*
Rupert ordered his three weakest vessels to be burnt, before setting course for Anguilla. A terrible hurricane hit the Royalists on 13 and 14 September, almost as soon as they were in the open seas. Rupert’s ship was the sturdiest, but it barely survived this intimate examination by furious elements. A survivor recalled the storm being so intense that it was impossible to see from one end of the ship to the other.
The master ordered all sails to be brought in apart from the mainsail, ‘but then the storm increasing,’ recalled the author of Prince Rupert’s diary with horror, ‘tore our sail from the yard, though of new double canvas. Rolling now in the trough of the sea, we strove to set our mizzen to keep her up, but ... the sails blew quite away, so that being destitute of all human help, we lay at the mercy of God.’[446] Rupert’s men later calculated that they had unknowingly been tossed between a high rock, called Sombrero, and the island of Anguilita — a stretch of water that was considered impossible to navigate, because of its treacherous shallows.
At 3 a.m. the storm reached a violent crescendo. Rupert and his crew watched with terror as their ship was taken towards a ledge of jagged rocks between Anagadas and the Virgins. They were approaching their doom at speed, when the wind suddenly changed direction and threw the ship eastward. The crew’s great luck continued: it was washed into a harbour in the uninhabited island of St Anne’s, where the anchors held in 12 fathoms of water. The hurricane blew itself out the following day.
After the passing of the storm, Rupert’s ship was alone and in a terrible condition, ‘both our topmasts being spent, and our ships left like a wreck, without rigging or sails’.[447] She limped back into the harbour at Dixon’s Hole, with the prince keen to repair the damage and hopeful that the rest of the fleet would soon find its way back. But the Honest Seaman was unable to return: she had been carried by the storm as far as Hispaniola and bad seamanship later drove her on to the coast at Porto Pina.
More disastrously, Maurice’s ship the Defiance, and its fly-boat, were lost with all hands. Nobody witnessed the sinking, which allowed hopes of the younger prince’s survival to continue for many years. It seems likely that Maurice was denied his brother’s extraordinary good luck: his ships probably splintered on the rocks that had so nearly claimed Rupert.
The author of Prince Rupert’s diary struggled to quantify the shock felt at Maurice’s loss: ‘In this fatal wreck — besides a great many brave gentlemen, and others — the sea, to glut itself, swallowed the Prince Maurice, whose fame the mouth of detraction cannot blast, his very enemies bewailing his loss. Many had more power, few more merit: he was snatched from us in obscurity, lest, beholding his loss would have prevented some from endangering their own safety: — so much he lived beloved, and died bewailed.’[448] Rupert was devastated at the loss of a man who was not only his brother, but also his treasured friend.
*
Maurice has received little attention from History. Clarendon, while acknowledging the young man’s ‘great courage and vigilance’[449] wrote him off as boorish — a soldier’s soldier, incapable of sensitivity, civility, or diplomacy: ‘The prince had never sacrificed to the Graces, nor conversed amongst men of quality, but had most used the company of ordinary and inferior men, with whom he loved to be very familiar. He was not qualified with parts of nature, and less with any acquired; and towards men of the best condition, with whom he might very well have justified a familiarity, he maintained at least the full state of his birth, and understood very little more of the war than to fight very stoutly when there was occasion.’[450] This harsh judgement owes much to the earl’s difficult relationship with Rupert. The Earl of Leicester was more generous in his assessment of a promising youth: ‘For besides that he hath a body well-made, strong and able to endure hardships, he hath a mind that will not let it be idle if he can have employment. He is very temperate, of a grave and settled disposition, but would very fain be in action, which with God’s blessing and his own endeavours will make him a brave man.’[451]
Maurice displayed constant loyalty to his controversial brother and it is this steadfastness that makes him so admirable. The brothers had been born a year apart, and although they endured forced separations, they were at their happiest when united. It was a fraternal love so strong that it overrode everything put in its way. They had both been bred for fighting. Together they had served their apprenticeship with the Dutch army of their uncle. While Rupert languished as a prisoner of war, Maurice fought hard for the Swedes, eager to inconvenience his brother’s captors.
Maurice was content to play the secondary role in their relationship — lieutenant general to Rupert’s commander; vice-admiral to his admiral. He did so without resentment and with admirable devotion. When Rupert’s duties took him eastwards, in the spring of 1644, the Chester commander Sir John (later Lord) Byron greeted news that Maurice was to replace his elder brother with relief: ‘Since these countries can not be terribly happy with your Highness’s return to your former command; nothing could be more welcome to them than to hear that Prince Maurice is to succeed your Highness; in that charge, & certainly the sooner he take it upon him, the more advantageous it will be for his Majesty’s Service.’[452] The chaplain of the Prince of Wales’s Life Guard called the two brothers, ‘the two great Instruments of our supportation’.[453]
Maurice’s Civil War record was as mixed as Rupert’s. He, like his elder brother, had immediately rallied to his uncle’s cause, fighting hard as a Colonel of Horse. His greatest moment came at Roundway Down, when he bettered the highly able Waller. Maurice was promoted to lieutenant general of the Marquess of Hertford’s army, in the west and southwest. He quickly assumed a senior role over the well-meaning but inadequate Hertford, overseeing the capture of Exeter and gathering together an army of 7,000 men. However, Maurice failed to take Plymouth when it was vulnerable: ‘But’, wrote Clarendon, ‘when I say it was an error that he did not, I intend it rather as a misfortune than a fault; for his Highness was an utter stranger in those parts…’[454] The foreign prince was persuaded to attack the lesser port of Dartmouth, giving Plymouth time to prepare its defences, while his army lost impetus and manpower. Indeed, Maurice’s powers unravelled so quickly that he failed to take the fishing town of Lyme, which Blake had transformed into a bastion of Parliamentary resistance.
At the Second Battle of Newbury, Maurice’s cool professionalism ensured the safe retreat of the Royalist infantry, preventing an unwise engagement from descending into catastrophe. When Maurice took control of Wales, in early 1645, he found his effectiveness was compromised by a lack of real power: ‘Dear Brother,’ he pleaded with Rupert, ‘I shall not need to mention any other particular than that which concerns the enlargement of my commission, and therein I desire no further latitude than the same from you which you had from the King, which is absolutely necessary for the performance of what is expected from me.’[455] But this commission never came and Maurice, surrounded by inexperienced lieutenants and suffering from high desertion rates, had an unsuccessful and unpopular time in Wales, trying to make up for his impotence with flashes of ruthlessness. ‘And for you Prince Maurice,’ scolded a pamphleteer, when the brothers were exiled from Britain, ‘[we] pray never think of coming into Wales again, for if you do, all the plundered cows-bobby, all the onions, leeks, and oat-cakes in Wales will muster themselves together, and rise up in judgement against you.’[456]
Maurice remained committed to his brother, as the war spiralled towards Royalist defeat. He was, however, prepared to criticise Rupert’s instructions when he believed them inappropriate: summoned from hard-pressed Worcester to help in the defence of Bristol, Maurice scrawled a covering note on his reply: ‘For his Majesty’s special service. To my dear brother Prince Rupert, Prince Palatine, &c. Haste, haste, post haste!’ Inside, Maurice wrote: ‘The Scots being advanced very near to us, with an intention, as is conceived, to besiege this place, I could not remove from hence without putting this town into a great distrac
tion; besides the dishonour that would thereby reflect on me.’[457]
When Rupert was so out of favour after surrendering Bristol, Charles actively encouraged a rift between the brothers, writing to Maurice of Rupert’s ‘unhandsome quitting the castle and fort of Bristol ... So much for him. Now for yourself. I know you to be so free from his present misfortune, that it no ways staggers [me] in that good opinion I have ever had of you; and so long as you be not weary of your employments under me, I will give you all the encouragement and contentment in my power.’[458] Maurice, however, ignored the flattery and the inducement, and remained loyal to his disgraced brother. Still recovering slowly from a vicious dose of the plague, which had nearly killed him, he rode to Newark through largely enemy territory, in support of Rupert’s demand for a court martial.
After expulsion from England, Maurice’s performance as Royalist vice-admiral had been committed and successful: he was frequently at the forefront of the fleet, taking the most prizes, and fighting with unrivalled bravery and muscularity. Whenever there was dissent among the officers, Maurice provided Rupert with unequivocal support. He had endured the hardships of a demanding voyage, content to serve with his brother in a cause that was otherwise dormant and seemingly headed for extinction.
Granger, in his Biographical History of England, gives a fair evaluation of Maurice: ‘He was not of so active and fierce a nature as Rupert; but knew better how to pursue any advantages gained over the enemy. He wanted a little of his brother’s fire, and Rupert, a good deal of his phlegm.’[459]
*
Rupert refused to accept that Maurice was dead: previous reports of his loss — most notably after the Second Battle of Newbury, and during the siege of Worcester, from the plague — had happily proved incorrect. Rupert prayed that this was another such mistake. He ordered his ships to search for his brother’s vessel, but they found nothing. The following year the princes’ mother, Elizabeth, wrote excitedly to her devotee Lord Craven of reports from the Caribbean that Maurice had survived the hurricane and was on Lomnema Island. This was not so.
Outlandish theories continued to entertain those who deemed drowning too mundane an end for a glamorous prince. On 19 June 1654, a Dutchman wrote: ‘Here is news of Prince Maurice, who was thought and believed to be drowned and perished, that he is a slave at Africa. For being constrained, at that time that he parted from Prince Rupert, to run as far as Hispaniola in the West Indies, he was coming back thence towards Spain in a barque laden with a great quantity of silver, and was taken by a pirate of Algiers. The Queen, his mother, hath spoken to the Ambassador of France, to the end he may write in his behalf to the Great Turk, for it is pre-supposed this State dare not speak for him for fear of offending the Protector.’[460] This was a complete fabrication.
Later, there was even a rumour that Prince Maurice was being held at a castle called ‘The More at Porto Rico’: ‘Some would have it that he was taken up at the Island of Porto Rico, and carried into the Castle, and there detained and concealed,’ Prince Rupert’s Logbook reported, ‘which seems improbable in regard that of 200 men in the ship with him, never any one man of them was heard of after.’[461] This proved to be yet another false hope.
Rupert continued to hope that his brother would reappear, alive. Eleven years after the shipwreck, he sent a ship to look for Maurice once more. It returned empty, unable to fill a void that ached throughout the remainder of Rupert’s life. Without Maurice, Rupert was incomplete.
Chapter Eighteen - Wilderness Years
‘Prince Rupert is in some measure recovered of his bloody flux, but goes little abroad out of the Palace Royal, because he wants a princely retinue, which I see no probability for him to have in France yet a while. Charles Stuart is at a non plus what to do; things do not answer his expectations; his designs fail him.’
A Letter from Paris, April 1653
Rupert returned to Europe with a handful of ships. The goods he carried, including precious tobacco, were scant reward for an excruciating, four-year voyage. His odyssey had been punctuated by many causes for regret, of which the loss of Maurice was by far the greatest. While the continued existence of Rupert’s tiny fleet had kept the Royalist cause afloat, its significance had been largely talismanic: after Blake’s clinical destruction of many of Rupert’s best ships, the small remnant had been, at best, a distant irritant to the Commonwealth. However, the determination, stamina, and inventiveness the prince had displayed during his independent command were truly heroic. He had underlined the reputation for bravery and perseverance won in boyhood and reinforced during the Civil War.
Rupert was soon reminded that his foes had not forgotten him. When he approached Fayal, and then St Michael’s, he was turned away, direct artillery fire confirming the warmth of Portugal’s friendship with Cromwell. Rupert was keen to reach land: he had been ill with a bloody flux — a vicious form of dysentery — since leaving the Caribbean. His health was further undermined by the lack of fresh provisions on board. The prince was grateful when the master of one of his prize ships gave him two hens, whose eggs provided welcome nutrition, but he urgently needed to find a harbour where he, his crews, and his battered flotilla could receive proper care. He sailed for northwest France, with all possible speed.
It was a slightly recovered Rupert who reached Brittany, sailing up river at Nantes to Paimboeuf. The French greeted Rupert warmly, granting him a hero’s welcome, even though their king had recognised the Commonwealth’s legitimacy a few months before. On 3 March 1653, ‘After many storms and tempests, his Highness, with his little fleet of five ships, arrived in sight of Belle Ile, and next day came to an anchor at St-Nazaire, near the castle, from which, as also from a fleet of Dutch ships, his Highness received and returned salutes.’[462]
Rupert’s appearance provided a welcome fillip to the Royalist exiles based in France. Prince Charles sent his own coach to meet his cousin, together with a delighted letter: ‘I am so surprised with joy at your safe arrival in these parts, that I cannot tell you how great it is, nor can I consider any misfortunes or accidents which have happened now I know your person is in safety.’[463]
‘I am sure it can be no news to you,’ Clarendon wrote to Sir Richard Browne, from Paris, with equal excitement, ‘that Prince Rupert is safe at Nantes, and therefore it is very probable this letter may not find you at Brest, but that you may have thought it fit to attend his Highness, and offer him your service.’[464] There was an assumption that the prince was returning with enormous bounty, which would cause Charles’s empty Privy Purse to overflow. Stuart loyalists rushed to attend their returning champion and to marvel at the magnificent trophies he would surely lay at their master’s feet.
Their hopes were soon snuffed out when some seamen from Rupert’s fleet deserted for England. Arriving at Weymouth, they publicly estimated that the prince had accumulated just £10,000 worth of prizes from his four years of privateering — a mere quarter of what he had raised from the sale of captured goods when arriving at Lisbon, early in his travels. The true figure was £14,000, still an extremely poor tally for such an arduous and costly voyage, explained by the sinking of his most richly laden ships. On 29 March, with his colleagues coming to terms with their disappointment, Rupert, still very weak from dysentery, travelled to Paris. There, Louis XIV received him with warmth and concern.
Disillusionment at Rupert’s poor yield quickly turned to resentment. Three weeks after his excited letter to Browne, Clarendon’s tone had become cynical: ‘The Prince ... no doubt will have occasion to use all and more than he can have brought home, to repair and fit out his ships.’[465] Faction fighting among the exiled Royalists fanned the controversy over Rupert’s inadequate return. Clarendon, who loathed Lord Keeper Herbert, complained to Nicholas: ‘You must never expect information from me of any of the business of the Prize, or any thing that is managed by Prince Rupert, who consults only with the Lord Keeper; and I much doubt very little of that money will come to the King. I shall be satisfied if
what is raised on the guns and the ship (for all is to be sold) come justly to his hands.’[466] There was a suspicion that Rupert’s financial accounts of his spoils were less than honest. Royalists talked of sending Rupert to sea again, to attack English ships distracted by naval war with the Dutch. But his vessels were in a terrible state and there were no funds to pay for refitting.
The ill feeling towards Rupert reached its peak when he refused to hand over all the proceeds of his voyage to Charles. Indeed, Rupert seemed determined to make his cousin meet the expenses of the voyage. Rupert insisted that his men should be paid first, with second call on the prize money going to those Toulon merchants who had helped to furnish the fleet in the first place. A failure to settle these debts would reflect terribly on Rupert’s reputation: they were both matters of fairness and of honour. Meanwhile, the French interfered, impeding the sale of the captured cargo and insisting on acquiring the Swallow’s artillery at a knock-down price.
Charles, desperate for money and unconcerned by what he regarded as lesser claims, wanted to seize everything for himself. Rupert refused to give way, prompting Clarendon to write with exasperation to Nicholas: ‘You talk of money the King should have upon the prizes at Nantes; alas! He hath not only not had one penny from these, but Prince Rupert pretends the King owes him more money than ever I was worth.’[467]
Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier Page 30