A fearful conflict ensued. The German States, entrusting the management of their affairs to thirty directors, composed wholly of Protestant Princes, were opposed by the Catholic League, formed with a view of upholding the Jesuits in opposition to the Hussites, or Protestants, or, as they were sometimes styled, the Evangelical party, by whose preponderance the Elector Palatine had been called to the throne.
Relying upon the cordial sympathy of the English nation, an expectation in which he was not disappointed, the Prince Palatine, believing himself equally sure of the co-operation of King James, accepted the tempting offer of royalty without waiting for the approval of his father-in-law. But he looked to him for support in vain. It was one of King James’s most cherished notions, that monarchs should support monarchs in case of disturbance, how just soever the cause, how unanimous soever the voice of the people by whom a sovereign was deposed. His natural timidity, also, operated in inducing a line of conduct towards his son-in-law and his daughter as pusillanimous as was every other trait of his character and action of his life--and, above all, his project of accomplishing a union between his son Charles and a daughter of Spain militated against a real and effective interference in the affairs of the Palatinate, except, indeed, to confuse and ruin them. He was contented, therefore, with sending ambassadors to Germany, not only to mediate between contending parties, but to induce the new King of Bohemia to relinquish a throne which James pretended to assert that his son-in-law had no right to retain.[289]
Brodie’s Constitutional History of the British Empire, vol. ii. p. 8.
The King of Poland, the Elector of Saxony, and the Duke of Bavaria, who was at the head of the Catholic League, sided with Ferdinand, Emperor after the death of Mathias, and the result was the reduction of Bohemia, the loss of the Palatinate, and the flight of the Elector Palatine, or, as he was called, the King of Bohemia, to Holland. The King of Spain, also, sent an army under Spinola into the field, and it was that circumstance which rendered the scheme of marrying Prince Charles to the Infanta so unpopular in England, and which brought so much odium on Buckingham.