Reprobates by John Stubbs

There may have been great Royalist warriors such as Prince Rupert of the Rhine, but this is a book that makes you wonder how Charles 1's forces could ever have been victorious in the English Civil War.

For in this exploration of the Cavaliers, the ostrich-feathered, silk-dressed swordsmen so beloved of the swashbucking image have little to endear them as a fighting force — a parcel of rogues, promiscuous and free-thinking, according to Stubbs.

However, beneath all the swaggering bravado there lies a poetical streak that is worth subtle attention.

Stubbs is determined to get to the heart of the cavaliers and to some degree restore them as worthy subjects of the Crown. It is not difficult to like them— who would not in the face of Cromwell’s grim-faced Puritans?

Here we meet Sir John Suckling, a card sharp who neverthless raised his own “band of brothers” to fight for the king, and Sir William Davenant, poet laureate and playwright, who had experimented with mercury to try to cure his syphilis — with disastrous consequences to his features.

Then there is Robert Herrick, who composed the lines “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” giving a pastoral touch to their cavalier behaviour.

It is hard to imagine these “roaring boys” as key to the English Civil War, brave and gallant as they may have been.

Stubbs sweetens the pot with a splendid narrative that brings to life their role in history and we are all the better for it.

The roustabout nature that may have defined the Cavaliers was not confined to them, however; many Puritans also dressed to the nines. But it was the difference in their behaviour that was so marked.

The royalist poets made the taverns their home, sitting at the feet of the enormous wordsmith Ben Jonson as he spilled out his graveyard humour. They jousted witticisms with each other and here, perhaps, we have the true essence of the Cavaliers.