Rupert of the Palatinate

“ He joined Goring on the borders of Lancashire and Yorkshire. On the 26th he halted at Skipton, to "fix his armes," [53] and to send a message to York. On the 29th he quartered at Denton, the house of the Puritan General, Lord Fairfax. Two of the Fairfaxes had fallen years ago, in the fight for the Palatinate, and Rupert, having noticed their portraits, preserved the house uninjured for their sakes. "Such force hath gratitude in noble minds," [54] comments the Fairfax who tells the story. ”

“ XX. THE PALATINES ON THE CONTINENT. RUPERT'S DISPUTES WITH THE ELECTOR. THE ELECTOR'S ANXIETY FOR RUPERT'S RETURN. WANT OF AN HEIR TO THE PALATINATE. FRANCISCA BARD. RUPERT'S CHILDREN . . . . . . . . . . 344 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Genealogical chart
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RUPERT, PRINCE PALATINE
CHAPTER I THE PALATINE FAMILY
"A man that hath had his hands very deep in the blood of many innocent people in England," was Cromwell's concise description of Rupert of the Rhine. ”

“ If the King were deposed, and his children rejected as the children of a Roman Catholic Queen, then the Elector, after his mother, was the Protestant heir to the throne. Probably the aspersions cast upon Rupert would have better fitted his elder brother, and the French Ambassador did not hesitate to assert plainly in 1644: "Some entertain a design for conveying the crown to the Prince Palatine". ”

“ Lastly, we have the Rupert of the Restoration; no longer sick at heart and desperately sad, but a Rupert who has out-lived hope and joy, disappointment and sorrow; a handsome man, with a keen intellectual face, but old before his time, and made hard and cold and contemptuous by suffering and loneliness.
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The first few months of Rupert's existence were the most prosperous of his life, but he was not a year old before his troubles began. His father, Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, had been married at sixteen to the famous Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I of England ”

“ The Bohemians welcomed the baby with enthusiasm; the ladies of the country presented him with a cradle of ivory, embossed with gold, and studded with precious stones, and his whole outfit was probably the most costly that he ever possessed in his life. He was christened Rupert, after the only one of the Electors Palatine who had attained the Imperial crown. His sponsors were Bethlem Gabor, King of Hungary, whose creed approximated more closely to Mahommedanism than to any other faith; the Duke of Würtemberg, and the States of Bohemia, Silesia, and Upper and Lower Lusatia. ”

“ His character had in it elements of greatness, but was so full of contradictions as to puzzle even the astute Lord Clarendon, who, after a long study of the Prince, was reduced to the exclamation—"The man is a strange creature!" [5] And strange Rupert undoubtedly was! Born with strong passions, endowed with physical strength, and gifted with talents beyond those of ordinary men, but placed too early in a position of great trial and immense responsibility, his history, romantic and interesting throughout, is the history of a failure. ”

“ Throughout the play Prince Rupert had sat quietly at the Governor's right hand, puffing at a long pipe of tobacco, observing with his keen eyes all that happened, and answering courteously enough when spoken to. The men around him were the rudest this world contained; esteeming themselves the equals of any, and the superiors of most. But there was a natural dignity which hedged his Highness in, over which even they did not dare to trespass; and so, by way perhaps of a sly revenge, they contented themselves by gibing now and again at his easily-blushing secretary. ”

“ The Elector Pallatin hath bin plesed to writt to a Prive Consellor of this Court, in these terms—what the King of England's ambassador doth negotiate with the Porte Elector Pallatin knowes not, nor what is intended by him against the house of Austria, but Prince Rupert, whoe is intimate with Kinge of England and his Prive Consellor, can tell, if he plese.—All this is a brotherly tricke you'l saye; but I thancke Gode they heere doe little beleeve what he saies... By Heven I am in suche a humour that I dare not writt to any ”

“ Immediately on his return from England in 1637, Rupert joined his brother Maurice in the army of the Stadtholder. Prince Henry was just then engaged in the siege of Breda, a town which was oftener lost and won than any other in the long wars of the Low Countries. Many Englishmen were fighting there, in the Dutch army: Astley, Goring, the Lords Northampton and Grandison, with whom the Palatines were already well acquainted, besides others whom they were to meet hereafter in the English war, either as friends or foes. ”

“ To such visitors the Prince must infinitely have preferred his solitude. He was a lonely man; the last, in a sense, of his generation. Between him and the Courtiers of Charles a great gulf lay. Will Legge was dead, and most of his other friends had likewise passed before him. Lord Craven was left, and Ormonde absent in Ireland, but they were the last of the old régime. For companionship Rupert fell back on his own "gentlemen," the people of Berkshire, and his dogs. ”

“ Dependent upon the English Parliament as the Palatines were,—for King Charles could no longer help them, and the Stadtholder was old and failing,—Rupert's zeal in his uncle's cause was a serious disadvantage to them. "I fear," wrote Roe to the Elector, "the freshness of his spirit and his zeal to his uncle may have drawn from him some words, if not deeds, that have begot a very ill odour; insomuch {89} that nothing is so much cried out against as his actions, which do reflect upon your whole family and cause, and there may be more need of a bridle to moderate him than of spurs. ”

“ But in the list of Rupert's friends, there is one more who must not be forgotten: one who was his inseparable companion for nearly six years, who shared his captivity in Austria, followed him to England, ate with him, slept with him, accompanied him to Council and to Church, shared all his dangers and hardships, and never left his side, till he fell, with many gallant Cavaliers, on the field of Marston Moor;—this was the Prince's white dog, Boye. ”

“ The Puritan army was encamped on Dunsmore Heath, and Rupert, riding as near to it as he dared, overtook a man driving a horse which was laden with apples. The man, on being interrogated, informed the Prince that he was going to sell the apples to the soldiers of the Parliament. "Why dost thou not go to the King's army?" ”

“ The King's triumph was short-lived. The citizens and the Parliamentary troops rallied to the defence of the capital. An army, twice as large as that of Charles, barred his way on Turnham Green. Essex advancing on Brentford, forced Rupert to retire. This he did in excellent order, entrusting the conduct of the retreat to Sir Jacob Astley. The Prince himself stood his horse in the river beside the bridge that he might watch his men pass over. ”

“ For the moment Rupert thought the man had been mocking him; but then he saw that the gangway was narrow, that the boatswain traversed it every hour on his official watch, and that the sleeping sailor at the further side would cause him to walk near the other edge, and so within hand-grips of the slaves who wanted the keys. So the Prince sat on his bench well satisfied, and the men near him, who had heard what had been said, waited in silence to get their share of any benefits which might befall. There is no reason to ask the slaves on a galley if they will join an insurrection. ”

“ After the battle of Naseby, misfortunes crowded thick upon the Royalists. Garrisons surrendered daily to the Parliament; Goring suffered a crushing defeat; and the King seemed in no way to raise another army. Rupert retired to his city of Bristol, and summoned Maurice to his side. But the younger Prince was at Worcester, which was threatened by the Scots, and could not quit the place with honour. ”

“ For the intention of carrying him to that army, (in the West,) he has yet heard nothing of it, and, if he shall, he will without fail oppose it; and I may say truely that if he has a great kindness for any man it is for your Highness." [44] For the moment Rupert triumphed. Richmond, who opposed the plan for the West as strongly as the Prince could have wished, assured him that it was "but a dream," [45] and for a while it fell into abeyance. ”

“ D'Estrées retorted with the declaration that Rupert, owing to his aversion to the war, had not pushed the first battle so far as he could have done. [90] But, said a contemporary, "it is as impossible to make any Englishman suspect the Prince's courage, as to persuade him that the French have any, at sea." ”

“ Indeed, I may say, he is his father, for
he, being without question dead, Rupert is king.
Alardo. Dead without question! You are positive.
How, if I say I know he is alive?
Think you to gain a sire the prince would choose
To lose so mighty and august a throne?
Ivy. Treasonless man! would you dethrone the prince? Ho! lechery and
faith! guard our good prince! His life's in danger.
Rupert. What cry is this?
Ivy. Great prince, it might have been a crying matter; but I, thank
the gods, have been man enough to stifle it.
Rupert. So you have turned approver: renegades I never trust ”

“ It is possible that Rupert was not over-scrupulous when the persons taxed happened to be Puritans, yet he always maintained what he considered a proper degree of discipline; and the frequent apologies of his officers prove that the Prince did not permit indiscriminate plunder. "Our men are not very governable, nor do I think they will be, unless some of them are hanged. They fall extremely to the old kind of plundering, which is neither for their good, nor for His Majesty's service," [24] wrote Lord Wentworth. ”

“ It was a maxim of his that the arts of patience, of strategy, and parleying with the enemy should be left to statesmen and caitiffs; and it can be said with truth of Rupert that no one could possibly have acted more completely in accordance with his rule than himself. "Than Prince Rupert," wrote a chronicler at his death, "no man was more courageous or intrepid. ”

“ At the same time, Legge received a long account of the battle from Digby himself, in which the Secretary, very cleverly, charged all the misfortune of the day to the Prince, while pretending to acquit him. "I am sure that Prince Rupert hath so little kindness for me, as I daily find he hath, it imports both to me and mine to be much the more cautious not to speak anything that may be wrested to his prejudice. ”

“ Rupert, though in an extremely weak state of health, had shown his usual courage and energy in the action. The official reports did not give satisfaction to his admirers. "Not a word is said of Prince Rupert, though the seamen say that none excelled him in valour and success," they complained. [21] The Prince himself wrote cheerfully to Arlington, though, as his letter confesses, he was again on the sick-list. "My greatest joy is to have ben so happie as to have bin a small instrument in this last encounter, to chastise so high an insolency as that of the Dutch. ”

“ And he walked through the city, looking with great disdain at those riches which were within reach of his hand and which so much tempted his ambition before.
That dazzling brilliance began to disturb him.
"Here it seems," he said to himself, "there is nothing else but gold. Cursed metal, which has cost me my heart. Goodness me! Who will give me back my little heart?"
He looked for friends, but did not succeed in finding them, because those people had hearts of steel, and Rupert felt that that little fibre that remained of his own made him suffer atrociously. ”

“ And said Sir Thomas Roe, who was not all inclined to approve the part Rupert had taken: "I cannot hear anything, credibly averred, which can be blamed by those who know the liberty of wars." [21] But the English did not know "the liberty of the wars," and they were naturally inclined to judge the young Prince harshly. Severe Rupert undoubtedly could be, if necessary. When the Puritans began a wholesale massacre of the King's Irish soldiers, the Prince promptly retaliated by executing an equal number of Puritan {65} prisoners. ”

“ Neither shall Prince Rupert want abettors in his cursed design; for many of our debauched and low-fortuned young nobility and gentry, suiting so naturally with this new conqueror, will make no bones to shoulder out the old King." [32] Eagerly did Rupert's Royalist foes catch at the libel. We have already seen that, before Marston Moor, Digby, Percy and Wilmot ventured to assert openly that the victory of Prince or Parliament was a matter of indifference. ”

“ Than bailing water out of a leaky vessel's bilges there is no labour more detestably menial; but a Prince of birth can be drowned by a ship swamping beneath him as glibly as a common sailor-man; and so as the remaining blacks showed clear signs of exhaustion, Rupert and his humble secretary had to take their turn at this occupation, and ply their utensils too with lusty vigour. It was extraordinary how fluent were the leaks. "They say that witches do sea-travelling in baskets," said Prince Rupert once. ”

“ Reginald Rupert, returning his hot, insolent glare with a cold and steady stare, beheld a huge and powerful-looking man with a pale, cruel face, coarsely handsome, wherein the bold, heavily lashed black eyes were set too close together beneath their broad, black, knitted brows, and the little carefully curled black moustache, beneath the little plebeian nose, hid nothing of the over-ripe red lips of an over-small mouth. ”