The first few months of Rupert's existence were the most prosperous of his life, but he was not a year old before his troubles began. His father, Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, had been married at sixteen to the famous Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I of England; the match was not a brilliant one for the Princess Royal of England, but it was exceedingly popular with the English people, who regarded Frederick with favour as the leader of the Calvinist Princes of the Empire. Elizabeth was no older than her husband, and seems to have been considerably more foolish. Her extravagancies and Frederick's difficult humours were the despair of their patient and faithful household steward; yet for some years they dwelt at Heidelberg in peaceful prosperity, and there three children were born to them, Frederick Henry, Charles Louis, and Elizabeth. But the Empire, though outwardly at peace, was inwardly seething with religious dissension, which broke out into open war on the election of Ferdinand of Styria, (the cousin and destined successor of the Emperor,) as King of Bohemia. Ferdinand was a staunch Roman Catholic, the friend and pupil of the Jesuits, with a reputation for intolerance even greater than he deserved.[6] As a matter of fact Protestantism was abhorrent to him, less as heresy, than as the root of moral and political disorder. The Church of Rome was, in his eyes, the fount of order and justice, and he was strongly imbued with the idea, then prevalent in the Empire, that to princes belonged the settlement of religion in those countries over which they ruled. But it happened that the Protestants of Bohemia had, at that moment, the upper hand. The turbulent nobles of the country were bent on establishing at once their political and religious independence; they rose in revolt, threw the Emperor's ministers out of the Council Chamber window at Prague, and rejected Ferdinand as king. {4} The Lutheran Princes looked on the revolt coldly, feeling no sympathy with Bohemia. They believed as firmly as did Ferdinand himself in the right of secular princes to settle theological disputes. They were loyal Imperialists, and hated Calvinism, anarchy and war, far more than they hated Roman Catholicism. With the Calvinist princes of the south, at the head of whom stood the Elector Palatine and the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, the case was different. Fear of their Catholic neighbours, Bavaria and the Franconian bishoprics, made them war-like; they sympathised strongly with their Bohemian co-religionists, they longed to break the power of the Emperor, and were even willing to call in foreign aid to effect their purpose. Schemes for their own personal aggrandisement played an equal part with their religious enthusiasm, and their plots and intrigues gave Ferdinand a very fair excuse for his unfavourable view of Protestantism.