Elizabeth Stuart: A Lost Girl

Elizabeth Stuart (born 28 December 1635)

The daughter of the ill-fated Charles I, king of England, and his queen, Henrietta Maria, Elizabeth Stuart didn't have much of a life. 

Van Dyck's 1637 painting of Elizabeth Stuart
and her younger sister, Anne,
who died in 1640, at the age of three

It might all have turned out quite differently for her--in 1636, while the Stuart princess was still an infant, her grandmother, the French regent Marie de' Medici was interested in arranging a match between the baby and William, the prince of Orange (the future William II of Orange). 

Although King Charles was not impressed with the prospects of such an alliance and rejected it for Elizabeth, he later accepted it for his eldest, Mary Henrietta, in 1641, after other marriage negotiations fell through and his economic situation grew dire.

After the outbreak of the English Civil Wars in 1642, Elizabeth Stuart and her younger brother, Henry, duke of Gloucester, were taken into the "care" of Parliament, placed into the hands of a series of "guardians" assigned to the task. 

In 1643, she was moved to Chelsea, where she was tutored by a woman we have met before, the scholar Bathsua Makin; with Makin, the princess  studied classical and modern languages and mathematics. In 1644, when Elizabeth was nine years old, Makin wrote about the princess's accomplishments, and although it is not absolutely clear, she may have remained as the girl's tutor until Elizabeth's death. 

Meanwhile, in 1647, Elizabeth and her brother were allowed to spend two days with their father, who had been captured and was being held by parliamentary forces. They had more occasion for visits when the king was moved to Hampton Court palace, but after his escape, there would be no more time spent with him.

In 1648, parliament acted to reduce Elizabeth's household, a decision she protested in a letter: "My Lords," she wrote, "I account myself very miserable that I must have my servants taken from me and strangers put to me. You promised me that you would have a care for me; and I hope you will show it in preventing so great a grief as this would be to me. I pray my lords consider of it, and give me cause to thank you, and to rest. Your loving friend, Elizabeth." 

An engraving of Elizabeth Stuart,
after 1645

The princess was moved to St. James's, where she was held in close captivity. After her father's trial and condemnation, she again wrote parliament, asking for permission to join her sister on the continent, in the Netherlands. Denied even that, the thirteen-year-old Elizabeth and her younger brother, were allowed to visit their father before his execution.

According to her account of this visit, she wrote that her father attempted to console his sobbing daughter. Further, 

He bid us tell my mother that his thoughts had never strayed from her, and that his love would be the same to the last. Withal, he commanded me and my brother to be obedient to her; and bid me send his blessing to the rest of my brothers and sisters, with communications to all his friends. Then, taking my brother Gloucester on his knee, he said, "Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy father's head." And Gloucester looking very intently upon him, he said again, "Heed, my child, what I say: they will cut off my head and perhaps make thee a king. But mark what I say. Thou must not be a king as long as thy brothers Charles and James do live; for they will cut off your brothers' heads when they can catch them, and cut off thy head too at the last, and therefore I charge you, do not be made a king by them." At which my brother sighed deeply, and made answer: "I will be torn in pieces first!" And these words, coming so unexpectedly from so young a child, rejoiced my father exceedingly. And his majesty spoke to him of the welfare of his soul, and to keep his religion, commanding him to fear God, and He would provide for him. Further, he commanded us all to forgive those people, but never to trust them; for they had been most false to him and those that gave them power, and he feared also to their own souls. And he desired me not to grieve for him, for he should die a martyr, and that he doubted not the Lord would settle his throne upon his son, and that we all should be happier than we could have expected to have been if he had lived; with many other things which at present I cannot remember.

The two children were regarded as even more of a burden after their father's execution--parliament refused the repeated offer of sanctuary in the Netherlands, and a succession of men appointed to act as their guardians rejected the duties the job entailed. 

Elizabeth found some respite under the care of Robert Sidney and his wife Dorothy Percy, who extended kindness to the girl. But even this didn't last--in 1650, when her elder brother, who would one day become Charles II, entered Scotland, the frightened English parliamentarians moved Elizabeth to the Isle of Wight, despite her pleas of ill health. 

She developed pneumonia and died on 8 September 1650, shortly after the move to Wight. She was fourteen years old.

When she was eleven years old, am ambassador from France had called her a "budding young beauty" who had "grace, dignity, intelligence and sensibility." But when her remains were examined in the nineteenth-century, it could be seen that she had suffered from rickets, resulting in shoulder and back deformities that would have made it difficult for her to walk--the result, surely, of the deprivations she suffered.

(Henry, duke of Gloucester, managed to survive his trials and tribulations, eventually reuniting with his older brothers, Charles and James, on the continent. He was with his brothers when Charles was restored to the throne, but he died shortly thereafter of smallpox. As he lay dying, his mother, Henrietta Maria, refused to see him because he had withstood her efforts to convert him to Catholicism. Family values. Sheesh.)

You may be interested in this BBC History Extra podcast, in which historian Linda Porter discusses the unhappy fate of Charles I's "left behind" children--click  here.

For a post on Elizabeth Stuart's sister, Mary Henrietta, click here.

Christine of France, Regent of Savoy

Marie-Christine of Bourbon, duchess of Savoy (died 27 December 1663)

Marie-Christine of Bourbon, known more simply as Christine of France, was the daughter of Henry IV of France and his second queen, the much-maligned Marie de' Medici. She was born on 10 February 1606, the third of their six children.

A 1633 portrait of Marie-Christine,
duchess of Savoy

Christine's elder sister, Elisabeth, and her younger, Henrietta Maria, both became queens--Elisabeth became the queen of Spain, Henrietta Maria, the queen of England. 

Elisabeth would give birth to eleven children, only two of whom lived past childhood, however; she was regent of Spain for her husband, Philip IV, but she died young, only forty-one years old.

Henrietta Maria married Charles I of England, but she was forced to flee after the beginning of the English Civil Wars, and she would remain an exile in France from 1643 until her son's restoration in 1660. She returned briefly to England, but died in Paris in 1669 at the age of fifty-nine. (Christine's brother became the king of France as Louis XIII.)

While Marie-Christine did not become a queen, she married Louis Amadeus, the duke of Savoy, in 1619. Although she brought as much culture and splendor to the court of Savoy as she could--and although she maintained a close and intimate correspondence with her younger sister, the queen of England--the ambitious Marie-Christine encouraged her husband to claim the title of king of Cyprus and Jerusalem even after he succeeded as duke of Savoy in 1630. 

After her husband's death in 1637, Christine claimed the title of regent of Savoy. Her eldest son died the next year, but Christine retained her role, acting from 1638 as regent for her second son, Charles Emmanuel (b. 1634). Although she resisted French influence, her husband's younger brothers, not content with their positions after Louis Amadeus's death, began a civil war with Spanish support.

With French support, Christine was victorious, and to ensure the peace, she settled matters with her husband's brother, Maurice. Now here's another example of "traditional marriage" for you: Maurice, who had been a cardinal for thirty years (!!!), gave up his ecclesiastical title, got a dispensation from the pope, and married well. The fact that he was forty-nine and Louise-Christine was thirteen is the least of it . . . Maurice's new bride was his niece, the daughter of Louis Amadeus and Marie-Christine. (The younger of Louis Amadeus's brothers, Thomas Francis, also made peace with Christine, but there was no marriage to a niece for him--he was already married to Marie, another member of the Bourbon family. Once peace was made, he began fighting against the Spanish and for the French.)

Anyway, Christine had successfully settled matters and retained her position as regent of Savoy until 1648, when her son, at age ten, achieved his majority. Although her formal role ended, she continued to govern for him. His delayed marriage--he didn't marry until 1663--is frequently interpreted as a sign of his mother's desire to hold onto power. When he did marry, in April of 1663, Charles Emmanuel married his first cousin, Françoise Madeleine d'Orléans, the daughter of his mother's younger brother, a young woman reportedly chosen because of her docility.

A gilded bronze medallion, 1637,
Christine of France,
regent of Savoy

Marie-Christine of Bourbon, regent of Savoy, enjoyed an exuberant personal life--she took lovers and enjoyed life's luxuries and pleasures as well as wielding political power.  

Christine died on 27 December, just months after her son's marriage. She was fifty-seven years old. 

The best account of Christine of Savoy is in Robert Oresko's "Maria Giovanna Battista of Savoy-Nemours (1644-1724): Daughter, Consort, and Regent of Savoy," in Clarissa Campbell Orr's Queenship in Europe, 1660-1815: The Role of the Consort.

By the way, the subject of Oresko's essay, Marie Jeanne Baptiste, had been proposed as a bride for Charles Emmanuel in 1659, and after being "inspected" by her potential husband and his mother, she was rejected by Marie-Christine, perhaps because she did not seem so very malleable. Charles Emmanuel, however, wanted her as his wife, and after the death of his first wife, Françoise Madeleine, just a month after the death of his mother, Charles Emmanuel married Marie Jeanne, now known as Maria Giovanna. After his death in 1675, Maria Giovanna became regent of Savoy.

Maria Giovanna,
duchess and regent of Savoy,
a print from 1677

Update: To respond to the question posed below, in the comments, about the changing of Marie Jeanne Baptiste's name to Maria Giovanna--royal and noble women's names were frequently changed to reflect the language of the country of their marriage. In perhaps the most well known example, Catalina de Aragón became Catherine of Aragon when she arrived in England. Thus Marie Jeanne Baptiste's name was Italianised when she married into the House of Savoy. (Also, I originally wrote "Jeanne" as "Jean," and it's been corrected here.)

Catherine de Vivonne, the "Incomparable Arthénice"

Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet (died 2 December 1665)

Although she herself was not a writer, Madame de Rambouillet exerted a powerful influence over the development of French literature in the early-modern period. She was the central figure in establishing a literary salon that cultivated intellectual and artistic conversation, shaped a sophisticated literary language, and fostered the development of writers and thinkers. The writer Jean Regnault de Segrais would later write of her that she "corrected the wicked customs that went before her" and that she "taught politesse to all those of her time who visited her."

A seventeenth-century portrait of
Catherine de Vivonne,
marquise de Rambouillet

Catherine de Vivonne was born in Rome in 1588 (the exact date is unknown). Her father, Jean de Vivonne, was a counselor to Henry III of France and an ambassador to Spain and to Rome. Three years before Catherine's birth, her father was granted the honorific military title of marshal of France (Henry III granted eight such titles between 1574 and 1589); in 1596, Jean de Vivonne was granted the title of marquis and the lordship of Pisani, in south-west France.

Catherine de Vivonne's mother, Giulia Savelli, was from a noble Roman family, the daughter of Cristoforo Savelli, prince of Albano, and Clarice Strozzi, who was the daughter of Roberto Strozzi and Maddalena de' Medici. (At the time of her marriage to Savelli, Guilia was the widow of Luigi Orsini; she married Savelli, then the French ambassador in Rome, in 1587.)

When she was just twelve years old, Catherine de Vivonne was married to Charles d'Angennes, a member of the French court (he would later be the French ambassador to Italy and Spain), who would inherit the title of marquis of Rambouillet.

Although Catherine de Vivonne and her husband were both intimates of the French court, by then the court of Henry IV and Marie de’ Medici (indeed, Catherine de Vivonne took part in the coronation), she withdrew from the court and from participation in its ceremonies and entertainments, disgusted by its coarseness and the "brutality" of the king's behavior and appetites. 

At the former Hôtel Pisani, which she had restored in an Italian-inspired decorative scheme and renamed Hôtel de Rambouillet, she opened her home, and in particular her Chambre bleu (the Blue Room) as a refuge from the harsh realities of city and court. 

In her salon (though the word was not in use until later), social differences were put aside--in this world, intellectual merit, not rank or title, was what mattered. There men and women with royal blood mingled with writers, philosophers, and actors. Among those whom she gathered in her Blue Room and whom she influenced were women we have met before: la Grande Mademoiselle, Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier; the novelist Madame de la Fayette; the writer Madame de Sévigné; and the novelist Madeleine de Scudéry. 

l'Hôtel de Rambouillet, 
1929 illustration drawn from Gossuet's 1652 map of Paris

Catherine de Vivonne maintained her conversations at the Hôtel de Rambouillet until her death.

There is no biography of Catherine de Vivonne, at least not in English, but you will find an extended discussion of her, along with many other women famous and not-so-famous for their literary salons, in Benedetta Craveri's The Age of Conversation.

Francesca Caccini, Composer, Singer, Poet, Teacher

Francesca Caccini (born 18 September 1587)

Francesca Caccini was born into a musical family: her father, Giulio Romolo Caccini, was a performer and composer for the Medici court, particularly supported by Francesco de' Medici, grand duke of Florence; Francesca's mother, Lucia Gagnolanti, her younger sister, Settimania, and, eventually, her step-mother (Giulio's second wife), Margherita della Scala, were also noted performers, the women sometimes performing together, at times referred to as "le donne di Giulio Romo[l]o."

A cameo engraving of 
Francesca Caccini

Francesca Caccini not only received an excellent and multi-faceted musical education--as a virtuosa singer and performer, who played guitar, lute, harp, and keyboard--but also a literary education. She studied the classical languages, modern languages and literature, and mathematics. 

In 1604, she traveled with her family to the court of Henry IV of France--the queen, Marie de' Medici, offered Francesca a place as an official court singer, which included a salary and a substantial dowry.

However, Francesca was not released from the service of the grand duke, so, along with her family, she returned to the Florentine court, where she remained as a performer, composer, and teacher until 1627.

In Florence, she was also able to enjoy the patronage of two powerful women, the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine and her daughter-in-law, Maria Maddalena of Austria. Christina of Lorraine was the granddaughter of the French queen Catherine de' Medici, Maria Maddalena the granddaughter of Anna Jagiellon, queen of Poland. The two women together, as the "Tutrici," were acting as regents of Tuscany following the Francesco's death.

At the Medici court, Francesca Caccini married Giovanni Batista Signorini in 1607, giving birth to Margherita, named after Caccini's stepmother, in 1622. In 1626, after the death of her husband, Caccini left Florence for Lucca, where she married again and where, in 1628, gave birth to a son, named Tomaso Raffaelo, after his father. 

Widowed in 1634, Francesca and her children returned to Florence, where she again entered the service of the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine. Although Maria Maddalena had died in 1631, and her son, Ferdinando II had married in 1633 (making Vittoria della Rovere the new grand duchess), Christina of Lorraine remained very influential at the Medici court until her death at the end of 1637.

Caccini and her daughter performed together at the court of the grand duchess, but in 1638, worried about the effect it might have on her daughter's reputation, Francesca refused to allow her daughter to perform publicly in a commedia; in 1642 Margherita Signorini became a nun in the Franciscan convent of San Girolomo in Florence, a convent known for its music and, despite edicts of the Inquisition, for public performances by the convent's inhabitants.

There, according to one contemporary observer, "crowds raced to hear her sing divine praises by herself, and sometimes in ensemble with other skilled virgins who are her companions, notwithstanding the church's inconvenient location on a steep hill."

(In the 1660s and 1670s, Margherita Signorini taught many young women being educated in the convent, including her niece, Maria Francesca Rafaelli, as well as several young women who would go on to serve in the court of the Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere. Margheriti Signorini died in 1689.)

Francesca Caccini is "the most prolific composer of her time," and the first woman known to have composed opera. In 1618 she published The First Book of Music for One and Two Voices (II primo libro delle musiche a una e due voci), a collection of thirty-two solo songs and four duets for soprano and bass voices. But only one opera survives, The Liberation of Ruggiora from the Island of Alcina (La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina), commissioned by Maria Maddalena of Austria and first performed on 3 February, 1625. 

Francesca Caccini's date of death is unknown, though guardianship of her son was transferred to Girolomo Raffaeli, her husband's brother, in February 1645, suggesting a likely date for Caccini's death.

For Francesca Caccini's biographical entry in The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, click here. This entry includes a comprehensive list of Caccini's known works, including those that have not survived, as well as an excellent bibliography.

Nate Zuckerman's biographical essay, from Italian Women Writers, is available here. But long before the Internet made information available with the click of a mouse, I discovered Francesca Caccini in Diane Peacock Jezic's Women Composers: The Lost Tradition Found, first published by The Feminist Press in 1988.

There are also a couple of excellent performances available on YouTube, such as this one or this, an instrumental featuring guitar, violin, harpsichord, and viola da gamba.

Anne of Austria, Regent of France

Anne of Austria, queen of France (becomes regent of France, 14 May 1643)

Anne of Austria in 1650,
while she was regent,
copy of an original
by Charles Beaubrun

Okay, this is just mean, but I'm posting about Anne of Austria today, 14 May, because this is the day that her husband, King Louis XIII died, and he did not want his wife, Queen Anne, to become regent of France. 

When his health began to fail, rather than planning for Anne of Austria to become regent of France, Louis XIII attempted to limit his wife's powers and made provisions instead for a regency council. But immediately following the king's death, Anne of Austria moved to circumvent his will and, with the aid of Pierre Séguier, chancellor of France, and in coordination with the French parliament, she had his will annulled.

For nearly ten years, from 1643 to 1651, Anne of Austria ruled France as regent with the assistance and support of Cardinal Jules Mazarin as her chief minister. Much to the surprise of those who had opposed her, she supported and continued her husband's policies rather than radically altering the state of affairs. 

The eldest child of Philip III of Spain and his wife, Margaret of Austria (not the Margaret of Austria we've already heard so much about, but a member of the same Habsburg dynasty), Anne was born on 22 September 1601, an infanta of Spain and a titled archduchess of Austria. 

Anne of Austria as infanta, c. 1607
portrait by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz

She was married to Louis XIII in 1615--by the terms of their marriage contract, if Louis died early, the French were to return Anne's large dowry to the Spanish; for her part, and in order to prevent any French claims on the Spanish crown, Anne was required to renounce her succession rights to the Spanish throne (she was the eldest child)--not only her own claim on the throne, but also the claims of any children she might have by the French king. If she were left a childless widow, all was forgiven--her rights to the Spanish succession would be reinstated.

Anne's marriage to the French king was extremely unhappy--and it was also a failure, at least judging from the perspective of its dynastic purpose. Although they were both fourteen, Louis was urged to consummate the marriage, advice he ignored. And he ignored his bride. The marriage was finally consummated in 1619, but there were no children. Instead, there was a series of miscarriages between 1622 and 1631 (perhaps as many as four).

It wasn't until 1638, more than twenty years after their marriage, that a son was born. Anne of Austria was just days away from her thirty-seventh birthday. Another son followed, in 1640. 

In 1651, when her son, Louis XIV, reached his majority, Anne of Austria ended her regency, though she remained on his royal council. In 1659, when the military conflict between Spain and France that had begun in 1635 was finally ended, Anne's son, Louis XIV, married her niece, Marie-Thérèse, the daughter of her brother, King Philip IV of Spain.

Anne of Austria, now Her Most Christian Majesty, the Dowager Queen of France, retired to the convent of Val-de-Grâce. She died of breast cancer on 20 January 1666.

Ruth Kleinman's 1986 biography, Anne of Austria, Queen of France, 1601-1666 is out of print, but used copies are available. You can scrounge up information by reading biographies of Louis XIII and Louis XIV, as well as by looking at biographies of Cardinal Richelieu and of Cardinal Mazarin. Antonia Fraser's Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King has, as its title might suggest, a fair amount about Anne of Austria.

And, by the way, when Louis XIII tried to deny Anne of Austria her role as regent of France, he did not do so because of his own unfamiliarity with female regency. His mother, Marie de' Medici, had acted as regent of France for Henry IV--and, in fact, was regent when the king was assassinated in 1610. (Marie de' Medici was the cousin of Catherine de' Medici, and Marie hoped to follow the earlier Medici queen in her role as a successful regent). Her son was nine when he became King Louis XIII; by 1614, his majority was officially declared by the Estates General, but he indicated that his mother would "continue" to "govern and command" as she had previously.

By 1617, however, he was done with her, and he exiled her to the chateau of Blois. "Madam," he is quoted as saying, "I wish to relieve you now of the fatigue of state business." After a few more years of ups-and-downs (their disagreements in 1620 were referred to as the "Wars of the Mother and Son"), the two were ultimately reconciled. By 1621 she was once more a part of the royal council, and in 1621 and 1622 she traveled with her son while Louis was fighting against the Huguenots.

In 1627 and 1628, and again in 1629, when he needed a regent while he was on the battlefield, Louis appointed his mother, Marie de' Medici, and not his wife, Anne of Austria, to the position. But Louis and his mother fell out again--by 1631, he declared her a "rebel against his authority," and she was once again exiled. She spent time in Brussels, Amsterdam, England, and Cologne, where she died in 1642.