Prince Rupert

Finding himself alone among his fallen men, Rupert rode to help one of Craven’s ensigns, who was defending Charles Louis’s standard with the last of his troopers. Soon all these men were also slain. Rupert was cornered, the sole Palatine survivor in this pocket of the battlefield. He killed the soldier who was holding his brother’s captured colours, then, in a desperate escape attempt, dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks while pointing him at a wall. However, after the day’s exertions, the height was too great for his mount and instead of jumping, it slowly sank to the ground, utterly exhausted. On foot now, Rupert killed the first enemy soldier who approached him. He refused to surrender, but his position was quite hopeless. He was quickly overpowered. Lippe, a veteran enemy colonel, pulled up the prince’s visor, and demanded to know his prisoner’s identity. ‘A colonel!’ replied Rupert. ‘Sacre met!’ replied Lippe, ‘You’re a young ‘un.’[fn3]

Rupert was recognised by Count Hartzfeldt, the Imperialist cavalry general, and was handed over to Colonel Devereux’s care. The prince began furtive negotiations with the Irishman, giving him five gold coins, while promising more if he would allow him to escape. Devereux would probably have obliged, but Rupert was too valuable a prisoner to be left without a special guard, and Hartzfeldt returned with one before the bribe could take effect. The prince was sent for safekeeping at Warendorf.

What of Rupert’s comrades? Conigsmark never committed his soldiers and fled from the battlefield without a scratch. Charles Louis took flight with him, nearly drowning in the chaos of retreat when his carriage overturned in the fast-running River Weser. He hauled himself out by a willow branch, while his coachmen and horses were swept to their death. King was suspected of treachery: it was later learnt that he had sent his baggage train, containing his silver and personal chattels, to safety, the night before the battle. Unless blessed with extraordinary foresight, he must have known of the enemy’s plans. Captain Pyne, an eyewitness, was of the opinion ‘that the wilfulness of the Elector and the treachery of King … lost the day’.[fn4] The loyal Craven, by contrast, shared Rupert’s fate, and was taken prisoner. He had been seriously wounded in the thigh and the hand, but would live. Craven was subsequently able to buy his freedom with the huge ransom of £20,000. When he offered to pay more to be allowed to stay with Rupert, he was refused.

Among the other prisoners was Sir Richard Crane, who Rupert was allowed to send to England with an account of the defeat. The scribbled message on a page torn from a notebook was the first confirmation that the prince’s family had of his survival: early reports had counted him among the dead. Elizabeth of Bohemia reacted to the news of his capture with immense self-pity, declaring that it might have been better if Rupert had perished. As a prisoner, he would be vulnerable to Catholic conversion — a thought not worth contemplating. She had greeted the suggestion with horror, claiming: ‘I would rather strangle my children with my own hands.’[fn5]

Rupert was defiant in the face of his enemies, the London Post recording: ‘The Emperor that then was pitying his youth, and hearing that he had the face and physiognomy of a Soldier, did send unto him to change his Religion, assuring him, that he would restore him to the Electoral Dignity, and make him Generalissimo of his Army. Prince Rupert returned this answer to the Emperor: That he thanked him for his promised favours, but for matters of Religion, they were out of his element. If the Emperor had sent him a bale of dice (he said) he knew what answer to return him. This wild answer of his being brought unto the Emperor, the Emperor replied, that he might have the face of a soldier, but it appeared by his answer, he but had the condition of a fool, & in choler protested, that he would he troubled no longer with him.’[fn6]

Rupert was moved to the forbidding castle of Linz, overlooking the Danube. So important a captive was he, that 1,200 men accompanied him there. By contrast, as a prisoner he was allowed a skeleton retinue, comprising just a pageboy and two other servants. Ferdinand III, now Emperor in place of the dour bigot whose armies had triumphed at White Mountain, chose the prince’s gaoler with care: Count von Kuffstein was a respected military veteran and an enthusiastic convert to Catholicism. The Emperor hoped Kuffstein would be able to win Rupert’s respect and confidence, before laying siege to his soul. Kuffstein enjoyed discussing military theory with Rupert and soon grew to like his prisoner. He never forgot his mission, though, and soon suggested that the prince might enjoy the company of two Jesuit priests. Rupert flatly rejected the offer, unless he was also allowed the companionship of Protestant guests of his own choice. This was out of the question. The war of spiritual attrition continued.

Rupert busied himself with science and art. He worked on a variation of an instrument originally devised by Darer, which helped in the drawing of perspective. The prince also drew: one of his etchings from this period shows a full-length mendicant friar in a landscape with a city, a river, and a handful of soldiers in the background. This is a precursor of his later, more celebrated, innovations with the mezzotint method of engraving. However, his ability to indulge in his favourite pursuits did not detract from the harshness of his confinement. Rupert would refer to it as ‘a wretched close imprisonment’, and point to his ability to endure it with pride. It was only his unshakeable Protestant faith that stopped him from accepting the Emperor’s ‘stately large promises’,[fn7] which included not just freedom, but also generalship in the Imperial army and the grant of a small principality, which he would be able to call his own.

From time to time the prince joined the count’s household for dinner and he was allowed occasional access to the castle’s gardens. It is not recorded where he first met Kuffstein’s daughter, Susan, but we know the two of them fell in love. Rupert recalled her much later as ‘one of the brightest beauties of her age, no less excelling in the charms of her mind than of her fair body’.[fn8] ‘He never mentioned her without admiration’, remembered a contemporary, ‘and expressing a devotion to serve her with his life.’[fn9] Given the strictness of his confinement, it seems unlikely that this relationship could ever have progressed beyond the platonic.

Rupert was an intriguing figure to his captors. Ferdinand III’s brother, the Archduke Leopold, went to examine the prince during the second year of his imprisonment. Leopold felt that Kuffstein was keeping the prince on too tight a leash, and saw to it that Rupert be allowed to play ‘ballon’ — tennis — and practise military skills, including the use of a gun with a rifled barrel. He became an extremely accomplished tennis player, and a very accurate shot. Provided he gave his word not to escape, Leopold felt that Rupert should be granted greater physical freedom. He was given three-day passes that allowed him to join surrounding noblemen on hunting expeditions. His favourite host was Count Kevenhüller, whose residence was at Kamur, in Bavaria: ‘It was’, Rupert’s manuscript biographer wrote, ‘a most pleasant place, and the count received him with all the honour imaginable.’[fn10]

The prince’s family seldom received news of his well-being, but Elizabeth of Bohemia never wavered in seeking Rupert’s release. When the Earl of Essex visited The Hague, she urged him to go on to Austria and intercede with the Emperor on her son’s behalf. When Essex declined, Charles Louis was disappointed. He felt that only somebody of the earl’s stature could reasonably undertake such a mission, because any lesser figure would be vulnerable to the effects of Rupert’s hot-headedness: ‘Essex should have gone’, Charles Louis wrote, ‘because there was no one else would, neither could I force any to it, since there is no small danger in it, for any obstinacy of my brother Rupert’s, or venture to escape, would put him in danger of hanging.’[fn11]

Charles I sent Sir Thomas Roe, Elizabeth of Bohemia’s devotee, as an ambassador to reiterate English support for Rupert’s release. Favourable reports reached The Hague of Roe’s progress, the Countess of Lowenstein writing: ‘I hope by the solicitation of Sir Thomas Roe we shall have our sweet Prince Rupert here: he hath been long a prisoner.’[fn12]

Ferdinand III eventually agreed to free Rupert, if he apologised for taking up arms against the Empire. The prince refused, saying that he had nothing to apologise for: he had only been doing his duty. This message reached Ferdinand when he was being visited by the Palatinate’s greatest foe, the Duke of Bavaria. Maximilian persuaded his host that such impudence demanded severe punishment. Rupert’s imprisonment now entered its toughest phase: his trips from the castle, his ability to play sports, and his contact with Kuffstein’s daughter were all forbidden. A detachment of twelve musketeers and two halberdiers was ordered to keep the prince under 24-hour watch.

Rupert’s only consolation lay in the company of pet animals. The Earl of Arundel was an eminent, cultured, English aristocrat who had joined the retinue accompanying the newly married Elizabeth to Heidelberg, after her marriage to Rupert’s father. Arundel, permanently disabled after being thrown from his carriage in London, had subsequently been a benign presence in the life of the Palatines since 1632, when he was sent to the United Provinces in a futile attempt to persuade Elizabeth of Bohemia to bring her fatherless family to live in her brother’s kingdom. Subsequently, the earl had greatly enjoyed Rupert and Charles Louis’s company during their visit to England, commissioning Francois Dieussart, a French sculptor, to sculpt busts of the two princes.

Arundel was deeply upset by Rupert’s protracted imprisonment and sent the prince a white dog, which seems to have been a rare strain of poodle. Rupert named him ‘Boy’ and made him his constant companion. The Grand Turk heard of the dog’s beauty and ordered his ambassador to find him a puppy of the same breed. The prince also domesticated a hare, which followed him at heel. Rupert had inherited his mother’s affinity for animals.

Once, the prince was nearly sprung from his cage. A Franco-Swedish force struck towards Linz, with Rupert’s release its main aim. It was met and defeated by Imperialists under Archduke Leopold. Soon after the engagement, Leopold rode to visit the captive once more, and his friendship with Rupert resumed. Meanwhile, Ferdinand’s Empress, who had been born a Spanish princess, began to advocate the prince’s liberty. With domestic problems escalating dangerously in England, Charles I increased his pressure on the Emperor: he needed his nephew to help lead whatever army could be mustered, if hostilities broke out. The concerted efforts eventually persuaded Ferdinand to grant Rupert his freedom, provided he promise never to fight against the Empire again. This was a considerable undertaking from a prince who was keen to avenge his father’s humiliations and whose vocation was the military. However, worn down by years of captivity, and eager to resume life as a free man, Rupert’s stubbornness gave way. He reluctantly agreed to this far-reaching restriction.

A symbolic act was needed, to bring about the prince’s release. When Ferdinand was hunting near Linz, it was arranged that Rupert would pretend to come across the hunting party and pay homage to the Emperor. This would be enough to trigger his freedom. Rupert arrived at the appointed time and place, to find a particularly ferocious wild boar holding hounds and hunters at bay. While everyone else hung back, Rupert rushed forward with a spear and slew the boar. The Emperor proffered a hand to the brave prince and Rupert kissed it. From that moment, he was free.

Ferdinand made a final offer to the prince of a senior command against the French and Swedes, and promised that he would be allowed to continue in the Protestant religion while serving. Rupert declined: he had compromised enough.

The prince was keen to surprise his family by reaching home before official messengers could bring them news of his release. He arrived back at the Prinsenhof in December 1641, just ahead of Sir Thomas Roe’s letter announcing his freedom, and remained with his delighted mother for two months.

Rupert returned to find Elizabeth recovering from the loss of another child. Gustavus had died in agony on 9 January 1641, five days before his ninth birthday. Rupert’s youngest brother had been in acute pain for much of his short life, but none of the many doctors the family had called on had been able to establish the cause of, or think of a cure for, his affliction. Gustavus’s final days were so terrible that they left a lifelong impression on Sophie, Rupert’s youngest sister. She later recalled that, ‘on opening him stones were found in his bladder, one of which was the size of a pigeon’s egg surrounded by four others that were pointed, and one in his kidneys in the shape of a large tooth that has been pulled out with its root.’[fn13] Only then did family members understand the full ghastliness of the ordeal that the little boy had endured for so long.

Rupert’s return provided a fillip for the grieving, impoverished family-in-exile, most of whose financial reserves had been spent on the ill-fated expedition that had resulted in the prince’s incarceration. That winter Rupert busied himself joining in scientific experiments with his sister Elizabeth. Active service soon reclaimed him, however. The uncle who had helped secure his freedom demanded Rupert’s presence across the North Sea, for Charles’s kingdom was facing the imminent prospect of civil war.

Chapter Five

To His Uncle’s Aid

‘Though I will never fight in any unrighteous quarrel, yet to defend the King, Religion and Laws of a Kingdom against subjects, who are up in arms against their Lord and Sovereign … such a cause my conscience tells me is full of piety and justice: and if it please God to end my days in it, I shall think my last breath spent with as much honour and religion, as if I were taken of my knees at my prayers.’

Prince Rupert His Declaration, 1642

From 1629 until 1640 England experienced what royal opponents termed ‘the Eleven Years’ Tyranny’, when Charles ruled without Parliament. The king managed to obtain funds through various controversial means, including the sale of commercial monopolies, the appropriation of tonnage and poundage customs dues, and by raising the naval war tax of Ship Money during peacetime. These methods helped to foment dissent, at a time when there was no national forum where it could be expressed. The king’s personal rule polarised the political nation.

The tensions that led to civil war became discernible, with increasing vividness and frequency, from the late 1630s onwards. The problems were not new, as an intractable king and an ambitious Parliament clashed with escalating force. Two of James I’s later Parliaments had been short-lived, as traditional monarchy failed to react with tact or understanding to strong social, economic, religious, and philosophical shifts.

Members of Parliament demanded a greater say in government, and a furthering of the Protestant cause at home and in Europe. Charles, though, was unresponsive. He had inherited his father’s belief in the divine right of kings, which held the monarch to be God’s anointed, with a right to rule as he saw fit. He expected his people’s representatives to respect his sovereignty, while granting him revenue when required. Four years into his reign, with three sessions already failed, Charles forewent the demanding politicians dominating Westminster and looked to fund his policies through the resurrection of ancient Crown privileges.

The religious sensibilities of seventeenth-century Europe compounded the discord. The atrocities of the Thirty Years’ War demonstrated that the clash of different Christian sects could lead to carnage. Tales of Catholic brutalities in Germany found a ready audience in Protestant England: ‘At the taking of Magdeburg,’ it was reported in a pamphlet of 1641, ‘a Preacher of great esteem was dragged out of the Church to his own house, that he might see his wife and children ravished, his tender infants snatched from the mother’s breast, and stuck upon the top of a lance, and when his eyes and heart were glutted with so cruel a spectacle, they brought him forth bound into the street, and laid him in the midst of his own books, and setting fire thereto miserably burnt him, and thus have I given you a taste of the lamentations of Germany.’[fn1] The message was clear: the Papists would do the same to their religious foes in England, if they ever got the opportunity — a fear made more real by the threat of rebellion across the Irish Sea. Charles’s marriage to Henrietta Maria, Henry IV of France’s daughter, left him open to the Puritan fear that the queen’s Catholicism would taint the monarch’s soul. When the king failed to launch an armed crusade to restore Rupert’s parents to the Palatine, critics claimed this showed a shameful lack of commitment to Protestantism abroad.

The king’s promotion of the High Churchman William Laud to the Archbishopric of Canterbury was deeply unpopular. Laud’s enemies claimed that: ‘The Archbishop hath been a notable deceiver; for whilst he did always pretend to cast out Popery and faction, he endeavoured nothing more than to bring it in, and settle it among us.’[fn2] Charles’s patronage of such a man seemed to confirm Puritan fears that the corrupt and ungodly, wilfully ignorant of the spiritual needs of the people, were favoured above true believers. This trend left the flock exposed to the wiles of Catholic predators, a theme John Milton angrily explored in his 1637 poem, ‘Lycidas’:

Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves know how to hold

A Sheep-hook, or have learn’d ought els the least

That to the faithfull Herdmans art belongs! …

The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,

But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:

Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw

Daily devours apace, and nothing sed,

But that two-handed engine at the door,

Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

The Puritans believed the king to be dangerously out of kilter with the religious preferences of most of his subjects. This was, they believed, an abrogation of his duty to God. By logical extension, if Charles could not observe his obligations to the Lord, why should they offer unquestioning obedience to their monarch?

*

Charles was king not just of England, but also of Scotland and Ireland. It was his Scottish subjects that brought an end to his personal rule.

Presbyterianism was a radical form of Protestantism that flourished in Scotland, particularly in the Lowlands. In 1637, ignoring his advisers north of the border, Charles insisted on imposing Laud’s English Prayer Book on the Scots. This attempt to achieve spiritual conformity in the two countries caused political as well as religious opposition. When Jenny Geddes, an Edinburgh servant girl, hurled her stool at a priest spouting Laudian offensiveness in St Giles’s Cathedral, her aggression was symbolic of a people’s fury. The Scots resented the highhandedness of a distant ruler who dared to meddle with their souls.

Two Anglo-Scottish conflicts, the Bishops’ Wars, followed. The first, in 1639, was an inconclusive affair that did little more than reveal the feebleness of Charles’s army. The second, a year later, ended in outright humiliation for the king: the Scots defeated the English in battle, and took orderly occupation of Durham and Northumberland. Charles, unable to finance a counterforce, was obliged to summon his first Parliament for more than a decade. Despite the national emergency of having a foreign force on English soil, the Members declined to grant funds unless the king first dealt with wider issues: ‘No taxation without redress of grievances’ was their uncompromising mantra. Their three prime grievances involved the liberty of Parliament, as well as questions of religion and civil government. Charles was not prepared to bargain on any point: ‘the Short Parliament’, so long in the gestation, perished after just three weeks.

The continuing Scottish crisis meant that Parliament had to be reconvened. November 1640 saw the start of what would come to be known as ‘the Long Parliament’. During its first six months it used the foreign incursion to win concessions from the beleaguered king. Charles was forced to approve the Triennial Act, which obliged the Crown to summon Parliament at least once every three years. Members also dismantled the raft of revenue-raising methods that Charles had relied on during his personal rule.

Those favourites most closely associated with the Eleven Years’ Tyranny were now exposed to vengeful fury. Archbishop Laud was imprisoned in the Tower of London. The equally controversial Earl of Strafford, who had ruled Ireland for Charles, suffered a humiliating impeachment. Extreme opponents then insisted on his execution. In a moment of weakness for which he never forgave himself, Charles signed the death warrant of his most loyal servant. Strafford’s dignified acceptance of his fate added to the king’s acute sense of guilt.

Constitutional surgery, combined with the removal of hated advisers, satisfied many in Parliament. However, the radicals, led by the Tavistock MP John Pym, wanted to push further. They sought the abolition of bishops, approval of the appointment of royal ministers, and control of the military. Charles’s supporters were shocked by this broad attack on the royal prerogative, and presented the radicals as self-serving and greedy:

… The game they play for is so great,

Vain is all hope them to intreat.

The Crown is strong: the Church is rich,

At these two things their fingers itch.[fn3]

But the Crown was not strong, and its weakness became ever more obvious. When Irish Catholics rebelled in October 1641, murdering thousands of Protestants, the king prepared to summon, and appoint, the commanders of the avenging English army. However, Parliament insisted on being party to such important matters of state. Meanwhile, critics of the court composed the Grand Remonstrance, an itemised list of the king’s alleged misdemeanours. This was narrowly approved by Parliament. Pym and his acolytes were placing the king — a weak man prone to impulsiveness and stubbornness — under intense pressure. Eventually the strain told.

On 4 January 1642, Charles attempted to arrest six especially vocal Parliamentary critics. Five were Members of the Commons, while one sat in the Lords. However, all had fled before the arrival of the king and his party, which included Rupert’s brother, Charles Louis. This clumsy lunge at the court’s enemies was the brainchild of George, Lord Digby. Digby, heir to the earldom of Bristol, would become Rupert’s greatest enemy in the Royalist camp. He had previously been a critic of the king’s advisers, while always stressing his loyalty to the Crown. Digby had argued that the monarch could only function correctly with the cooperation of Parliament: ‘The King out of Parliament hath a limited, a circumscribed Jurisdiction’, he had told the Commons, ‘But waited on by his Parliament, no Monarch of the East is so absolute in dispelling Grievances.’[fn4]

Digby had argued eloquently for Strafford’s impeachment, but had been appalled when radical colleagues insisted on — and gained — the earl’s head. The execution caused Digby to side with the king. His charm and eloquence had quickly earned Charles’s forgiveness. The same gifts went on to win the king’s highest favour. However, the armed intrusion was early evidence of Digby’s poor judgement. The move backfired spectacularly, infuriating much of London and prompting the king to quit his capital. ‘The Five Members’ of the Commons sailed down the Thames in triumph, cheered by supporters celebrating their escape from a king whose key advisers were believed to have lured him into despotism. The failure of Digby’s ill-considered plan greatly increased the likelihood of war.