Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier

by Charles Spencer

  Rupert’s passage was difficult. As his party approached Flamborough Head, on the Yorkshire coast, the Parliamentarian ship the London bore down on them. ‘What are you doing?’ the Parliamentarian captain hollered. ‘We are cruising,’ replied Colster, captain of Rupert’s vessel, while the prince stood next to him in a mariner’s cap. ‘What is the galiot?’ persisted the master of the London. ‘It is a Dunkirk prize,’ Colster lied. The suspicious Parliamentarians insisted that the galiot be searched. Rupert ordered Colster to sail on, prompting the London to summon assistance by firing her cannon. When two more enemy ships appeared on the horizon, Rupert told Colster to head directly for shore.

  The prince and his men rowed to safety and landed at Tynemouth. That night the galiot set off again and took its much-needed contents to the Royalist haven of Scarborough.

  Rupert wasted no time. He rode for Nottingham, which Charles had made his base, through fields rich with summer crops — the harvest of 1642 was to be especially bountiful. However, he was delayed when his horse lost its footing, throwing him to the ground and dislocating his shoulder. When he eventually reached Nottingham, he found that his uncle had departed for Coventry. Rupert set off south to join him. En route, the prince learnt that Coventry had closed its gates to Charles, its rebel garrison firing on his flag. The king, bewildered by this show of aggression, had moved on to Leicester. Rupert changed direction once more, arriving at Leicester Abbey, where he found his uncle with a tiny army. Its cavalrymen, under Henry Wilmot, had performed poorly in a skirmish. They were immediately entrusted to the prince’s command.

  The rank of General of Horse was much coveted. Military manuals of the time insisted that such a position be filled by a figure of rare qualities, reflecting the cavalry’s pre-eminence on the battlefield: ‘Cavalry, so called of Cavallo (which in the Italian and Spanish signifieth a horse) is worthily esteemed a most noble and necessary part of the military profession,’[89] recorded a military expert, in 1632. The same authority continued: ‘The General of the Horse, as being one of the principal Chiefs of an army, must be a soldier of extraordinary experience and valour; having in charge the nerve of the principal forces, and on whom the good success of many designs and actions dependeth, as being most usually executed by the Cavalry, especially in battles: where the charging of the enemy in good order usually giveth victory; and contrariwise, the disorders of the Cavalry often disturb and disband the whole army.’[90]

  The question for more seasoned veterans was whether the smooth-faced Rupert had either the experience essential to such a key position or the ability to transform the ragbag cavalry into a disciplined force. The German prince had bravery, they knew. He also possessed great charisma and style, his impressive figure topped with a plumed hat and ending in fine leather cavalry boots, while his back was swathed in the swish of a scarlet cloak. However, the sum total of his military experience was slight: the action at Rheinberg, four sieges, the cavalry charge at Rheine, and the defeat at Vlotho. Since then, he had been a prisoner of war. He had been absent during three years when some of them had been perfecting their skills on continental battlefields. They looked to Rupert to prove his worth in the crucial, senior position allotted him by his uncle.

  On 22 August 1642, when Charles raised the royal standard at Nottingham, it was less a declaration of war than an urgent call for supporters to rally to the Crown. The first night that it flew above the town, the royal standard was blown over. In a superstitious age, this was interpreted as an ill omen for the king’s cause. Certainly, if the Royalists were to have a chance, reinforcements were direly needed: Sir Jacob Astley, the king’s general of infantry, and a former military tutor of Rupert’s, warned that without more men, he could not be sure that he could prevent Charles being ‘taken out of his bed, if the rebels should make a brisk attempt to that purpose’.[91] Charles’s army numbered about 2,000 men — a quarter of the size of Parliament’s force, based in Northampton. Some of the king’s men had seen service in the Thirty Years’ War, but most of them were amateurs who were present because of a simple belief that it was their duty to support their monarch. Clarendon recalled the disparity between Rupert’s cavalry and Parliament’s, in the late summer of 1642: the prince’s men ‘were not at that time in number above eight hundred, few better arm’d than with swords; while the enemy had, within less than twenty miles of that place, double the number of horse excellently arm’d and appointed’.[92] In London there was optimism that the king’s inability to raise a sizeable army would compel him to bow quickly to Parliament.

  Rupert set about equipping and reinforcing his men. The training of horses for battle was as important as the schooling of their riders. John Vernon, who served in the Royalist cavalry, wrote of how best to prepare a horse for war:

  You must use him to the smell of gunpowder, a sight of fire and armour, hearing of drums and trumpets, and shooting of guns but by degrees. When he is eating of his oats you may fire a little train of gunpowder in the manger, at a little distance from him, and so nearer by degrees. In like manner you may fire a pistol at a little distance from him in the stable, and so nearer by degrees, and so likewise a drum, or trumpet may be used to him in the stable. The groom may sometimes dress him in armour, using him sometimes to eat his oats on the drum head. In the fields when you are on his back, cause a musket[-eer] and yourself to fire on each other at a convenient distance, thereupon riding up unto him with speed, making a sudden stand. Also you may use to ride him up against a complete armour set on a stack on purpose, that he may overthrow it, and so trample it under his feet, so that by these means, the horse finding that he receiveth no harm, may become bold to approach any object.’[93]

  By the end of September, Rupert had 3,000 cavalry and dragoons (mounted infantry), most of whom had received some training. He had begun to establish that reputation for tireless energy that was to be his trademark: ‘This Prince, like a perpetual motion’, reported an agitated Parliamentarian historian, ‘with those horse that he commanded, was in short time heard of in many places at great distances.’[94] With the myth came hostility and fear. Rupert and his younger brother Maurice were quickly made hate figures by their enemies: ‘The two young Princes, Rupert especially, the elder and fiercer of the two, flew with great fury through divers counties, raising men for the King in a rigorous way ... whereupon the Parliament declared him and his brother “traitors”.’[95]

  Rupert relied on continental military practices, and in so doing revealed what the Earl of Clarendon, an ally but no friend, termed ‘full inexperience of the customs and manners of England’.[96] On mainland Europe it was normal to force the local population to fund the army in the field, through levies and confiscations: the Thirty Years’ War general, Wallenstein, invented the dictum, later borrowed by Napoleon, that ‘war should support itself’. In early September Rupert wrote an ultimatum to the mayor of Leicester, demanding £2,000 for the king ‘against the rebellious insurrection of the malignant party’. Although signed by ‘Your friend, Rupert’, there was nothing friendly about the PS: ‘If any disaffected persons with you shall refuse themselves, or persuade you to neglect the command, I shall tomorrow appear before your town, in such a posture, with horse, foot, and cannon, as shall make you know it is more safe to obey than to resist his Majesty’s command.’[97]

  The startled mayor immediately referred this alien threat to the king, prompting an apology from Charles: Rupert’s letter, he assured the people of Leicester, had been ‘written without our privity or consent, so we do hereby absolutely free and discharge you from yielding any obedience to the same, and by our own letters to our said nephew, we have written to him to revoke the same, as being an act very displeasing to us’.[98] Charles was appalled by Rupert’s misjudgement. At this delicate stage, before Leicester had even declared which side it would support, bullying extortion had no place.

  Rupert’s gaffe played into the hands of Parliamentary propagandists. From the moment the king’s enemies learnt t
hat Rupert was coming to Charles’s aid, they portrayed him in the blackest light. He was condemned for being sinfully ungrateful for the efforts made on his family’s behalf by England’s Protestants. The prince would never be forgiven for siding against those who had so vociferously championed the Palatine cause.

  It was not long before the propagandists presented him to a credulous public as the epitome of immoral soldiery. There was a determination that the most eye-catching of the Royalist leaders should be characterised as wild, dangerous, and even devilish. He was portrayed as a deviant, who enjoyed sex with his white poodle, Boy, and with a ‘Malignant She Monkey’. A Parliamentary pamphleteer enjoyed imagining the creature’s sexual repertoire:

  this monkey is a kind of movable body that can cringe and complement like a Venetian courtesan, though her face be not so handsome; yet all her gestures and postures are wanton and full of provocation, she being nothing else (as many others are) but a skin full of lust; her eyes are full of lascivious glances, and generally all her actions do administer some temptation or other; so that she cannot choose but work upon Prince Rupert’s affections; and if he were any thing effeminate as it is not to be doubted but he is forward enough in expressions of love as well as valour; for as the Spanish painter wrote in a Church window sunt with a C. which was an abomination, so her name is an emblem of wantonness, sunt written in that manner being often called a Monkey, which is a kind of prophanation, and thus you see what Prince Ruperts Monkey both nominally and figuratively signify, she being in all her posture the picture of a loose wanton, who is often figuratively called a Monkey.[99]

  It was not particularly subtle stuff.

  His men suffered from similar slanders. Parliamentary printing presses began to use the term ‘cavaliers’ to demonise their enemies. It was an expression of contempt that had arisen from the excesses of the Spanish trooper, the caballo, during the Thirty Years’ War. ‘He’s the only man of all memory’, the author of The Character of a Cavalier stated, ‘whose unworthy actions will perpetuate his memory to ensuing generations. His very name will be odious; and when Posterity ... shall find his name mentioned in our Annals, they will be inquisitive to know the Nature of the Beast: This Skellum, this Nigro carbone notatus, this Monstrum horrendum.’[100]

  Parliamentary leaders encouraged people to give money and silver to their cause, rather than remain vulnerable to ‘several sorts of malignant men, who were about the King; some whereof, under the name of Cavaliers, without having respect of the laws of the land, or any fear either of God or man, were ready to commit all manner of outrage and violence; which must needs tend to the dissolution of the Government; the destruction of their Religion, Laws, Liberties, Properties; all which would be exposed to the malice and violence of such desperate persons, as must be employed in so horrid and unnatural an act, as the overpowering [of] a Parliament by force.’[101] Violent, destructive, malicious, and overwhelmingly dangerous: Parliament’s image of the cavalier had taken form before Rupert’s arrival in England. However, he was presented as the quintessential example of this cursed phenomenon.

  Meanwhile, the Royalists wanted Rupert — ‘our most Gracious Prince’ — to be seen as a positive influence on their admittedly undisciplined force. He was adamant, they argued, that his troopers ‘should behave themselves fairly, not doing any harm, to man, woman, or child, giving them strict Command, that they should commit no Outrage whatsoever against any of His Majesty’s loving Subjects, neither should they take any thing from them by violence’.[102] When any of his men’s crimes were reported to him, it was claimed, Rupert dished out swift and decisive justice.

  Among Parliamentary pamphleteers, there were occasional flashes of honesty about the shortcomings of some of their own: ‘I answer that it is true indeed that some of the Parliament’s army are as bad as the Cavaliers’, one conceded, ‘and such as are a very shame to the cause they pretend to stand for, & it were to be wished they were all cashiered, although there were but Gideon’s army left behind.’[103]

  A generation before the outbreak of war, Henry Peacham had written an unflattering description of the typical English gentleman: ‘To be drunk, swear, wench, follow the fashion, and to do just nothing, are the attributes and marks nowadays of a great part of our Gentry.’[104] The Cavaliers were credited with all these debauched and dissolute ways. Fear of their capabilities was heightened as hostilities increased.

  The recipients of this nickname, however, were keen to cast themselves in a more forgiving light. One writer in early 1643 talked of ‘the Cavaliers, whom now we see with our eyes to be the Flower of the Parliament, Nobility and Gentry of the Kingdom’.[105] An imaginary conversation in The Cavaliers’ Catechism broadened the theme:

  Question: ‘What is your name?’

  Answer: ‘Cavalier.’

  Question: ‘Who gave you that name?’

  Answer: ‘They who understood not what they did when they gave it; for it was intended to my infamy, but it proves to my dignity, a Cavalier signifying a Gentleman who serves his King on horseback.’

  Question: ‘I pray you tell me what Religion you are of, for it is generally reported of you Cavaliers that you are all most infamous livers, atheists, Epicures, swearers, blasphemers, drunkards, murderers, and ravishers, and (at the least) Papists.’

  Answer: ‘To these and the like scandalous aspersions, I will only say thus, (in brief, Sir) that as I cannot excuse all of our Party (no more than you can all of yours) so I cannot but in Conscience (according to my ability) be bound to defend & vindicate the major part of us from such malicious, and fraudulent calumniations ...’[106]

  The dark imagery of the rapacious Cavalier was an attempt to counter the reputation Rupert’s horsemen had won in the public mind, in the early months of the conflict.

  *

  The personal myth of Prince Rupert began to blossom from the outset of the Civil War. It is so varied and rich that separation of fact from embellishment is often difficult. There were many eyewitnesses present, however, when Rupert, while passing through Stafford, stood in the garden of a Captain Richard Sneyd and fired his ‘screw’d horseman’s pistol’ at a weathercock on top of St Mary’s Church. He managed to hit it from a range of 60 yards — an astonishing achievement in an era when the handgun was notorious for its inaccuracy. Charles I dismissed the shot as a fluke, prompting Rupert to fire again. He repeated the feat. A visitor to Staffordshire two generations later could report ‘the two holes through the weathercock tail (as an ample testimony of the thing) remaining there to this day’.[107]

  Another credible episode was one the prince enjoyed recounting: when seeking food from a widow, Rupert asked her what her opinion was of the infamous royal nephew. ‘A plague choke Prince Rupert,’ she replied. ‘He might have kept himself where he was born; this kingdom has been the worse ever since he landed.’

  Less plausible are tales that were nonetheless believed at the time. These yarns endowed Rupert with almost supernatural powers. As part of his wizardry, it was said that he was a cunning master of disguise. One such story told how Rupert met an apple-seller, and bought 10 shillings’ worth of apples from him, before a mischievous thought came to him:

  ‘Hold thy hand,’ said the Prince; ‘there is a piece for thee: now hold my horse, change habit with me, and stay here while I sell thy apples — only for a merry humour that I have — and at my coming back I’ll give thee a piece more.’ The fellow willingly lent him his coat and hat, and away went the Prince, selling the apples through the [Parliamentary] army, at any rate; viewing their strength, and in what kind they lay; and, returning to the fellow gave him another piece, with this charge: ‘Go to the Army and ask the commanders how they liked the fruit Prince Rupert, in his own person, did but this morning sell them.’[108]

  The reader would be forgiven for expecting this merry tale to conclude with appearances by Little John and Will Scarlet. It is difficult to accept that even someone of Rupert’s reckless courage would risk himself in suc
h a perilous exploit. He was one of the most distinctive-looking of men, his great height of 6 foot 4 inches making him 9 inches taller than his average contemporary. However, the tale of the prince selling apples to the enemy in their own camp was accepted by many as fact, not just through gullibility, but because such yarns fitted an established pattern of story-telling.

  The folklore surrounding Rupert’s more improbable deeds stem from a cult thriving at this time — that of the gentleman outlaw. Robin Hood was the most popular mythological figure in this tradition: the yeoman bandit who first appeared in Piers Plowman in the 1370s had, by the late sixteenth century, been accorded noble status as Robin, Earl of Huntingdon. One of the best-known tales of his derring-do was ‘Robin Hood and the Potter,’ which celebrated Robin’s ability to wrong-foot enemies by concealing his identity with brilliant cunning. Robin ventured into his enemies’ camp, disguised in much the same way as Rupert was said to have been. It is an ancient, English story-telling device: the hero as daring chameleon. Over five hundred years before, Hereward the Wake, a Saxon rebel leader, was said to have played a similar trick on his Norman opponents, dressing as a fisherman to inspect his enemies’ siege works, before returning to torch them later in the day. That Prince Rupert inspired similar tales shows the fear he provoked, but also the respect that was grudgingly given to a prominent foe who was considered formidable, dangerous, and resourceful.

  The notion of a man of royal blood resorting to criminal subterfuge would not have surprised Caroline England: half a century earlier, Shakespeare had dramatised the youthful misdemeanours of Prince Hal, the future Henry V, when led astray by Falstaff and his guttersnipe band. John Taylor, the self-styled ‘Water Poet’, celebrated this irresponsible phase in 1630, placing Hal, ‘the Robber Prince’, in the pantheon of famous English lawbreakers: