James also sponsored him, Mansfeld went to London intent on levying troops. James agreed. The Spanish ambassador at the Stuart court was irritated by the bellicose attitude against the Spanish at court and accused Elizabeth, her secretary Sir Francis Nethersole, and court favourite Buckingham of having purposely derailed the Spanish Match in order to effect a marriage between Frederick Henry, Prince Palatine, and Buckingham’s daughter Mary. This, he suggested, was so that they would see their offspring on the throne some day. (That this scheme entailed Charles never marrying was apparently seen as within Buckingham’s power to effect, too). James took the side of his daughter (and his favourite) and dismissed all Spanish diplomats from his court.

Charles Louis signed the Peace of Westphalia, consenting to a partial restitution, the one result Elizabeth had tried to prevent all these years. Charles Stuart authorised James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, to subdue the Covenanters by force. Amalia von Solms and William II supported a Presbyterian alliance. Elizabeth disagreed, hoping that through Montrose the Scottish Covenant could be avoided. Amalia wanted Charles Stuart for Albertine Agnes, Elizabeth wanted him for Sophia. Rupert, blockaded into Cork, escaped with 7 ships, setting sail for Portugal. Yet Charles signed his agreement with the Scottish kirk and parliament at Breda - abandoning Montrose who was hanged. Elizabeth, disillusioned, abandoned the plan to marry Sophia to Charles and sent her to Heidelberg to join with Charles Louis instead. Charles Louis demanded the tapestries etc. from Rhenen. William II died unexpectedly. Elizabeth, who wanted nothing to do with Parliament following her brother’s execution, turned to the States General for pensions. She became Honthorst's debtor. Both the States of Holland and the States General tried to get money from Parliament for her, unsuccessfully. Elizabeth sent Edward to Germany, as news had arrived Frankenthal had been given back to Charles Louis but also out of harm’s way as he had offended Cromwell's ambassadors in The Hague. Henriette married a prince of Transylvania, amidst arguments between Elizabeth and Charles Louis who did not want his mother’s title Queen of Bohemia mentioned in the marriage contract. Both Henriette and her husband died within the year.

This chapter considers several thwarted plots against the Stuarts, which had a particular affect on Elizabeth’s relationship with her brother Henry. First, the Main and Bye plots - a pair of overlapping plots whose combined intention was to overthrow King James in favour of his first cousin, the English-born Lady Arbella Stuart, and install Thomas Grey, 15th Baron Grey of Hilton, as de facto king, to secure greater religious toleration for Catholics in England – which would have seen Elizabeth killed. The plotters included Sir Walter Raleigh and, more importantly, Lord Cobham, husband of Elizabeth’s governess Lady Kildare. Though the plots failed, they resulted in Lady Kildare’s removal from office and Elizabeth and Henry being separated for their own safety – the court at Oatlands was dissolved and Elizabeth moved to Coombe Abbey near Coventry, the residence of the Haringtons. The second plot was the notorious Gunpowder Plot which would have had Elizabeth crowned queen: the confession of Guy Fawkes showed beyond doubt that although the primary aim had been to blow up parliament with James and Henry in attendance, this was merely a clearing of the way, as ‘they intended that the king’s daughter the Lady Elizabeth should have succeeded’. The plot showed that having Elizabeth in the country was not safe either, and so she was moved closer to the court, to Kew. This enabled her and Henry to visit each other regularly and even share their education. They behaved and were in many ways treated as if they were twins.

With Henry dead, James was keen that Elizabeth’s marriage go ahead as planned, not least as many of his subjects were now unhappy to see their princess, who they considered a far more likely heir than the fragile Charles, leave the country. Frederick and Elizabeth were thus married in Banqueting House in a ‘private’ ceremony on 6 January. Three days before their marriage’s solemnization on Valentine’s Day, the king, the young couple, and practically the entire population of London watched a series of spectacular fireworks displays on the Thames. These were designed to connect Princess Elizabeth with English Protestant chivalry and the late Queen Elizabeth's fervent Protestantism - the programme drew heavily from Edmund Spenser's allegorical celebration of Elizabeth I, The Faerie Queene. The following day was occupied by a jingoistic mock sea-battle; the day after that was a day of rest originally intended for a masque, then un-titled but now known as The Masque of Truth. The cancelled masque was pro-Protestant, emphasizing Britain's alignment with the Palatine, showing his Calvinism as the true faith that would convert Catholic powers. The Protestant propaganda shows just how divided the country had become, as many of the faithful appeared to have more belief in Elizabeth than they did in their king. The Palatine match had turned Elizabeth Stuart into their new warrior queen, a mystical heir to both Henry and the late queen Elizabeth, her godmother. Finally, the chapter explores the wedding itself and its costs, both in financial and political terms.

After the wedding, Elizabeth and Frederick began the journey to his ancestral home, Heidelberg, and were entertained royally in the United Provinces. After persuading the States General to join the Protestant Union, Frederick left Elizabeth in the United Provinces to prepare Heidelberg Castle for her arrival. Heidelberg had accommodated two, complementary, households since the death of Elector Friedrich IV in 1610: that of the Administrator of the Lower Palatinate, the Duke of Zweibrücken-Veldenz, who would govern until Frederick came of age, and that of Frederick’s mother, the Electress-Dowager Louise Juliana. The arrival of Frederick and Elizabeth in 1613 introduced two new households into the equation – to make matters more confusing, Elizabeth’s own household was riven along factional lines; the majority of her ladies-in-waiting were English, while most of her gentlemen were Scots. The couple failed to agree on matters of precedence, as Elizabeth believed that her status as a royal-born princess accorded her a higher status than anyone else at court, including Frederick. There were also financial problems, and Hans Meinhard Schomberg, the head of Elizabeth’s household, tried hard to solve both the financial and precedence issues. Elizabeth soon delivered the Palatinate a male heir while Frederick’s first decision on reaching his majority was whether or not to go to war. Elizabeth became increasingly reliant on Schomberg, and his being called away to fight at the newly reignited Jülich-Berg & Cleves crisis, along with her husband falling prey to fits of melancholy, left her at the mercy of her mother-in-law.

Elizabeth’s son Edward married Anne de Gonzaga, a French-Italian noblewoman he met while at the French court, to great scandal, not least because, in the process, he converted to Catholicism. In The Hague, the conflict between Elizabeth and Amalia continued apace, as both sought to win the hand of Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg for their respective daughters Louise Hollandine and Louise Henriette – Amalia won this round. The House of Commons agreed to renew Elizabeth’s allowance if she dismiss Johnson (Laud had recently lost his head) and replace him with a chaplain of their choosing, William Cooper. Elizabeth did so willingly, but secretly engaged another, George Morley. Charles I was taken prisoner by Parliament, and Rupert and Maurice both fled the country. In The Hague, Elizabeth’s son Philip attracted outrage and his mother’s ire by murdering her court favourite, Count L’Espinay. Descartes and Elisabeth discuss the nature of the passions, and whether an individual can be held responsible for their actions when in their grip. Elizabeth cannot forgive Philip, however, and his sister’s attempts to mediate for him lead to the two women falling out – Elisabeth is sent to German relatives. The Prince of Orange, Frederick Henry, carries out his final military movements before his death in March 1647. The new Prince, William II, opposed his mother Amalia over the Peace of Westphalia. Elizabeth’s nephew Charles Stuart arrived in The Hague and the king her brother is executed by Parliament.

This chapter explains how the accession of James VI of Scotland to the English crown transformed his two elder children into hotly desired marriage material, and how proposals were received from all quarters, many of which were presented as double marriages for Henry and Elizabeth. It explains why out of the many candidates, James chose Frederick V, even above the King of Spain. James had become embroiled in the Jülich-Berg and Cleves crisis, and was supporting the Protestant Union, and thus by extension its leader, the Elector Palatine, with an army. When the Elector died unexpectedly young, his son, Frederick V, was transformed from also-ran into the most eligible of bachelors. With the King of France having been assassinated, James felt the need to counter France having allied itself with Spain through a double marriage treaty: he joined the Protestant Union for six years, as well as promising his daughter to the Elector-Palatine in waiting. Elizabeth moved from Kew to Whitehall in preparation for the arrival of Frederick V, with whom she had begun exchanging courtship letters as was demanded by the duty she owed to her father. Shortly after Frederick’s arrival in England with hundreds of courtiers, and while the court revelled in the upcoming wedding, Henry fell ill and died. Elizabeth was inconsolable. A period of mourning began, but the wedding preparations continued.