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10 - ‘Elizabeth the Forgotten’: The Life of Princess Elizabeth Stuart (1635–1650)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2020
Summary
Abstract
Elizabeth Stuart (1635–1650), the second daughter of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, influenced both Royalists and Parliamentarians as a symbol of prosperity, piety, and scholarly excellence despite effectively being Parliament’s hostage during the first half of the English Civil War. She was a persistent force for causes she believed in, influencing politics with both her private writing and public countenance. This influence was even remarked on by political foes including Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. Tragically, Elizabeth did not survive her imprisonment, dying days before Parliament ordered her release, and she was mourned by her family, her public, and the rest of Europe's monarchies as a great loss. The modern historical narrative, however, has largely forgotten her, and recognising her influence enhances our understanding of the English Civil War.
Keywords: female influence; royal images; historical revisionism; English Civil War; Royalists and Parliamentarians
For two centuries, the chancel of St. Thomas's Church in Newport, on the Isle of Wight, held the obscured remains of Princess Elizabeth Stuart (1635–1650), marked only by the letters ‘E.S.’ carved into the wall nearby. In 1856, during the church's renovations, Queen Victoria ordered that a monument be erected as ‘a token of respect for her virtues, and of sympathy for her misfortunes’. Around the same time as Victoria's public honouring of the Stuart princess, Elizabeth was (re)introduced to popular culture: Mary Anne Everett Green published the multi-volumed Lives of the Princesses of England: From the Norman Conquest in 1855, which was followed in 1888 by Agnes Strickland's Lives of the Tudor and Stuart Princesses. Both texts included biographical chapters on Elizabeth that detailed her life as a child in the royal court, as well as her actions and involvement during the English Civil War. However, Elizabeth is still a figure on the edge of Stuart scholarship, and is routinely absent from accounts of the period. She is absent from the recent Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen, and her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is no more detailed than the Wikipedia article about her life. The most recent work to include an account of her life is Linda Porter's Royal Renegades.
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- Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe , pp. 203 - 224Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019