On New Year's Day, 1661, Anne Hyde, the clandestine bride of James of York, was formally received at court. Rupert and Edward dined with the rest of the Royal family, in public; and on this occasion there was a most unseemly contest between the Roman chaplain of the Queen mother, and the Anglican chaplain of Charles II, for the honour of saying grace. In struggling through the crowd assembled to see the King dine, the Anglican priest fell down, and the Roman gained the table first and said grace. His victory was greeted by the disorderly courtiers with shouts of laughter. "The King's chaplain and the Queen's priest ran a race to say grace," they declared, "and the chaplain was floored, and the priest won."[[8]]
Rupert, soon after his arrival in England, had resigned his title of President of Wales and the Marches, granted him by Charles I, on the grounds that he would hold only of the reigning King.[[9]] He had, however, found himself so cordially received, and so generally popular, that he resolved to accept Charles's invitation to remain permanently in England. "Prince Rupert," says a letter in the Sutherland MSS., dated March 1661, "is the only favourite of the King, insomuch that he has given him £30,000 or £40,000 per annum, out of his own revenue, for his present maintenance; and is resolved to make him Lieutenant General of all Wales, and President of the Marches. Meantime he is preparing to go to Germany to take leave of that court and to resign his military charge there, and so return to England. I am told that the King went into the Palatinate with an intent to have procured some money of the Palsgrave, which was refused. Prince Rupert, being then there, seeing the unworthiness of his brother in this particular, made use of all the friends he had, and procured his Majesty a considerable sum of money, which was an act of so much love and civility as his Majesty was very sensible of then, and now he will requite him for it."[[10]] But Charles's intentions towards Rupert, though doubtless good, were far less magnificent than here represented. The claims on his justice and bounty were far too numerous, and his means far too small, to permit of his rewarding anyone so lavishly.
Rupert was still in high favour at the Austrian court, and the "temptations to belong to other nations" were real ones; but he preferred England and the Stuarts to any of the allurements held out to him by France or Germany, and therefore resolved to "remain an Englishman." In accordance with this decision, he set forth for Vienna in April 1661, partly to wind up his affairs there and to take leave of the Emperor, and partly to transact business on behalf of Charles II. His absence from England lasted nine months, and his doings and movements during that period are chronicled in letters addressed to his "Dear Will." The old friendship of the Prince and the honest Colonel had not cooled, though tried by time and long years of separation; and, on his departure, Rupert appointed Legge his "sufficient and lawful attorney, to act, manage, perform and do all, and all manner of things" in his behalf.[[11]]
The greater part of his letters to Legge are printed in Warburton, but with some omissions and inaccuracies. They are also to be found, in their original spelling, in the Report of the Historical MSS. Commission on Lord Dartmouth's Manuscripts; but they are, in their frank, familiar, somewhat sardonic style, so characteristic of the Prince as to merit quotation here.[[12]]
The first letters are dated from the Hague, whither he had gone to visit his solitary mother. "I found the poor woman very much dejected," he informed his friend. And after mentioning disquieting rumours of war, he concluded, with evident triumph:—
"I almost forgott to tell you a nother story which be plesed to acquainted (sic) the Duke of Albemarle with. You have doubtlesse scene a lame Polish Prince, some time at Whitehall with passe ports a beggin. This noble soule is tacken and in prisoned at Alikmare; hath bin butt twice burnt in the bake befor this misfortune befell him. The Duke I am sure will remember him, and what my jugement was of the fellow.
"I am your most faithful friend for ever,
"Rupert."
Europe was at that time swarming with impostors, who impersonated all imaginable persons of distinction. Only a few months earlier a "Serene Prince" had been visiting the Elector, who wrote of him much as Rupert might have done. "His Highness was graciously pleased to accept from me three ducats for his journey, besides the defraying. I doubt not but he and the counterfeit Ormonde and Ossory will come to one and the same end one day."[[13]]
In the beginning of May Rupert had reached Cleves, where he found the little Prince of Orange. Rumours of war met him on all sides; both Swedes and Turks were arming against the Emperor, and the Dutch declared loudly that they would defend their herring fisheries against England, with the sword. "I told some that butter and cheese would do better," wrote the Prince; little thinking what stout antagonists he was to find those despised Hollanders at sea. He was anxious to recommend to Charles' service an engineer, "the ablest man in his profession that ever I saw... If the fortification of Portchmouth go on, I wish his advice may be taken, for noen fortifies so well, and cheap, and fast as he. He has a way of working which noen has so good. Pray neglect not this man, and tell Sir Robert Murray of him, with my remembrances; also that I met with camphor wood, which smells of it, also with a distilled pure raine water which dissolved gold."
After a short visit to his friend, the Elector of Mainz, who, he said, "assured me to be assisting in all things," Rupert reached Vienna. There he was very cordially received by the Emperor, though the Spanish Ambassador, for political reasons, saw fit to ignore his arrival. The Austrians were still loth to let him leave them; and on June 22, he wrote to Legge: "A friend of mine, att my coming, assured me that there were but twoe difficulties whiche hindred my advancement to the Generallship of the Horse. The one was my being no Roman, the other that the Marquess of Baden and Generall Feldzeugmeister de Sanch might take ill if I was advanced before them. And he thought both these small impediments might easily be overcome, but especially the first, on whiche, he assured me, most ded depend." He had not yet forgotten his role of Protestant martyr! To this letter he added, as usual, a hurried and incoherent postcript.