Bohemian historians speak in terms of warm praise of Elizabeth, the “Winter Queen,” but their estimate of Frederick, “First Prince of the Imperiall bloud, sprung from glorious Charlemaigne,” falls lamentably short of the measure taken of him by the Bohemian Estates, as reprinted on another page.
Conceivably for the “Winter Queen’s” enlightenment, John Harrison, who accompanied the royal pair to Prague in the capacity of court chaplain, sketched the “Historie of Bohemia, the first parte describing the Countrye, Scituation, Climate, Commodities, the Name and Nature of the People and compendiously continuing the Historie from the beginning of the Nation to the First Christian Prince, about the year of Christ 990.”
Speaking “in the name of all our exiled nation” the Bohemian Church appealed for help “to the lord protector, his highness council, and the parliament.”[6]
As in the case of the Waldenses, Protector Cromwell ordered a national subscription; and a handsome amount was collected during the spring of 1658 to relieve the distress of Bohemian Protestants. Komenský and his fellow exiles were invited to settle in Ireland, the Protector desiring to strengthen the Protestant element there. The “Act for the Satisfaction of Adventurers and Soldiers” authorized “all persons of what nation soever professing the Protestant religion to rent or purchase forfeited lands,” but the Dutch, German and Bohemian emigrants whom this clause contemplated never came.[7] Believing in the fulfillment of Drabík’s false prophecy, that the cause of Protestantism in Bohemia would prevail in the end and that the exiles would yet return home in triumph, Komenský hesitated to accept England’s proffer.
Protestant refugees, who had been driven from home by Ferdinand’s edicts, wandered to England in pursuit of religious freedom and livelihood. Simon Partlicius (1593-1639), preacher and author and Samuel Martinius (1588-1640), writer and mathematician, both enjoyed England’s hospitality for a time. So did Komenský who came in 1642 to London to visit friends and to further his literary projects. Wenceslaus Hollar established a permanent residence in England. Letters are extant written by Komenský’s son-in-law, Peter Figulus, and dated at Oxford. At least two exiles, Wenceslaus Libanus and Paul Hartmann, both members of the Brethren’s Unity, had been ordained as ministers of the Church of England.
That the Irish Franciscans had been invited to Bohemia during the Thirty Years’ War to assist in the re-Catholisation of the country, is known. In Hybernská ulice, a famous thoroughfare in Prague, named after them, the Irish Friars founded a monastery in 1630. Later (1659) they built there the Church of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception. Although the monastery has long passed out of existence and even the church edifice has been forced to give way to business, the name, Hybernská ulice, still reminds the tourist of the presence of the Hibernians in Prague. An Irish name—that of Count Edward Francis Josef Taafe—has figured largely in Austrian and Bohemian politics of yesterday. The Taafes secured an incholate in Moravia in the middle of the eighteenth century and have intermarried with the Šlik, Chotek and Pachta families.
No narrative of the Thirty Years’ War is complete or understandable unless the student knows what part Bohemia took in the great struggle. A recognized authority on the subject is Anton Gindely, (1829-1892) Professor at the Prague University. Gindely’s Geschichte des dreissigjährigen Krieges has been translated by A. Ten Brook.
A quarter of a century ago one could not find on the shelves of an American library a comprehensive history of the Bohemian nation written in English. The task and the distinction of writing such a work fell to the lot of a Chicago lawyer of Scotch-Irish ancestry, Robert H. Vickers. Vicker’s History of Bohemia was published in 1894 in Chicago, the munificence of the Bohemian National Committee making the publication possible. Stranger to the subtle modern forces of the nation’s life, unfamiliar with its language, unduly in love with the rust of the past, Vickers produced a volume suffering obviously from bookiness. The Chicago Bohemians erected a monument in the National Cemetery to the memory of their Scotch-Irish friend.
A year later (1895), there appeared another history of the nation: Frances Gregor’s Story of Bohemia.
In translating into idiomatic English the little classic, Němcová’s Babička—the first story book by a Bohemian author to be so honored—Frances Gregor rendered an actual service to literature. Many an American Bohemian youth has had his or her first glimpse of the charms of Bohemian country life from Babička, but her Story of Bohemia has since been supplanted by newer and abler historical studies. Frances Gregor’s talents lay not in historical research but in light fiction writing and literary criticism. An incurable malady greatly interfered with intensive literary labor, making her life all but unendurable. She died in Colorado in 1901, aged fifty-one years.