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Place

Herford

Westphalia · Modern Germany

The imperial abbey in Westphalia where Elisabeth of Bohemia served as abbess and sheltered dissenters nobody else would house.

Herford was a Protestant foundation whose abbess held the rank of an imperial princess, which gave Elisabeth both an income and a jurisdiction of her own. She used it. She took in Labadists and Quakers when other territories were expelling them, corresponded with William Penn, and kept up her philosophical connections. It is a better ending than the exiled royal daughter of a lost kingdom had any right to expect.

Thinkers Connected to Herford