The ex-Queen employed her time in conversation, and in correspondence with men of literature and science, taking also great delight in the exercise of hunting, being a fearless horsewoman. The management of her household she intrusted to her devoted friend, Lord Craven, who entered the service of the States in order to be near her, and it has commonly been believed that they were privately married.
So fervent was her attachment to the Reformed faith, that on her brother’s sending Sir Harry Vane, to persuade her into compliance with his proposal that her eldest son should go to Vienna, and espouse an Austrian Princess, which step would entail his becoming a Catholic, she indignantly replied she would rather kill him with her own hand.
This same son treated his mother most unkindly, and refused her all pecuniary aid in her distress.
Charles II., on his Restoration, invited his aunt to return to England, and she landed at Margate. How wonderful was the contrast between her return and her embarkation from that same place on the occasion of her marriage!
In the meanwhile the King had raised Lord Craven to an earldom. This unwavering and loyal friend conducted Elizabeth to his own home, called Drury House, surrounded by a delightful garden, where she took up her abode.
Drury Lane Theatre was built on the site of the garden, but a tavern existed near Craven Court, called ‘The Queen of Bohemia,’ on the door of which was an equestrian portrait of Lord Craven. The building was standing as late as 1794. It would appear that Elizabeth did not go to Court, although Pepys mentions her accompanying the King to the theatres, sometimes attended by Lord Craven. But at his house she had a little Court of her own, and all that hospitality, generosity, and the most refined consideration for his royal guest, wife, or friend, could suggest, was lavished upon her by her noble-hearted host. Here too she was once more united to her favourite and dutiful son, Prince Rupert. In the autumn she changed her residence, and went to Leicester House, belonging to Lord Leicester. But her health, which had been slowly undermined, now gave way; she prepared for the end, and made her will, leaving her books, pictures, (a most interesting collection may be seen at Combe Abbey,) and papers to Lord Craven. She died on the 13th of February 1662.
Lord Leicester, in speaking of his ‘royal tenant,’ says with some flippancy, ‘It is a pity she did not live a few hours more, to die on her wedding-day; and that there is not so good a poet as Dr. Donne to write her epitaph, as he did her epithalamium unto St. Valentine.’
She was interred with much pomp in Westminster Abbey; Lord Craven was occupied at that time in constructing a house for her reception at Hamstead Marshall, county Berks, which was destined to be a miniature Heidelberg, but it was burnt to the ground before it was completed. The gate-posts, which are all that remain of the building, bear an Electoral Crown, entwined with the coronet of an English Earl, carved thereon.
It is strange to reflect that Elizabeth, who was deprived of her titles of Electress and Queen, should be the ancestress of every crowned head in Europe at this moment.