This effect was achieved using roulettes — wheels with sharp revolving teeth that left small indentations as it passed over metal. The roulettes, and their teeth, were of varying sizes, allowing the artist a range of effects that rival engravers could only envy. Mezzotint engraving worked in a different way from the conventional processes, for it was a ‘deductive’, as opposed to an ‘additive’ process — like photography, it worked first with the negative image, before progressing into the positive.
Rupert was a very close friend (and cousin) of William IV, the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and it may have been while staying with him in 1655 that the prince first came across the mezzotint process. Another possibility is that Sielen, also a soldier, met Rupert on campaign. Sielen’s duties took him on many journeys through the German states and he may have come across the prince in Heidelberg, Mainz, or Cologne, cities where Rupert spent much of the mid to late 1650s. Whatever the two men’s connection, the prince took credit for improving the process after a variety of experiments in 1657 and 1658: his first known work, Head of Titian, dates from 1657. Whereas Sielen used the roulette solely to tidy up mistakes, Rupert employed it as part of the creative process, adding texture to his finished images. He took mezzotint to a level of refinement that Sielen’s first efforts, in the early 1640s, could not rival.
John Evelyn, a keen collector of prints, was intrigued by the prince’s innovations: ‘This invention, or new manner of Chalcography his Highness Prince Rupert was pleased to show me with his own hands in the year 1661. He told me it was the device of a common soldier in Germany, by observing something which had scraz’d his musket, upon which (being an ingenious fellow) he refined, and he has brought it to that perfection in copper, as to exceed all the sorts of graving.’[483] Evelyn used a copy of the prince’s The Great Executioner as a frontispiece for his book Sculptura in 1662. Rupert’s most accomplished work, it was inspired by Juseppe de Ribera’s painting of the man who beheaded John the Baptist.
Rupert’s form of mezzotint was much admired: the prints of Jan Thomas of Ypres, the court painter to the Holy Roman Emperor in the mid seventeenth century, betray a style that seems to be directly drawn from the prince’s methods. William Sherwin, court engraver to Charles II, asked Rupert to instruct him in his art. By way of thanks, Sherwin dedicated his 1669 print of the king to Prince Rupert.
Twenty of Rupert’s mezzotint engravings survive. The majority have a classical theme, including The Standard Bearer, based on Pietro della Vecchia’s painting of the same name. An altogether more modern feel is to be found in his informal portrait of Queen Christina of Sweden: hand on hip, braced four square on her parted legs, her hair hanging in a thick parting, she looks portly and uneasy. The prince’s ability to capture everything from military posturing to Biblical tragedy, as well as contemporary caricature, display a skill that persuaded one twentieth-century expert to declare: ‘The best of his mezzotints are among the finest ever produced.’[484] John Evelyn thought Rupert’s work ‘comparable to the greatest masters, such a spirit and address there appears in all he touches’.[485]
*
Rupert left his brother in mid August 1654, with a large and costly retinue of eighteen attendants, including two blackamoors. On arriving in Vienna, the prince went to see the Emperor at Ebersdorf, having been assured of a warm welcome. The Emperor was still recovering from the death of his son, the King of the Romans, whose body had been laid out in the Imperial mausoleum in a black cloak, adorned with gold and silver. Rupert was accompanied by one of Charles Louis’s courtiers, who brought his master’s condolences.
The Emperor was recovering from serious illness, as well as his loss, but he was determined to show how much he appreciated the prince’s visit: ‘Prince Rupert hath been very nobly received by his Imperial Majesty’, noted a London observer, ‘and had this honour, that many ambassadors attending there expecting audience, were delayed for a time, by reason the Emperor was not in health; but as soon as he went abroad Prince Rupert had the first honour of kissing his hand, and had audience with the usual ceremonies.’[486]
There was much speculation about Rupert’s intentions in seeking the audience. Most thought that the prince came seeking Imperial aid for Charles Stuart. Others assumed that Rupert would also take the opportunity to press his personal interests — asking for assistance in finding Maurice’s shipwreck, securing his financial dues, and exploring his marriage options. It was noted by all present that the Emperor and the prince enjoyed each other’s company enormously. Rupert stayed for several weeks as an Imperial guest. In late September, it was reported in London: ‘Prince Rupert doth daily receive new tokens of the Emperor’s love to him, who hath promised to give him satisfaction upon his demand of payment of what hath been granted him by the treaty of Munster.’[487]
More intriguingly, separate accounts claimed: ‘Letters from Regensburg do make mention, that a great match is propounded to Prince Rupert, to which the Emperor seems very much inclined, and gives all the assistance and encouragement that can be desired; Prince Rupert himself seemeth not to be very forward in it, peradventure he remembers what was told him the last spring by the fortune-teller at Paris, who advised him not to marry this year, for he found by the disordered and preposterous resolution of the Planets, that when his Lady was in Gemini, he should be no further than in Aries.’[488]
During his stay, a Turkish ambassador from Budapest arrived for an audience with the Emperor. His mission had two purposes: first, to express his dismay at the reported poisoning of twelve of his countrymen, held captive by the governor of Baab; second, ‘He solicits likewise for the liberty of a young Turk, son to one of the chiefest of the Ottoman Court, lately taken at sea by Prince Rupert.’[489] It is not known if the prince was able to help.
Rupert took leave of the Emperor and his senior ministers on 23 November 1654 and headed back to Heidelberg via Nuremberg, accompanied by a large retinue. ‘Prince Rupert is returned satisfied from the Emperor’s Court’, reported the Faithful Scout that Christmas, ‘and hath presented the King of Scots [Charles] with two delicate Turkish horses.’[490]
*
Charles Stuart made a pitiful sight, during his exile on the Continent. Louis XIV’s alliance with the Commonwealth had been conditional on the Royalists being expelled from France. Charles therefore spent time in Germany, the United Provinces, and the Spanish Netherlands, while the people that he hoped to rule one day watched his progress, furnishing him with some dignity by referring to him as the King of Scotland. ‘A Messenger came to Whitehall with Letters from Sweden’, recorded a London pamphlet, ‘and saith, that he came by the way of Collen, and as he was passing Post through the City, he met the King of Scots with a great train going to dine with the Duke of Newburgh, the Duke of Brandenburgh, his Nephew [sic] Prince Rupert and some other Princes; and when the Scots King perceived that a Post was passing by, he beckoned him to him, and demanded of him whither he was bound, and answer was returned, that he was going with Letters for England; at which the titular King shook his head, and went on his way. The party saith, that he was in a sad coloured cloth Suit, a Hatband of Pearl, and a very rich Silver Belt and Sword.’[491] Charles was so poor, that throughout his long stay in the city he lodged with a widow and could not afford to maintain a coach.
Although his circumstances were humble, Charles enjoyed life in Cologne: he later remembered it being his most hospitable sanctuary. His court overseas found everyday life more difficult: ‘All those who were either great on account of their birth or their loyalty, had followed him into exile; and all the young persons of the greatest distinction, having afterwards joined him, composed a court worthy of a better fate. Plenty and prosperity, which are thought to tend only to corrupt manners, found nothing to spoil in an indigent and wandering court.’[492] Sir Stephen Fox, who had made a fortune from banking, was charged with overseeing the court’s finances: he set the ceiling for expenditure at a miserly 600 pistoles per month.
Since Charles I
’s execution, the political climate in England had intensified. The Commonwealth had moved towards more extreme republicanism, which made the restoration of the monarchy seem only a distant possibility. In April 1653 Oliver Cromwell expelled the ‘Rump’ Parliament. At the end of the year, he assumed the title of Lord Protector, his rule marked by God-fearing austerity. He governed England through a network of senior army officers — major generals — whose power was as unpopular as it was undemocratic.
Throughout the mid 1650s Rupert’s name continued to inspire fear in Protectorate ranks. In the summer of 1654 three conspirators stood trial in London for the planned assassination of Oliver Cromwell. They had aimed to strike at the Lord Protector on his weekly ride to Hampton Court — a journey he undertook with lightly armed bodyguards on Saturdays. Their intention was then to overwhelm the guards at the Tower of London, Whitehall, and St James’s, seize the Lord Mayor of London, and proclaim Charles king. The prosecution’s case against this ‘base, bloody, unworthy, murderous design’[493] was strong: Somerset Fox admitted his involvement, while John Gerrard’s and Peter Vowell’s claims of innocence were undone by the sworn testimony of former friends (and Gerrard’s brother), prepared to give evidence against them.
As the trial progressed, it was revealed that Rupert had proposed this plot to Charles. The would-be assassins had reached the prince first and explained their plan, which Rupert liked enough to organise an audience with his cousin. However, Charles poured cold water on the plot, believing assassination dishonourable conduct for a prince and calculating that the plan had little chance of success. The court heard, ‘Prince Rupert afterwards did much encourage and persuade, that the design might be carried on, and promised all assistance.’[494] Rupert had no qualms about murdering the man who had engineered his uncle’s execution: he was convinced that only a bold strike could overturn the Protectorate. He promised to arrange an army of 10,000 English, Scottish, and French troops to land in Sussex after Cromwell’s death.
The conspiracy ended in failure and the three prisoners were found guilty. The honest and repentant Fox was reprieved. Gerrard, terrified of the rope, was granted permission to be beheaded. Vowell, stubborn to the end, refused to admit his guilt and spoke at length from the ladder, before being hanged. Both condemned men warned their audiences that, one day, the true king would return.
While Rupert agitated for armed intervention, other Stuart stalwarts saw the prince’s presence as one of the main impediments to restoration. The Earl of Clarendon advised Charles to dissociate himself from his controversial cousin, if he wanted to regain the Crown. Hurt by Charles’s growing coldness towards him, Rupert left the court-in-exile in the late spring of 1655 — almost exactly a year after his last heated departure in protest at Clarendon’s influence: ‘I need not tell you by whom Prince Rupert was turned from Court’, a Protectorate spy reported to London, ‘yet perhaps you have not known that Hyde [Clarendon] then offered Charles Stuart, that 50,000 men should be in arms in England, before a year went about, if he would quit the Queen’s Court and the Prince’s party.’[495]
This outcome remained improbable until Cromwell suddenly died at the beginning of September 1658, leaving a vacuum that his son Richard proved unable to fill. For sixteen months the Protectorate struggled to survive. It eventually foundered, weighed down by vicious faction fighting, whose main protagonists’ extremism was out of kilter with the general populace’s yearning for calm and order.
General George Monck, a favourite of Cromwell’s, betrayed his patron’s legacy. Marching from Scotland into England, Monck approached London. His army of Scots and Coldstreamers stood in the wings while Parliament received ‘the secluded Members’ — those who had been elected before the Civil War, but had since been purged by Cromwell. The House of Commons was reconstituted in mid February 1660, more sympathetic to monarchy than its predecessors had been for a generation. It was a foregone conclusion that it would vote for the restoration of the Crown. Three months later, England excitedly awaited the return of Charles Stuart, so that he could become king.
Chapter Nineteen - Restoration
‘Dread Sovereign! I offer no flattering titles, but speak the words of truth: you are the desire of three kingdoms, the strength and the stay of the tribes of the people, for the moderating of extremities, the reconciling of differences, the satisfying of all interests, and for the restoring of the collapsed honour of these nations. Their eyes are toward your Majesty, their tongues with loud acclamations of joy, speak the thoughts and loyal intentions of their hearts, their hands are lift up to Heaven with Prayers and Praises; and what oral triumph can equal this your Pomp and Glory?’
The Earl of Manchester’s speech to Charles II, 1 June 1660
The restoration of the Stuart line to the English throne was greeted with an almost childish enthusiasm and optimism. The majority refused to look back beyond the previous decade, deciding to draw a discreet veil of denial over the causes, course, and aftermath of the Civil War. Parliament, not without self-interest, urgently set about drafting a bill of General Pardon. Meanwhile, the people declined a close examination of their new king’s character. People wanted to believe in the return of a system of government that was familiar and comforting. They chose to assume that Charles possessed the kingly qualities that neither of his Stuart predecessors had displayed.
The flirtation with republicanism had utterly failed. Most people welcomed the break with extreme Puritanism and the end of martial law. James, Duke of York, looked back with patrician contempt on a period when England was: ‘Governed by an army; officers of the meanest sort of men, brewers, colliers, mechanics. Oliver Cromwell was more arbitrary than any king.’[496] The duke was confident that the joyful welcome extended to his elder brother marked the return of the correct system of government — monarchy, to its natural custodians — his family.
Those who had previously opposed the Royalist cause, in battle or in heart, now hoped to expunge their disloyalty through energetic celebrations of Charles’s return. Dryden, formerly a secretary in Cromwell’s regime, captured the vibrant hopefulness of the moment in verse:
Oh Happy Age! Oh times like those alone
By fate reserv’d for great Augustus Throne!
When the joint growth of Arms and Arts foreshew
The World and Monarch, and that Monarch You.[497]
Charles appeared in London on 29 May 1660, his thirtieth birthday, flanked by his two younger brothers, the dukes of York and Gloucester. All three of Charles I’s sons wore silver doublets. John Evelyn watched the procession pass through the Strand, ‘with a triumph of above 20,000 horse and foot, brandishing their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy; the ways strewed with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung with tapestry, fountains running with wine’.[498] The first days of Charles II’s reign saw representatives from across his kingdoms hurry to pay homage to the new sovereign.
There were dissenters, who had hoped that the days of monarchy were gone forever. However, they were wooed in a sophisticated public relations’ exercise that began the day before the Coronation. Charles processed through London in a pageant choreographed by John Ogilby, a Royalist who wanted to reconnect his contemporaries with the ways of ‘the ancient Romans, who at the return of their Emperors, erected Arches of Marble’.[499] Four triumphal arches — albeit of wood — were erected in different parts of the capital.
Despite the delirious outpourings and the effusive professions of loyalty, the new king was insecure. He knew that the spirit of revolution that had undone his father could quickly reappear, if he failed to unite his people. He appreciated the need for sensitivity and generosity of spirit. To the disappointment of those supporters who had suffered so much during the previous eighteen years, he declined to punish all who had, in the words of one of his closest advisers, been ‘on ye wrong side’.[500] Even Rupert’s great enemy Digby understood that Charles had no choice but to offer an olive branch:
My Lords, I profes
s unto you I find myself set on fire, when I think that the blood of so many virtuous and meritorious persons, peers, and others of all ranks, so cruelly and so impiously shed, should cry so loud for vengeance, and not find it from us.
That many of the wickedest and meanest of the people should remain, as it were, rewarded for their treasons, rich and triumphant in the spoils of the most eminent in virtue and loyalty of all the nobility and gentry of the Kingdom. What generous spirit can make reflection on these things, and not find his heart burn into rage within him? Here it is, my Lords, that we sufferers have need of all our philosophy.
But when I consider that these are mischiefs only to the sufferers, and that to insist on a remedy might perhaps expose the public to an irreparable inconvenience, I thank God I had in an instant all my resentments calmed and submitted to my primary duty.
My Lords, we have here in our view a kingdom tossed and rolling still with the effects of past tempests; and though, God be thanked, the storm be miraculously ceased, we cannot say that the danger is, until we get into still water: that still, that smooth water, is only to be found in the generality’s security from their guilty fears, and in the two Houses’ union between themselves, and with their sovereign.[501]
Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier Page 32