Marlborough Royalist Sack 1642
Who Fought
History & Significance
Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland (17 December [O.S. 27 December] 1619 – 29 November [O.S. 9 December] 1682) was an English–German army officer, admiral, scientist, and colonial governor. He first rose to prominence as a Royalist cavalry commander during the English Civil War. Rupert was the third son of the German Prince Frederick V of the Palatinate and Elizabeth, eldest daughter of King James VI and I of Scotland and England respectively.
Prince Rupert had a varied career. He was a teenage soldier fighting alongside Dutch forces against Habsburg Spain during the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648), and against the Holy Roman Emperor in Germany during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). Aged 23, he was appointed commander of the Royalist cavalry during the English Civil War, becoming the archetypal "Cavalier" of the war and ultimately the senior Royalist general. He surrendered after the fall of Bristol and was banished from England. He served under King Louis XIV of France against Spain, and then as a Royalist privateer in the Caribbean Sea. Following the Restoration, Rupert returned to England, becoming a senior English naval commander during the Second Anglo-Dutch War and Third Anglo-Dutch War, and serving as the first governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. He died in England in 1682, aged 62.
Rupert is considered to have been a quick-thinking and energetic cavalry general, but ultimately undermined by his youthful impatience in dealing with his peers during the Civil War. In the Interregnum, Rupert continued the conflict against Parliament by sea from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, showing considerable persistence in the face of adversity. As the head of the Royal Navy in his later years, he showed greater maturity and made impressive and long-lasting contributions to the Royal Navy's doctrine and development. As colonial governor, Rupert shaped the political geography of modern Canada: the English possession of Rupert's Land was created for him to administer as its first governor and one of the founders of the Hudson's Bay Company. Rupert's varied and numerous scientific and administrative interests, combined with his considerable artistic skills, made him one of the more colourful public figures in England of the Restoration period.
Rupert's father was Frederick V of the Palatinate, of the Palatinate-Simmern branch of the House of Wittelsbach. As Elector Palatine, Frederick was one of the most important princes of the Holy Roman Empire. He was also head of the Protestant Union, a coalition of Protestant German states. The Palatinate was a wealthy state, and Frederick lived in great luxury.
The ground they fought on
The site of Marlborough Royalist Sack 1642 lies on White Chalk Subgroup, bedrock that formed in the Maastrichtian. The rock here is chalk.
The autumn of 1642 saw Royalist cavalry under commanders such as Prince Rupert ranging widely across the Midlands and south of England, projecting force and securing resources for the King's cause; that such energy and boldness could also bring devastation to market towns in its path is a reminder of how the wider campaign was felt at a very local level, though the particular details of what befell Marlborough remain undocumented in the surviving sources consulted here.
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- Prince Rupert of the Rhine · Wikipedia
- First English Civil War, 1642 · Wikipedia