Maria Beatrice d'Este (1658-1718)

Maria Beatrix d'Este of Modena as Duchess of York (1680), portrait by Willem Wissing

Maria Beatrix d'Este, Princess of Modena (born October 5, 1658 in Modena , † May 7, 1718 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye ) was the wife of James II./VII. Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland from 6 February 1685 to 11 December 1688. After the overthrow of her husband by his son-in-law William of Orange , she fled to King Louis XIV in France at the end of 1688 , where she died after almost 30 years of exile.

Descent and youth

Maria Beatrix, whose full baptismal name is Maria Beatrice Anna Margherita Isabella d'Este , was the only daughter of Alfonso IV. D'Este , Duke of Modena from the House of Este , and his wife Laura Martinozzi , one of Cardinal Mazarin's nieces . Alfonso IV died in July 1662, after which his widow acted as regent for her only two-year-old son Francesco , who was a little younger than his sister Maria Beatrix. On the instructions of her mother, the latter received a strict, Catholic-religious education from nuns from a local Carmelite monastery and wanted to pursue a spiritual career. She was fluent in Italian and French and was also proficient in Latin.

marriage

Maria Beatrix's wish to become a nun was not fulfilled. As early as 1670 , after the death of Henrietta Anne Stuart, her great-uncle, Cardinal Rinaldo d'Este , suggested her widower, Duke Philip of Orléans , as her new wife. If it didn't, she was chosen to be the bride of the Duke of York and later King James II of England in 1672 . Jakob converted to Catholicism in 1669 and was looking for a woman of his new faith after the death of his first wife Anne Hyde at the end of March 1671 . Because his older brother, King Charles II , had no legitimate offspring and would hardly get any more from Katharina von Braganza , he was the next heir to the throne and had two daughters, Maria and Anne , among surviving children from his first marriage no son. He hoped to get one from a second wife, with which a male succession would have been secured.

After Archduchess Claudia Felizitas and other high-ranking ladies had left as marriage aspirants, Jacob's suitor, Lord Peterborough , preferred Maria Beatrix as the future wife of the Duke of York. The chosen bride, however, initially vigorously refused to marry; she would rather live a monastery than live in a Protestant country. Modena's regent Laura supported her daughter's decision or perhaps wanted to marry her to the eleven-year-old Spanish King Charles II . Instead, she offered her sister-in-law Eleonora d'Este as a bride for Jacob. Peterborough rejected this proposal and went to Modena in July 1673 to woo Maria Beatrix's hand in Jacob's name. The French King Louis XIV also tried to promote the realization of this marriage project by promising a dowry of 400,000 crowns and sending the Marquis de Dangeau to support Peterborough.

The regent Modenas finally gave in to French pressure. But first Pope Clement X had to be asked for the necessary dispensation , and in order to get Maria Beatrix to consent to her marriage, a papal letter was required with the warning that through her marriage to Jacob she was helping the Catholics in Great Britain and consequently could achieve more for her denomination than if she became a nun. Although Clemens X then postponed the granting of the dispensation until Maria Beatrix 'public practice of her religion in England was secured, the long-distance wedding was on September 20th ^July. / September 30, 1673 ^greg. carried out in the ducal palace in Modena. Lord Peterborough took the place of the absent groom. Maria Beatrix then set out for the British Isles with her mother and a large entourage. She made a stopover with her companions in Lyon and Paris , among other places , where the French king had her brilliantly received. In Versailles , the young bride had to recover from an ailment.

The population of Anglican England, where Jacob's second marriage was not widely known until the end of September 1673, however, viewed this marriage between the Duke of York and a Catholic woman with extreme reserve. The House of Commons demanded that the princess be prevented from embarking, but King Charles II rejected this request. From Calais , the bride was able to transfer to Dover , where she was greeted by her husband after landing on November 21, 1673 and where the actual wedding took place that same evening after the marriage contract was read out to the public by Bishop Nathaniel Crew of Oxford. The tall, black-haired and dark-eyed Maria Beatrix, who had a fair complexion and was only 15 at the time, was adored by her 40-year-old husband and, despite her initial rejection of marriage, gradually developed a great affection for Jacob. King Charles II, who had traveled to Greenwich to meet the newlyweds, got on well with his sister-in-law from the start.

Duchess of York

The ascended through her marriage to the Duchess of York Maria Beatrix moved with her husband soon after their arrival in London in the St James's Palace . The fact that at their reception in Whitehall some of the wives of peers protested against the king's offer to have their mother assigned a seat at the same time annoyed her very much. So the Dowager Duchess Laura decided not to stay long in London. She also complained that her daughter Maria Beatrix only had a private prayer room in her own chambers, but no public Catholic chapel, although this was guaranteed in the marriage contract. The person concerned, however, did not bring any complaints about this violation of the marriage contract. After her mother and her entourage left for Italy at the beginning of 1674, only a few people who had traveled to England from their homeland remained in Maria Beatrix's household, including two ladies-in-waiting and three priests. The English servants of the Duchess of York, however, chose her husband. The Countess of Peterborough, wife of Jacob's suitor, became head of the Duchess's household.

At first, Maria Beatrix felt rather unhappy in England and understood little English. But she tried to acquire this language quickly and, as mentioned, felt a gradually growing love for Jacob, who furthermore gave her great joy due to his firmness in the Catholic faith. She also had a good relationship with her step-daughters Maria and Anne, who were only a few years younger. In 1675 the king granted her an annual sum of 5,000 pounds.

progeny

Although Maria Beatrix von Jakob had numerous offspring over the course of almost two decades, she suffered several miscarriages, while others of her children died very early. Only her last two children reached adulthood:

• Child (* / † May 1674), miscarriage
• Catherina Laura (January 10, 1675 - October 3, 1675)
• Child (* / † May 14, 1675), miscarriage
• Child (* / † October 4, 1675), miscarriage
• Isabella (August 28, 1676 - March 2, 1681)
• Charles (7 November 1677 - 12 December 1677), Duke of Cambridge
• Elisabeth (* / † 1678)
• Child (* / † 1681), miscarriage
• Charlotte Maria (born August 16, 1682 - † October 6, 1682)
• Child (* / † October 1683), miscarriage
• Child (* / † May 8, 1684), miscarriage
• James Francis Edward (June 10, 1688 - January 1, 1766), called the Old Pretender
• Louisa Maria (June 28, 1692 - April 18, 1712)

Anti-Catholic sentiment, Popish plot, exile and return

In England, when Mary Beatrix married the Duke of York, there was an anti-Catholic mood among the people, parliament and the Anglican Church. Radical Protestants viewed Jacob's wife as an agent of the Pope. Maria Beatrix, however, initially stayed away from politics.

The king was annoyed when Maria Beatrix had her first daughter, Catherina Laura, who had died in October 1675, secretly baptized by her Jesuit chaplain Antonio Galli; so the child also had to undergo an Anglican baptism. The Duchess gave birth to another daughter, Isabella, in August 1676. Then the anti-Catholic attitude in the country was reinforced by the birth of Maria Beatrix's first son, named Charles after the English king, in November 1677, because now the prospect insisted on two generations of Catholic monarchs. The fact that Charles died of smallpox when he was only five weeks old was greeted with relief by the population.

In the first half of October 1678, Maria Beatrix and her stepdaughter Anne stayed at the court in The Hague to meet her other stepdaughter Maria , who was now married to William of Orange . She asked the Dutch governor for help for Modena, which was then fighting a military conflict with Mantua .

In the meantime, anti-Catholic tendencies began to increase in England, when the clergyman Titus Oates came across widespread belief with his freely invented claim of a papist conspiracy (English Popish Plot ). According to Oates, this alleged Catholic conspiracy was aimed at the murder of King Charles II and the eradication of English Protestantism. Was believed that his baseless allegations, was among other causes in the took place on September 29, 1678 discovery of the correspondence of Maria Beatrix's erstwhile end of 1676 discharged or dismissed because of military secrecy treason Secretary Edward Colman with Jesuits founded, in which the fall of the Anglican faith with French Support was discussed.

Although Maria Beatrix, who returned to England on October 16, 1678, was assumed that she and her husband had known about Colman's activities despite the fact that Colman had been released almost two years earlier, it was essentially only possible to prove to her that they were hers in England Disgraced and therefore fled to France in November 1675, confessor Pierre de Saint-Germain 1676 had asked Louis XIV to ensure that he would help her uncle Rinaldo d'Este to become cardinal. The Duchess was also in Holland at the time of the mysterious murder of Justice of the Peace Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey (October 12, 1678), who had taken Oates' statements, and could therefore not be directly involved. As a result, she was hardly suspected of complicity in the conspiracy postulated by Oates.

However , the hysteria triggered by the alleged Popish plot led to the persecution of Catholics. The English king sent Maria Beatrix and her husband to Holland at the beginning of March 1679 for their safety; for the time being they were to live at the court of William of Orange. But in the same month the couple went to Brussels , the capital of the Spanish Netherlands , where they resided in the Hôtel de Bassigny, the house of the Prince of Ligne. In the following July Maria Beatrix received a visit from her mother, who was now living in Rome. In August 1679 her stepdaughter Anne came to see her in Brussels. Despite a letter from English confidants to convert to the Anglican denomination again, Jakob vehemently refused to take such a step and was confirmed in this attitude by his wife.

On the news of the serious illness of Charles II, Jacob returned quickly to London with his wife and daughter Anne in October 1679, fearing that in the event of the king's death his illegitimate son James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth , would become the throne could be raised. Charles II recovered and sent his brother and his wife to Scotland in November 1679, while Jacob's daughters, Anne and Isabella, who was only three years old, stayed in London on the king's orders. Since in Scotland the linear succession was maintained regardless of the faith of the heir to the throne, the duke and duke found a joyful welcome in Edinburgh and resided in Holyrood Palace . The Scottish trade hoped to stimulate it through its presence. In February 1680 Maria Beatrix was able to come to England again temporarily with her husband. However, she apparently suffered from melancholy on her return, which rumored to go back to her husband's liaison with his long-time mistress Catherine Sedley . Another visit from her mother, who was unpopular in England, also had a negative effect on her.

In October 1680 Maria Beatrix had to go back to Scotland with Jakob, where the couple held court in Edinburgh. Then the Duchess was deeply saddened by the death of her only four-year-old daughter Isabella on March 2, 1681 in London. A back injury sustained in December 1681 as a result of a riding accident prevented her from continuing to do equestrian sports for years. After all, in 1681 the attempts to exclude Jacob from the line of succession through the Exclusion Bill finally failed . In that year the fictional character of the Popish Plot was recognized and anti-papism subsided somewhat in England. King Charles II achieved that the Duke and Duke of York could return to London on June 6, 1682.

On October 6, 1682, another child of the Duchess, Charlotte Maria, died at the age of only one and a half months, and in the two following years Maria Beatrix suffered two more miscarriages, so that both her and her husband lost hope of surviving children. At least the political opposition to Jacob decreased significantly. Together with Katharina von Braganza, Maria Beatrix succeeded in persuading King Charles II to convert to the Catholic faith shortly before his death on February 6, 1685.

King James II

Queen Mary's coat of arms

queen

Coronation; conditional political influence

After the death of Charles II, his brother came to the government as James II and Maria Beatrix became Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland as well as the North American colonies at the side of her husband. After a private Catholic coronation ceremony, which was held for the royal couple in their own premises, the official coronation ceremony according to the Anglican rite took place on St. George's Day (April 23) in Westminster Abbey . On the occasion of this solemnity, Maria Beatrix, with whom an English queen was crowned for the first time since 1603, wore a white and silver brocade dress set with gemstones with a six-meter-long train made of purple velvet. According to the Dean of Peterborough who was present at the ceremony, the queen behaved very dignified and reverently, while her husband was rather indifferent. After the ceremony, Maria Beatrix received applause from the people waiting in front of the church.

The queen was in poor health, as reported by the Tuscan ambassador Terriesi. The doctors feared that she was about to die soon, and new marriage plans for James II were already being rolled out. In many places, Maria Beatrix's discomfort was attributed to her husband's continued liaison with Catherine Sedley. The Jesuit father Edward Petre and others managed to get the king to end his love affair with Sedley, which was exiled to Ireland in early 1686, but was soon allowed to return. At least Maria Beatrix received a promise from Jacob II that he would not renew the relationship with his former mistress. The Queen is also said to have been angry in September 1685 at the evidences of favors her husband showed to his two illegitimate sons from Arabella Churchill . Her health improved significantly by the spring of 1686.

Maria Beatrix's household was modeled on that of her predecessor Katharina von Braganza, and its costs were almost the same. The Queen's annual income from her lands and other sources initially amounted to £ 40,000 and was increased by £ 10,000 in December 1686 when it was not quite sufficient. The death of her maternal grandmother, Laura Margherita Mazzarini († June 9, 1685), brought her some possessions in Italy. By 1687, several state apartments in Whitehall Palace were completed for them on behalf of the king.

The queen's political influence was probably overestimated by her contemporaries. So the attempt of the Duke of Monmouth, who after the death of his royal father Charles II. Appeared unsuccessfully as a pretender against James II. In June 1685, to save his head through the influence of Maria Beatrix failed. This was then very interested in the fact that the Vatican ambassador of Jacob II, who had left for Rome in February 1686, Roger Palmer, 1st Earl of Castlemaine , again met with Pope Innocent XI. campaigned for her uncle Rinaldo d'Este to be granted the cardinal's hat, which request was finally granted on September 2, 1686.

In July 1687, Maria Beatrix's mother passed away in Rome. The English court ordered an official six-month mourning period for the deceased, who had left her daughter with considerable cash and jewelry.

Maria Beatrix saw with concern that her husband was trying to enforce a Catholic absolutist system without any political instinct. To this end, he filled influential administrative and military offices with Catholics and, in terms of foreign policy, increasingly approached France, but was confronted with increasing resistance from politically and socially relevant circles. He did not even heed the advice from Rome that warned him to proceed more cautiously.

The Queen tried in vain to work towards a conciliatory compromise between her husband and the English Protestants. Contrary to their advice, Jacob II accepted the Jesuit Edward Petre into the closest government council in November 1687. The queen increasingly hated Petre because she made his influence responsible for the anti-Anglican behavior of Jacob II and, according to Terriesi, saw him as an instrument that drove the king to ruin. In spite of her attitude aimed at a moderation of the politics of her husband, many English attributed to her political mistakes by the king and feared that, also at the instigation of her confidants, she would intervene in favor of the Catholics. Her stepdaughter, Princess Anne, believed that despite her protestations to the contrary, the queen was receptive to flattery and was so influenced. Several courtiers took advantage of the monarch's weakness to secure her favor. George Douglas, 1st Earl of Dumbarton, owed his appointment as royal chamberlain in July 1687 in part to Maria Beatrix's support.

Birth of the presumptive heir to the throne

After the queen had lost so many children, she now dearly wished that she would have a son who would then be heir to the throne. She therefore went to the healing springs of Bath on the advice of her doctors in August 1687 . During her stay in the Cross Bath , men were not allowed to visit this bath, but she and her companions could be seen bathing. She traveled to the country daily with her servants and she also held public audiences. Meanwhile, in September 1687, her husband went to the miraculous spring of St. Winifred in Holywell in Wales to pray for the birth of male offspring.

Indeed, to her delight but to the chagrin of her stepdaughter Anne and the Protestants, Maria Beatrix soon became pregnant, which was officially confirmed on December 23, 1687. For this reason, thanksgiving celebrations took place in January 1688. In addition to worsening the domestic political situation, Jacob II continued, among other things, to heave Catholics into high offices and by the beginning of 1688 had dismissed all Tory ministers taken over by Charles II.

Maria Beatrix gave birth on June 10, 1688 in the presence of numerous people, including the queen widow Catherine of Braganza, with James Francis Edward (the later "Elder Pretender", English "Old Pretender") a viable son. According to the custom of the time, the queen then lived in seclusion for a while and appeared in public for the first time on July 9th. While the Anglicans had hitherto been able to hope that England would receive a Protestant king after the death of Jacob II, the line of succession to the Catholic Stuarts now seemed certain. Despite testimony to the contrary, the rumor immediately spread across England that the heir to the throne was not "real", but a child who had been foisted on his mother by Jesuits, as did the stepdaughter of the Queen and Princess of Orange, Maria, in response to a letter from her sister Anne believed.

Escape

Anglicans' fear of a long reign of English Catholic kings led the Bishop of London, Henry Compton , and six other leading English Protestants to seek military intervention in late June 1688, Jacob's Calvinist son-in-law William of Orange. As a result, Wilhelm used the doubt that the little Prince of Wales was the son of Jacob II. He landed in Torbay with his expeditionary force on November 5th, starting the Glorious Revolution . Maria Beatrix, who asked the Pope for help, was afraid that the Protestants would want to seize their young son; so she temporarily brought him to safety in Portsmouth . She allowed her husband to use all of her private wealth to wage war against his adversary. The king hesitated at first and did not leave London until November 17, 1688 to join his main army in Salisbury , while his wife, supported by the remnants of the Privy Council, remained as regent in London. Jacob II found that many previous friends and some officers had defected to Wilhelm, avoided a military confrontation and withdrew to London, where there were already attacks against Catholics. Jacob's daughter Anne and her husband, Georg of Denmark , had also switched sides in the meantime.

After a final dinner together at Whitehall Palace, at the request of her husband, Maria Beatrix left the English capital disguised as a laundress with her little son in the early morning of December 10th and took a carriage to the coast, where some servants and friends joined her. With her few companions sailed the next day, December 11th, ^July. / December 21, 1688 ^greg. , near Gravesend aboard a small yacht and landed in Calais after about six hours of sailing in strong winds . Here she first attended a mass held in the Capuchin monastery, was warmly received by the governor, the Duc de Charost, and asked Louis XIV in a letter to be admitted and to protect her son. The French king, who had always had a fondness for her, was very friendly towards her and sent her financial means and beautiful clothes.

When her husband did not arrive soon in Calais, as Maria Beatrix had expected, she traveled on to Boulogne and received a hospitable welcome from the governor, the Duc d'Aumont. However, she was desperate about her husband's further absence, requested him to join her in a letter and, when she learned of his - but then only very brief - imprisonment, intended to return to him in England, of which she was her escort Lauzun should dissuade under all circumstances on the instruction of Louis XIV.

First the dethroned queen was to be received in Vincennes Castle , but then Saint-Germain-en-Laye was chosen as her future residence. She learned in Beaumont of the landing of her husband in Ambleteuse and was then by Louis XIV. On December 27, 1688 ^jul. / January 6, 1689 ^greg. personally welcomed in Chatou and quartered in Castle Saint-Germain-en-Laye , where James II also arrived the following day.

Exile in France

Unsuccessful efforts to regain the English crown

In France, the dethroned King James II and his wife, the Queen over the water , as she was called by her followers in England, initially had considerable financial resources. Maria Beatrix had brought her own gemstones, her husband had invested some money in France and the couple also received a monthly pension of 5000 livres from Louis XIV. Maria Beatrix was able to gather the majority of her most trusted service personnel on her exile farm in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. While Jakob was often confronted with very critical and unflattering remarks because of his political failure in his country of exile, for example that he had little sense, Maria Beatrix made a very good impression at the court of the Sun King and was greeted with a lot of sympathy. Her good command of French, her friendly demeanor and her attractive appearance contributed to this. The attention given to her by Louis XIV is said to have aroused the jealousy of Madame de Maintenon , to whom she tried to be as pleasant as possible and who then became her friend. Since there was no French queen and Maria Beatrix was granted queen status, she stood above all other noble ladies at the Versailles court. This primacy clouded her relationship with Dauphine Maria Anna, who had already died in April 1690 .

As the real driving force behind the exiled Stuart court, Maria Beatrix tried hard to make her contribution so that her husband regained the English throne. So she tried, albeit in vain, an alliance directed against William of Orange between the French king, Pope Innocent XI. and other Catholic powers to bring about. Despite her requests, Louis XIV only provided her husband with relatively limited assistance.

At least Jakob was able to go to Ireland in March 1689 with French military help, where he could count on many Catholics. Despite months of siege, his siege of Derry failed . His wife helped Lauzon to be sent to the head of a French army to support Jacob. After the personal appearance of William of Orange in the Irish theater of war Jacob suffered in the Battle of the Boyne (July 1 ^jul. / July 11, 1690 ^greg. ) A crushing defeat. Although the French admiral Tourville had won control of the English Channel the day before by defeating an Anglo-Dutch fleet in the sea ​​battle of Beachy Head and Maria Beatrix had then urged Louis XIV to invade England, the Sun King took after the news from Jacob Defeat on the Boyne from such an invasion distance. Jacob fled to France again, and in October 1691 the Catholic troops in Ireland had to give up their last resistance.

Maria Beatrix was disappointed with the outcome of the war, the little help from France and other Catholic states to regain the English throne and also with the growing lethargy of her husband, who increasingly took refuge in religious meditation. So it was mainly up to her to receive Catholics who had escaped from England and to have lively correspondence with the Jacobites on the British Isles. If she wanted to find consolation in faith, for example when she was in a crisis or was separated from her husband, she visited Chaillot, a monastery founded by Queen Henrietta Maria near Paris of her favorite order of the Visitation of Mary . She also dedicated herself to the veneration of the Sacred Heart ; the Jesuit Claude de la Colombière had been one of their chaplains in the late 1670s.

The defeat of the French invasion fleet at La Hougue (early June 1692) nullified a new plan of Jacob's invasion of England. Soon after, on June 28, 1692, Maria Beatrix gave birth to her last child, Louisa Maria , in Saint-Germain-en-Laye . The little girl got her first name after her godfather, the French king. With this her youngest daughter, Maria Beatrix had the greatest joy. Like Jacob, she devoted herself intensively to religious exercises; their exile court seemed remote and monastic. In 1693, the Earl of Ailesbury saw the former Queen of England for the first time in more than four years and noted that she had aged greatly.

When her childless brother Francesco II died on September 6, 1694, Maria Beatrix tried to win the throne in Modena for herself and her husband, but the plan failed due to the rejection of Jacob, who was too lethargic for it. In Modena, she was followed by her uncle Rinaldo , who joined the Augsburg alliance directed against Louis XIV and maintained tense relationships with his niece. After the death of Jacob's daughter, Queen Maria II. , On December 28, 1694, her childless widower Wilhelm III offered to adopt Maria Beatrix's son James Francis Edward, thus keeping his chances on the English throne open. But the royal couple in exile refused this offer because they did not want to tolerate the associated change of religion of their child to the Anglican faith.

At the end of 1696 the Sun King wanted to make peace with his opponents, and Maria Beatrix had to assure him through Madame de Maintenon that she and her husband would bow to this request. In the Peace of Rijswijk , Louis XIV recognized William III on September 20, 1697. de facto as the English king. The government of Great Britain promised to make payments to Maria Beatrix for her Wittum - as if James II were already dead - but these did not materialize.

Widowhood and death

On September 5th ^Jul. / September 16, 1701 ^greg. Jacob II died in the absence of his wife, as it was considered improper for queens to stay on royal deathbeds. In France, Maria Beatrix's son was now called Jakob III./VIII. proclaimed King of England, Scotland and Ireland, but this only by Louis XIV., Clement XI. as well as the rulers of Modena, Spain and Savoy. Maria Beatrix, who continued to reside in the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, took over the function of "regent" for her underage son until 1706 and tried to protect his interests.

James Francis Edward and his sister Louisa Maria Stuart, painting by Alexis Simon Belle

After the death of Wilhelm III. († March 8th ^July / March 19th 1702 ^greg. ) Jacob II's daughter Anne rose to become the new Queen of England. It was not recognized by Louis XIV, which plunged the Sun King into a new military conflict with England. Simon Fraser, 11. Lord Lovat spoke in Inverness for James Francis Edward as William III's successor. soon afterwards traveled to the exile court in Saint-Germain and asked Maria Beatrix for permission to bring her son to Scotland. Lovat wanted to raise 15,000 soldiers there and use them to give James Francis Edward control of the British Isles. But Maria Beatrix rejected this plan.

After James Francis Edward had reached the age of majority in 1706, he tried himself, but just as unsuccessfully, to win the English throne and was therefore very sad. His ailing mother, Maria Beatrix, who had been operated on for the diagnosis of breast cancer in 1703 and 1705 , now often stayed in Chaillot when she was not living in Saint-Germain. In this monastery she spent a lot of time almost every summer with her daughter Louisa Maria, who acted like a close friend and comforter to her mother. In Chaillot, Maria Beatrix also found out in 1711 that her son should lose the recognition of Louis XIV as King of England and have to leave France after the preliminary talks about the Peace of Utrecht, which was yet to be concluded . In fact, James Francis Edward was exiled in 1712. But Maria Beatrix not only had to part with her son, but also lost her daughter Louisa Maria in the same year, who died on April 7th ^. / April 18, 1712 ^greg. died of smallpox at the age of only 19 . Maria Beatrix was hit hard by her death. For years she had tried in vain to find a suitable husband for Louisa Maria. Both events continue to affect the former queen's health. At the beginning of 1714 she became so seriously ill that her death seemed imminent, which is why she sent farewell letters to Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon; but she recovered.

Maria Beatrix had used up almost all of her fortune to invest in realizing her husband and son's political claims to rule in Great Britain. Although Queen Anne had given permission in December 1713 to finally send Maria Beatrix payments for her Wittum, she received no money. Anne died just eight months later and her successor George I did not care about this issue. The former queen spent her last years in rather modest circumstances, but nevertheless sought to work for the rights of her son James Francis Edward again after George's accession to the throne. But the first Jacobite revolt failed in 1715; the English royal crown was denied to the "Old Pretender". He last met his mother in early 1716 when he stayed in Saint-Germain for a while after returning from Scotland. At least Maria Beatrix was able to find him his future wife Maria Clementina Sobieska .

Maria Beatrix, who was the only English queen from Italy, died on April 26th ^July. / May 7th 1718 ^greg. in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, aged 59, from pneumonia complicated by an abscess on her left side . The next day Liselotte of the Palatinate wrote a kind of obituary in which she remarked that the deceased had been a good and pious queen and had given poor everything she owned and never complained about her misfortune. On June 16, ^Jul. / June 27th 1718 ^greg. Maria Beatrix received a state funeral by order of the French regent Philippe II. de Bourbon, duc d'Orléans . She was buried in the church of Chaillot, but her grave there was destroyed during the French Revolution .

literature

• Agnes Strickland : Lives of the Queens of England. Volume 9 and partly Volume 10, 1846.
• Martin Haile: Queen Mary of Modena: her life and letters. 1905.
• Mary Hopkirk: Queen over the water. 1953.
• Carola Oman: Mary of Modena. 1962.
• Otto Flake: Great ladies of the baroque. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, 1981, ISBN 3-596-22273-7 .
• Janet Southorn: Mary of Modena, queen consort of James II and VII. 1992.
• Marita A. Panzer: England's Queens . Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2001, ISBN 3-7917-1749-9 , pp. 143-156.
• Andrew Barclay: Mary of Modena . In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . (ODNB). Volume 37, 2004, pp. 97-103.
• Ronny Baier:  Este (Modena), Maria Beatrice Anna Margareta Isabelle von. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 24, Bautz, Nordhausen 2005, ISBN 3-88309-247-9 , Sp. 568-591.
• Alessandro Cont: Corte britannica e Stati italiani. Rapporti politici, diplomatici e culturali (1685–1688). (= Biblioteca della Nuova Rivista Storica. 55). Società Editrice Dante Alighieri, Rome 2019, ISBN 978-88-534-3436-4 . ( online )

Remarks

1. ↑ Andrew Barclay, ODNB Volume 37, pp. 97f .; Marita A. Panzer: England's Queens. P. 143ff .; Ronny Baier, BBKL Volume 24, Sp. 568ff.
2. ↑ Andrew Barclay, ODNB Volume 37, p. 98; Marita A. Panzer: England's Queens. P. 145; Ronny Baier, BBKL Volume 24, Col. 570.
3. ↑ Andrew Barclay, ODNB Volume 37, pp. 98f .; Marita A. Panzer: England's Queens. P. 145ff .; Ronny Baier, BBKL Volume 24, Col. 571-574.
4. ↑ Andrew Barclay, ODNB Volume 37, pp. 99f .; Marita A. Panzer: England's Queens. Pp. 147-150; Ronny Baier, BBKL Volume 24, Sp. 575ff.
5. ↑ Andrew Barclay, ODNB Volume 37, pp. 100f .; Marita A. Panzer: England's Queens. P. 150; Ronny Baier, BBKL Volume 24, Sp. 578f.
6. ↑ Andrew Barclay, ODNB Volume 37, p. 101; Marita A. Panzer: England's Queens. P. 151f .; Ronny Baier, BBKL Volume 24, Sp. 579ff.
7. ↑ Andrew Barclay, ODNB Volume 37, pp. 101f .; Marita A. Panzer: England's Queens. P. 153f .; Ronny Baier, BBKL Volume 24, Col. 582-586.
8. ↑ Andrew Barclay, ODNB Volume 37, p. 102; Marita A. Panzer: England's Queens. P. 154ff .; Ronny Baier, BBKL Volume 24, Sp. 587ff.

Web links

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predecessor	Office	successor
Catherine of Braganza	Queen Consort of England and Ireland 1685–1701	George of Denmark
Catherine of Braganza	Queen Consort of Scotland 1685–1701	George of Denmark