“T. D. I was called Tobie’s house-dog ... my name is Pepper.”
“P. R. D. Though your zeal be never so hot, you shall not bite me, Pepper.”
“T. D. I’ll barke before I bite, and talke before I fight. I heare you are Prince Rupert’s white Boy.”
“P. R. D. I am none of his white Boy, my name is Puddle.”
“T. D. A dirty name indeede; you are not pure enough for my company, besides I heare on both sides of my eares that you are a Laplander, or Fin-land Dog or, truly, no better than a witch in the shape of a white Dogge.”
Hereupon Prince Rupert’s dog calls the other “a Round-headed Puppy that doth bawle and rayle;” and Tobie’s Dog retorts that Puddle is “a Popish, profane dog, ... more than half-divell. It is known,” he says, “that at Edgehill you walked invisible, and directed the bullets who they should hit, and who they shoulde misse, and made your Mister Prince Rupert shott-free.”
And so on, through several amusing pages. It is a pleasant and fun-inspiring jest; but other productions of the time strike a note of savage hate, strange enough, as applied to an innocent dog.
Boy’s fate befitted a soldier’s dog: on the fatal field of Marston Moor, where many a gallant cavalier was slain, he also fell, shot to the heart. As The More True Relation, a Puritan statement, says: “Here also was slain that accursed cur which is here mentioned by the way, because the Prince’s dog hath been so much spoken of, and was prized by his master more than creatures of much more worth.”
PURITAN CARICATURE OF THE DEATH OF
PRINCE RUPERT’S WHITE HOUND BOY.