Elizabeth married Frederick V, Prince–Elector of the Rhenish Palatinate, in 1613. Five years later the largely Protestant estates of Bohemia rebelled against their Catholic King Ferdinand, triggering the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. Frederick was asked to assume the crown of Bohemia; he accepted the offer and was crowned on 4 November 1619, as Frederick I. The estates chose Frederick because he was the leader of the Protestant Union – a military alliance founded by his father (Frederick IV) – and hoped for the support of Elizabeth's father. But James opposed the takeover of Bohemia from the Habsburgs, and Frederick's allies in the Protestant Union failed to support him militarily by signing the Treaty of Ulm (1620).
Bohemia was already struggling to finance a war against the Holy Roman Empire, and Frederick's popularity was not helped by the fact that neither he nor his wife spoke Czech. His derisive sobriquet, 'the Winter King', originated in an Imperial pamphlet published in 1619 – presumably suggesting that his reign would be over by the following Spring. Frederick's supporters attempted to respond by portraying him as a 'Winter Lion' who would defend the crown of Bohemia against troublemakers and liars, and claiming that he would also prove to be a 'Summer Lion'. In fact he managed to hang on until November 1620, so he did indeed see out not only the Winter and Spring of that year but its Summer as well. He was eventually forced to abdicate however, after the Bohemian army suffered a crushing defeat in the Battle of White Mountain, fought just outside Prague, on 8 November 1620.
Elizabeth bore thirteen children, nine of whom survived into adulthood. The Act of Settlement, passed in 1701, disqualified Roman Catholics – or anyone married to one – from succeeding to the English and Scottish thrones (which were merged, although the Union of the two countries was still six years away). It settled the succession on Sophia, the Electress of Hanover – the twelfth of Elizabeth and Frederick's thirteen children, and the youngest to survive childhood – and her Protestant descendants. Sophia was 70 years old when the Act was passed, and she died in 1714 aged 83. When Queen Anne died less than two months later, the British crown passed to Sophia's eldest son, George – the first monarch in the House of Hanover.
© Haydn Thompson 2021