Links to pages about Rupert of the Rhine

Earl of Holderness & Duke of Cumberland 1619 -1682
(Note: There's a midi file on the link above that will start when the page is viewed)
The half - German son of the "Winter Queen" Elizabeth, sister of King Charles I, Rupert was the archetypal Cavalier. At times rather reckless and undoubtedly very brave, he was, nonetheless, a capable and influential commander. The young Prince had learned his fighting skills on the European continent during the "Thirty Years War". Such was his fearsome reputation on both sides, the Prince was mistrusted and deeply resented by many in the King's Army command, demonised by his adversaries, and was associated with all manner of bizarre and unfounded reports of rapine and atrocities. Indeed his pet poodle, "Boy" whom he carried on his saddle or in a gun holster on campaigns, was attributed with supernatural powers by puritan pamphleteers , and the dog's death was widely reported and celebrated by the Parliamentary side.

Prince Rupert of the Rhine and Boy
Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619-1682), nephew of the ill-fated Charles I of England, was taken prisoner at the Battle of Lemgo in 1638 and confined at Lintz until 1641. During this hiatus, Lord Arundell, English ambassador to Vienna, gave him a white Poodle, Boy, '"of a breede so famous that the Grand Turk gave it in particular injunction to his ambassador to obtain him a puppie thereof,"' (Eliot Warburton, Memoires of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, London: 1849, 3 vols, vol. 1, p. 99). Warburton adds dryly: "It is curious to observe this daring and restless man amusing himself by teaching a dog that discipline he himself could never learn."