Table Of ContentTheHistoricalJournal,pageof ©CambridgeUniversityPress
doi:./SX
1
2 THE CANNIBAL CAVALIER: SIR THOMAS
3
LUNSFORD AND THE FASHIONING OF
4
5 THE ROYALIST ARCHETYPE*
6
7 MARK STOYLE
8 University of Southampton
9
10
11
ABSTRACT. Thisarticlere-examinesthecareerofSirThomasLunsford,oneofthemostnotorious
12 royalistofficersoftheEnglishCivilWar.Drawingonawiderangeofcontemporarysources,itnot
13 only casts new light on the pre-war activities of Lunsford himself but also explores the ways in
14 which his blood-thirsty reputation was exploited by parliamentarian polemicists on the eve of the
15 conflict.Thearticlearguesthat,followingthedeathoftheproto-royalistplaywrightandplotterSir
John Suckling in , Lunsford inherited Suckling’s mantle as the archetypal ‘cavalier’, and
16
thatitwasinassociationwithSirThomas’sname,ratherthanSirJohn’s,thatthehostilecaricature
17
of the royalist gentleman-at-arms was first introduced to the English population as a whole. The
18
article concludes by exploring the persistent rumours of cannibalism which have swirled around
19 Lunsford’s name for the past years–and by demonstrating that, while the claim that Sir
20 Thomaspossessedatasteforhumanfleshmaywellhaveoriginatedintheparliamentariancamp,
21 itwas,rathersurprisingly,royalistwriterswhosubsequentlydidmosttokeephisanthropophagical
22 reputationalive.
23
24
25
26
27 ‘Cavaliersandroundheads’:thepopularparty-labelswhichwereappliedtothe
28 supporters of Charles I and parliament during the Great Civil War of –
29 have continued to haunt the English historical imagination ever since. It
30 seems fair to suggest that–of the two stereotypical figures which those nick-
31 names instantly summon up in the mind’s eye–that of the cavalier is, by
32 some way, the most vivid and powerful. Over the past years, the figure of
33 the cavalier has proved a rich source of inspiration for creative souls of all
34
35
36
HistoryDepartment,TheUniversity,Southampton,SO[email protected]
37
* This article is a revised version of my inaugural lecture, which was delivered at the
38 UniversityofSouthamptonin.Iamgratefultoeveryonewhoattendedonthatoccasion
39 andwhospoketomeaboutthecavalierarchetypeafterwards,mostofalltoJohnWalter.Iam
indebtedtotheeditoroftheHistoricalJournalandtothetwoanonymousreadersfortheircom-
40 mentsonanearlierdraftofthisarticle–andtoGeorgeBernard,whoalsoreadthetext.Finally,
41 IwouldliketothankalloftheformerstudentswhohavediscussedSirThomasLunsfordwith
42 meovertheyears,especiallyChrisLawrence,HenryGill,andStephKirkham.
MARK STOYLE
sorts, including dramatists, novelists, journalists, painters, and poets. As a
43
result, that figure enjoys remarkable brand-recognition, brand-recognition
44
which both popular and academic historians of the Civil War have simultan-
45 eouslycapitalizeduponandhelpedtoreinforce:byinsinuatingtheword‘cava-
46 lier(s)’ into the titles of their books, for example, by choosing Victorian
47
paintings of imagined cavaliers to adorn their dust-jackets, and by employing
48 the term ‘cavalier’ as a synonym for ‘royalist’ in their texts. Yet despite–or
49 even, perhaps, because of–the word’s continued ubiquity, the origins of this
50 most familiar of English historical soubriquets remain surprisingly obscure.
51 In recent years, the work of Alexandra Walsham, Ethan Shagan, Phil
52 Withington, and others has taught us to pay far more careful attention to the
53 precise meanings with which specific words were freighted during the early
54 modernperiod–and to how those meanings could sometimes alter over time
55 as familiar terms became, in Withington’s words, ‘politicised, appropriated
56 and popularised in new and unexpected ways’. The party label ‘cavalier’–a
57 label which, as Blair Worden has well observed, was a product of that pre-war
58 processofideologicalmobilizationbywhich‘theopposingsideslearnedtocari-
59 cature one another’–is clearly worthy of consideration through a similarly
60 close-up lens. For while there are scores of more or less detailed definitions
61 of what the partisan term ‘cavalier’ was held to denote after , there are
far fewer discussions of precisely when that term first appeared on the public
62
stage–and of how the anonymous individuals who coined it had thereby
63
64
65 See, for example, A. Benn, The rover, or the banish’t cavaliers (London, ); W. Scott,
Woodstock, or the cavalier ( vols., Edinburgh, ); E. Warburton, ed., Memoirs of Prince
66
Rupert and the cavaliers ( vols., London, ); W.S. Burton, ‘The wounded cavalier’
67 (paintedin,exhibitedin);andR.Browning,Cavaliertunes:thelostleaderandother
68 poems(Boston,MA,).
Forcavalierbook-titles,see,forexample,M.Bence-Jones,Thecavaliers(London,);
69
andC.Spencer,PrinceRupert:thelastcavalier(London,).Forbook-coversfeaturingpaint-
70
ingsofimaginedcavaliersbyCharlesLandseer,andJohnPettierespectively,seeP.Tennant,
71 Edgehill and beyond: the people’s war in the South Midlands, – (Stroud, ); and
72 M.Bennett,TheCivilWarsinBritainandIreland,–(Oxford,).Fortheuseof
‘cavalier’ as a synonym for ‘royalist’ by modern academic historians, see, for example,
73 D. Underdown, Revel, riot and rebellion: popular politics and culture in England, –
74 (Oxford,),p..
75 See A. Walsham, Charitable hatred: tolerance and intolerance in England, –
(Manchester,);E.H.Shagan,Theruleofmoderation:violence,religionandthepoliticsofre-
76 straint in early modern England (Cambridge, ); and P. Withington, ‘The semantics of
77 “peace”inearlymodernEngland’,TransactionsoftheRoyalHistoricalSociety(TRHS),thser.,
78 (),pp.–,atp..
B.Worden,Roundheadreputations:theEnglishCivilWarsandthepassionsofposterity(London,
79 ),p..Fortheconceptofrivalideological‘mobilizations’duringthemonthsbeforethe
80 conflictbegan,seeM.J.Braddick,‘PrayerbookandProtestation:anti-popery,anti-puritanism
81 andtheoutbreakoftheEnglishCivilWar’,inC.W.A.PriorandG.Burgess,eds.,England’swars
of religion revisited (Aldershot, ), pp. –, passim, especially pp. –; and idem,
82 ‘History,liberty,reformationandthecause:parliamentarianmilitaryandideologicalescalation
83 in’,inM.J.BraddickandD.L.Smith,eds.,TheexperienceofrevolutioninStuartBritainand
84 Ireland(Cambridge,),pp.–,especiallyp..
THE CANNIBAL CAVALIER
succeeded in fashioning an overarching royalist stereotype even before the
85
conflict had begun. The best work on this neglected subject has been
86
carried out by the literary scholars T.N. Corns, Timothy Raylor, and Robert
87
Wilcher,allofwhomhavearguedthatthehostilecaricatureofthecavalierini-
88
tiallybegantocoalescearoundthepersonofthepre-warpoetanddramatistSir
89 JohnSuckling.Thepresentarticlesuggeststhat,whilethisthesisisundoubtedly
90 correct,ittellsonlypartofthestory,andthatthesecondkeyfigureintheproto-
91
parliamentarian invention of the cavalier was the Sussex gentleman Colonel
92 ThomasLunsford.
93 Thearticleisdividedintosixparts.Thefirstconsiderswhatprevioushistor-
94 ians have had to say about Lunsford. The second reviews the events of
95 Lunsford’s turbulent youth, and his service as a regimental commander in
96 the army which Charles I sent to fight the Scots in . The third part
97 showshow,followingCharles’shumiliatingdefeatandtheconsequentcollapse
98 oftheroyalregime,LunsfordreturnedtoLondon,wherethekeyingredientsof
99 whatwouldlaterbecometheroyalistarchetypewerealreadybeginningtoform.
100 ThefourthpartshowshowLunsfordsuddenlyshottonationalprominencein
101 ,whenhewasappointedaslieutenantoftheTowerbyCharles,andhowhe
102 was then subjected to a campaign of vilification by the king’s critics in parlia-
103 ment, as they sought to discredit the new lieutenant and, through him, his
royal master. Here, it will be argued that, with Suckling now dead,
104
Lunsford–whowaspresentedinthemostluridlightintheproto-parliamentar-
105
ianpamphletswhichwerethenbeginningtoproliferateinthecapital–effect-
106
ively inherited Sir John’s mantle. As a result, he became the first notorious
107
‘cavalier’, and, in the process, played a significant, if wholly involuntary, role
108
in the fashioning of that hostile caricature of the royalist gentleman-at-arms
109
110
Foradetaileddiscussionofsomeofthewaysinwhichtheword‘cavalier’wasusedduring
111
the Civil War itself, see I. Roy, ‘Royalist reputations: the cavalier ideal and the reality’, in
112
J. McElligott and D.L. Smith, eds., Royalists and royalism during the English Civil Wars
113 (Cambridge,),pp.–.
114 See T.N. Corns, J.A. Downie, and W.A. Speck, ‘Archetypal mystification: polemic and
realityinEnglishpoliticalliterature’,EighteenthCenturyLife,(),pp.–,atp.;T.N.
115 Corns, ed., The Cambridge companion to English poetry: Donne to Marvell (; Cambridge,
116 edn), pp. –; T. Raylor, Cavaliers, clubs and literary culture: Sir John Mennes, James
117 SmithandtheOrderoftheFancy(Newark,DE,),p.;andR.Wilcher,Thediscontentedcava-
lier:theworkofSirJohnSucklinginitssocial,religious,politicalandliterarycontexts(Newark,DE,
118 ),pp.–.
119 ForpreviousaccountsofLunsford,seeG.Steinman-Steinman’spioneering‘MemoirofSir
120 ThomasLunsford,baronet’(parts–),Gentleman’sMagazine(GM)(Apr.),pp.–;
GM(June),pp.–;GM(July),pp.–;GM(Aug.),pp.–;W.H.
121 Blaauw, ‘Passages of the Civil War in Sussex from to ’, Sussex Archaeological
122 Collections (SAS), (), pp. –; ‘W.A.S.’, ‘Lunsford, Sir Thomas, ?–?’, in
123 S.Lee,ed.,Dictionaryofnationalbiography(London,),pp.–;C.Thomas-Stanford,
Sussex in the Great Civil War and Interregnum, – (London, ), pp. –; P.R.
124 Newman,RoyalistofficersinEnglandandWales,–:abiographicaldictionary(London,
125 ),p.;andB.Morgan,‘Lunsford,SirThomas,b.circa,d.inorbefore’,in
126 Oxforddictionaryofnationalbiography(ODNB)(Oxford,),pp.–.
MARK STOYLE
whichwouldshortlygoontoestablishitselfasoneofthemostenduringparty
127
stereotypesinEnglishhistory.HavingdemonstratedhowLunsfordwaspressed
128
intoserviceasaproto-royalistbugbearduring–,thearticlethengoeson
129
explore how his fearsome reputation continued to be elaborated upon as
130 England fell into civil war during –. Finally, it investigates the tangled
131
origins of the most famous of all the contemporary rumours that circulated
132
about Lunsford: the rumour that he possessed a penchant for eating human
133 flesh.
134
135
I
136
137 ‘A debauched ruffian’, a ‘bold and violent swaggerer’, and ‘ablustering rake-
138 hell’: these are the epithets which were chosen by S.R. Gardiner, C.V.
139 Wedgwood, and J.P. Kenyon respectively to describe Sir Thomas Lunsford.
140 Norshoulditbethoughtthatthesewriterswereinanywayatypicalintheirat-
141 titudetowards Lunsford,for–althoughhewasoneoftheminor celebrities of
theCivilWar,andmakesatleastafleetingappearanceinmostgeneralhistories
142
ofthe conflict–fewhistorians havefound anythingverycomplimentary tosay
143
abouthim.Onthecontrary,Lunsfordhasbeenalmostuniversallycondemned
144
by scholars, who have variously characterized him as ‘brutal’; ‘notorious’;
145
‘unscrupulous’; ‘thuggish’; and straightforwardly ‘murderous’. The
146
present article does not seek to turn this hostile view of Lunsford on its head;
147
tosuggest,withPeterNewman–oneofSirThomas’sfewscholarlydefenders–
148
that he was the blameless victim of ‘innuendo and hearsay’. Rather, what it
149
setsouttodoistoprovideaslightlymorenuancedviewofLunsfordthanthe
150 onewhichappearsinthestandard histories–aviewwhichoccasionallycomes
151
perilously close to being a simple restatement of what was said about Sir
152 Thomas by his enemies at the time. That this should be so, of course,
153 reflectstheabidingpowerofthenegativeimageofhimwhichwasconstructed
154
155
156
Forapreviousone-linesuggestionthattheimageofthecavaliermighthavebeenpartly
157 modelledonLunsford,seeD.Hirst,Englandinconflict,–:kingdom,community,com-
158 monwealth(London,),p.,and,forarecentdescriptionofLunsfordas‘anarchetypal
159 cavalier’,seeD.Cressy,Englandonedge:crisisandrevolution,–(Oxford,),p..
S.R.Gardiner,HistoryofEnglandfromtheaccessionofJamesItotheoutbreakoftheCivilWar(
160 vols.,London,),x,p.;C.V.Wedgwood,Theking’swar,–(;London,
161 edn),p.;andJ.P.Kenyon,TheCivilWarsofEngland(London,),p..
162 A.Woolrych,Britaininrevolution,–(Oxford,),p..
A.Hughes,ThecausesoftheEnglishCivilWar(London,),p..
163 R.Cust,CharlesI:apoliticallife(Harlow,),p..
164 J.Miller,TheEnglishCivilWars:roundheads,cavaliersandtheexecutionoftheking(London,
165 ),p..
N.Carlin,ThecausesoftheEnglishCivilWar(Oxford,),p..
166 SeeP.R.Newman,Theoldservice:royalistregimentalcolonelsandtheCivilWar,–
167 (Manchester,),pp.,–,(quotationatp.).
168 AsNewmanrightlyobserves,seeOldservice,p..
THE CANNIBAL CAVALIER
duringthes:asubjectwhichwewillreturntolater.Butfirstwemustcon-
169
siderthemanbehindthemyth.
170
171
172 II
173 ThomasLunsford,theeldestsonofThomasLunsfordofEastHoathlyinSussex
174 andhiswife,Katherine,wasprobablybornatBearsteadinKentin.The
175 Lunsfordswereanancientgentryfamily,whocouldtracetheirrootsinSussex
176 backtothetimeoftheConquest,butbythetimethatCharlesIaccededtothe
177 thronetheirfinancialpositionwasdeteriorating–and,tomakemattersworse,
178 they had fallen out with a wealthy neighbour, Sir Thomas Pelham. Thomas
179 Lunsford grew up to be a strapping young fellow–according to a later writer,
180 indeed, he was one of ‘the biggest men…you could likely see’–and several
181 pieces of evidence suggest that he soon developed a propensity for brawling
182 and violence. By the early s, Thomas had become an active participant
183 in his family’s continuing feud with Pelham. The latter subsequently com-
plained that Thomas had not only poached deer from his park, but that he
184
had violently assaulted his park-keepers and had publicly declared that ‘he
185
cared not a fart’ for Pelham himself. In , Lunsford, infuriated by the
186
legal proceedings which Pelham had initiated against him, determined to
187
exact a wild revenge. It was subsequently claimed that Thomas lay in wait for
188
Pelham one Sunday as he was leaving church and fired two or three shots
189
into his coach as it passed by. This could clearly have been construed as an
190
act of attempted murder–as, indeed, it probably was–and, soon afterwards,
191
Lunsford was committed to prison in London by order of the privy council,
192
193
194 Lunsford is usually said to have been born in ‘circa ’; see, for example, Morgan,
‘Lunsford’,p..Forwhatappearstobethetrue,ratherearlier,dateofhisbirth,seeKent
195
Archives Office, Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, DCa/BT/. (Archbishop’s
196 Transcripts for Bearstead), fo. . I owe my knowledge of this document to my former
197 student, Steph Kirkham.For further information about Lunsford’s parentage and ancestry,
198 seeBritishLibrary(BL),HarleyMS,,fo.v.
OntheLunsfords’feudwithPelham,seeSteinman-Steinman,‘Memoir’,part,pp.–
199 ;idem,‘LettersrelatingtotheLunsfordfamily’,GM(Mar.),pp.–;andM.Lower,
200 ‘Observationsonthebuckle:thebadgeofthefamilyofPelham’,SAS,(),pp.–.On
201 Pelham himself, see A. Fletcher, A county community in peace and war: Sussex, –
(London,),pp.,–,–,,,–,,,,.
202 ForLunsford’sphysicalbulk,seeD.Lloyd,Memoiresofthelives…ofthose…thatsuffered…for
203 the Protestant religion (London, ), p. . For his attempts to provoke a duel with
204 another young man in London, see R. Cust and A. Hopper, eds., Cases in the High Court of
Chivalry, – (Harleian Society, New Series, , ), pp. –; and R. Cust,
205 CharlesIandthearistocracy,–(Cambridge,),p..
206 J.Rushworth,Historicalcollectionsofprivatepassagesofstate(vols.,London,–),III,
207 Appendix(StarChamberreports,MichaelmasCharlesI),pp.–.
208 )I,bIiId,.p,.III,pp..–;andT.Birch,ed.,ThecourtandtimesofCharlesthefirst(vols.,London,
209 Rushworth,Historicalcollections,IV,p.;andTheNationalArchives,Kew(TNA),SP/
210 ,fo..
MARK STOYLE
for what his gaoler later described as ‘a foul attempt upon Sir Thomas
211
Pelham’.
212
In October , Edward Sackville, fourth earl of Dorset, wrote to Pelham
213
assuring him that he and the rest of the council were poised to act against
214 ‘thatt yong outtlaw, Mr Lunsfurd, who nether feares God nor man, and who,
215
havinge given himselfe over unto all leudness and dissoluteness, only studyes
216 to affront justice…[taking] a glory to bee esteemed…a swaggeering
217 ruffian’. This lively description of Thomas has been reproduced by legions
218 of historians and may well be a fair summing-up of his character, but, in
219 justice to Lunsford, it must be stressed that Dorset–who was clearly friendly
220 with Pelham–should not be regarded as an entirely unbiased witness. Over
221 the following months, Lunsford continued to languish in Newgate prison,
222 but in –after his gaoler had rashly permitted him to exchange his
223 prison cell for more comfortable lodgings in town–Lunsford broke his
224 parole and made his way to the continent. Here, he embarked on a career
225 as a soldier of fortune, and in it was reported from Paris that Lunsford
226 was in Picardy where he was planning to raise a regiment of soldiers to fight
227 for the king of France.
228 Ayearlater,thecaseagainstLunsfordwasfinallyheardinStarChamber.He
229 wasfined£,forhisattemptonPelham,andoutlawedforhisownfailureto
appear–and at this point it must have seemed probable that Thomas would
230
either remain in exile for ever or die in the French king’s service. Yet the
231
Scottish rebellion of – transformed Lunsford’s fortunes. In ,
232
Charles began to raise an army to bring the Scots to heel. It was obvious that
233
he would need experienced officers, and at some point somebody seems to
234
have suggested that Thomas–who was by now serving as a colonel in the
235
French king’s service–might well prove a useful commander, despite his
236
rackety past. Certainly, Lunsford returned to England in and received a
237 royal pardon for his crimes. Then, in early , he was commissioned as
238
colonel of an infantry regiment, which he was to raise in Somerset and lead
239
240
241
242 ForaletterofAug.fromAttorneyGeneralNoy,askingtosee‘theexaminations
243 concerningMrLunsford’,whichalmostcertainlyreferstothecaseofThomasLunsfordjunior,
seeCalendarofstatepapers,domestic(CSPD),–,p..Forthegaoler’ssubsequent
244 comment,seeCSPD,–,p..
245 SackvilletoPelham,Oct.,HamptonCourt,BL,AdditionalMS,,fo..
246 CSPD,–,pp.,,.
CSPD,–,p..
247 ‘W.A.S.’,‘Lunsford’,p.;andTNA,SP/,fos.–.
248 ForLunsford’sundatedpetitionaskingCharlestopardonhimandtoremitthetwofines
249 whichwereowedbyhimtothecrown,seeSteinman-Steinman,‘Memoir’,part,pp.–.
NotealsoSirJohnCoke’sendorsementofthepetition,confirmingthatCharles‘isgraciously
250 pleasedtopardonhisoffences,andtoremityefine’,dated‘attheCourtatYork,April
251 ’.SeealsoHistoricalmanuscriptscommission(HMC),DeLisleandDudley,VI(),p.;
252 andCSPD,,p..
THE CANNIBAL CAVALIER
northtofighttheScots.Thiswasasignalmarkofroyalfavour,ofcourse,but,
253
likesomanyofthegentlemenwhohadbeencommissionedtoserveasofficers
254
inthenewarmy,Lunsford swiftlyfoundthathehadbeenhandedapoisoned
255 chalice. The English people had little appetite for the fight and hundreds of
256
the soldiers who had been pressed for the service proved openly mutinous.
257 This was certainly true of Lunsford’s recruits and no sooner had Thomas set
258
out for the north than he found that he was in grave danger of being killed
259 by his own men. On June, Lunsford sent a gloomy letter to the general of
260 theEnglisharmyfromWarwick,wherehehadmadeahaltonhismarch.‘My
261 Lord’,wroteLunsford:
262
Ifindmyregimentin[the]greatestdisorder;diversofthemintroopesretourned
263
home,[and]allinaforwardnestodisbande…We[thatistosay,Lunsfordandhis
264 officers]…are daily assaulted by sometimes of them togeither, [and] have
265 hurt and killed some in our owne defence…Notwithstanding, we march still
266 forward with as many as we can but…I assure your Excellency, the officers…lives
267 havebinindangereveryhouresincetheiremarch.
268
Itisworthobservinghere,perhaps,thatthisletterisperfectlywellphrasedand
269
literate;whatever else Lunsford may have been, hewasclearly not the unedu-
270 cated brute of legend. And while he certainly reported that he and his
271 officers had been forced to kill several of their mutinous soldiers ‘in our
272 owne defence’, this is not quite the same thing as ‘boast[ing]’ that he had
273 ‘shot a couple of mutineers out of hand’, as his biography in the most recent
274 editionoftheDictionaryofnationalbiographyclaimsthathedid.
275 Lunsfordwasclearlyfearfulofbeingkilledhimself,andhewasbynomeans
276 alone in this, for across the whole of England, the king’s disaffected soldiers
277 were by now mutinying, rioting, and attacking their officers–several of whom
278 were savagely beaten to death. The Scots were well aware of the chaos in
279
280
ForaletterfromthelordlieutenantofSomersettothegeneraloftheEnglisharmy,dated
281 May,statingthat‘ColonelLundesfords’officerswerealreadyraisingsoldiersinSomerset,
282 seeCSPD,,p..
LunsfordtotheearlofNorthumberland,June,Warwick,TNA,SP/,fo..
283 Fortheprivycouncillors’discussionofthemutinyamongLunsford’stroopssixdayslater,see
284 Rushworth,Historicalcollections,III,p..Fortheroyalproclamation‘for[the]apprehending
285 andpunishingof[mutinous]souldiers’whichwasissuedinthewakeofthisdiscussion,on
July, see J.F. Larkin, ed., Stuart royal proclamations, II: Royal proclamations of King Charles I,
286 – (Oxford, ), pp. –. For the subsequent misbehaviour of Lunsford’s
287 mennearDerby,seeHMC,Twelfthreport,appendix,partII,themanuscriptsoftheearlofCowper
288 (),pp.–.
ForEdwardHyde’scommentthatLunsfordwas‘ofnogoodeducation’,seeE.Hyde,earl
289 ofClarendon,ThehistoryoftherebellionandCivilWarsinEngland,ed.W.DunnMacray(vols.,
290 Oxford,),I,p..
291 Morgan,‘Lunsford’,p..
Onthesoldiers’mutiniesof,seeM.C.Fissel,Thebishops’wars:CharlesI’scampaigns
292 againstScotland,–(Cambridge,),ch.,pp.–;M.Stoyle,Loyaltyandlocal-
293 ity:popularallegianceinDevonduringtheEnglishCivilWar(Exeter,),pp.–;andCressy,
294 Englandonedge,pp.–.
MARK STOYLE
their enemies’ ranks, and on August, they invaded England. Eight days
295
later, they attacked the English forces which had gathered to block their way
296
at Newburn. Lunsford was on the front line and during the engagement
297 which followed he displayed real courage. His example was not enough to
298 infuse the king’s army with the fighting spirit it so patently lacked, though,
299
and it was not long before the English forces retired from the fray, leaving
300 theexultantScotsinpossessionofthefield.Newburnwasoneofthemosthu-
301
miliating defeats in English military history. But Lunsford emerged from the
302 debacle with his reputation intact–and indeed Conrad Russell has gone so
303 far as to suggest that the battle was the making of him, observing that those
304 ‘who foughtbravely at Newburn, including…Lunsford, retained for ever after
305 a special hold on Charles’s affections’. The evidence on which Russell
306 based this claim is not entirely clear, as far as Lunsford is concerned, but the
307 suggestion that Thomas’sconspicuous display of valour at Newburn may have
308 confirmedtheking’strustinhimdoesseemperfectlyplausible.
309 Certainly,Newburnmarkedtheendofthelineforthepersonalrule.Worsted
310 by the Scots, Charles was forced to patch up a hasty treaty with them, by the
311 terms of which he agreed to pay the Scottish army–as well as his own army,
312 in Yorkshire–until a permanent peace settlement had been concluded.
313 Without the help of parliament, there was simply no way that he could do
this and, accordingly, writs went out for the momentous assembly which
314
would later become known as the Long Parliament. Once the new MPs had
315
begun to sit, in November , they quickly seized the initiative. Rather
316
than helping the king against the Scots they set to work to reform the state,
317
to dismantle the structures on which the personal rule had been based. A
318
new political world was rapidly evolving and, as we shall see, it was a world in
319
which army officers like Lunsford were soon to find themselves increasingly
320
embroiled.
321
322
323 III
324 Duringtheearlymonthsof,thepaceofpolitical‘reformation’inLondon
325 quickened, as many of the king’s ministers were arrested, and his prerogative
326 courts were voted down. Charles I’s critics seemed to be in complete control.
327 Yet, already, knots of ultra-loyalists were scheming to turn the tide, and
328 among them were a number of army officers: some of whom had by now
329 made their way to the king’s side in the capital, others of whom were still at
330 the head of theirunits in the north.In March, asmall coterie of these men
331
332 Cust,CharlesI,p..
333 Fissel,Bishops’wars,pp.–.
334 RCu.Rshuwssoerltlh,,THheisftaorllicoafltchoellBecrtiitoinshs,mIIoI,npaprc.hies,–.–(Oxford,),p..
335 For these machinations, see C. Russell, ‘The first army plot of ’, TRHS, th ser.,
336 (),pp.–.
THE CANNIBAL CAVALIER
begantodiscussthepossibilityofbringingtheEnglisharmydowntoLondonin
337
ordertooverawetheparliament,whileplansweremadetoseizetheTower.
338
Prominent among the conspirators was the courtier-poet, Sir John Suckling,
339 who had served, like Lunsford, in the army raised during the previous year.
340 On May, Suckling gathered a party of armed men and attempts were made
341 to have these irregular soldiers admitted to the Tower in the king’s name.
342
Yettheplanfailed,and,asnewsofwhatappearedtohavebeenanabortivemili-
343 tary coup spread, protests erupted on the city’s streets. Soon afterwards,
344 Suckling and several of the other officers who had been involved in what
345 their enemies now termed ‘the Army Plot’ fled abroad, where Sir John subse-
346 quentlydied.
347 The flight of Suckling and his co-conspirators is a key episode for our pur-
348 poses, because it was in the wake of their hurried departure that a hostile
349 writer first seems to have referred to the most militant supporters of the king
350 as ‘cavaliers’. Before we examine precisely how that crucial conjunction oc-
351 curred, though, we should pause for a moment to consider the etymology of
352 the word ‘cavalier’–which was not newly minted in , as general histories
353 of the Civil War so often imply, but had instead been familiar in English for
354 many years before. Originally derived from the Latin word caballarius,
355 meaning ‘a horseman’, the term had later become transmuted into the
Spanish caballero and the French chevalier, and had then been imported from
356
those languages into English, where it was already well-established by
357
Shakespeare’s day. It is important to stress, however, that, in sixteenth-
358
century English, the word had two variant forms, which possessed distinct, if
359
oftenoverlapping,meanings.
360
Ontheonehand,therewas‘thecavalier’,or‘courageousmilitaryman’:the
361
sort of person whom Shakespeare clearly had in mind when he caused the
362
ChorusinHenryVtorefer,admiringly,tothose‘culledandchoice-drawncava-
363 liers’whowerepreparingthemselvesforbattleonthevastyfieldsofFrance.On
364 theotherhand,therewas‘thecavaleiro’,or‘gallantmanoffashion’:thesortof
365
personwhomShakespeareequallyclearlyhadinmindwhenhecausedJustice
366 Shallow to swear that he would drink a health to ‘all the cavaleros about
367 London’inHenryIV,part.AsShallow’sspeechsuggests,theword‘cavaleiro’
368
369
Russell,‘Armyplot’,passim.
370 OnSuckling,seeT.Clayton,‘Suckling,SirJohn(–)’,inODNB,pp.–;and
371 Wilcher,Suckling,passim.
372 ForSuckling’sbotchedattemptedtoseizetheTower,seeRussell,‘Armyplot’,pp.–;
andJ.Adamson,Thenoblerevolt:theoverthrowofCharlesI(London,),pp.–.
373 SeeAdamson,Noblerevolt,pp.–;andB.Manning,TheEnglishpeopleandtheEnglish
374 revolution(London,),p..
375 Russell,‘Armyplot’,passim;and,forSuckling’sdeath,Wilcher,Suckling,pp.–.
ApointwhichiswellmadeinCressy,Englandonedge,p..
376
TheOxfordEnglishdictionary.
377 W. Shakespeare, King Henry V, Act III, prologue; and idem, Thesecond part of HenryIV,
378 Act V, Scene iii.
MARK STOYLE
tendedtobeespeciallyassociatedwithdrinkandsexuallicenceandinwe
379
find the ‘water-poet’, John Taylor, painting a splendid portrait of a young
380
London gallant–or ‘Cavalero Hot-shott’, as Taylor vividly terms him–being
381
rowed across the Thames in a wherry, yelling all the while at the sweating
382 oarsmen ‘Zoun[d]s! Rowe, ye Rog[ue]s!Ye lazy knaves, make hast; anoyse of
383 Fidlersandabraceofwhores[awaitme]atLambeth!’
384
WhileShakespeareappearstohavedrawnadistinctionbetweenthecavalier
385 andthecavaliero,thetwofiguressoonbecameincreasinglyblurred–andthis
386 was certainly the case in an anonymous graphic satire which was published in
387 London at some point after Suckling’s flight to France in May : a satire
388 whoseiconography–asHelenPiercehasrightly noted–waslatertoinform‘a
389 host of cavalier images’. Entitled The Sucklington Faction: Or (Suckling’s)
390 Roaring Boyes, this engraved broadsheet depicts two fashionable young gentle-
391 men sitting together in a low room, with drink, dice, and playing-cards by
392 their sides (Figure ). It is almost superfluous to point out that, as Pierce
393 implies, in their costume and general demeanour these two individuals may
394 be said to epitomize the way in which most people still imagine ‘the cavalier’
395 to this day. What Pierce does not comment upon, though–and what is
396 crucialforourpurposes–isthatinthehighlycondemnatorytextwhichaccom-
397 panies the engraving, the two gallants are specifically described as ‘hot-spur
Cavaliers’. Here, then, we find the word ‘cavaliers’–which was already sug-
398
gestive both of military men and drunken roisterers–being specifically asso-
399
ciatedwiththemosthard-linesupportersoftheking.
400
Itwasduringtheliteraryoffensivewhichwasmountedbyproto-parliamentar-
401
ian polemicists against Sir John Suckling in mid- that the word ‘cavalier’
402
first seems to have been appropriated and subtly re-modelled in order to
403
serve as a partisan term of abuse, in other words. Nor can there be much
404
doubt that it was from Suckling’s own literary oeuvre that the soubriquet
405
which would later go on to become so famous had initially been derived, for,
406 in the letters, poems, and plays which he had written during the s, Sir
407 John had made frequent use of the term ‘cavalier’ to describe both gallants
408
and soldiers, while in his stage-play, Brennoralt, written in the aftermath of the
409 FirstBishops’War,Sucklinghadincludedthreecharacterswhomhespecifically
410 termed‘Cavaliers’,andwhoweresurelyintendedtorepresentofficerswhohad
411
412
413 J.Taylor,Thesculler,rowingfromTibertoThames(London,),epigram.
414 BL,E.,f.(),TheSucklingtonFaction:Or(Sucklings)RoaringBoyes(single-sidedbroad-
sheet, n.p., ); and H. Pierce, Unseemly pictures: graphic satire and politics in early modern
415 England(London,),p..JohnAdamsonsuggeststhatthisbroadsheetwasfirstpub-
416 lishedinDec.–orevenin–butprovidesnoevidencetosupportthiscontention,
417 seeNoblerevolt,platebetweenpp.and,caption;andp.n..Itissurelymoreprob-
ablethatthebroadsheetmadeitsappearanceduringtheperiodinwhichpublicinterestin
418 Suckling was at its height; that is to say, during the weeks immediately following Sir John’s
419 attempttointroducesoldierstotheTowerinMayandhissubsequentflight.
420 BL,E.,f.().
Description:conflict. The article argues that, following the death of the proto-royalist article concludes by exploring the persistent rumours of cannibalism which have .. infuse the king's army with the fighting spirit it so patently lacked, though,.
