No Great Expectations 7appearing in historical works as early as 1640, and as such is adopted
here.^1
Bohemian aristocracy the Waldsteins definitely were, distantly
descended through female lines from a medieval king of Bohemia and
related through a long history of inter-marriage to virtually all the other
families in this small but tightly knit elite.^2 Nevertheless they were not
rich, and indeed Albrecht’s father, one of nineteen children, owed his
mod est estate of Hermanitz to a fortunate bequest from a childless uncle.
Some of his own smaller family died early, so that Albrecht was the
only surviving son by the time of his parents’ death, leaving him heir to
the property and the title of Freiherr (baron) at the age of twelve. That he
looked back with affection on his childhood may be surmised from two
later acts. On taking up his inheritance at the age of nineteen he had
fine memorial tombstones for both parents erected in the local church,
and when he later reached a position of power one of his earliest uses
of his patronage was to award a lordship to a family retainer who had
been his tutor.^3
Albrecht’s mother came from a much wealthier branch of the aristoc-
racy, the Smirˇický family, but it was her brother-in-law Heinrich Slavata,
a prominent member of yet another noble family, who became Albrecht’s
guardian when his father died. He was thus also related to one of his
own later enemies, Heinrich’s nephew Wilhelm Slavata, who survived
being thrown out of the window of Prague castle in the incident tradi-
tionally regarded as the start of the Thirty Years War. Wilhelm was eleven
years older than Albrecht, though, and he also turned Catholic at around
this time, so it is unlikely that they saw much of each other at the castle
of Koschumberg (Košumberk) which now became Albrecht’s home.
The religion of Albrecht’s own family was the relatively moder-
ate Bohemian Confession, which was derived from both Hussite and
Lutheran influences, and his first formative years were spent in an
environment which was probably conventionally pious rather than fer-
vently sectarian. Heinrich Slavata, however, belonged to the Bohemian
Brethren, a quite different type of Protestantism, strict, zealous, influ-
enced by although not adhering to Calvinism, and with strong national-
political links. During his two years at Koschumberg Albrecht will have
had instruction in this faith, and while it does not appear to have had
a lasting influence on him it did bring him into early contact with the
religious divisions which ran through the Bohemian aristocracy, most of
whom were Protestants of one form or another, although a few remained
Catholic or had converted to Catholicism, including at least one promi-
nent Waldstein.^4