King Charles, Prince Rupert and the Civil War

Charles Petrie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000220377
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Until this book was published in 1974, many of the letters in this book between Charles I Prince Rupert his nephew and the leading Royalist commander had never been published. From a mainly private collection, the letters give a fascinating insight into the stormy relationship between the monarch and his nephew. Also included are letters from the Royalist exiles, including the future King Charles II and letters to and from other notable figures of the time including Queen Henrietta Maria, Montrose and Oliver Cromwell. The period covered by the letters is the turning point of the Civil War and enables the reader to see the War through the eyes of those who participated in it. The letters have been edited in such a way as to illuminate to the full the personalities of their writers and the appropriate historical and personal context to the letters.

CHAPTER 1
UNCLE AND NEPHEW

The character of the Civil War is often misunderstood. Those whose sympathies are with the Parliament not infrequently regard the struggle as one between a faithless and tyrannical monarch, backed by a loose-living aristocracy, on the one hand, and a sober and liberty-loving middle class on the other. On the contrary, those who incline towards the royal cause are apt to see the conflict in the light of a conspiracy by a minority of determined revolutionaries, prepared to stop at nothing to achieve their nefarious purpose. Too often the pen and the brush have depicted the Civil Weir in one or other of these strong lights, and very rarely has it been shown in those half-tones which more nearly approximate to the truth. From the beginning there were certainly many who had no doubt which side they would espouse if and when the sword was drawn, but there must have been far more who hesitated until the last moment. The issue was not at the beginning so clear cut as it became later, or as it appears in retrospect, when much is obvious that was hidden from contemporaries: nor did it remain unchanged from the meeting of the Long Parliament to the Restoration of Charles II. Many thought that enough had been done when the Prerogative Courts were abolished; more were alienated from the Parliamentary cause when the King was beheaded; and only a remnant was satisfied to see the hereditary monarchy replaced by a military dictatorship. So it came about that no inconsiderable proportion of those who had opposed Charles I were quite genuine in welcoming the return of his son.

To the historian in his study two or three centuries later, with all the relevant documents at his disposal, it may appear strange that men should have had any hesitation in declaring for one side or the other, but to take such a view is surely to betray ignorance of human nature. When the dynastic crisis first burst upon the British Empire in December 1936, and before it was realized exactly what was at stake, men and women who had many beliefs in common suddenly found themselves taking diametrically opposite views: so it was in 1641 with much more reason. Thousands of swords must have been drawn for King or Parliament only with the greatest reluctance, and this may well explain the relative mildness of the struggle compared with the horrors of the contemporary Thirty Years’ War. Kipling described the situation very well when he wrote of the battle of Edgehill:

But there is no change as we meet at last

On the brow-head or the plain,

And the raw astonished ranks stand fast

To slay or to be slain

By the men they knew in the kindly past

That shall never come again—

By the men they met at dance or chase,

In the tavern or the hall,

At the justice-bench and the market place

At the cudgel-play or brawl,

Of their own blood and speech and race

Comrades or neighbours all!

In effect, whichever side one believes to have been in the right, one cannot shut one’s eyes to the fact that there were honest men on the other, as well as fools and knaves, and that for many of our ancestors the choice must have been very difficult indeed. Typical of the attitude of many must have been that of the Roundhead Waller who wrote to the Cavalier Hopton, ‘The Great God, Who is the searcher of my heart, knows with what reluctance I go upon this service, and with what perfect hatred I look upon a war without an enemy.’

The conduct of the war, with which we are primarily concerned in these pages, at any rate in England itself though certainly not in Ireland, or where the Irish were concerned, was on the whole merciful, and in this the King set a notable example. There were often relatives on both sides, as at the siege of Sherborne Castle, where the daughter-in-law of its defender was the sister of the Parliamentary commander who besieged it. She told her brother that if he were determined to reduce the place he ‘should find his sister’s bones buried in the ruins’; whereupon he raised the siege. A further illustration is afforded by an episode which occurred in 1645 after Cromwell’s capture of Winchester. The prisoners complained of being robbed contrary to the terms of surrender. Six men in particular were accused, and Cromwell had them put on trial: all were found guilty, one chosen by lot was hanged, and five were sent to the Royalist governor at Oxford, who returned them ‘with an acknowledgement of the Lieutenant-General’s nobleness’.

Such behaviour was very different from the savagery which had marked the previous civil contest, namely the Wars of the Roses. The combatants in that struggle were professional soldiers, bred in the hard school of the French wars; as the late Professor Mowat wrote:

Troops of men, nobles, mercenary captains, common soldiers, came back into England, demoralized by long years of bitter warfare, of fighting for their lives and their booty amid an alien people. War was their only occupation. In time of peace they were out of place. For law they had little respect, and the renewal of fighting was their main chance of success.

In the war between Charles and the Parliament, on the other hand, at any rate in its earlier stages, save for a few officers with Continental experience, both armies were composed of amateurs to whom the shedding of blood was a regrettable necessity.

The chief exception on the Royalist side was Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the third son of the Elector Palatine and Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I, and consequently the nephew of Charles I. He was only twenty-three when he became involved in the Civil War at his uncle’s request, hut he had already seen service in Germany, where he had had the misfortune to he taken prisoner by the Imperialists in an action at Vlotho on the Weser, after which he spent several years as a prisoner at Linz. English politics meant nothing to Rupert, who never understood the hesitations which in so many cases accompanied the outbreak of hostilities, and he could not share the horror of Falkland and all the more moderate Cavaliers at the prospect of fighting against Englishmen, for he was not an Englishman but a foreigner and a professional soldier. He was thus liable to commit extremely tactless acts, such as his behaviour at Leicester at the beginning of the war, when he sent a terse note to the Mayor demanding £2,000 on behalf of his uncle. The demand showed a lack of tact, for while most of the leading citizens of Leicester were for the Parliament, there was also a strong party for the King, and the Mayor was himself sitting on the fence, but it seemed perfectly natural to Rupert to raise some money in this way if he could. The upshot is not uninteresting, for the Mayor handed over £500 to keep him quiet, and then sent a galloper to Charles at Nottingham telling him what had happened, whereupon the King promptly repudiated in rather severe language the action of ‘my said nephew’.

Uncle and nephew were in fact utterly dissimilar in temperament, and it has been suggested that this may have been the secret of their friendship. Rupert had the greatest respect for the King, but he could never understand in any man a refusal to face facts, especially military facts, yet this is what Charles seemed to him to be doing to an increasing extent as the war progressed, and turned against him. It would be hard to imagine any attitude of mind more opposed to Rupert’s practical temperament: his uncle seemed to him to be living in another world. Yet there was in the royal character a core of steel upon which misfortune could not make the slightest impression. He was, before anything else, a man of principle. He had not drawn the sword at Nottingham in any light-hearted mood, but on a point of principle, and while that remained in doubt he would never willingly sheath it. Military defeats were unfortunate and regrettable, but they could not settle the real issue. Charles was always looking for a moral victory, and it can hardly be denied that he got his moral victory in the end, though at the price of his own life.

In no way is the character of the King more clearly revealed, or the contrast between it and that of Rupert more clearly stressed, them in their attitude towards their enemies. For example, Hyde is found writing to Falkland from Oxford under date of 29 September 1642:

Mr. Hampden!¹ and Mr. Goodwyn² are at their houses, and our cavalry here think it a very easy matter to take them. His Majesty will give such directions either to those forces which are near those parts, or to their lordships here what shall be done. It is a pity the gentlemen should not be visited.

¹ Of Ship Money fame.

² A leading Parliamentarian in Bucks.

They were not, however, kidnapped but, on the contrary, when Hampden was mortally wounded on Chalgrove Field, Charles sent his own chaplain to his deathbed. It is difficult to imagine Rupert neglecting such an opportunity.

A further instance of the King’s attitude towards his opponents is to be found in his letter to the Mayor of Newbury on 21 September of the following year, and the day after the second battle at that place:

Our will and command is, that you forthwith send into the towns and villages adjacent, and bring thence all the sick and hurt soldiers of the Earl of Essex’s army, and though they be rebels, and deserve the punishment of traitors, yet out of our tender compassion upon them as being our subjects, our will and pleasure is, that you carefully provide for their recovery, as well as for those of our own army, and then to send them to Oxford.

Charles has been accused of trickery, though whether on this score he is any more vulnerable than his opponents is a matter of opinion, but he certainly showed a respect for legality as, for example, when he wrote to the Governor of Dartmouth on 13 December 1645:

Whereas divers ships and vessels of good value are brought in, as we understand, to our port of Dartmouth, which our and other ships have taken from the rebels and their adherents; and whereas it is like that many more will be hereafter brought in thither, concerning which it is fit that there be a legal proceeding before they be in any way disposed of. Our pleasure and command therefore is, that you take effectual order that not only the said ships already brought in, but all that shall be hereafter, be first legally adjudicated by the judge of our Admiralty there who is or shall be for the time being, before you or any others whatsoever, offer to dispose of such ships, vessels, and prizes, or anything belonging to them, or any of their goods, and commodities aboard. Which rule we will and command you punctually to observe and cause to be observed for the avoiding of injustice, and the prejudice that would ensue to our service by the contrary.

That Charles should have adopted such a moderate attitude towards his enemies is evidence of that complexity of his character which was the despair of his contemporaries and has been the puzzle of posterity. Whereas Rupert saw the Civil War as a war like any other, his uncle saw it as a crusade and, as we shall see, this difference in outlook was to cause a rift between them. The King’s chief defect as a ruler and as a commander in the field was a fatal irresolution and lack of self-confidence, which Rupert found exasperating. Gardiner, the historian, treated him as a stupid man, but this was not the opinion of his contemporaries. Clarendon wrote that ‘he had an excellent understanding, but was not confident enough of it; which made him often-times change his own opinion for a worse, and follow the advice of a man that did not judge so well as himself’. His opponent, St John, held much the same view, and Cromwell went so far as to say that if the King had trusted his own judgment he would have fooled them all. This was very marked when war came, and Clarendon put it on record that ‘he was very fearless in his person, but not enterprising’.

There is nothing in the correspondence between uncle and nephew prior to Rupert’s surrender of Bristol in 1645 to indicate that there were any serious differences between them: even the defeats of Marston Moor and Naseby had had no adverse effect upon their relations, which had always been exceptionally cordial. Almost the only occasion when they seem to have differed was after Edgehill which, although a drawn battle, could in Rupert’s opinion have been converted into a victory had it been properly followed up. According to his diary, Rupert ‘offered to push on with the horse and three thousand foot; to seize Westminster and the rebel part of the Parliament, and occupy the palace of Whitehall until the King should come up with the remainder of the army’.

All the evidence goes to show that the civilians about the King were horrified at such a drastic proposal, and at the council meeting to discuss it the old Earl of Bristol³ roundly declared that if Rupert got into the city he would probably set it on fire. The truth is that he and those who thought with him did not want a victory by force of arms—certainly not such a one as Rupert envisaged, for they were working and hoping for a peaceful settlement. Given the King’s temperament, they had no great difficulty in carrying Charles along with them. He was so convinced of the righteousness of his cause that he kept hoping that before long his opponents would see reason if only he gave them a little time; so he delayed at Banbury, and then again at Oxford: he even allowed the sluggish Essex to march past him and get to London first, with the result that by t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Uncle and Nephew
• 2 Women at War
• 3 Father and Son: The Two Fairfaxes
• 4 Montrose
• 5 The Irish Scene
• 6 The Fighters and the Fighting I
• 7 The Fighters and the Fighting II
• 8 The Exiles
• Index