When the Imperial party, after the year 1620, persecuted the daughter of the King of England, Elizabeth, wife of the Palatine, with satirical pictures, they painted the proud princess, as going along the high road with three children hanging on by her apron, or, as on the bare ground eating pap from an earthenware platter. The second of these children obtained, through the Westphalian peace, the eighth Electorate of the German Empire. After many vicissitudes of fortune, after drinking the bitter cup of banishment, and seeking in vain to recover his territory, the new Elector, Karl Ludwig, looked down from the royal castle at Heidelberg on the beautiful country, of which only a portion returned into the possession of his line. His was not a nature which bore in itself the guarantee of peace and happiness: it is true that in his family he was considered jovial and good-humoured, but he was also irritable, hasty, and passionate, covetous and full of pretension, easily influenced, and without energy, inclined to venture rashly on deeds of violence, and yet not firm enough to effect anything great. It appears that he had derived from the blood of the Stuarts, besides a high feeling of his own rank, much of the obstinacy of his ill-fated uncle Charles. In the year 1650, he had married Charlotte, Princess of Hesse, the daughter of that strong-minded woman, who, as Regent of her country, had shown more energy than most men, and whose powerful matronly countenance we still contemplate with pleasure, in the portrait by Engelhard Schäffler. The mother described her own daughter to the Elector as difficult to rule; the Electress was indeed passionate and without moderation, and must often have disturbed domestic peace by her frowardness and jealousy. A young lady of her court, Marie Susanne Loysa von Degenfeld, daughter of one of the partisans of the Thirty years' war, a person according to all accounts of great loveliness and much gentleness, mixed with firmness, excited a passion in the Elector which made him regardless of all considerations. After many angry quarrels he divorced his wife and at once married his love, on whom the title of "Raugräfin" was bestowed by the Imperial Court. The castoff Electress turned in vain to the Emperor Leopold, to effect a reconciliation with her husband. This petition is here given according to Lünig, from the rolls of the German Empire, 1714.[43] "We, by the grace of God, Charlotte, Electress, Countess Palatine of the Rhine, born Landgravine of Hesse, offer to the most august Prince and Sovereign of Sovereigns, Leopold, by the grace of God, father of the fatherland, our most dutiful, obedient, and submissive greeting and service.