CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE PALATINE FAMILY. THERE are few women who have inspired in their contemporaries so strong an interest as Elizabeth, the daughter of James the First, better known by the appellation of "the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia." Born to experience the vicissitudes of fortune, she was destined also to be the primum mobile of the most extraordinary and long protracted war that had ever arisen in Modern Europe; but of which the results were no less salutary than the origin had been calamitous. If the German matrons had cause to mourn for those hostilities which the ambition or enthusiasm of the British princess had kindled, their sons might rejoice in the religious freedom and toleration which were thus nobly purchased for themselves and their children. As the history of Elizabeth's life is indissolubly connected with that of her wedded consort, it appears necessary to prefix a brief account, of the family into which she was by marriage transplanted, and which has since given a new dynasty to the British throne. The Palatine princes gloried in a descent which, if certain courtly antiquaries might be credited, was derived from a royal stock that flourished in Bavaria three hundred years before the era of Charlemagne.* By modern historians those extraordinary * (See the extract from Stowe at the end of the volume.) The more accurate Shannat, in his Histoire Abrégée de la Maison Palatine, traces the descent to a family that flourished under the Carlovingian princes. "It would argue extreme ignorance of history," says Spanheim, in his Mémoires de l'Electrice Louise Juliane," not to know that the Palatine House is one of the most antient and honourable in Europe." pretensions have been reduced to a dynasty that took its rise under the Carlovingian kings, whose authority and title were derived from the hereditary office of the Count Palatine Comptroller, or Seneschal of the royal household. In the ninth century, this officer was transferred to the provinces bordering on the Rhine, which, by the annexation of other contiguous lands, insensibly formed an extensive and flourishing principality. Leaving the remote origin of the Palatine House to the antiquarian whom it may interest, it is incontestable that the Counts Palatine of the Rhine were dependent on the Emperor alone, and disclaimed any intermediate authority; but it is no less true, that, from domestic functions attached to the court of Charlemagne, originated the personal and royal prerogatives afterwards assumed by those princes in the empire. The first dynasty ended in Herman, a count of Scheyren*, who having incurred the dis * The sepulchres of the Counts of Scheyren attested the antiquity of their family. In those vaults |