'Charles Louis,' (
German: ''Karl I. Ludwig''), 'Elector Palatine' (
22 December 1617 –
28 August 1680) was the second son of
Frederick V, the Winter King, and his wife,
Princess Elizabeth, daughter of
King James I of England (James VI of Scotland).
After the death of his
older brother in 1629, and of his father in 1632, Charles Louis inherited his exiled father's possessions in the
Palatinate. Along with his younger brother
Prince Rupert, he spent much of the 1630s at the court of his
uncle in England, hoping to enlist English support for his cause. The young Elector Palatine was largely unsuccessful in this, and became gradually estranged from the King, who feared that Charles Louis might become a focus for opposition forces in England. Indeed, in the English crisis leading up to the outbreak of the
English Civil War, Charles Louis had considerable sympathy for the parliamentary leaders, especially the
Earl of Essex, feeling them more likely to come to the aid of the Palatinate on the continent. The Prince Palatine supported the execution of
Strafford. Although Charles Louis was involved in the early stages of the Civil War with his uncle, he was distrusted for his parliamentary sympathies, and soon returned to his mother in
The Hague. There he distanced himself from the royalist cause in the Civil War, fearing that Charles would sell him out for Spanish support.
In 1644, Charles Louis returned to England at the invitation of Parliament. He took up in the
Palace of Whitehall and took the
Solemn League and Covenant, even though his brothers,
Rupert and
Maurice, were Royalist generals. Contemporaries (including King Charles) and subsequent generations believed that Charles Louis' motive in visiting Roundhead London was that he hoped that Parliament would crown him King, in place of his uncle. Indeed, this fear was fulfilled, sixty years later, when Charles I's grandson,
James Francis Edward Stuart, was disinherited in favour of Charles Louis' nephew,
Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover (later George I of Great Britain). Charles Louis' endorsement of the Parliamentary party was a cause of enmity between uncle and nephew, and when a captive Charles I met his nephew once again in 1647, the elder Charles accused the Prince of angling after the English throne. Charles Louis was still in England in October 1648 when the
Peace of Westphalia restored the Lower Palatinate to him (the Upper Palatinate, to his eternal dismay, remained under the Elector of Bavaria). He remained in England long enough to see the execution of his uncle Charles I in January 1649, which appears to have come as a shock (nevertheless, the two had not reconciled prior to the King's death - Charles refused to see his nephew before his execution).
After this unhappy dénouement to Charles Louis's dubious participation in English politics, he at last returned to the now devastated
Palatinate in the autumn of 1649. Over the more than thirty years of his reign there, he strove with some success to rebuild his shattered territory. In foreign affairs, he pursued a pro-French course, marrying his daughter
Elizabeth Charlotte to
Monsieur, Louis XIV's brother, in 1671. After his restoration, his relations with his relatives continued to deteriorate - his English relations never forgave him for his equivocal course in the Civil War, while his mother and siblings resented his parsimony.
The most notable facet of his reign was probably his unilateral divorce of his wife,
Charlotte of Hesse-Kassel, and subsequent bigamous marriage to
Marie Luise von Degenfeld. This second wife was given the unique title of ''Raugravine'' (''Raugräfin'', countess of uninhabited or uncultivated lands), and their children were known as the 'Raugraves'.
Ancestors
Family
References
★ http://www.thepeerage.com/p11375.htm#i113745
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