Rupert was a professional soldier who had no experience as a sailor, although as a boy, he had enjoyed watching the activities of Dutch boat-yards. The Earl of Arundel, sent by Charles I in 1633 to invite Elizabeth of Bohemia to England after Frederick’s death, noted Rupert’s excitement when aboard his uncle’s vessels, ‘and the gladness your Highness Prince Rupert showed when you took to help to row towards them’.[388] Likewise, Phineas Pett, from a dynasty that had overseen shipbuilding in England for a century, recalled Rupert and Charles Louis’s great excitement as they witnessed the launch of two pinnaces in 1637, during their visit to Charles I. Youthful enthusiasm aside, his knowledge of the sea was limited to a few voyages shuttling back and forth across the Channel and North Sea.
Rupert, though, was temperamentally suited to seventeenth-century naval command. As Granger observed, in his Biographical History of England, the prince ‘possessed, in a high degree, that kind of courage, which is better to attack than defend; and is less adapted to the land service than that of the sea, where precipitate valour is in its element’.[389] Only the bravest men could hope to prosper in a theatre of war so unforgiving, that it provided no hiding places.
Furthermore, naval service became Rupert because its isolation brought with it independence. Years later he shocked Samuel Pepys with his candid observation: ‘God damn me, I can answer but for one ship, and in that I will do my part; for it is not in that as in an army, where a man can command everything.’[390] No courtiers could undermine his position, or obscure his focus, once he was under sail for communications were slow and unreliable. Whatever trepidation the prince may have felt as he set off on his first mission as admiral, the relief of autonomous command was rich compensation.
The prince’s ships were in poor order, owing to the neglect of their previous Parliamentarian owners. ‘I protest to God’, Clarendon wrote, after seeing their condition, ‘if I know anything, the Prince is in the most lamentable condition of want that any gentleman hath been acquainted with.’[391] Rupert paid for a thorough refit of his motley force by selling the brass cannon of the unreliable Antelope. When further money was needed to complete the task, he persuaded his mother to pawn her jewellery. He also maximised the few resources he had to hand: while the larger ships were being attended to, a pair of frigates was sent to forage in the North Sea. They returned with £800 taken from a collier and ‘a ship from Hamburg richly laden, taken out of Yarmouth road, as she lay there at anchor’.[392]
There had been disquiet among the prince’s critics, when he had first been mooted for naval command. A correspondent wrote from London to say that many Presbyterians were minded to support the king, but only in the interest of establishing lasting peace throughout the nation. ‘Rupert’s very name’, he objected, ‘hath a sound of war in it, and therefore it is hoped he may not be employed.’[393]
The prince, aware of this resistance, pushed his case with Charles, who confirmed his cousin’s appointment. Many hoped that he would fail. Culpepper was foremost among the Prince of Wales’s courtiers in undermining Rupert’s efforts. However, Rupert’s unstinting labours to prepare the navy for action won over the sceptics. From The Hague, Clarendon wrote on 21 January 1649:
I presume the fleet will be with you before this comes to your hands; the preservation whereof must be entirely ascribed to Prince Rupert, who seriously hath expressed greater temper and discretion in it than you can imagine. I know there is, and will be, much prejudice to the service of his being engaged in command, you will believe me, and not be without that prospect, both by your own observation and the information we every day received from England. But, the truth is, there was an unavoidable necessity in it. Batten and Jordan played the rogues with us ... In this distress Prince Rupert took the charge, and with unwearied pains and toil, put all things in reasonable order, it being then resolved that the Duke of York should go with the fleet to Ireland. But, to our amazement, his old Presbyterian counsellors wrought so on his Royal Highness, that in express terms he refused it. So you see the necessity of what is done, and really I believe the Prince will behave himself so well in it, that nobody will have cause to be sorry for it.[394]
Rupert’s first action was in response to a letter brought to him by Will Legge from the king, on the Isle of Wight. Dated 28 October 1648, it was an abrupt and succinct call for help, which Legge was able to amplify in person: Charles needed to be removed from his increasingly perilous situation as soon as possible. Rupert immediately sent a ship, which remained off the Isle of Wight for nearly a week, waiting for a signal to land. But none came.
*
On 30 January 1649, William Juxon, Bishop of London, read Morning Service to Charles, before the two men walked to Whitehall. After a brief wait, the colonel of the guard came to escort the king to his death. He had been sentenced after a brief trial, the result of which was a foregone conclusion. Thomas Webb had written to Lord Craven, two weeks earlier: ‘I have very little hope of the king’s life, all seeming to be resolved.’[395] Charles had convinced Cromwell that he could not be trusted and that England’s security lay in his death.
On the day of execution Juxon was prostrate with grief, while Charles remained composed, helping the bishop to his feet. The two men proceeded to the scaffold outside the Banqueting House, the king wearing an extra shirt to ward off shivers that might be misinterpreted as signs of fear. He was determined to remain a picture of dignity throughout his final ordeal, and in this he succeeded.
Reaching the scaffold, the king was disappointed to note Parliament’s soldiers were holding the crowd at a distance from him. He was therefore forced to make his final, prepared address to those on the scaffold. He told them that he saw his fate as just reward for weakly agreeing to Stafford’s execution — ‘an unjust sentence that I suffered to take effect is punished now by an unjust sentence on me’.[396] The king’s long hair was teased into a cap while he heard the bishop’s assurances: ‘There is but one stage more, which though turbulent and troublesome, is a very short one; you may consider, it will soon carry you a very great way, it will carry you from Earth to Heaven, and there you shall find to your great joy the prize you hasten to, a Crown of Glory.’ Juxon’s last words of comfort were: ‘You are exchanged from a temporal to an eternal crown, a good exchange.’ Charles’s final comment to his priest was, ‘Remember!’[397] He then knelt in prayer by the executioner’s block, before lifting his arms as a signal of readiness.
Onlookers recalled that there was no cheering after the axe had fallen, but rather a shocked groan. The executioner raised his arm to the crowd, holding his dripping trophy for all to see, and astonishment greeted the uniquely disturbing sight of a king’s severed head. They had witnessed the slaying of the man who, most still believed, was God’s Anointed. All present knew the significance of the moment was so enormous as to be unfathomable.
Chapter Fifteen - Pirate Prince
‘Conceive him now in a Man-of-war, with his letters of mart, well armed, victualled, and appointed, and see how he acquits himsef. The more power he hath, the more careful he is not to abuse it. Indeed, a Sea Captain is a King in the Island of a ship, supreme Judge, above appeal, in causes civil and criminal, and is seldom brought to an account in Courts of Justice on land for injuries done to his own men at sea.’
The Good Sea Captain, Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)
Prince Rupert set off for Ireland in December, his eight vessels severely undermanned. The prince had recruited in the Netherlands, securing the services of some Flemish sailors, although many more were needed. The Constant Reformation, the prince’s flagship, was designed to have a complement of 300, but only 120 men could be found to man it at this stage of the voyage. The frigates were more generously provided for, so that they could fulfil their roving brief, scouring the seas in search of prizes.
Rupert’s crews were worried that their course would take them through the Channel, and it was inconceivable that they would be able to navigate it without attracting enem
y attention. However, when the Parliamentarians started to bear down on the Royalists, Rupert fell back on the tactics that had served him so well in his cavalry days: he turned and attacked, and the startled enemy dispersed and fled in the face of bold, Cavalier, aggression. Their new admiral’s courage impressed the sailors and quelled many of the more disruptive voices on board. A fair wind followed, speeding the ships to Ireland.
Arriving in the Irish port of Kinsale, which had been a Spanish outpost during part of Elizabeth I’s reign, Rupert learned of Charles I’s beheading. The shocking news reverberated around Europe, causing thrilled revulsion and frenzied chatter: the execution of an anointed monarch was viewed by many as an insult to God and seemed to demand divine vengeance. The prince’s feelings ran deeper. Whatever their spats towards the end of the Civil War, a pure love had existed between Charles and Rupert. The king had shown his nephew kindness and had partially filled the void caused by the early loss of his father, Frederick V. Differences over Marston Moor or the surrender of Bristol could not expunge the blood loyalty that bound the two men together.
The prince’s siblings shared the sense of devastation. His elder sister, Elizabeth, was so horrified at the news that she became seriously ill. She wrote of her profound sorrow to her confidant, Descartes, who comforted the princess with soothing words: ‘It is surely something to die in a way which commands universal pity — to leave the world, praised and mourned by whoever partakes of human sentiments. It is undeniable that without his last trial the gentleness and other virtues of the dead king would never have been so remarked and so esteemed as they will be in future by whoever shall read his history ... As to what regards his mere bodily sufferings, I do not account them as anything, for they are so short that, could assassins use a fever or any of the ills that Nature employs to snatch men from the world, they might with reason be considered much more cruel than when they destroy life with the short sharp blow of an axe.’[398]
Clarendon was less philosophical, stating that the king’s execution was ‘the most execrable murder that was ever committed since that of our Blessed Saviour’.[399] He wrote a letter of condolence to Rupert that was flecked with loathing for the Regicides and weighed down with sadness at the ghastliness of the execution:
Sir,
Though, when your Highness left this place, there was no reason to expect any good news from England, yet the horrid wickedness which hath been since acted there, with those dismal circumstances which attend it, was so far beyond the fears and apprehensions of all men, that it is no wonder we were all struck into that amazement with the deadly news of it, that we have not yet recovered our spirits to think or do as we ought.[400]
A sense of profound unease arose among many — even those who had been unsympathetic to Charles when he had been alive. They saw the king’s slaying as a cause for national disgrace and mourning, prompting a flood of self-flagellating remorse from pamphleteers and poets:
Come, come, let’s mourn; all eyes, that see this day,
Melt into shows, and weep yourselves away:
O that each private head could yield a flood
Of tears, whilst Britain’s Head streams out His Blood;
Could we pay that his sacred drops might claim,
The World must needs be drowned once again.[401]
In defiance of his personal loss, and as an act of monarchical continuity, the Prince of Wales now proclaimed himself Charles II. However, he could afford few of the trappings of kingship: indeed, he was so impoverished, that he could not even find the money to send messengers to thank European rulers for their condolences. Rupert’s task of providing for the Royalist exiles was now even more urgent, although his renewed instructions from the Court differed hardly at all from his original commission: ‘There is no other alteration from the former’, confirmed Charles’s secretary, ‘but what is necessary in regard to the change of condition in the person of the King, by the barbarous murder of his father by the bloody rebels in England.’[402] Rupert must raise funds to help free his cousin from financial embarrassment.
At the same time as the prince was coming to terms with his uncle’s beheading, he had to comfort his mother who was confronting another family disaster: Princess Louise had converted to Catholicism, after being won over by the arguments of Jesuit priests. On 24 February, Rupert sent a letter to Elizabeth, telling her of his great sadness at his sister’s change in faith. He also wrote angrily to the States-General, defending his mother’s honour from scurrilous rumours doing the rounds in Holland, that she had encouraged Louise to become Papist. The princess’s conversion had been so sudden and complete that she had left a short note one morning for Elizabeth stating that she was leaving for the true Church, and was leaving her mother and the outside world forever. She carried through this threat, later becoming the Abbess of Maubuisson.
*
Rupert’s arrival in Ireland gave a huge fillip to Royalist morale. He was a talisman, a reminder of past glories, and a general whose dogged loyalty demanded respect. One correspondent greeted him with a warm tribute: ‘I have been always ambitious to be esteemed your servant, and your unwearied labours for the King and gallant dangerous undertakings increase my desires therein; there are but few men, of your quality and fortune, that would expose himself to those difficulties you constantly are subject to, your ends therein having no particular relation to the interests of your own person, and seeing that the redemption of his sacred Majesty is that which your Highness proposes to make your actions glorious, I am sure you will accomplish it, and may he perish that contributes not thereto.’[403]
Rupert’s time in Kinsale, far from the navy’s prime bases in the Thames, was initially successful. He managed to supply the stubborn Royalists holding the Isles of Scilly. Privateers joined him, swelling his fleet to twenty-eight ships — considerably larger than Parliament’s force in the Irish Sea. The prince suffered some losses — the frigate Charles became isolated in a storm, then lost in a fog, before being taken by two enemy vessels — but his tally of hostile ships was significant. Parliament decided to implement a convoy system, to protect its merchantmen from Royalist attacks. When losses in the west remained unacceptably high, it despatched the main fleet to deal with the problem. Flying the new ‘cross and harp’ jack as its flag, ‘the State’s Navy’ had another task: to assist Cromwell’s campaign on the Irish mainland. The roads in Ireland were terrible, so being able to supply the New Model Army by sea gave the invading English a huge advantage over Lord Lieutenant Ormonde’s Royalists.
In May 1649 Parliament’s fleet appeared outside Kinsale, blockading Rupert’s men inside the harbour. ‘We began to careen and fit for a summer voyage’, Prince Rupert’s papers recorded, ‘but the fleet being ready to fall down to the mouth of the harbour, the enemy appeared with a very potent fleet before it, which caused us to stop our proceedings.’[404] Leading the enemy force was Robert Blake, a 50-year-old friend of Cromwell and Hampden, and a former MP. The princes knew Blake: he had distinguished himself during Rupert’s capture of Bristol, holding out for a day and a night after the main Parliamentarian surrender. Blake had been even more successful when facing Rupert’s brother. He had held Maurice’s Western Army at bay for two months, with only 500 men, until the Earl of Essex’s approach forced the Royalists to lift their unsuccessful siege.
Rupert organised batteries of artillery to protect the harbour entrance. He then summoned his council of war, whose members advised that the current fleet should be strengthened, while further craft were built as reinforcements. They also recommended that fire-ships be prepared: these were floating pyres that were set alight and directed at opposing ships, which they either scattered or burned. Once these additions had been made, the council members agreed that the prince could engage Parliament.
Rupert accepted these conditions, personally leading a recruiting drive along the coast, collecting soldiers and sailors to provide man-power for the tasks in hand. But, when Rupert had achieved the counc
il of war’s objectives, its members back-pedalled. They were concerned that the scanty Royalist fleet might be annihilated in a single action. Their strong advice now was that Rupert should ride at anchor, safe in his harbour, and wait for bad weather to drive Blake away.
The conditions, however, failed to deteriorate and Blake refused to budge. The Royalists remained so tightly cooped up that not even merchantmen were able to enter or leave Kinsale. With supplies failing, and morale wavering, the Perfect Weekly Account reported to Westminster: ‘Letters from the West gave us some particulars of the State of the Prince his Fleet at Kinsale representing of it thus. The English seamen, will not endure to have received aboard with them the Irish Rebels, provisions also becomes scarce amongst them, and therefore time is thought will be necessitated to fight if the Parliament ships are able to lie but some few days longer before it.’[405]
Rupert’s situation deteriorated further when he lost the man who, after his brother Maurice, was his most trusted ally. The Parliamentarians swooped on a frigate just outside the harbour, taking the ship and sixty prisoners: ‘In this frigate’, a Parliamentary pamphleteer reported, ‘we found Colonel William Legge, which was once at Oxford.’[406] Legge was sent for imprisonment at Bristol Gaol (one of a remarkable eleven prison sentences that Legge suffered for his loyalty to Rupert or the Crown), an accusation of high treason hanging over him. With execution of defeated Royalists now quite common — the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Capel had followed their king to the block — it seemed likely that Legge would also be killed. Meanwhile, there were further erosions of Rupert’s manpower and resources. ‘Letters from the Navy say, that there have happened some dispute and action between the Parliament’s Fleet and the Princes near Kinsale, and after several volleys, the Parliamentary Navigators became victors.’[407] Two ships and one hundred prisoners were taken.
Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier Page 26