British Coins from the Collection of Dr John Tooze

James I (1603-1625), BOHEMIA, Frederick V of the Palatinate (the ‘Winterking’), 48 Kreuzer, 1620, Kuttenberg, 15.21g/10h (Donebauer 2070). About very fine £150-£200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, British Coins from the Collection of Dr John Tooze.

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Frederick V (1596-1632), Elector Palatine of the Rhine 1610-23, was derisively nicknamed ‘The Winter King’ because of his short reign as king of Bohemia, from November 1619 to November 1620. He had married Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of James I and Anne of Denmark, in the Chapel Royal at Whitehall on 14 February 1613. They had 13 children, including Prince Rupert of Civil War fame; the last surviving child, Sophia (1630-1714), was the mother of George I. Frederick was offered the throne of Bohemia by Protestant sympathizers who had rebelled against the rule of his Catholic contemporary, Ferdinand II (1578-1637). In making this gesture the Protestant Union hoped to secure the support of Frederick’s father-in-law. However, James opposed the takeover of Bohemia from the Habsburgs and, following the signing of the Treaty of Ulm and the intervention of imperial troops from the Spanish Netherlands, the city of Mainz, defended by only 2,000 English volunteers, fell in August 1620. Frederick’s army retreated to Prague and, on the morning of 8 November 1620, suffered a crushing defeat. Frederick, together with his family and close advisers, was forced to flee to Breslau. A monarch in exile, Frederick had hopes for a restoration to his fortune with the intervention of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who had conquered the Palatinate in the autumn of 1631, but Gustavus would not cede these newly-won territories to a Protestant ally. Ironically, Gustavus was killed at the Battle of Lützen the following year and, within a fortnight, Frederick too was dead, the result of a ‘pestilential fever’