Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier

by Charles Spencer

  Rupert, still recovering from his serious head wound, had quit Louis XIV’s service to rejoin the Royalist cause. The prince had, in the words of his private papers, ‘been plied over again with the repeated offer of any conditions in the French service, before his going for Holland’.[376] However, he had always insisted that, if the chance arose to serve his uncle once more, he would feel obliged to take it.

  Arriving at The Hague, Rupert found that Charles had been reunited with his younger brother, James, Duke of York. The teenager had escaped house arrest in St James’s Palace during a game of hide and seek. He had slipped away and disguised himself as a girl, wearing a wig and a lady’s cloak. He had then succeeded in crossing from Gravesend to Holland, his arrival giving a fillip to the court-in-exile and embarrassing his former captors.

  James bore the title of Lord High Admiral. He hoped that he would be called upon to lead the ships that, like him, had recently quit England. However, Prince Charles insisted on commanding the squadrons himself. The royal heir led the fleet into the Downs, off the southeastern English coast, eager for action. Princes Rupert and Maurice were by his side.

  The expedition was not a success. The Prince of Wales’s ships were poorly provided for: the English sailor of the mid seventeenth century endured harsh conditions, in return for limited but inalienable rights. Of prime importance to him was his daily food allowance. This comprised 1 lb of bread, 1/2 lb of cheese, and 1/4 lb of butter. He also expected adequate clothing. Prince Charles had neither the money nor the logistical support to see that these basic needs were met, and the men became mutinous. They insisted in putting to shore near Deal, in the hope of finding food and booty, but the foray was a shambles and a detachment of Parliamentary cavalry saw off the raiders. ‘Upon this repulse,’ Rupert’s papers recorded, with disappointment, ‘disorders and discontents increasing in the fleet, and all disadvantages being artificially improved, it was thought ... best to return to Holland.’[377]

  On their way back across the North Sea, the Royalists met Batten and Jordan, two enemy naval commanders who professed loyalty to the Crown. This was especially surprising of Batten, a figure of hate among the king’s supporters since firing on Henrietta Maria as she landed on the Yorkshire coast at the start of the Civil War. Now, to Rupert’s bewilderment, the queen’s son chose to knight the rebel vice-admiral. Batten assured his new allies that, if they waited where they were, he would ensure that they received supplies from London. None came.

  Some of the Royalists now suggested sailing to the relief of Colchester, while others advocated joining up with the Scots in the north. Rupert believed these plans to be of secondary importance when the chance remained of rescuing the king from the Isle of Wight. However, the seamen were less interested in strategy than in self-enrichment. They busied themselves taking prizes: picking off the colliers returning from London to the northeast was particularly lucrative, since they carried the money earned selling coal to the capital.

  There were few opportunities to fight battles. When the Earl of Warwick emerged with Parliament’s fleet, Rupert noticed that Batten was extremely nervous about the prospect of fighting his former comrades. The prince’s suspicions heightened when Batten took to carrying a large white napkin, which he claimed he needed for mopping sweat from his chin. Rupert felt sure that Batten was instead using the napkin to signal to the enemy, but Charles dismissed his cousin’s concerns as the workings of an overactive imagination. Rupert conceded that he had no proof of Batten’s treachery, ‘But,’ he vowed, ‘if things go ill, by God, the first thing I will do is to shoot him.’[378]

  The chance never arose: a storm broke when the two forces were about to engage, forcing all the ships to drop anchor. When the winds slackened, Warwick declined combat. The Prince of Wales, his crews’ provisions and morale both running low, ordered a return to Holland. ‘At night,’ Prince Rupert’s Logbook recalled, ‘the Prince standing upon the deck in the Constant Reformation, Patison (the master of the ship) cried out to his Highness that he saw a light, and asked what he should do.’[379] Rupert was convinced that the light belonged to a ship from a Parliamentary fleet — a conclusion that Patison and the other officers endorsed. Batten revealed a suspicious reluctance to pursue this possible enemy sighting. ‘Sir,’ he said to the Prince of Wales, ‘whither do we steer? Will your Majesty have him [Rupert] run out of the way for every collier that he sees?’[380] Prince Charles bowed to Batten’s scepticism and ordered his ships to continue their course for the Netherlands.

  However, Rupert had been correct. The light he had seen twinkling in the distance belonged to a vessel from Parliament’s Portsmouth fleet, which had been looking to throw in its lot with the king. Batten’s curious advice scuppered this plan and the fleet went back to Portsmouth, and to Parliament’s service. Meanwhile, the Royalists returned to Holland with little to show for their efforts.

  Disappointment and failure stoked the smouldering faction fighting in the Stuart court. Rupert’s longstanding dislike of Culpepper was cleverly played on by Sir Edward Herbert, the manipulative attorney general. Herbert knew, as Clarendon put it, that Rupert: ‘did not, upon many old contests in the late war, love the Lord Culpepper, who was not of a temper to court him’.[381] Culpepper’s temper was, if anything, hotter than Rupert’s. The two men clashed with increasing aggression in Prince Charles’s council. One day, the council met at the lodgings in The Hague shared by the Lord Treasurer and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to discuss who should dispose of the cargo of a recently taken prize ship. Clarendon recorded:

  Prince Rupert proposed, ‘That one Sir Robert Walsh (a person too well known to be trusted) might be employed in that affair’: it was to sell a ship of sugar. No man present would ever have consented that he should have enjoyed; but the Lord Culpepper spoke against him with some warmth, so that it might be thought to reflect a little upon Prince Rupert, who had proposed him. Upon which, he asking ‘What exceptions there were to Robert Walsh, why he might not be fit for it’; Culpepper answered with some quickness, ‘That he was a known cheat’; which, though notoriously true, the Prince seemed to take very ill; and said, ‘He was his friend, and a gentleman; and if he should come to hear of what had been said, he knew not how Lord Culpepper could avoid fighting with him’. Culpepper, whose courage no man doubted, presently replied, ‘That he would not fight with Walsh, but he would fight with His Highness’; to which the Prince answered very quietly, ‘That it was well’; and the Council rose in great perplexity.[382]

  Prince Charles was determined to prevent a duel between his cousin and one of his family’s most loyal servants. Clarendon took Culpepper for a walk outside and urged him to ask for Rupert’s pardon. But Culpepper’s temper was ablaze and he refused to back down, unless Rupert did so too. It took several days for Culpepper to calm himself and appreciate that nobody of influence was supporting him.

  Culpepper went to Rupert’s lodgings and apologised. Sir Edward Herbert had tried to dissuade him from forgiving the effrontery, but Rupert received Culpepper and his apology with grace. Herbert then worked on Sir Robert Walsh, telling him that, now Prince Rupert had given way, it was up to Walsh to defend his own honour. Herbert broke the confidentiality of the council, by quoting Culpepper’s slurs word for word.

  At ten o’clock on the morning after his reconciliation with the prince, Culpepper was intercepted by Walsh as he walked to the council. He spoke with quiet menace, leaving Culpepper in no doubt that he knew what he had said and that he would get his revenge. Culpepper replied that he would happily fight Walsh, but that he would not be drawn on what had or had not been said in council, since such matters were secret. At this, Walsh punched Culpepper powerfully in the face and then drew his sword. However, seeing that Culpepper was unarmed, he left him bleeding heavily and walked away.

  Culpepper remained confined to his room, embarrassed and outraged by the wound to his face. Prince Charles, shocked at this violence against his confidant, asked the authorities in
The Hague to take urgent action. They were not particularly interested in a spat among their royal guest’s retinue, but eventually banned Walsh from their city. The whole business was unattractive and reflected poorly on the Royalist community-in-exile.

  *

  After a brief stay ashore, Rupert rejoined the fleet. There were rumours that Parliament was sending a force to occupy Helvoetsluys, a harbour that the Royalists planned to make their Dutch maritime headquarters. The two navies dashed for the port, Lord Warwick despatching his fastest frigate to secure its prime berth. Inside the harbour wall, the rebel frigate seemed sure to win a frantic rowing race with Rupert’s vessel. However, when Warwick’s men threw their rope to an apparently friendly figure on the shore, he turned out to be one of Rupert’s officers, Captain Allen. Allen let the rope slip through his hands, into the water. He then assisted the prince’s craft, tying it fast to the quay. The rest of the Royalist ships pulled in alongside, the race for Helvoetsluys narrowly won.

  Warwick’s fleet was forced to hover outside, waiting for the Royalists to reappear. The Dutch forbade any fighting in the harbour and posted a squadron of their own ships between the two enemy fleets, promising to open fire on whichever side breached the peace first. They could not, however, stop Warwick’s men from infiltrating Helvoetsluys, where they mocked the harsh conditions endured by the Royalists and told them of the plentiful supplies that Parliament provided for its fighting men.

  These claims left Rupert’s crews ‘mutinous and distracted’, as well as vulnerable to ‘flatteries and moneys from several of Warwick’s agents that were dispersed there ashore’.[383] Morale was further undermined by reports from England. By September 1648, the Second Civil War was already effectively over. Cromwell had defeated the Scots in Lancashire in mid August. More shockingly, after Colchester had been starved into submission, Sir Charles Lucas and his deputy were ‘in cold blood barbarously murdered’,[384] victims of a hastily convened firing squad.

  During the weeks that followed Rupert spread his most loyal officers equally among his ships, in an effort to control his increasingly disaffected men. The one vessel that gave particular, repeated problems was the Antelope, whose crew wanted an immediate return to England. Rupert decided to confront the ringleaders in person. Gathering the ship’s company together, he told them that anyone who was unhappy was free to go — he could easily find others, who would be proud to serve their king. The sailors were determined not to be intimidated by the prince’s presence, but were unsure of how to react to this unexpected offer. In the event, apathy prevailed: most of the men stayed on in unhappy service.

  Later in the year, trouble flared up on the Antelope once more. The prince had sent to them for twenty men, to help with the de-rigging of one of the larger ships before winter set in. When the sailors refused to obey his order, Rupert again elected to deal with the problem in person. The crew crowded menacingly round him, one of the seamen trying to spark a mutiny by shouting out, ‘One and all!’ Rupert seized him, pinned his arms back, and dangled him over the side of the ship, threatening to drop him into the sea. ‘The suddenness of this action wrought such a terror upon the rest’, the prince’s private papers recorded, ‘that they returned forthwith to their duty.’[385]

  *

  The Royal fleet was no use to the king cooped up in a Dutch port. Rupert hoped that poor winter weather would force Warwick to head home, allowing the Royalists to sail to Ireland, where the Marquess of Ormonde was struggling to keep Charles’s cause alive. Warwick, though, had guessed Rupert’s scheme and planned to stay outside the harbour for as long as possible. When the Dutch squadron left Helvoetsluys for other duties, its leaders extracted a promise from Warwick that his men would not violate the port’s neutrality. However, Parliament’s ships took advantage of the new space in the harbour and sailed in to berths that were near to their enemies.

  Inevitably, brawls broke out between the rival crews. The discipline of Rupert’s men continued to unravel, and the Royalists soon gained a reputation for aggression and wildness that drew protests from the Dutch authorities. The prince had so great a fear of the enemy, and so little control over his men, that he was forced to move artillery from his ships to form onshore batteries. The guns’ muzzles were directed as much at his own ships as at Warwick’s.

  Despite his tough stance, Rupert was unable to stem the flow from his ranks to those of his opponents. Eventually, taking advantage of confusion in the harbour, the bulk of the Royalist ships sailed off to join Warwick. The earl now sailed back to England, sure that he had rendered the king’s remaining naval force little more than an irrelevance. The prince was left with just eight ships. Four were frigates, while the other four — the Constant Reformation, Convertine, Antelope, and Swallow — were larger warships.

  The exiled Royalists had, in the main, fled England with insufficient money and chattels to fund themselves. Their houses and estates had been confiscated by a Parliament eager for money to pay an increasingly uneasy New Model Army, whose salary was £1 million in arrears. The desire to keep the flag flying for the king was arguably secondary to this financial imperative. There was little hope of further military action in England; the Royalists there had been violently suppressed and there was an inability or unwillingness among Charles’s fellow rulers to come to his aid. Even those with blood or marital ties to the Stuarts failed him.

  Charles’s daughter Mary was wed to the Prince of Orange, yet the republican politicians in the States-General, the Dutch parliament, stopped him from giving aid to his father-in-law. In France, Louis XIV was preoccupied with domestic ructions, while his war with Spain continued: he could give shelter and a small pension to his exiled cousins, but he had no troops or ships to spare. There was notional support for Charles in Russia, but it never amounted to practical assistance. The Duke of Lorraine offered help, but required the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey as surety. The Duchess of Savoy had given the Prince of Wales 50,000 crowns on his arrival in France, but this had soon be spent. Scotland was unable to lend its forces overseas, or on the seas, though the Covenanters remained concerned by the rise of Puritanism in England, which oppressed their religious fellow travellers, the Presbyterians.

  The exiled council of war persuaded Prince Charles to equip his ships for the taking of enemy prizes. Their contents could be sold, and the resulting funds could support the court. At the same time, the Royalist navy should inconvenience and attack Parliament’s interests wherever possible. Parliament began to tarnish the enemy’s fleet with negative propaganda, similar to that used so often and so effectively against the Cavaliers in the Great Civil War. It was to be expected, the two Houses warned merchants and ship owners, ‘that the Revolters will endeavour to maintain their defection by rapine and violence’.[386]

  There were no volunteers to be admiral of the miniscule, poorly equipped Royalist fleet. Batten and Jordan, the twin turncoats, had proved to be unreliable. The Prince of Wales asked Rupert if he would assume the role, with Maurice as his vice-admiral. Options for the two princes were limited. The Peace of Westphalia, signed in October 1648, marked the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War. Its provisions made dispiriting reading for Frederick V’s children: they had hoped for a full restoration to their former titles, powers, and possessions, thanks to the support of Queen Christina of Sweden — Gustavus Adophus’s only child and a Wittelsbach cousin. However, French diplomats were determined to block a Palatine restoration and they persuaded the Swedish mediators that Charles Louis should only receive a fraction of what he sought. His electorate was no longer to be viewed as more important than those of his peers. Furthermore, Charles Louis was to rule only the Rhenish Palatinate: the Upper Palatinate became Bavarian, while the Elector of Mainz received the Bergstrasse. Charles Louis’s brothers and sisters had assumed they would be provided for, once harmony returned to Europe, but the Peace of Westphalia gave them next to nothing.

  During the autumn of 1648, it looked as though there woul
d be fewer siblings to provide for. The worrying news from Berlin was that Rupert’s elder sister Princess Elizabeth was ill with smallpox. She had long suffered from depression and had been treated with the waters at Spa. However, now she battled a deadly disease that, even if she were lucky enough to survive it, threatened to ravage her features. As she recovered, she wrote to her brother Charles Louis, without vanity or self-pity: ‘I have been persecuted by this wretched illness, and though the fever has left me and with it the peril of my life, I am still quite covered with it and can use neither my hands nor my eyes. They feed me like a little child, but the doctors would persuade me I shall not be disfigured, which I leave to their faith, since I have none of my own on the subject; but at the worse I console myself that the illness will only have the effect of three of four years, at the end of which age would have rendered me ugly enough without its aid.’[387]

  With the Thirty Years’ War concluded, and hopes of a reasonable inheritance dashed, Rupert had few alternatives but to continue as a warrior. He agreed to lead the Royalist navy, assuming all the responsibilities of supreme authority, while insisting that he remain nominally junior to the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, out of respect for their superior social rank. A letter written by Prince Charles from The Hague, on 5 January, confirmed this arrangement and so began Rupert’s career as an admiral.

  The army and the navy, at this stage of their evolution, were not the distinct entities of later centuries: admirals were commonly referred to as ‘generals at sea’ and marines were frequently land troops occasionally deployed on ship. Naval tactics were essentially rudimentary, with battleships looking to close with each other before disgorging their firepower to maximum effect. Plans of battle were basic, with admirals struggling to control their fleets once an action was underway: the commander looked to win advantage of wind and tide, and then led his ships into actions that were brutal free-for-alls. The effect of cannon balls, musket fire, and splintering timber could be devastating.