‘Tell my son, that I shall less grieve to hear that he is knocked on the head, than that he should do so mean an action as the rendering of Bristol Castle and Fort upon the terms it was.’
Charles I to Sir Edward Nicholas, chief adviser to the Prince of Wales
‘But is Bristol taken?’ Parliament’s Moderate Intelligencer taunted, pinching himself with delighted disbelief, ‘And in less than three weeks? Fortified four times as well as when Colonel Fiennes was in it, and more men, and the cream of the Royal army. Poor Prince Rupert! “The sentence of death must surely pass on you!” Why not retreat to the castle; the King on one side and Goring on the other, within 60 miles of you!’[fn1]
In truth, there had been no chance of Charles’s relieving Bristol: although he was, in theory, only five days’ march from the city, he was closely shadowed by one of Parliament’s finer generals, Sydenham Poyntz. Poyntz would have intercepted any attempt by the king to come to his nephew’s aid. Besides, if scouts had reported Charles’s approach, Fairfax would still have had time to storm the Royalist defences and eliminate the garrison before the main field army arrived. The king would then have been caught in a pincer movement, between his and Poyntz’s armies, finishing off the task that Naseby and Langport had narrowly failed to complete.
Rupert knew that the war was lost, whether he held Bristol or not. He had been convinced of the inevitability of defeat since Naseby, if not before. His uncle’s obstinate refusal to negotiate flew counter not only to Rupert’s, but also to Henrietta Maria’s, advice. Meanwhile, the prince felt responsible for men who had served him bravely and deserved better than certain death in a hopeless cause. Fairfax’s clever letter had reminded him of the dubious colleagues for whom they would be laying down their lives. Surrender was the only responsible option left open to the prince.
Lord Digby saw things differently and he made sure that the king shared his perspective. It was Digby who started the rumour that Rupert had surrendered the city for 8,000 gold Jacobus coins. He was certainly behind the allegation that Rupert had been in treacherous correspondence with his Parliamentarian brother Charles Louis — ‘though’, Prince Rupert’s diary refuted indignantly, ‘he never wrote one letter to him’.[fn2] The king believed Digby’s slanders. When Charles wrote from Hereford, on 14 September, his tone was one of shock and bewilderment at Rupert’s betrayal:
Nephew,
Though the loss of Bristol be a great blow to me, yet your surrendering it as you did is of so much affliction to me, that it makes me forget not only the consideration of that place, but is likewise the greatest trial of my constancy that hath yet befallen me; for what is to be done? After one that is so near to me as you are, both in blood and friendship, submits himself to so mean an action (I give it the easiest term) such I have so much to say that I will say no more of it: only, lest rashness of judgement be laid to my charge, I must remember one of your letters of the 12 August, whereby you assured me, (that if no mutiny happened,) you would keep Bristol for four months. Did you keep it four days? Was there any thing like a Mutiny? More questions might be asked, but now, I confess, to little purpose. My conclusion is, to desire you to seek your subsistence (until it shall please God to determine of my condition) somewhere beyond seas, to which end I send you herewith a pass; and I pray God to make you sensible of your present condition, and give you means to redeem what you have lost; for I shall have no greater joy in a victory, than a just occasion without blushing to assure of my being
Your loving uncle and most faithful friend.[fn3]
Charles’s position had further deteriorated, the day after Bristol’s fall: Montrose’s remarkable run of success ended at Philiphaugh, when defeat was followed by the cold-blooded murder of the duke’s Irish troops and their families. They had surrendered in good faith. The king felt beleaguered, with Parliament closing in on him from every direction. He looked to those closest to him to reverse the inevitable slide to total defeat. In this pressurised context, Rupert’s surrender attracted the harshest of interpretations. Meanwhile, Digby remained a source of unrealistic hope, seeing salvation coming from Ireland, France, and even Scotland. The meek capitulation of Bristol was set against this wild optimism and seemed to substantiate all Digby’s past attacks on Rupert.
Digby now struck hard at his enemies. The prince’s loyal friend Will Legge was removed as Oxford’s governor and imprisoned. His replacement was Sir Thomas Glemham, one of Digby’s acolytes. Rupert was now confined to his room, with musketeers posted outside his door. ‘The Lord Digby hath drawn up articles of high treason against Rupert,’ a rebel pamphlet claimed, ‘and swears he shall have his head, or it shall cost him a fall. The substance of the articles of treason against Rupert:
1. That he hath, several times, traitorously undermined the designs of the King and his Council, to the hazard of his Majesty’s person, and the loss of his army.
2. That he hath, several times, betrayed his Majesty’s forces to the enemy … by engaging them wilfully, to their destruction.
3. That he hath traitorously delivered the fort and castle of Bristol to Sir Thomas Fairfax.
4. That he himself declared, that he did worse in losing Bristol, than Colonel Fiennes did, in delivering it up to the King.
5. That he made promise to the enemy, to seduce his Majesty to come into the Parliament; promising never to fight more for the King against the Parliament …[fn4]
Rupert countered Digby’s attacks, writing to his uncle: ‘I only say, that if your Majesty had vouchsafed me so much patience as to hear me inform you before you had made a final judgement — I will presume to present this much — that you would not have censured me as it seems you do: and that I should have given you as just satisfaction as in any former occasions, though not so happy.’[fn5]
Charles now publicly disgraced Rupert. An open letter removed him from his commands, and disbanded his infantry and cavalry lifeguards. He was ordered to leave the kingdom. If the prince refused to go, or if he tried to stir up a mutiny, then Sir Edward Nicholas was to imprison him.
Digby manoeuvred to keep the king away from Oxford, in order to deny Rupert access to his impressionable uncle. Clarendon wrote:
‘The Lord Digby, who had then the chief influence upon his Majesty’s Councils, and was generally believed to be the sole cause of revoking the Prince’s Commission, and of the Order sent to him to leave the Kingdom, without being heard what He could say for himself, found that the odium of all this proceeding fell upon him.’ Prince Maurice made it clear that he blamed Digby for Rupert’s fall from grace, and Lord Gerard fell in with the brothers.
To avoid ‘the breaking of that cloud upon him, which threatened his ruin’,[fn6] Digby took Charles to Newark. This was the main Royalist stronghold left in the north and, in the diarist John Evelyn’s estimation, ‘a place of the best security’.[fn7] However, Digby underestimated the prince’s determination: Rupert was not a man to leave false accusations unchallenged, as his printed rebuttals of Parliamentary lies had repeatedly demonstrated. Now, accused of the basest betrayal, he decided to ride to Newark to plead his case in person.
The journey was largely across enemy territory. His eighty companions included Prince Maurice — who joined his brother at Banbury — Lord Molyneux, Sir William Vavasour, and Lord Hawley. They managed to cross Parliamentarian Northamptonshire without incident, before arriving at Burghley. The mansion had become a Roundhead garrison, its governor one of Rupert’s deserters. This turncoat raised the alarm and ordered his men to attack the prince. The opposing forces lined up, and then charged one another. ‘The Governor came with the gross of his body’, Prince Rupert’s diary recorded, ‘and knowing the Prince, he came up with his pistol and missed fire, and then cried for quarter, but the Prince shot him dead. And then in a short time the rest fled.’[fn8]
Enemies in both camps had now rumbled Rupert’s objective. Digby, desperate to block any rapprochement between uncle and nephew, sent frantic messages in the king’s name, forbidding the prince’s approach. Meanwhile, Parliament committed 1,500 men to hunting down Rupert and his confederates, and commanded its forces in Lincolnshire and Leicestershire to be on the look out for this dangerous troop of Cavaliers. A Parliamentarian colonel filed a report from Grantham, his inflation of the Royalist numbers betraying his fear at the princes’ names: ‘On Tuesday morning we received intelligence that Prince Rupert & P. Maurice were at Banbury upon their march towards Newark, some reported them to be twelve hundred, others six hundred; upon which intelligence all the horse belonging to this garrison, being three hundred, and four hundred more which lay at Stamford, were drawn to Colonel Rossiter, to interpose between the King and the Princes … No sooner were we marching, but from Leicester we received intelligence that the Princes were upon their march towards Belvoir, [so] we pursued them with all speed.’[fn9]
Arriving at a bridge near Belvoir Castle, Rupert found 300 Roundhead troopers barring his way. ‘The Prince stood first toward the horse,’ Prince Rupert’s diary recalled, ‘as if he would charge them, and then upon a sudden turned, and the enemy followed him; the Prince turned and fought them, and beat them twice, by which the other forces of the enemy being alarmed they came up to the Prince. Says the Prince to his people, “We have beaten them twice, we must beat them once more, and then over the pass and away”, which accordingly they did.’[fn10] Rupert led his men off at a gallop, his route helped by memories of a boyhood visit to Belvoir. He had spent many hours shooting rabbits on the estate and he still remembered various little-known paths through the woods: by twisting down these tracks, Rupert kept ahead of his pursuers.
He was riding fast, with twenty of his men, when they were suddenly confronted by forty Parliamentarians on a hilltop. ‘Will you have quarter?’ their officer shouted down. Rupert quietly ordered his men to keep close to him and ‘to turn when he turned’. The rebels careered down the hill out of formation, eager to kill or capture the retreating princes and their retinue. Rupert suddenly spun his smaller force round in a counter-charge, killing several of the enemy and forcing the rest to flee. Lord Molyneux despatched a rebel on a strong mare and gave the horse to the prince, who ‘fair and softly went to Belvoir.’[fn11] The next day Rupert and his party approached Newark.
Digby was still in favour with the king, Parliament’s Mercurius Britannicus commenting: ‘It is remarkable that Prince Rupert, and all the Protestant leaders should be deposed for Popish Digby …’[fn12] Learning of Rupert’s approach, Digby persuaded the king to move further north. However, he and Charles had only reached Rotherham when they learnt of Montrose’s defeat of Philiphaugh.
Despite this disaster, Digby urged an advance into Scotland: it seemed preferable to returning to Newark, where Rupert’s arrival was imminent. Digby was allowed to lead the remnants of the Northern Horse into Scotland as general of the King’s forces North of the Trent, an impressive title for one with such a limited military record. This command came to an inglorious end at Annan Moor, in the Borders, at the beginning of November: ‘Hath not God wrought wonderfully for us in destroying their powers’, a Parliamentary newspaper asked, ‘and crossing their designes; Digby himself routed and fled, nearly escaping with his life, of which he knoweth not how short a list he hath behind.’[fn13] Digby escaped to the Isle of Man on a fishing boat. From there he moved to Ireland, hopeful of raising an army that he would bring to the king’s aid in England. In this, he failed. The same month, Goring fled to the Continent, with a considerable amount of money. Rupert’s foremost Royalist enemies were overseas, but there were other hostile faces to take their place.
*
When the prince arrived at Newark, his retinue swollen to 120 men, he found that Charles had lost control of the town: with defeat hanging in the air, it had descended into dissolute chaos. Twenty-four generals had found sanctuary there, and they and their senior colleagues were hard to discipline. Sir John Oglander, a Royalist knight, witnessed similar debauchery elsewhere: ‘Truly all, or the greatest part, of the King’s commanders, were so debased by drinking, whoring and swearing that no man could expect God’s blessing on their actions.’[fn14] When Charles tried to establish order, he was ignored.
A large welcoming party greeted Rupert outside the town walls, while the king skulked inside. Rupert rode into Newark, dismounted, and to the consternation of Sir Edward Walker, an eyewitness, ‘comes straight into the [King’s] presence, and without any usual ceremony, tells his Majesty that he has come to render an account of the loss of Bristol.’[fn15] Charles refused to acknowledge his nephew’s presence and, appalled by his insolence, walked silently to his supper table. The two princes followed him, standing by his chair, Rupert eagerly trying to open a dialogue. The king started to eat and addressed only Maurice.
Rupert’s persistence eventually won through, though, and Charles agreed to his request for a court martial. Sitting in judgement were seven Royalist grandees, including the Earl of Lindsey (son of the general slain at Edgehill), Lord Astley, Lord Gerard, Sir Richard Willis (governor of Newark), Lord Bellasis, and John Ashburnham. Bellasis and Ashburnham were Digby’s men, but the court martial’s verdict was unanimous: the prince was declared innocent of cowardice or treachery. The panel accepted that Rupert would have defended Bristol ‘to the last man; though the tender regard he had to the preservation of so many officers and soldiers, was the chief reason that induced him to capitulate for the whole; they having so long and faithfully served us.’[fn16] Charles’s counterclaim — that he would have saved the city if his nephew had held out for longer — was rejected.
On 21 October the king was obliged to sign the humiliating verdict. He then declared he would be leaving for Oxford. His parting shot was the dismissal of Willis as governor, and his replacement by Digby’s acolyte, Bellasis. This was a provocative decision that intensified the faction fighting in the Royalist upper reaches. Charles’s authority was no longer intact, having been eroded by continuous defeat, and the deposed Willis protested vociferously at his demotion. ‘He consulted his friends, at the head of whom was Prince Rupert’, Sir Edward Walker recorded, ‘and they all agreed that he should demand a trial by a Council of War for the misdemeanour, of which … he was guilty.’[fn17] The king’s concession of a trial to his nephew had established a dangerous precedent.
Rupert sought an immediate redress of Willis’s grievances. The prince, Maurice, Gerard, and more than twenty of their followers burst in on the king while he was dining with Bellasis and his supporters. Charles sprang to his feet, startled at the invasion of his private quarters. Willis demanded that the king justify the dishonour done to him, before Rupert explained that he would offer Willis every support, since it was Willis’s friendship with the prince that had cost him the governorship. Gerard, encouraged by his comrades’ candour, went further, claiming ‘that the appointment of Lord Bellasis was Digby’s doing, that Digby was a traitor, and that he could prove him so.’[fn18]
John Evelyn wrote about this charged encounter in his famous diary: ‘Digby’s character, however, was supported by Bellasis, the governor, and several others; but the Princes, Rupert and Maurice, sided with Gerard. At length swords were drawn, and the King rushed in to part them …’[fn19] With peace restored, Charles agreed to speak to Willis — but only privately. However, Willis insisted that his complaint be dealt with in public. The king, his shock turning to anger, ordered Willis, Rupert, and their entire party, to leave the room. He then summoned his other generals ‘and it was debated what course to take with these wild Cavaliers.’[fn20]
On reflection, Rupert and his partisans accepted that they had behaved with ill-considered haste. The ruffling of Charles’s dignity demanded, and received, an immediate apology:
May It Please Your Most Excellent Majesty,
Whereas in all humility, we came to present ourselves this day unto your Majesty, to make our several grievances known, we find we have drawn upon us some misconstruction of the manner of that, by reason your Majesty thought it appeared as a mutiny. We shall therefore with all humbleness and clearness present unto Your Majesty, That we the persons subscribed, who from the beginning of this unhappy war, have given testimony to Your Majesty and the world, of our fidelity and zeal to Your Majesty’s Person and Cause, do think ourselves as unhappy to lie under that censure, and as we know in our consciences, our selves innocent and free from it; We do in all humility therefore (lest we should hazard ourselves upon a second misinterpretation) present these Reasons of our humblest Desires unto Your Sacred Majesty rather in writing than personally, which are these:
That many of us, entrusted in high commands in Your Majesty’s service, have not only our Commissions taken away, without any reasons or causes expressed, whereby our Honours are blemished to the World, our Fortunes ruined, and we rendered incapable of trust or command from any foreign Princes, but many others (as we have cause to fear) designed to suffer in the same manner.
Our Intentions in our addressing ourselves to Your Majesty were, and our submissive Desires now are, That Your Majesty will be graciously pleased, that such of us as now labour under the opinion of Unworthiness, and incapacity to serve Your Majesty, may at a Council of War receive knowledge of the causes of Your Majesty’s displeasure, and have the Justice and Liberty of our Defences against what can be alleged against us, and in particular concerning this Government.
And if upon the severest Examination, our Integrity and Loyalty to Your Majesty shall appear, that then Your Majesty will be graciously pleased, to grant us either Reparation in Honour against the calumny of our Enemies, or liberty to pass into other parts …[fn21]
It was clear that Rupert, Maurice, and their twenty co-signatories — all senior Royalist figures — knew the king’s cause to be lost. Before long, they would be obliged to seek military employment overseas and they needed to have their reputations cleared. Unless this happened, other rulers might shun their services.
Charles summoned Rupert and Maurice to an awkward meeting, where much was left unsaid. The king told his nephews that he welcomed their constant support, given the desperation of his position. He assured them of his continued trust, before contradicting himself by warning them that switching allegiance would lead to their eternal shame.
Rupert restated his loyalty to his uncle and asked the king to state openly that the princes’ clique had not attempted mutiny. This Charles agreed to do — but it appears that Rupert was unconvinced by this assurance and remained concerned by his uncle’s hesitancy. On leaving the king’s presence, the two brothers went to consult Gerard. They concluded that Digby and his faction were too firmly in favour for the king to treat them fairly or honourably. With regret, they decided to quit Newark.
The king watched from a castle window as the princes led away 400 of their supporters. Eyewitnesses recalled seeing tears in Charles’s eyes as the column rode off.
*
Rupert took his men to Worton House, 14 miles from Newark. They later moved to Belvoir Castle, from where the prince wrote to Parliament on 29 October:
My Lords and Gentlemen,
Having determined, with my brother Prince Maurice, my Lord Stanley, Lord Gerard, Sir Richard Willis, and many other Officers and Gentlemen, to leave this Kingdom, being altogether disengaged from the service we have been in, it hath given me the occasion to desire this favour from you, that you would grant a pass and safe convoy for me, my brother Prince Maurice and these Noblemen and Gentlemen that came along with me, together with their servants, horses, and all necessaries, to go beyond the seas or to retire to their houses, as shall be most convenient for them. And I engage my honour for myself and them, that no act of hostility shall be done by us, and that there is no other design in our journey, but to go wherever our particular occasion or design shall lead us …
Your Friend and Servant,
Rupert[fn22]
Parliament reacted with suspicion, unable to accept Rupert’s transformation from feared enemy to humble supplicant: ‘To me it seems a mystery’, wrote The Scottish Dove, ‘that the two German Princes, and 400 officers so much spoken of five weeks since, should seem to go out of the King’s Garrison from Newark in discontent, and send in such haste to desire the Parliament’s Pass to go beyond Sea, &c.’[fn23] Members asked Rupert’s emissary, Colonel Henry Osborne, to give them more details: what were the prince’s true intentions? Osborne was blunt: if the Parliamentarians failed to agree to the terms spelt out in his master’s letter, Rupert would return to serve the king. This clarification caused such consternation, Osborne writing to his master, ‘that, to draw you from that, they will consent to anything’.
In the same letter Osborne relayed rumours circulating in London from overseas. There was little good to report: Henrietta Maria was said to have accused Rupert publicly of selling Bristol to the enemy; and Rupert’s younger brother Prince Edward was alleged to have converted to Catholicism after falling in love with the Queen of Poland’s sister, prompting the Pope and the Emperor to favour him as the next Elector Palatine. Princess Elizabeth, Rupert and Edward’s eldest sister, summed up the family’s shame in a letter to her friend Rene Descartes: ‘If you take the trouble to read the gazette, you must be aware that he has fallen into the hands of a certain sort of people who have more hatred to our family than love of their own worship, and has allowed himself to be taken in their snares to change his religion and become a Roman Catholic, without making the least pretence which could impose on the most credulous that he was following his conscience. And I must see one whom I loved with as much tenderness as I know how to feel, abandoned to the scorn of the world and the loss of his own soul (according to my creed).’[fn24]
More promising was Osborne’s news that: ‘At the last fight of my Lord Digby, he lost all his letters, which the Parliament took, and three score ciphers, by which they have deciphered most of the letters, which, before, they could make nothing of. And, this afternoon, a committee hath been reading many of them. Amongst the letters they last took, there was one from the King to your Highness, being an answer to a letter of yours, of July last, where you advised him to peace, and not to trust the Irish. This letter hath done you a great deal of right, and gained much of their good opinion.’[fn25] Rupert’s reputation as a bloodthirsty warmonger was gradually unravelling.
Osborne wrote the following week to warn that Parliament had decided to grant the prince a pass, but only if he promised never to serve the king again. Rupert had already waived his rights to fight one enemy, the Holy Roman Emperor. He was reluctant to make a similar commitment now, even though his uncle’s cause was clearly lost.
Captain Pickering, a Roundhead officer with a reputation for trustworthiness, took the conditional pass to Rupert at Worcester. Pickering’s mission was to discover the two princes’ intentions and then return to London immediately with his findings. Rupert and Maurice did not want to be rushed: they stalled the talks with Pickering while opening up a line of communication with the king through the Duke of Richmond. Pickering became restless: ‘When he had stayed some days,’ The Moderate Intelligencer reported, ‘he went to the Princes, to desire them to let him know if they would accept of the Parliament’s offer, that so he might return with an affirmative, or negative.’[fn26] The princes said they could not reply to Parliament until Osborne was safely returned from London. This was a fatuous argument, since Osborne had been delayed by illness, not by restraint. However, it won Rupert time to move with his retinue to Woodstock, from where he began to explore his options with the king.
Charles had travelled from Newark to Oxford. Four days after his return, the king pardoned and freed Will Legge. The rapprochement was incomplete: Charles refused to reinstate Legge as governor of the town. However, with Digby absent and the king increasingly despondent, Legge took the opportunity to advance Rupert’s cause. The first conversation he had with the king, on his release, involved Charles’s sorry retelling of his quarrel with his nephew. Legge was genuinely distressed at the news, viewing Rupert’s return to favour as the only, faint hope of Royalist success. ‘I have not hitherto lost a day without moving his Majesty to recall you’, Legge wrote to the prince on 21 November, ‘and truly this very day he protested to me he would count it a great happiness to have you with him … The King says, as he is your uncle, he is in the nature of a parent to you, and swears if Prince Charles had done as you did, he would never see him without the same he desires from you.’[fn27] Charles was seeking an unreserved apology from his nephew.
‘My dearest Prince,’ Legge continued, five days later, ‘… I am of opinion you should write to your uncle, seeing your stay bath been so long in his quarters in Woodstock — you ought to do it; and if you offered your service to him yet, and submitted yourself to his disposing and advice, many of your friends think it could not be a dishonour, but rather the contrary, seeing he is a king, your uncle, and in effect a parent to you.’[fn28] But Rupert was not to be rushed, while Parliament’s offer of safe passage overseas remained an option. He tried to persuade the king to seek peace and insisted that he ‘put from him Digby and other Machiavellians’, but Charles countered that such requests were ‘no more than the Parliament demanded.’[fn29]
Seeing that Legge had failed to reconcile the prince to his uncle, other ardent Royalists chimed in. ‘If my prayers can prevail,’ wrote the Earl of Dorset, on Christmas Day 1645, ‘you shall not have the heart to leave us all in our saddest times; and if my advice were worthy of following, truly you should not abandon your uncle in the disastrous condition his evil stars have placed him. Let your resolution be as generous and great as is your birth and courage. Resolve, princely Sir, to sink or swim with the King; adjourn all particular respects or interests until the public may give way to such unlucky disputes.’[fn30]
During the winter of 1645-6, the prince remained at Woodstock. Troops joined him from the neighbouring Royalist garrisons of Wallingford, Banbury, and Oxford. While there, Rupert and Maurice considered serving the Venetian Republic, raising troops in Hamburg and marching them through Holland. However, they passed up this opportunity in favour of their younger brother, Philip, a teenager eager to rival his elder brothers’ military exploits. ‘I could wish,’ Charles Louis wrote to Elizabeth of Bohemia, ‘either my brother Rupert or Maurice would undertake the Venetian employment, my brother Philip being very young to undertake such a task.’[fn31]
Eventually the two princes elected to fight on, in their uncles’ name. Rupert wrote to Charles, acknowledging his poor conduct at Newark and enclosing a blank sheet of paper with his signature at the bottom: he was prepared to confess to whatever the king believed him to be guilty of. Charles was moved by this show of humility. ‘The Prince went to Oxford, and the King embraced him’, Prince Rupert’s diary recorded, ‘and, as has been said, repented much the ill usage of his nephew.’[fn32] The princes brought with them relatively few men: some had already returned to Charles, in Oxford; others had slipped away to other Royalist garrisons; and yet more had secretly negotiated places in the Roundheads’ ranks.
The brothers’ motive for rejoining their uncle stemmed from family loyalty, for the hope of any personal advancement or financial rewards was by now long gone: ‘The low, sad, despicable condition of the Royal party, confusion and despair, is spoken of very much among themselves,’ The Moderate Intelligencer reported with satisfaction, ‘that there is now no other means left in view, but the reward or encouragement of honour.’[fn33] ‘Poor cavalier,’ wrote another gloating rebel at the end of 1645, ‘thy condition is lamentable; though thou have Antichrist, the Pope, the Devil and all to thy friends, thou must submit.’[fn34]
Surrender became the Royalists’ theme. Chester, the last lifeline connecting Charles to his Irish recruiting ground, fell on 3 February 1646. Later in the month the southwestern army was defeated after a valiant display at Torrington. On 2 March the Prince of Wales sailed for the Scilly Isles. Lord Astley was forced to lay down the arms of Charles’s last field army, at Stow on the Wold, on 21 March. Oxford remained defiant, one of a handful of garrisons still in the king’s service.
Fairfax now closed in on the Royalist headquarters, arriving in front of the town on 22 April. ‘You may prove to what condition want will bring men,’ remembered Sir John Oglander. ‘The Lords at the siege of Oxford, through want of power and money, were so undervalued that you could hear a common soldier cry out in their watches, “Roundhead, fling me up half a mutton and I will fling thee down a Lord.”’[fn35]
The king realised that Digby’s fanciful hopes of salvation had come to nothing: the Pope was not going to finance an Irish invasion; and agents in Denmark, France, and Holland had failed to engage potential allies. Charles requested a return to Westminster, but was rejected by Parliament. It was clear that Oxford would soon fall and then the king would have no negotiating position. Rebel spies confirmed that Charles was contemplating flight. ‘The King is still in Oxford,’ Commissary Henry Ireton wrote to Fairfax, ‘but now (as it is thought) does again intend to get away if he can: we shall be as vigilant as we can to prevent it, & do our utmost duty if he attempt it.’[fn36]
‘About this time,’ noted Prince Rupert’s diary, ‘the King sent for the Prince, and desired him to go, with what force he could, to convoy, him to the Scots; which the Prince undertook, but would have a command under his Majesty’s hand, else not. The King was then in debate, whether to Ireland or Scotland.’[fn37] Rupert advised against relying on the Irish and said his uncle should only approach the Scots if sure of their loyalty. He asked the king to write a letter, confirming that Rupert had categorically advised against a risky journey to an uncertain Scottish reception. This Charles did, appreciative of his nephew’s concern, but convinced by the French ambassador, Montreuil, that the Scots would rally to their monarch.
During the early hours of 27 April Charles woke Rupert to say that he was immediately leaving Oxford for his northern kingdom. He would ride disguised as a servant, attending his chaplain, Dr Hudson, and the loyal John Ashburnham. Rupert asked to accompany them, but the king pointed out that the prince’s great height would compromise an already precarious mission. The two men parted, unaware that they would never meet again.
Charles handed himself over to the Scottish army as they besieged Newark. He was immediately forced to order Bellasis to surrender the garrison, which he did on 8 May 1646. Oxford, Pendennis, Ragland, and Harlech were now the only places in England and Wales still in the king’s hands.
At Oxford, the confinement of the siege failed to curb Rupert’s appetite for action. One day, accompanied by Maurice, Gerard, and twenty others, he was riding outside the town walls when, recalled Prince Rupert’s diary: ‘The Parliament forces sent three bodies of horse against him, and they fell upon the Prince, and pressed him. There was some skirmishing, and two pages, Lord Gerard and Prince Maurice’s pages, were wounded by picketing; whereupon one of the enemy called, “Lord Gerard — capon-tail!” and challenged him; and a lieutenant of the enemy shot the Prince in the shoulder, and shook his hand, so that his pistol fell out of his hand, but it shot his enemy’s horse.’[fn38] The Roundheads tried to cut off Rupert’s retreat, but he managed to summon reinforcements. He then led his men in a brave charge that harked back to the glory days of the Cavaliers. The enemy reacted as their comrades had done in years gone by, opening fire prematurely, before buckling under the impact of the Royalists. Many of the rebels were driven into nearby marshland, allowing Rupert to lead his men back safely to Oxford.
It was clear to both sides that the siege could not continue for long. Fairfax sought Oxford’s immediate surrender, addressing his summons to Prince Rupert. However, the Prince passed the communication to Glemham — Oxford’s governor, and therefore the garrison commander. Glemham, obeying the king’s parting instructions, summoned a council of war. There were two main questions: how generous would Fairfax be with his terms; and what treatment could the most eminent Royalists expect from him? There was particular concern about the fate awaiting the king’s second son, the 12-year-old James, Duke of York. With the Prince of Wales overseas, the rebels insisted that he: ‘be delivered into the hands of Parliament to be disposed of according to their pleasure’.[fn39]
Rupert and Maurice had spent much of the war on the list of Royalists who would be shown no mercy if captured. However, Parliament now knew of Rupert’s efforts for peace, and sympathised with his hatred of Digby and the so-called Papist faction. Rupert had sounded out the enemy in May: ‘Pray see if you can find Sir Thomas Fairfax will think me worthy to receive an obligation from him by setting his thought upon the means of providing for some place of liberty and safety for me.’[fn40] Now he would find out what the rebels intended to do with him.
The capitulation took place on 24 June 1646, a day of heavy summer rain. Rupert, for the second time in a year, headed the procession of the vanquished. Oxford still had six months of supplies and seventy barrels of gunpowder when it yielded to the enemy. However, with the king a prisoner and the field army repeatedly defeated, the Royalist wartime headquarters was redundant. Two thousand men followed Rupert out of the town, ‘well armed, with colours flying and drums beating’.[fn41] Nine hundred of them chose to return peacefully to their homes, while the greater part sought service overseas: the Thirty Years’ War was nearing its climax on the Continent, assuring ready employment.
Fairfax gave Rupert and Maurice more generous terms than their uncle had offered them after the fall of Bristol. After animated debate, Parliament was prepared to allow the princes to stay in England for six months, attended by a retinue that included grooms, footmen, an apothecary, a gunsmith, a tailor, and two washerwomen. Among the more exalted company permitted to remain with them were Lord Craven, de la Roche, de Gomme, and Dr Watts, Rupert’s chaplain. In return, the princes had to promise not to approach within 20 miles of London. At the end of the six-month grace, they must go overseas, never to return: ‘A pass is to be granted to Rupert as is desired in his letter, with Maurice, and other gentlemen to go with them beyond Sea,’ reported a Parliamentary newspaper, ‘and without doubt, they may do themselves more good, and us less hurt, to serve the State of France, than against the Parliament of England. Let them march, it is an old Proverb, “Lay an Enemy a bridge of gold”.’[fn42]
Fairfax waived the exclusion zone so Rupert and Maurice could ride to Oatlands, on the outskirts of the capital, to meet their elder brother, Charles Louis. Now that it looked likely that the Palatine would be his, the two younger princes wanted to know if Charles Louis planned for them to benefit from the family’s restoration. Meanwhile, the Holy Roman Emperor had asked Charles Louis to establish whether his two younger brothers would be bound by the peace terms he was offering.
However, Rupert and Maurice were early victims of the growing tension between Fairfax’s Puritan New Model Army and the predominantly Presbyterian Westminster. Prince Rupert’s papers recorded sourly: ‘The House of Commons, taking advantage of their coming within 20 miles of London, notwithstanding the liberty granted them by General Fairfax so to do, declared, June 26th, that [they] had broken the articles agreed upon [and ordered their party] to repair to the seaside within 10 days, and forthwith to depart the kingdom.’[fn43]
The two brothers quit England in separate directions: Maurice sailed for Holland on 8 July, while Rupert left for France, three days earlier.