Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier

by Charles Spencer

  When Essex withdrew after the battle, he believed that the king would look to make good his losses, and return towards his most productive recruiting grounds in Wales and the northwest. Instead Charles led his army to the rebel stronghold of Banbury, which fell to him without a fight, four days after Edgehill. At this point, with Royalist morale buoyant, Rupert urged his uncle to agree to a bold plan: he would hurry on to London with a flying army of cavalry, dragoons, and mounted musketeers, capture the members of the Lords and Commons in Westminster, and hold them at Whitehall until the king arrived with the rest of his troops. Edgehill had failed to end the rebellion, but the taking of the capital promised an immediate and successful conclusion to the war.

  Charles’s advisers were unconvinced. Some expressed serious reservations about the plausibility of Rupert’s scheme. The Earl of Bristol, father of Lord Digby, revealed a distaste for Rupert’s foreign ways, voicing concern that the prince would set London on fire. The German had shown his readiness to threaten unrestrained force against the citizens of Leicester. How could he be trusted with the safety of the capital, by far the biggest city in Britain — and, with 150,000 inhabitants, the most populous city in the world?

  This has been seen as a defining moment in the Civil War. Charles was never to enjoy another opportunity to march on London. Rupert could, possibly, have succeeded in his Blitzkrieg, and such was the terror at his name that his numerical inferiority to the capital’s militia, the London Trained Bands, might have been irrelevant. There was Royalist support in London, which may well have risen for Rupert. But it is hard to see the lightly armed force penetrating London’s defences, decayed though many had become. To speed his progress, Rupert would have had to leave his artillery behind and this would have further reduced his chances of success. The Earl of Warwick had also begun to raise a second Parliamentary army; it was unproven and inexperienced, but it would have been a further impediment. Among all the hypotheses, there is one certainty: Rupert’s aim of taking the Lords and Commons by surprise had absolutely no hope of success.

  Charles sided with his more cautious advisers against his nephew’s plan. From Banbury he turned to Oxford, which he made the Royalist headquarters. This was a town he knew well, since repeated bouts of the plague had forced him to move there from London with court and Parliament, earlier in his reign.

  ‘After the famous Battle at Edgehill’, a Parliamentarian noted, ‘the first large field of blood in these Civil Wars, though the King’s Army was there much broken, yet his strength increased, and multitudes began to look towards him, as one at least wise possible not to be overcome, and in this strange confluence of men His Army seemed like that fabulous generation that sprung out of the teeth of the Cadmean Serpent buried in the earth.’[143] After the embarrassing fiasco of the standard-raising at Nottingham, many had thought the king would struggle to form an army. Thanks to Rupert’s energetic work with the cavalry, and Aston’s efforts with the infantry, Charles had met Essex and at least achieved parity on the battlefield. Partial success helped attract waverers to the king’s cause. If Charles were to have a hope of winning the war, Rupert and his colleagues needed to produce further success, quickly and consistently. If not, Parliament’s advantages — in terms of recruitment, armament, and control of the navy — would surely tell.

  Chapter Seven - The Curse of Parliament

  ‘Most Bloody Prince, and all your bloody Prelates and Cavaliers: I have as you may see by this ensuing Discourse, taken a little pains, to set that before your eyes in words, which by your actions you will not take notice of namely, your unreasonable wickedness, and the doom that will follow: Advising you to take heed of persisting in such destructive ways, as now you are in; which counsel of mine, if you shall take, you will find it the best piece of work that ever you took in hand; but if you refuse and reject it, you will, I am sure, repent the day, when it is too late.’

  Introduction to The Bloody Prince, or a Declaration of the Most cruell Practises of Prince Rupert, and the rest of the Cavaliers, London: 1643

  The king marched triumphantly into Oxford, then sent a force on to take Reading. Rupert, meanwhile, pushed further down the Thames Valley towards Windsor. Most of the 1,500 townsfolk were Parliamentarians and, in the aftermath of Edgehill, they took control of the mighty Royalist castle — ‘being a place of greatest strength in this part of the kingdom, by reason of the height and strength, the country lying under it so that the Castle can command it round about’.[144] The new governor was Colonel John Venn, a City merchant who was loathed by the Royalists: he was on a select list of eleven rebels (headed by Pym) ineligible for the king’s pardon. If captured, he would be executed.

  A fortnight after Edgehill, on 7 November, Rupert attacked Windsor from the Eton side of the Thames. The market town was almost defenceless and suffered badly during a seven-hour bombardment by Rupert’s five field pieces. Many civilians fled for refuge into the surrounding woodland. Others sought shelter up the hill in the castle, where the prince’s cannon made barely any impression on formidable defences. Rupert was told by his men that ‘they would willingly attend him to fight against men but not against stone walls, rocks and inaccessible places, where a hundred men might keep out ten thousand, all valour being useless; and therefore desired the Prince that he would rise thence, and depart into other places where they might do the Cause better service’.[145] Rupert reluctantly agreed, leaving Windsor Castle in Parliament’s hands. It would be its military headquarters throughout the Civil War, a counterbalance to Royalist Oxford 40 miles away.

  Meanwhile, Charles and Parliament revisited possibilities for peace. But, when the king met the rebel commissioners near Slough, on the same day as his nephew was assaulting nearby Windsor, both sides believed the other to be insincere. Convinced that his enemies were deploying delaying tactics, Charles sanctioned Rupert’s request to attack Parliamentary Brentford. The prince led a ruthless infantry assault, descending out of the mist at the head of Welsh troops to overwhelm the garrison and capture several hundred men and a dozen cannon. The king’s opponents were outraged by this ‘bloody and treacherous design’.[146] Their men had been caught off guard, they claimed, because of the truce accompanying the ongoing peace negotiations. The military success of the attack was countered by the claims of Charles’s critics that he was ‘environ’d by some such Councils, as do rather persuade a desperate division, than a joining and a good agreement with your Parliament and People’.[147] The drunken pillaging of the town by Rupert’s men added credibility to the view that the prince, ‘and all his followers, wheresoever they go, leave not a house in their way unplundered’.[148]

  Londoners saw Brentford’s fate as a foretaste of what they could expect, if Rupert breached the capital’s defences. The prince became the target of increasingly vicious propaganda. Lord Wharton, returned after serving as a captain at Edgehill, claimed in a speech at the Guildhall that God’s favour had spared Essex all but miniscule casualties in the battle. ‘One great cause of the preservation, & of the success of that day’, he continued, ‘was that the troops under the command of Prince Robert, while we were a fighting, not only pillaged the baggage (which was a poor employment;) but killed countrymen that came in with their teams, and poor women, and children that were with them; this I think not amiss to tell you, because you may see what is the thing they aim at, which is pillage, and baggage, and plundering, and the way which they would come by it is murdering, and destroying, and therefore it will come in very properly, to encourage you to that work ... which is, the standing upon your defence.’[149]

  Rupert reacted to Wharton’s slanders with fury: ‘If these abominable untruths (with many more like them in his Lordship’s speech) be all true,’ Rupert fumed, ‘then shall he freely charge me with barbarousness and inhumanity; but if these be most gross falsities (as many thousand worthy Gentlemen will take their oaths they are) then I must profess I am sorry that any Baron of the English Nation should utter such foul untruths, to dec
eive the poor abused Citizens of London with false reports, and so slander us.’[150]

  Many chose to believe Wharton. The capital’s Puritan ministers harnessed fear at the prince’s approach to persuade 20,000 Londoners to stiffen the city’s defences. The citizens’ unity of purpose, in the face of looming peril, was celebrated in verse:

  By hearsay our foes they are coming to town,

  And threaten to kill us and beat our works down;

  Which thing to prevent our tradesmen do strive,

  To build up new bulwarks to keep us alive ...

  The several tradesmen I to you will name,

  And tell you how orderly they to work came,

  With shovels and baskets, with pick-axe and spades

  Who laboured as hard as they did at their trades ...

  It do my heart good to see how fine wenches,

  Doth drive the wheelbarrows and work in the trenches,

  I dare undertake that they laboured so well,

  That all the whole kingdom will of the same tell ...

  Indeed they have cause for to do their endeavour,

  To work and take pains now at this time or never,

  To keep out Prince Robert and his Cavaliers,

  Which daily possesses the City with fears ...[151]

  The entrances to London — at St James’s, Hyde Park Corner, St Giles in the Fields, Pancras Fields, Gray’s Inn Lane, Holloway Road, and Hoxton — were allotted artillery batteries, fortifications, and troops with which to hold back ‘Prince Robber’. Warships were deployed along the Thames, their cannon standing sentinel over the Houses of Parliament.

  Essex’s troops rushed back to the capital and joined apprentice-boy volunteers and the London Trained Bands on Turnham Green, ready to block Rupert’s approach from Brentford. The combined Parliamentary army numbered 24,000 men. An awkward stand-off ensued, both armies deployed for action but neither prepared to risk battle. Rupert saw that there was no open ground for his cavalry to exploit, and he could make out rebel muskets in the hedges and ditches before him. Essex’s artillery was well entrenched, its exploratory shots claiming a few victims.

  Rupert led his cavalry forward in some minor sallies, his enemies reporting seeing him ‘charging like a Devil, rather than a man’. They were nervous of the prince’s growing reputation and sought to portray his bravery in a sinister light: ‘The prince, who without all doubt, is rather to be held desperate than truly valiant ... and though he was shot at a thousand times by our men, not any of them was to purpose; encouraging his horsemen, who were the flower of his garland, not to leave him nor the quarrel.’[152] Despite Rupert’s efforts, the skirmishes did not develop into the expected decisive battle.

  It was enough for the Parliamentarians to have blocked the Royalist advance. In a humiliating end to the 1642 campaign, Charles led his men slowly away, eventually returning to Oxford. The king was not to see London again until returning as a prisoner, years later, on trial for his life.

  *

  The reality of war had been a shock for all but the few professional soldiers on either side. The violent clashes at Edgehill, and the extraordinary sight of an English king preparing to attack his capital, were events that many found bewildering. A third of Essex’s army deserted during the first winter of the war, disillusioned and ill provided for. ‘My hope was’, Charles now admitted, ‘that either by success on my part, or Repentance on theirs, God would have put a short end to this great storm.’[153] However, he underestimated the passions unleashed by open conflict.

  From January to April 1643, peace negotiations were conducted at Oxford. The concessions demanded of Charles remained unrealistic on many fronts: he would not contemplate surrendering his sovereign control of the militia; honour forbade him from handing over his key supporters to Parliament for punishment; his religious beliefs stopped him from abolishing the bishops; and common sense dictated that he should not disband an army that was showing encouraging growth.

  While the talks dragged on, Rupert remained active and aggressive. As a professional soldier, he was determined to win political advantage on the battlefield. As the son of a displaced ruler, he was eager to save his uncle’s crown. The prince’s military position was strengthened by the confirmation of Patrick Ruthven, the Earl of Forth, as commander of the Royalist army in succession to the dead Lindsey. Forth admired Rupert’s exceptional drive and recognised his talismanic value to the king’s cause. The prince was encouraged to strike into the enemy heartland: 1643 was to be the golden year of his military career.

  Cirencester was the first to fall. A crucial stronghold in the Cotswolds, the town was home to a large Parliamentary garrison. Rupert attacked it with 6,000 men in February, after his summons to surrender had been declined, and took it in four hours. A well-aimed grenade ignited the key defences and when the enemy’s musketeers fled, they were ruthlessly despatched by the prince’s men. There were the customary rumblings from London, which followed in the wake of a Rupert spectacular: he was falsely accused of sanctioning the cold-blooded murder of women, children, and Puritan ministers. In truth, he took 1,000 prisoners, seized much-needed arms and provisions, and marched them all to Oxford, where the Royalists greeted his victory with a celebratory Evening Service. Sir Edward Nicholas, one of Charles’s secretaries of state and a great admirer of the prince, wrote: ‘The welcome news of your highness’s taking of Cirencester by assault with admirable dexterity and courage, came this morning very seasonably and opportunely, as his Majesty was ready to give an answer to the Parliament Committee, and will, I believe, work better effects with them.’[154] Rupert’s timely victory had narrowly saved his uncle from needless concessions to his enemies.

  By taking Cirencester, Rupert gained the king a vital staging post between his Oxford headquarters and his key recruiting grounds in the northwest and Wales — the latter was referred to by the rebels as the ‘feed-plot and nursery of Prince Rupert’s soldiers’.[155] The new acquisition also threatened two significant Parliamentarian cities, Bristol and Gloucester. Rupert tried to sweet-talk the governors of both into switching allegiance, without success.

  Rupert now swept through Hampshire, bettering a Parliamentary force at Alton in late February, before terrorizing enemy troops in Wiltshire. Speed and surprise were his hallmarks, and nowhere in southern or central England seemed to be beyond his reach; he spread round the country, his enemies complained, ‘like wildfire’.

  On 22 February, Henrietta Maria landed in Yorkshire with desperately needed reinforcements and armaments from the Continent. Rupert and 12,500 men — mainly mounted — were sent to escort the queen to Oxford, through the hostile Midlands. The prince was encouraged to attack enemy strongholds on his way northeast, to make the return of his precious convoy easier.

  Birmingham was the first victim; it prided itself on being the most rebellious town in England, but its forces were unequal to its reputation. Rupert’s papers recalled that: ‘The Prince took Birmingham by assault with little loss, only the Lord of Denbigh was unfortunately slain.’[156] Denbigh had been one of the first to volunteer to serve the prince, at the outbreak of war. His son, though, had opted to fight for Parliament.

  Rebel scribes accused Rupert’s men of defiling the women of Birmingham and of wilfully setting the town ablaze — their main pamphlet describing the assault was called Prince Rupert’s Burning Love for England discovered in Birmingham’s Flames. Independent eyewitnesses supported the prince’s denial of both charges.

  Lichfield was a tougher proposition. Its well-drilled garrison, under a flinty professional called Colonel Rowsewell, made a stand inside the moat and walls of the town’s cathedral close. The rebel forces at Lichfield behaved in an inflammatory manner, hunting a cat with hounds inside the cathedral, and dressing up a calf as a bishop. Then, after capturing several Royalists in a failed assault with ladders, they paraded one of these prisoners, attached a noose around his neck, and goaded Rupert to rescue his man, if he could, by shooting through t
he rope. They then swung him over the wall from a gibbet, where he kicked his last in view of the prince. Rules of war were rudimentary during this period, and were frequently disregarded on the Continent, but in England the cold-blooded murder of prisoners was still regarded as a heinous act.

  Rupert vowed to slaughter the garrison. He was entitled to do this because of the murder of his soldier and because his calls to surrender had been rejected. However, he had insufficient artillery to breach the walls. The prince now called on his experience in European warfare: summoning fifty Staffordshire miners from Cannock Chase, he ordered them to burrow a tunnel beneath the cathedral walls. It was a complex operation, requiring the draining of the defensive moat and the penetration of an unforgiving stratum of rock, but eventually ‘the first mine sprung in England’[157] was complete, and five barrels of gunpowder were detonated to good effect. Frenzied fighting took place in the resulting breach, but the defenders, no doubt spurred on by fear of Rupert’s reprisals, continued their resistance into the following day.

  It was during his time outside Lichfield that Rupert received a stream of confusing and contradictory letters from the king. Initially, eager to be viewed as a magnanimous ruler, Charles wrote urging his nephew to ‘have a care of spilling innocent blood’[158] when he took the city. This was an easy order for an inexperienced, absent commander to give, but a difficult one for Rupert to implement on the ground. Such interference risked compromising the effectiveness of an independent man of action.