The Owners of Brandenburgh House: Prince Rupert

Prince Rupert (1619-1682),1st Duke of Cumberland and Count Palatine of the Rhine by Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656) in 1642.

Of all the owners of Brandenburgh House in its two hundred year history, Prince Rupert of the Rhine is the most illustrious. He is famous for his military heroism on the Royalist side in the Civil War, but as well as being an outstanding cavalry leader he was also a sea captain, at one time a pirate, a scientist, an inventor, an artist, a sportsman and a business entrepreneur who set up the Hudson Bay Company and became its first governor.
Rupert was distantly related to Elizabeth Craven, who was descended from the prince's cousin Charles II through the Richmond line. And he was a lifelong friend of the Earl of Craven, who was devoted to Rupert's mother and built Ashdown House for her.

Portrait by Lely said to be 

Margaret Hughes. Once in collection of 

1st Earl of Craven.

In the Restoration period, Prince Rupert bought the property in Hammersmith for his mistress, the actress Margaret Hughes, and gave it to her outright. It was a generous gesture from a man who, despite his high birth, had never been wealthy and had spent long periods of his life in hardship.

      I have recently read Charles Spencer's enthralling biography of this extraordinary, versatile man, Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier. Rupert was the third son of the English Princess Elizabeth and her husband Frederick, Elector Palatine, whose brief tragic reign as King of Bohemia led to the loss of all his domains and the start of the Thirty Years' War. Rupert was born in Prague in December 1619 and thrown hastily into a carriage as his parents and their retinue fled from invasion. A wandering life as a dispossessed royal followed.

    From his youth he served in the wars on the Protestant side, and was taken prisoner for three years. When he was released in 1642 he came to England to fight for the cause of his uncle, King Charles I. A hot-headed young warrior, he had to cope with faction, jealousy and the weak leadership of his uncle, who often gave conflicting or impossible orders, and who never appreciated his nephew's heroism and devotion.  

      His heroism consisted not only in outstanding bravery, but in his unwavering loyalty to the Stuart cause, in an era when many found it more convenient to switch sides. Rupert was a good leader of men, and when commanded to defend Bristol against an overwhelming number of Parliamentary forces, he surrendered rather than offer his men up for pointless, inevitable slaughter. Dismissed by the king, he demanded a court martial, at which he was acquitted with honour. 

Another portrait of
Margaret Hughes by Lely

When the land war was lost, Rupert continued to fight for the Stuarts by sea. After a brief period in the French army, during which he was severely wounded, he took command of the remains of the British Royalist fleet and led a series of daring expeditions to the Cape Verde Islands, West Africa and the Caribbean, where he battled the Parliamentarian fleet. Now and then his little flotilla managed to capture enemy merchant ships and seize their cargoes in acts of sheer piracy. It is said that he also introduced cricket to the West Indies. Tough and determined, the pirate prince survived years of danger, privation, hardship and shipwreck. His beloved brother Maurice was killed in a storm that Rupert only narrowly survived because of the loyalty of his sailors.

      When the Thirty Years' War ended, Rupert's elder brother was restored to only part of their father's domains, and Rupert who had fought so valiantly got nothing. He was still a penniless prince.

He took service for a while in the army of the Emperor until finally in 1660 his cousin Charles was restored to the throne of England. Charles II was far more appreciative of Rupert's service and loyalty than his father had been. He made Rupert a privy councillor, and gave him joint command of the navy. This meant that Rupert had to take part in a series of crazy wars against the Dutch, who had once sheltered him and supported his family in exile.

     His other interests included scientific experiments and he was one of the founder members of the Royal Society, an achievement that should be enough in itself to make his name illustrious. Eventually Charles II rewarded him by making him governor of Windsor Castle. Rupert was still not rich compared to the English nobles who had their own estates and mansions, but he was at last able to live in a dignity that matched his royal birth. 

    Margaret Hughes was one of the first professional actresses to appear on the London stage. Admired for performing Shakespearean roles and modern comedies, she soon became the mistress of the courtier-wit Sir Charles Sedley, a playwright, by whom she had a child. Rupert seems to have met her in 1668, when he was 48, and she was about twenty. For beauty and talent, Peg Hughes was a rival of Nell Gwynn. Rupert made it quite apparent that he was smitten by her, to the amusement of court observers and wags. 

    Rupert had been aged by his long, tough years in military service and at sea. He never fully recovered from the head wound that he suffered in France and in 1667 he had to undergo two agonizing operations on his skull. He endured these with the courage and stoicism that characterized him all his life. No wonder late portraits show a face that is rather sombre and grim. 

    His predicament as a dispossessed royal meant that Rupert had never been eligible to marry a suitable woman of rank, nor could he for most of his life afford to support a mistress. So although he keenly appreciated women and did have some love affairs, he had always been denied the pleasures of married life. In his later years, he managed to gain some wealth through investment in the Hudson Bay Company, which he took a lead in setting up. Margaret Hughes was initially cool to his advances, but he was at last able to woo and win her, and provide her with a house at Hammersmith, not too far from Windsor so that he could conveniently visit her. The house was delapidated when he bought it in 1673 from the grandson of Sir Nicholas Crispe. It had been so wrecked in the Civil War by Parliamentarian forces that it had to be more or less completely re-built. 

    Margaret gave birth to a daughter, named Ruperta, and after the Prince's death in 1682, she continued to live there until she had to sell it to pay her gambling debts. He left her well provided for, and this sad outcome was the result of her own extravagance. Margaret Hughes sold the house in 1692 to Timothy Lannoy, a Turkey merchant whose granddaughter Leonora sold it to Bubb Dodington.

Charles Spencer, Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier. Phoenix Books, 2017.

Prince Rupert figures in Cryssa Bazos' novel Severed Knot.
https://cryssabazos.com/2019/08/14/prince-rupert-of-the-rhine-pirate-prince-of-the-caribbean-17thcentury-stuartage/

“Account of Brandenburgh House, Hammersmith, by Thomas Faulkner,” The Gentleman's Magazine, Volume 132 October 1822 ( Ed.John Nichols) 297-300. 

[1] Thomas Faulkner, The history and antiquities of the parish of Hammersmith: interspersed with biographical notices of illustrious and eminent persons, who have been born, or who have resided in the parish, during the three preceding centuries (Hammersmith (London) Nichols & Son, 1839. 

Thomas Faulkner, An Historical and Topographical Account of Fulham: Including the Hamlet of Hammersmith... (London: T. Egerton, 1813) pp. 420 ---

Edward Wedlake Brayley, James Norris Brewer, Joseph Nightingale, London and Middlesex: or, An Historical, Commercial, & Descriptive ..., Volume 4 (1816) pp.116-120.

  

Melissa Merchant “The woman newly come, called Pegg”: an historiographical examination of Margaret Hughes as the Vere Street Desdemona.  2019.