although considerably older than his superior and a seasoned campaigner in Scotland and in the Dutch service. Moreover, the Prince’s commission, which gave him a command independent of the elderly Earl of Lindsey, the King’s Commander-in-Chief, was bound to lead to trouble in the future.
Prince Rupert’s stock with fellow-officers fell even lower when it was decided to leave Nottingham for Shrewsbury where there were better hopes of attracting more recruits. On their way the Prince and his brother Maurice, who had come with him from Holland, made no scruple in clattering up the drives of country houses of known Parliamentary supporters and demanding money with menaces, a practice common enough on the Continent but not to the taste of English gentlemen. It was regarded as a particularly bad example to troops whose discipline was quite lax enough as it was and whose behaviour in houses in which they were quartered was much condemned. Certain other Royalist commanders followed Prince Rupert’s example. Lord Grandison, for instance, rode into Nantwich with his troop and forced his way into several houses belonging to Parliament’s supporters and supposed supporters: it became a saying amongst Royalist soldiers that ‘all rich men were Roundheads’. In Yorkshire a party of Royalists broke into George Marwood’s house at Nun Monkton, near York. ‘It was done in the day-time and by 24 horse or thereabout,’ a Parliamentary pamphlet recorded. ‘They threatened Mrs Marwood and her servants with death to discover where her husband was and swore they would cut him in pieces before her face and called her Protestant whore and Puritan whore. They searched all the house and broke open 17 locks. They took away all his money…and all his plate they could find…And, though it be Mr Marwood’s lot to suffer first, yet the loose people threaten to pillage and destroy all Roundheads, under which foolish name they comprehend all such as do not go their ways.’
Although plundering expeditions were far from general in all counties, and in many areas successful efforts were being made to maintain tranquillity, the behaviour of the Royalists at Henley-on-Thames was not exceptional. Here a regiment under Sir John Byron was quartered at Fawley Court, a large house just outside the town which belonged to Bulstrode Whitelocke, a rich young lawyer and Member of Parliament for Marlow. Whitelocke, who was in London at the time, had sufficient warning of the Royalists’ approach to tell one of his tenants, William Cooke, to hide as many of his valuable possessions as he could. The tenant and his servants ‘threw into the mote pewter, brasse and iron things and removed…into the woods some of [Whitelocke’s] bookes, linnen & household stuffe, as much as the short warning would permit’. But enough remained in the house and outbuildings for the ‘brutish common soldiers’ to indulge in an orgy of plunder.
There they had their whores [Whitelocke recorded in his diary]. They spent and consumed in one night 100 loade of Corne and hey, littered their horses with good wheate sheafes, gave them all sorts of Corne in the straw, made great fires in the closes, & William Cooke telling them there were billets and faggots neerer to them [than] the plough timber which they burned, they threatened to burne him. Divers bookes & writings of Consequence which were left in [the] study they tore and burnt & lighted Tobacco with them, & some they carried away [including] many excellent manuscripts of [my] father’s & some of [my own] labours. They broke down [my park fencing] killed most of [my] deere & lett out the rest. Only a Tame Hinde & his hounds they presented to Prince Rupert.
They eate & dranke up all that the house could afforde; brake up all Trunkes, chests & any goods, linnen or household stuffe that they could find. They cutt the beddes, lett out the feathers, & tooke away the courtains, covers of chayres & stooles, [my] Coach & 4 good Coach horses & all the saddle horses, & whatsoever they could lay their hands on they carried away or spoyled, did all that malice and rapine could provoke barbarous mercenaries to commit.
Soon afterwards, at another of Whitelocke’s houses in Henley, Phyllis Court, Parliament’s soldiers ‘did much spoyle & mischiefe, though he was a Parlem[en]t man, butt bruitich soldiers make no distinctions. Major G[eneral] Skippon directed Phyllis Court to be made a Garryson, & it was regularly fortefyed and strong, & well manned because Greenland [at Hambleden] hard by it was a Garryson for the King, & betwixt these two stood Fawley Court, miserably torn and plundered by each of them.’
General as pillaging became, it was, however, felt that Prince Rupert’s activities were peculiarly unacceptable as those of a foreign interloper, and characteristic of a man who cockily demonstrated his marksmanship in Stafford by shooting the weather-vane off the steeple of St Mary’s Church. In Leicester he threatened to plunder the town unless the inhabitants gave him £2,000, to ‘teach them that it was safer to obey than refuse the King’s commands’. They collected £500 and fearfully presented it to him. The King disavowed his nephew’s conduct; but he kept the money all the same.
Yet, if the depredations of the Royalists were reprehensible, those of the Parliamentarians were quite as bad, if not worse. Sir Philip Warwick recalled that when a Puritan praised the sanctity of the Roundhead army and condemned the faults of the Cavaliers, a friend of his replied: ‘Faith, thou sayest true; for in our army we have the sins of men (drinking and wenching) but in yours you have those of devils, spiritual pride and rebellion.’
The vandalism of the Parliamentarians was not as indiscriminate as Royalist propaganda later suggested. The west window, stone angels and ironwork of Edward IV’s tomb in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, for example, were spared, even though the castle was a Roundhead garrison; and the stained glass in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, was also untouched, though the chapel itself was used as a drill hall. Yet in Canterbury, Parliamentary troops shot at the crucifix on the South Gate leading to the cathedral, rampaged about the aisles and transepts, jabbed pikes into the tapestries and tore the illuminated pages from the service books. Norwich Cathedral might have suffered in the same way had not a force of five hundred armed men poured into the building to help the members of the choir protect the organ from a mob which had succeeded in tearing out the altar rails. In Rochester Cathedral Parliamentary troops smashed glass and statues, and kicked the precious library across the floor. In many other churches effigies upon tombs were hacked about and inscriptions in Latin, ‘the Language of the Beast’, defaced. In Colchester, where the vicar of Holy Trinity narrowly escaped hanging, the house of the Lucas family was invaded, their chapel ransacked, its glass destroyed and the bones from the family tombs thrown from wall to wall. The house of their friend Lady Rivers was similarly attacked and pillaged and robbed of property worth £40,000.
Letters written by Nehemiah Wharton, an officer in Parliament’s army, give numerous examples of similar depredations committed by his troops as well as of the countless sermons the men attended before and after their pillaging expeditions:
Tuesday [9 August 1642] early in the morninge, several of our soldiers inhabitinge the out parts of the town [Acton] sallied out unto the house of one Penruddock and…entred his house and pillaged him to the purpose. This day also the souldiers got into the church, defaced the auntient glased picturs and burned the railes. Wensday: Mr. Love gave us a famous sermon…also the souldiers brought the holy railes from Chissick and burned them…At Hillingdon, one mile from Uxbridge, the railes beinge gone, we got the surplesses to make us handecherchers…Mr. Hardinge gave us a worthy sermon…We came to Wendever where wee refreshed ourselves, burnt the railes and one of Captain Francis his men, forgettinge he was charged with a bullet, shot a maide through the head and she immediately died…sabbath day morning Mr. Marshall, that worthy champion of Christ, preached unto us…Every day our souldiers by stealth doe visit papists’ houses and constraine from them both meate and money…They triumphantly carry away greate [loaves] and [cheeses] upon the points of their swords…Saturday I departed hence and gathered a compliete file of my owne men and marched to Sir Alexander Denton’s parke, who is a malignant fellow, and killed a fat buck and fastened his head upon my halbert, and commaunded two of my pickes to bring the body after me to Buckingham…Thursday, August 26th, our soildiers pillaged a malignant fellowes house in [Coventry]…Friday several of our soildiers, both horse and foote, sallyed out of the City unto the Lord Dunsmore’s parke, and brought from thence great store of venison, which is as good as ever I tasted, and ever since they make it their dayly practise so that venison is as common with us as beef with you…Sunday morne the Lord of Essex his chaplaine, Mr. Kemme, the cooper’s son, preached unto us…This day a whore, which had followed