July 29, 2021 • 42 mins
When the Earl of Rundel learned his acquaintance Prince Rupert was languishing in an Austrian prison during the Thirty Years' War, he gifted the prince a rare white hunting poodle as a companion. Rupert named his new pooch "Boy" and the two became inseparable. Boy accompanied Rupert into multiple conflicts and became a mascot of sorts -- and, in an odd twist, people across England started to believe Boy was no ordinary dog. Instead, they argued, both Boy and Rupert had occult, supernatural powers. In today's episode, the guys explore the story of a Prince, his pooch, and the effectiveness of propaganda.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Shout out to the one
and only super producer, Max Williams. They call me Ben. Also,
I'm a lover of dogs, Noel. You and I have
talked about this before, right about your love of dogs,
about well, dogs in general. Because the our local hangout
(00:51):
spot that we when we've been shouting out a lot
recently is uh, those places are dog friendly. And you know,
there's there's nothing quite like getting There's this validation that
I feel when a dog, a random dog like comes
up and likes me. I'm like, all right, okay, I'm
doing something absolutely. I mean, it's sort of like that
(01:12):
trope from science fiction movies where like when the bad
aliens are coming, the dogs are always the first to know. Yeah,
really great barometer for all things sinister. So if a
dog comes up to you and gives you a little
nuzzle and lets you pet, it probably means you're relatively
okay person. Yeah, and you like you you have a cat,
but you like dogs as well. I think you can't
(01:34):
stand him. I'm kidding. It takes a particular type of dog.
There are some dogs that, let's just say, test me
a little bit. Um. My girlfriend's dog Jude, who is
I think like a lab mixed kind of situation. She
is a little older but just so sweet, and she'll
like lay down right at the foot of your bed,
and you know she she'll bark when there's danger, but
(01:54):
not overly, so she doesn't freak out for no reason.
So yeah, I love the idea of a dog as
a part actor. A dog is a companion, and then
you know, like eve dare I say, even like a
familiar Yeah, there we go. That's one thing that dogs
do very well. They tend to be bonded quite closely
with their humans. And also they tend to be quite protective.
(02:17):
In some dog breeds, this is trait that has been
bred into them purposefully. And it's amazing to see dogs
without any kind of like training her education, for instance,
just sort of naturally start hurting sheep. That's crazy. That's
crazy specific. But before we begin, I think you're getting
us a perfect setup. I gotta ask Max, what's your
(02:41):
pet situation? Man? So I am a very proud cat lover.
I have I have only one cat right now because
she's extremely territorial and aggressive with other animals, which is funny.
She's eight pounds, solid white, with like a high pitched
me out. She's like not intimidating at all, but she
has her clothes. She's pathetic. I love her at death.
I love this cat. No, I think you might know
(03:02):
my cat. What's your cat's name? Her name is Sylvia.
She's had multiple names throughout the throughout the years. It
was Germaine. At one point, she was a stray that
got fount There's a whole story behind my cat. I
don't know that i've met your cat, Max, but I
love the idea of a cat with morphing names. I
once had a cat with two names, Robert and Fernando. Yeah,
(03:23):
you'd call them different things depending on the situation, Like
if he was being a bad boy, you did say Robert,
and if he was being a sweetie, you'd say, oh, Fernando. Um,
I've got I got. I got a cat with multiple
names too. He is a cat with a thousand names.
Because when I got him, the folks who were living
with me, I messed up and I made it democratic
(03:44):
and uh no one, no one won the vote. So
we were just like, this cat has his many names
at once, but we're not talking about cats at least
at least nobody named it Catty McCAT face. I'm just
gonna say that. No, I've got the one cat with
many names, uh, and one that I referred to as
the Colonel, and then another cat named Dr Bankman, which
(04:04):
is still like one of my top ten favorite names
for a pet. Incredible pet name, incredible pet. It's not
quite as ah, It's not quite as I would say,
as much of a statement as naming a dog. Boy.
They were talking about uh, an amazing, an amazing little
(04:27):
pooch poodle who was sometimes called Puddle and sometimes called Boy.
Very magic dog allegedly and true story scholars site this
guy as the Well scholars site this dog, I should say,
as the first ever British military dog. That's right. This
dog was the best boy of Prince Rupert of the Rhine.
(04:53):
Rupert of the Rhyme was a German nobleman. He went
on to do all kinds of amazing things that will
will get to some of uh in today's episode, but
we're mainly going to talk about his political and military career. Um.
But he did go on to become an artist and
a scientist and an inventor. He was the nephew of
King Charles the First of England and cousin, uh first
(05:14):
cousin rather of King Charles the Second of England. So
he was in the mix with these royals, and he
was introduced into a military life very very young, I
believe around the age of thirteen and sixteen thirty three
when he began his tenure in the military during the
Thirty Years War. Yeah, he was a child soldier, that's
(05:36):
what we call it today. Uh. This war had a
personal toll on him because it resulted in his father,
Frederick Elector Palatine and briefly the King of Bohemia, losing
his crown. And so he's he's growing up in times
of war. And during one of the wars he took
(05:59):
part in when he was still very young, he was
around seventeen or so, it's the Thirty Years War in Germany.
He fought against the Holy Roman Empire and he was captured.
But because you know, he was well to do and
from the ruling class, he had a little bit different
treatment as a pownal. He was locked up in a
castle in Austria, the Lens Castle, and the main thing
(06:22):
that his captors wanted from him was not necessarily like
a ransom or you know, political cloud. Their main issue
was they wanted to convert him from Calvinism to Catholicism.
So like every day they come in and they say,
feeling Catholic. That's a hard pass. But the puritanical nature
(06:44):
of Rupert's opponents in these battles is really what leads
to the kind of propaganda around him and his dog
in particular, uh, he gets he's actually gifted this uh,
this white poodle which is actually bred to be unting dog.
They were bred to retrieve ducks, you know, or other
(07:04):
you know, game birds, you know, when they were shot
down over water usually and they're kind of little velcro
like curls that you see. I mean, you know, obviously
poodles can be groomed in bizarre and elaborate ways, but
typically just like a short hair pood poodle that doesn't
have like pom poms shaved into it, have these curly,
almost knit like coats, very dance exactly and very good
(07:29):
for keeping them warm but also increasing their buoyancy, which
allowed them to be very very effective at retrieving those birds. Yeah. Yeah,
and at this point a bit of foreshadowing ridiculous historians.
It is important to note that while he was incarcerated,
some soldiers from the Austrian side started spreading these rumors
(07:52):
that Rupert had super natural abilities, what we would call
superhuman abilities today, but to them this was the result
of magic. He was invulnerable to bullets, what they called
shots free. They said they had like fired at him
point blank range, and it wasn't that their weaponry was flawed.
(08:13):
It was that this guy was somehow immune to bullets,
which is a nice it's a nice rumor to have
about you, although it could come back to to bite you.
As I'm gonna, I'm gonna test this theory out, um
blast this guy at point blank range. And that's exactly
what that was claimed. Was claimed that he could take
shots up close and and still you know, walk away unscathed.
(08:35):
I love the idea of shot free being kind of
an old timey version of bulletproof, you know. Yeah. And
and they thought this is the thing though, they didn't
just make this up out a whole cloth, right, People
really believed throughout you know, the area at this time,
they really believed there was possible to use magic to
make yourself shot free, let's say shot free instead of bulletproof.
(08:57):
I like that totally, really quickly, right up front, just
want to list some amazing sources that we used for
this episode. We've got History Extra an article called the
Prince and his Devil Dog, and this is a piece
actually for the BBC's History Magazine and also BBC History Revealed.
We have a lovely little article from the Vintage News
about Boy the magical dog of Prince Rupert of the rhyme,
(09:21):
and we also have a great one from Alice Obscura,
one of our favorites. Five years later, English school children
still learn about a magic propaganda dog by Eric Grundhauser.
And a few others that will list along the way,
but those are the big ones I'd like to shout
out some specifically. Mark Style also wrote a book about this,
uh called I'm not going to give the full title
(09:42):
till the end, but it's called The Black Legend of
Prince Rupert's Dog. And then there's a there's a book
will pull a little bit from that was published in
sixteen forty three called Observations upon Prince Rupert's white dog
called Boy keefully taken by tea be for the purpose
employed by for some of quality in the city of London.
(10:08):
I'm reading from a very old copy. Yeah, I believe
that's a pamphlet. And part of this propaganda wars you
start to see waged against Rupert and his dog Boy.
So he gets the dog and immediately they are inseparable
like his is by his side, brings it to several battles. Um,
he really starts to get involved in the in this
(10:28):
campaign against parliament. Right, yeah, yeah, let's let's talk a
little bit about how how Boy gets on the scene. So,
like we said, because of his high social status, Rupert
is being treated better than your garden variety prisoner. And
(10:51):
there's a guy, an Englishman named the Earl of Arundel,
who is an old old friend of the family, and
he says, you know what's gonna help Rupert out here?
He might feel a little less less uh down on
himself if he has some companies. So I'm gonna send
him a puppy. Uh. This was a different time. I
hope everybody knows today that if you send, if you
(11:14):
give someone a dog as a gift, unless you know
explicitly what kind of dog they want, and they've said it,
then you're not giving them a gift, you're giving them
a responsibility. But this, this was a different circumstance. And uh,
the reason I said this guy and then changed it
to this dog is because even though they named the
(11:35):
dog Boy, she was female and like Noel said, she is,
she was down to ride. She was ride or die
for Rupert, that was her human. And you can see
these accounts of Rupert and Boy going on hunts together.
It's very Pixar, you know what I mean. It's very
like first act of a Disney or Pixar film. So
(11:55):
they know that, like you had said earlier, No, they
know that this was definitely a working dog, a hunting dog,
because there are stories about the dog helping him, you know,
hunt deer and whatnot. But this is important because it
carries onto Boy's behavior in war, right, like that those
same sets of skills are helping helping Boy. I want
(12:19):
to say, but also I have to ask do you think,
like how active do you think Boy really was? As
we'll see, this is kind of a tough question to answer.
I don't know. I mean, it's like it would take
some really specific training to train a poodle, uh to
two more than retrieved ducks, you know, to actually like
attack and go for the throat. But they are all
(12:40):
these like woodcuts of Prince Rupert and Boy where he
was so his brand right, it was like so tied
to this dog that you knew just from like they're
kind of proximity in these images, um who we were
dealing with. He invades the city of Birmingham and actually
sets fire to to several houses, and Boy is apparently
(13:01):
by his side during that battle. And you have images
of this that actually have to name the city of
Birmingham like in text in the background, even though there's
the fires. So like the burning and the sacking of
that city was less iconic than the man himself. And this,
you know, this devil dog. Oftentimes it's portrayed like a crazy,
ferocious black lion in some images. Weird that they get
(13:26):
the color so off. I mean, that's obviously for creative license,
you know. Yeah, there were two poodles. Actually, that's part
of one of the one of the stories is that
he was given two poodles, one of whom had a
black coat and died early on, so might explain some
of it, but we should also mention Rupert did get
out of prison in one and that's where and you
(13:49):
know boy went with him and maybe that other poodle,
and that's when he started, you know, just pillaging across
across Europe and and people people would see this on
the battlefield and they would, uh, they started making this
very effective propaganda about this. It's centered on the dog.
I mean, we're not like Rupert did do messed up
(14:12):
stuff like you said in April sixte Uh. He was
setting fire to houses in Birmingham, and you know his
dog is right there with him. And so these propaganda
pamphlets start to come out, and one of them is
a true relation Prince Rupert's barbarous cruelty against the town
of Birmingham. Yeah, the old only English. Let's just also
(14:38):
really quickly, just get a few terms straight. Not to
be labor it too much. We don't want to get
to um in the weeds here. But this was the
English Civil War, and this was a conflict between parliamentarians
and royalists, Parliamentarians being people that were loyal to parliament
and royalists being people that were loyal to royals. Uh.
And obviously Prince Rupert was firmly in that camp, given
(15:02):
his proximity and relation to all of these royal bloodlines. Yeah, yeah,
and there this is an information war, Make no mistake,
parliament supporters. We're trying to spread word about Rupert as
like a villain and non trustworthy, bloodthirsty dude. And they
(15:22):
also if you look at the wood cuts, which are
freely available online, if you look at the wood cuts
of Boy B A y E by the way, you
will see something that looks a lot less like a
poodle today and much more closely resembles a wolf like creature.
It's the kind of if you have ever had a
(15:45):
nightmare about a poodle. I think we're speaking to a
very specific part of the audience today, but if you've
ever had a poodle related nightmare, this is a nightmare poodle.
It's like whomever was drawing these pamphlets or creating these
wood cuts made Boy look more like a lion, wouldn't
you say? And it's it's probably bigger than it actually
(16:07):
was for sure. Like I said, there's lots of these
where there's definitely some styling going on, whether some of
them were depicting previous poodle or not. Um, they're all
pretty ferocious looking. And again there were these pamphlets let's
let's not forget this is a war against Parliament, and
there there's lots of different sex but I think that
the main cause of the Civil War was people who
(16:28):
are loyal to the royalists King Charles the first and
the second, and people who are loyal to Parliament, and
so that was where the beef came from. And so
Parliament was understandably trying to win over the hearts and
minds of the people, not only painting Rupert is this
kind of elitist royal sympathizer, but also literally like a
witch or demon of some kind, you know, with this
(16:50):
uh familiar devil dog at his side. Yeah, yeah, he was.
He was presented as a warlock, one who trafficked in
the occult and he was also called a shape shifter,
and these devilish bowers were attributed to him. This was
pretty effective during sixty two. Before he's burning Birmingham and
(17:12):
he's already been an agent of chaos across the land.
And during early hundreds and hundreds of pamphlets were printed
every single month to either talk trash about the king's friends,
which includes rupert or exalt the king's foes and make
them look good and noble and just so these claims
(17:35):
were made when we have to remember the majority of
people definitely just assumed witchcraft was a thing, even if
they didn't know too much about it. Like if the
the four of us, Uh, Noel, Max, Me and you
listening along at home, if we were back in that
time and we said, hey, I think somebody this just
(17:56):
point a random person, I think they might be a witch,
you know, and other people would say, uh, I don't. Yeah,
they're definitely out there, which is here a thing? Everybody agreed,
which is there a thing? So if you look at
the pamphlets, you see what the mission of the propaganda is.
It's to make people think that anyone who sides with
(18:17):
the Royalist is siding with the infernal powers. Like they're
trying to make you think it's the same thing as
supporting Lucifer or Satan and the opposition to the Royalists
were referred to, or at least one sect of them
were referred to as round heads. By the way, also
the Royalists and and Bruper they were referred to as
(18:38):
cavaliers because they apparently they their dress kind of was
reminiscent of the Couble arrows and Spain and just the
kind of like look of their kind of flowy silks
and their whole garb or whatever. And then you had
supporters of Parliament, um were often referred to as round heads.
And then you also had a group under Oliver Cromwell,
(19:01):
who you know, you know, absolutely meant business was about
as puritanical as they come. His men were known as
iron Sides. That makes me think of the actor Michael Ironsides. Yeah.
And then of course there was Parliament Funkadelic, which is
where the name of the band comes from, and if
you think about it, most of their songs are about
the English Civil War. Then I can't tell if you're
(19:22):
joking or not, but I love it either way, and
I do know you're joking. Parliament the underrated band that
people think of like only the George Clinton era, like
the really like spaceship kind of you know vibe. Their
album Maggot Brain is actually like a total psychedelic masterpiece.
Highly recommend if you have it. Checked that one out.
(19:42):
But okay, so we got your roundheads right, and they
were considered by the Royalists to be kind of dulty, right,
like a little bit slow on the uptake, So they
actually started writing their own propaganda. It was really interesting
flex it was almost like a like a sat was satire,
but it was satire masquerading as actual propaganda against their
own cause. So the Royalists were writing up these pamphlets
(20:05):
that were very similar to the ones the roundheads were
putting out to try to, you know, turn public opinion
against this devil dog and you know, Luciferian master. But
they would write these things that were almost so outlandish
they were feeding the room or mill. Uh. They knew
what they were doing, and it was a way of
mocking their you know, their enemies. But I think it
(20:25):
may have done I don't know, Like do you how
this seems like a good thing. If people are really
starting to believe this stuff, it could strike fear into
the hearts of people that would like, you know, meet
him in battle, you know, Rupert and and uh and
uh and and boy in battle. Yeah. Yeah, Because now
the information has spread such that even if you read
(20:48):
this kind of stuff, let's say your roundhead and you're like, oh, okay,
this is this is a little far there are witches,
but I don't know if this guy's which. And then
all of a sudden, knowing this information, you see him
in person on the on the battlefield, and you see
boy accompanying him. You might think, uh, I don't know,
is he shot free? Because now the rubbers hitting the road.
(21:11):
I love the satire though, because there's this one Royalist
poet that's that we found in the Atlas Obscura article
we mentioned earlier. His name is John Cleveland, and he
is probably the source of the beginning like comedic response
to the parliamentary and propaganda is. He has this poem
(21:35):
that he wrote called to Prince Rupert, which we've read.
You can find it online. Well, we're not gonna read
it right now because it is it is very long.
It is not a radio friendly poem if you look
at it, but it's it's funny the way that it
the way that it traces, uh, the powers attributed to Rupert. Anyway,
(22:00):
So there are two fronts of this war. There's an
information war and then there's the actual war. The King
tried to take London in November sixty two. He was
not able to do this successfully and he had to
return back to Oxford. And when this occurred, John Cleveland
(22:20):
hits back again. He's sort of like a maybe like
a John Oliver esque figure. You know, he's lampooning people,
and he writes a satirical poem that mocks the Roundheads
for being dumb enough to believe that Rupert has magic powers,
and he says, you know, the Roundheads all believe this
(22:42):
guy is a witch. They're all convinced that the Prince's
dog Boy is his familiar, a demon in the shape
of an animal, and this gives him this may indeed
be one of the sources of his power. Speaking of
his powers, yeah, his powers are Upert's uh boys. Um specifically,
(23:03):
I mean that this list started to grow and grow
and it got real specific. Um Again, we've mentioned the
idea that we people believe Rupert was a shape shifter. Oh,
not to mention that there was heavily implied in some
of these pamphlets. And then something that I didn't even
realize is apparently heavily implied in general with witches or
warlocks and they're familiars. Is that. Yeah, Rupert was definitely
(23:26):
having sex with Boy. Yeah, it was about there. There's
a there's an expression. There's something in one of these
pamphlets that says that describes them as laying together, sometimes
with Rupert upon boy and sometimes Boy upon Rupert's Uh.
So the yeah, you could cut that innu window with
(23:47):
a giant broadsword or something. Um. But so again obviously
intended to demean uh and to other and to make
Rupert into some sort of pariah, you know, or them
that people would be like, this guy is unnatural. He's
you know, evil in every way. But the dog had
these the following powers. Um, my favorite is that possessed
(24:10):
it was polylingual and possessed the ability to speak in
a quote mixed language. Uh m I x T love
the old English spellings somewhere between Hebrew and High Dutch. Okay, interesting. Um,
he could see the future or she could see the future.
So it's really confusing when you got a dog called
boy that's a not a boy at all. That she
(24:31):
could prophecy or to or predict the future. We've also
got yeah, we've already we've already mentioned being invulnerable, uh
two bullets and and just all around you know, godlike
and it's uh ability to withstand attack. Yeah, also could
find hidden treasure that was one of the powers attributed
(24:51):
to Boy. Also a couple of things these are coming
from John Cleveland, by the way, a lot of these
these are coming from a royalist. Uh, it's the definition
of a moment because he is a Roundheads are dumb.
They believe the following about this dog. But some of
the things he describes sound more like very specific political
(25:15):
jokes or very specific tricks that Boy was trained to do.
Like there's the idea that if you say the name Pim,
that boy will lift her leg like she's gonna pee
on him. And then there's the idea that if you
ever say the word Charles around Boy, uh, the dog
(25:38):
will immediately quote come aloft for whomever says that, Wait,
does that mean like come at them? I think so.
I think so. I think it means a come for you.
So it's like a dog that just goes beast mode
whenever here's but Charles. But I thought I thought Boy
liked Charles. I thought we were in Charles's camp. I know,
(25:59):
I thought it was like a Charles and Charged situation.
But but yeah, or maybe it means I come aloft.
As a little vague right for us, you may mean
that the dog just runs up to you and it
is your buddy. But may mean it's a flying tackle
they have, but maybe okay, like maybe it's like a
loving Dino to Fred Flintstone type tackle. You know what
(26:20):
I mean? Um, I love this one. It's just so simple.
The power to inflict death or injury on those who
had wronged him, Yes, exactly. Uh. This so this was
a big hit with other royalists. They thought it was
hilarious because they also said, yeah, we get it. Roundheads
(26:41):
are dumb. And by January it was apparently common for
supporters of the king when they're all around drinking right
to cheers to Prince Rupert's dog, so he'd be like,
cheers the y boy. I guess I just wanted to
throw a ye in there. He's fun, it's a good
one and I like eat as well. Unrelated, so surely,
(27:05):
I mean, I think this probably worked, right, I mean this, Uh,
these rumors that the royalists themselves started about, boy, I
mean I was taken in by it. I'm like, this
is the fun stuff to repeat. Did you hear about
the dog with the power to prevent others from making
rational decisions by making them impotent in their minds. Have
you heard of this been It totally sounds like it
(27:28):
checks out, totally seems legit. Terrified of this boy, Um,
I wouldn't he have the powers of the shadow from
the golden era of radio and comics? Right, he can
cloudman's mind? She boy can't? She boy can't. The last
one on the list is she possesses the power to
move you right that this is just a tribute. It
(27:51):
is the greatest to the greatest dog in the world.
So whatever of these you know, uh powers that the
round has. The parliamentarians actually believed they They definitely seemed
to be some stock put in this idea that Boy
(28:15):
and Rupert were of the devil were in some way, um,
wielding the black arts, you know, on the battlefield, and
it really got out of hands, it did. It did
because it started like imagine, it's the definition of not
getting the joke. Like imagine you saw a late night
(28:35):
monologue right from one of the late night hosts and
someone said, oh, yeah, no, this is whatever they're saying
is absolutely absolutely true, and you said, no, no, part
of it's true, but this part is the joke, and
they were like, you are a fool this This is
completely true. Why else would they bother to put it
on television? This stuff spread, people were like, why else
(28:57):
would someone bother to print it if it's not true?
And we have to keep in mind a lot of
people already wanted to hate this rupert guy. So if
you already want to dislike someone it doesn't like, you're
gonna be very open to stuff that confirms your opinion.
One of my favorites was that the idea that boy
was not a dog at all, but in fact to
(29:19):
quote lapland lady, meaning the Sami people of northern Europe,
and this area was infamous for its quote unquote, which
is because of the traditional practices of those people. But
as you said, the joke goes so out of hand.
Parliamentarians totally have that woosh moment. They don't get it.
They start to think that it is factual information. The
(29:42):
common folk, including some supporters of the Royalists, start believing
these rumors. It's like they were realing Mad magazine for
news kind of That's how that's how weird it got.
And the people who didn't take witchcraft seriously on the
Royalist side still thought it was hilarious. But eventually it
(30:04):
backfired and Boy gained a real reputation as a supernatural familiar.
People genuinely believed this and this pre existing association with witchcraft.
By being allegedly shot free, it didn't help tamp the
fire down right. Let' let's not forget. I mean it
was Rupert was already considered to be pretty witchy in
(30:27):
his own right before the dog even even came on
the scene. So the Royalists, though, really looked at Rupert
as this kind of symbol right of of of their
superiority on the battlefield, their whole brand right, and the
dog would be by his side. I mean the Rupert
(30:47):
was in fact a absolute beast on the battlefield. He
was a very very sharp tactician. Um he knew how
to sack, he knew how to pillage, and he could
like do no wrong. I mean, he was loved by
his troops because he was out there on the front
lines with them and with Boy and Boy in particular.
It's so incredibly popular word of mouth of this magical dog.
(31:12):
Again on their side, they're not calling it a devil dog.
They're calling it a magical dog. You know, I was
spreading all around Europe and the powers. This notion, these
powers even reached Murad the Fourth, uh, the Sultan of
the Ottoman Empire, who said, you know what, I want
to give me one of those. Yeah, the Sultan, he's
(31:32):
at the point where you can just hear stuff and
say I want one of those. Make it so, you know,
kind of like kind of like the way Prince was
able to make ridiculous demands and people would just follow
through with it. I'm talking about Prince the musical legend. Uh,
not European Prince, but this the Sultan was like that
(31:53):
was quite well to do, of course, and boy even
got the rank of sergeant. Made your general. She was
a mascot. She was a supporter on the battlefields. This
is this is a pattern we see in a lot
of militaries across human history. Animals, whether they're wild or
whether they belong to some specific person, end up becoming
(32:15):
these mascots and people people like having an animal on
their side or just hanging out cats. Uh, did we
ever do an episode on various military animals? I want
to someone to do it on military cats, in particular
military cats. Yeah, let's do it, let's do It's gotta
be some weird military cat, but probably belonging to a Frenchman. Yeah,
you know, it depends on the cat. I think we're
(32:37):
talking big cats. To be dope, to have a tiger
on your side. We just we we gotta work out
the logistics. But they're probably, to your point, Nold, probably
house cats. As this continues, royalists still think this is hilarious.
Roundheads are starting to get superstitious and genuinely believe that
boy has these powers. But we're taking a turn, Max.
(33:01):
Can we get some you know, like the music in
the third act of it Pixar Disney film where it
gets kind of serious. Yeah, there it is, Okay, let's
bring it down a lot. Yeah. So on July one, four,
Rupert's troops are coming into support the Royalist in York
(33:22):
and this is currently held by the Marquess of Newcastle.
The next day, Rupert and Newcastle put themselves in position
in a place west of York called Marston Moore, and
they prepare themselves for battle most of the day. If
you've been in a combat situation, you're probably familiar with this.
(33:43):
It's surprising how you can spend a lot of time
waiting just kind of waiting around for something to happen.
And that's what they did for most of the day.
But from what we understand, in the early evening, forces
commanded by a Lord Fairfax, the Earl of Manchester in
the Earl of Levin, got together. They vultron up and
they launched a surprise attack. They had the advantage in numbers,
(34:09):
and they had the advantage in training. The troops were
both better prepared and outnumbering the royalist, so they absolutely
mopped the floor with him. They the parliamentarians, won this battle.
Rupert during the battle, his horses shot under him, and
so he hides in a field of beans, which feels
(34:31):
like a piece of folklore, doesn't it. But that's what
he does, does it really does? And you know, the
pamphlets kept coming, and one of them that came out
later that month Um said the following He said, a
valle and Soda, who had skill in necromancy, saw boy
and killed the dog, possibly shooting in with a brass button,
(34:52):
which was like a consider I guess, like a silver
bullet kind of situation, like werewolf fools, and I was
supposed to be it was supposed to be a magical weapon.
I guess is the implication the real story feels. Accounts differ,
but it looks like when they were fighting, Boy had
been tied up in the Royalist camp but somehow got
(35:15):
free and went to find went to find Rooper her person,
but she didn't make it, and it turns out that
sadly she was not bullet proof and expired on the
field of battle. No one sure what happened to Boy's body.
But back to Mark style, he has an interesting suggestion.
(35:35):
He says, you know what, if the parliamentary and soldiers
knew that this poodle was Boy, wouldn't they have wanted
to take the body with them as a trophy because
it's the most it is the most famous dog in
England at the time by far. Sorry, there's I don't
even know if there's a second place. Well, you gotta
wonder too if maybe there was a sense that they
(35:56):
could honess his abilities even in death. I don't know.
Maybe they were may maybe I'm just have read too
much fantasy and sci fi. And a fun fact, Boy
was actually one of the oldest living London dogs that
have been detailed in historical records of the time. Um
and that because it had very specific data about its birth, breed, color,
(36:22):
and the exact date of his death. Yeah. Yeah, and
this story is still told today to a lot of
school kids in England. But according to Mark Style, all
we have really we don't have a ton of evidence.
All we have our fragments of evidence and the propagandist
campaign about the dog. So this is this, this whole
(36:46):
kerfuffle is kind of fake news, at least in the
propaganda aspect of it. And and it didn't stop. That's
the thing. When Boy passed away, unfortunately, very sad. When
Boy passed away, propagandists printing pamphlets about this they did.
I mean, it was good fodder, you know, it was.
It did gave folks something to fear and despise. Oh
(37:10):
and this is when he turns black. Aha, Okay, maybe
it's because it was you know, somehow reanimated, unholy or
something like that, you know, come from the Great Beyond,
sort of like when Gandalf becomes goes from Gandalf the
Grade a Gandolf the White, you know, but like in
reverse I could see that, So yeah, I get like
(37:30):
black Philip. For example, the the demonic goat in the
film The David Agger's film or the Robert Actors film
rather the Witch, So that makes sense. It was really
kind of leaning into this whole idea of it being
a a satanic demon from from the pit. So yeah,
we actually have a publication of one of those pamphlets
that we have a record of called a Dog's Elegy
(37:53):
or Rupert's Tears, and that was published in July secon
six and sort of starts to build on that mythology
because apparently you know, History mag the BBC piece that
we referenced as it really makes a really great point
that in death the dog was even more useful than
in life for this propaganda war because now they could
(38:15):
say whatever they wanted about it. There would be no
way for anyone to question it or or have it
be backed up. Um. It was absolutely just the perfect
storm of like you know, generating these like larger than
life stories about this uh, this cursed creature um. And
so the royalists they never really seemed to mention boy
again because I think for them, they realize that they're
(38:36):
joke kind of backfired and now the you know, parliamentarian
Um pamphleteers were using this against them even still, so
I think they were probably just like kind of tired
of it at that point. Yeah, and it also would
probably feel like bad form to continue propaganda for this
poor guy's dog, because Ruper is still alive, is still alive,
(38:58):
So he was probably sad about this, you know, and
all his people I think that they didn't want to
maybe didn't want to, you know, pour salt on the wound. Yeah.
So sixty six, as you know, Royalist cause collapses, Rupert
high tails it for the European continent, and eventually, after
the restoration of the monarchy, he returns to England and
(39:20):
he is buried at Westminster Abbey in sixteen eighty two.
By this time, boy is old old news and no
one is really talking about this pooch until the eighteenth
and twenty century when scholars rediscover the satirical text of
John Cleveland. And you have to think this is something
(39:44):
that soil ask in history. Extra You have to think
how tickled John Cleveland would have been to know that
the joke he started way back in sixteen forty two
would still be around today. Luckily we have a better
understanding of it. Of course. You know, while I've yet
to see a magic dog, if you have one or
(40:06):
proof of one. I think we'd all love to see it.
If you have a dog that can change shape, that's
I mean, do a little video clip all here please?
Oh man, you can send all of that and more
to us in our apparently working email, which is ridiculous
at I heart media dot com. Thanks as always to
our super producer Max Williams thinks as well to Casey Pegram.
(40:29):
Thanks to our own devil Dog, Jonathan Stricklands, a k a.
The Quister, who I have a feeling will be returning suit.
There's a restaurant in my hometown of Augusta, Georgia called
Knuckle Sandwiches. I've always thought a very cute name, and
they do a really fantastic spicy hot dog called a
devil Dog. I'mnna have to ask if it was named
after boy that be hilarious person who you're talking to.
(40:52):
The restaurant owner says, yes, you know, really, I only
run a restaurant to support my primary love, which is
learning more of the English Civil War. I think we
need more history themed restaurants were like each you know,
I love a food item in some way teaches you
a lesson about history. Revolution, revolution, and let us know
your history themed restaurant ideas or any food related history puns.
(41:15):
Again ridiculous. I heart media dot com so happy that
it exists, going to say one more time ridiculous at
I heeart media dot com. You can also set us
up on social media individually. I am how now Noel
Brown on Instagram. You can learn more about my misadventures
my ongoing research where I am at Ben Bullen on Instagram. Also,
I got a bone to pick with you guys, because
(41:37):
I went to the trouble of getting that email address
set up and I don't think I'm getting it, so
I'm gonna I'm gonna try to fix it. But word
on the street is Max and Noel can see them,
so I know, I know you sent that test the
other day and it came right through to me and
Max that is absurd. We'll give it a try, ridiculous historians.
Hopefully Ben will get them, and if he doesn't, I
(42:00):
must you've been We will forward them to you immediately.
But let's get to the bottom of a big big
thanks to Eaves, Jeff Cope, Big thanks to Christopher hascy
Otis Big Big thanks to boy or Puddle a shoe
is sometimes called uh you just you can't beat having
a cruel dog, you know, it's it's something to aspire to.
I'd love to see people's dog pictures over on the
(42:22):
Facebook page Ridiculous Historians. We'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Shout out to the one
and only super producer, Max Williams. They call me Ben. Also,
I'm a lover of dogs, Noel. You and I have
talked about this before, right about your love of dogs,
about well, dogs in general. Because the our local hangout
(00:51):
spot that we when we've been shouting out a lot
recently is uh, those places are dog friendly. And you know,
there's there's nothing quite like getting There's this validation that
I feel when a dog, a random dog like comes
up and likes me. I'm like, all right, okay, I'm
doing something absolutely. I mean, it's sort of like that
(01:12):
trope from science fiction movies where like when the bad
aliens are coming, the dogs are always the first to know. Yeah,
really great barometer for all things sinister. So if a
dog comes up to you and gives you a little
nuzzle and lets you pet, it probably means you're relatively
okay person. Yeah, and you like you you have a cat,
but you like dogs as well. I think you can't
(01:34):
stand him. I'm kidding. It takes a particular type of dog.
There are some dogs that, let's just say, test me
a little bit. Um. My girlfriend's dog Jude, who is
I think like a lab mixed kind of situation. She
is a little older but just so sweet, and she'll
like lay down right at the foot of your bed,
and you know she she'll bark when there's danger, but
(01:54):
not overly, so she doesn't freak out for no reason.
So yeah, I love the idea of a dog as
a part actor. A dog is a companion, and then
you know, like eve dare I say, even like a
familiar Yeah, there we go. That's one thing that dogs
do very well. They tend to be bonded quite closely
with their humans. And also they tend to be quite protective.
(02:17):
In some dog breeds, this is trait that has been
bred into them purposefully. And it's amazing to see dogs
without any kind of like training her education, for instance,
just sort of naturally start hurting sheep. That's crazy. That's
crazy specific. But before we begin, I think you're getting
us a perfect setup. I gotta ask Max, what's your
(02:41):
pet situation? Man? So I am a very proud cat lover.
I have I have only one cat right now because
she's extremely territorial and aggressive with other animals, which is funny.
She's eight pounds, solid white, with like a high pitched
me out. She's like not intimidating at all, but she
has her clothes. She's pathetic. I love her at death.
I love this cat. No, I think you might know
(03:02):
my cat. What's your cat's name? Her name is Sylvia.
She's had multiple names throughout the throughout the years. It
was Germaine. At one point, she was a stray that
got fount There's a whole story behind my cat. I
don't know that i've met your cat, Max, but I
love the idea of a cat with morphing names. I
once had a cat with two names, Robert and Fernando. Yeah,
(03:23):
you'd call them different things depending on the situation, Like
if he was being a bad boy, you did say Robert,
and if he was being a sweetie, you'd say, oh, Fernando. Um,
I've got I got. I got a cat with multiple
names too. He is a cat with a thousand names.
Because when I got him, the folks who were living
with me, I messed up and I made it democratic
(03:44):
and uh no one, no one won the vote. So
we were just like, this cat has his many names
at once, but we're not talking about cats at least
at least nobody named it Catty McCAT face. I'm just
gonna say that. No, I've got the one cat with
many names, uh, and one that I referred to as
the Colonel, and then another cat named Dr Bankman, which
(04:04):
is still like one of my top ten favorite names
for a pet. Incredible pet name, incredible pet. It's not
quite as ah, It's not quite as I would say,
as much of a statement as naming a dog. Boy.
They were talking about uh, an amazing, an amazing little
(04:27):
pooch poodle who was sometimes called Puddle and sometimes called Boy.
Very magic dog allegedly and true story scholars site this
guy as the Well scholars site this dog, I should say,
as the first ever British military dog. That's right. This
dog was the best boy of Prince Rupert of the Rhine.
(04:53):
Rupert of the Rhyme was a German nobleman. He went
on to do all kinds of amazing things that will
will get to some of uh in today's episode, but
we're mainly going to talk about his political and military career. Um.
But he did go on to become an artist and
a scientist and an inventor. He was the nephew of
King Charles the First of England and cousin, uh first
(05:14):
cousin rather of King Charles the Second of England. So
he was in the mix with these royals, and he
was introduced into a military life very very young, I
believe around the age of thirteen and sixteen thirty three
when he began his tenure in the military during the
Thirty Years War. Yeah, he was a child soldier, that's
(05:36):
what we call it today. Uh. This war had a
personal toll on him because it resulted in his father,
Frederick Elector Palatine and briefly the King of Bohemia, losing
his crown. And so he's he's growing up in times
of war. And during one of the wars he took
(05:59):
part in when he was still very young, he was
around seventeen or so, it's the Thirty Years War in Germany.
He fought against the Holy Roman Empire and he was captured.
But because you know, he was well to do and
from the ruling class, he had a little bit different
treatment as a pownal. He was locked up in a
castle in Austria, the Lens Castle, and the main thing
(06:22):
that his captors wanted from him was not necessarily like
a ransom or you know, political cloud. Their main issue
was they wanted to convert him from Calvinism to Catholicism.
So like every day they come in and they say,
feeling Catholic. That's a hard pass. But the puritanical nature
(06:44):
of Rupert's opponents in these battles is really what leads
to the kind of propaganda around him and his dog
in particular, uh, he gets he's actually gifted this uh,
this white poodle which is actually bred to be unting dog.
They were bred to retrieve ducks, you know, or other
(07:04):
you know, game birds, you know, when they were shot
down over water usually and they're kind of little velcro
like curls that you see. I mean, you know, obviously
poodles can be groomed in bizarre and elaborate ways, but
typically just like a short hair pood poodle that doesn't
have like pom poms shaved into it, have these curly,
almost knit like coats, very dance exactly and very good
(07:29):
for keeping them warm but also increasing their buoyancy, which
allowed them to be very very effective at retrieving those birds. Yeah. Yeah,
and at this point a bit of foreshadowing ridiculous historians.
It is important to note that while he was incarcerated,
some soldiers from the Austrian side started spreading these rumors
(07:52):
that Rupert had super natural abilities, what we would call
superhuman abilities today, but to them this was the result
of magic. He was invulnerable to bullets, what they called
shots free. They said they had like fired at him
point blank range, and it wasn't that their weaponry was flawed.
(08:13):
It was that this guy was somehow immune to bullets,
which is a nice it's a nice rumor to have
about you, although it could come back to to bite you.
As I'm gonna, I'm gonna test this theory out, um
blast this guy at point blank range. And that's exactly
what that was claimed. Was claimed that he could take
shots up close and and still you know, walk away unscathed.
(08:35):
I love the idea of shot free being kind of
an old timey version of bulletproof, you know. Yeah. And
and they thought this is the thing though, they didn't
just make this up out a whole cloth, right, People
really believed throughout you know, the area at this time,
they really believed there was possible to use magic to
make yourself shot free, let's say shot free instead of bulletproof.
(08:57):
I like that totally, really quickly, right up front, just
want to list some amazing sources that we used for
this episode. We've got History Extra an article called the
Prince and his Devil Dog, and this is a piece
actually for the BBC's History Magazine and also BBC History Revealed.
We have a lovely little article from the Vintage News
about Boy the magical dog of Prince Rupert of the rhyme,
(09:21):
and we also have a great one from Alice Obscura,
one of our favorites. Five years later, English school children
still learn about a magic propaganda dog by Eric Grundhauser.
And a few others that will list along the way,
but those are the big ones I'd like to shout
out some specifically. Mark Style also wrote a book about this,
uh called I'm not going to give the full title
(09:42):
till the end, but it's called The Black Legend of
Prince Rupert's Dog. And then there's a there's a book
will pull a little bit from that was published in
sixteen forty three called Observations upon Prince Rupert's white dog
called Boy keefully taken by tea be for the purpose
employed by for some of quality in the city of London.
(10:08):
I'm reading from a very old copy. Yeah, I believe
that's a pamphlet. And part of this propaganda wars you
start to see waged against Rupert and his dog Boy.
So he gets the dog and immediately they are inseparable
like his is by his side, brings it to several battles. Um,
he really starts to get involved in the in this
(10:28):
campaign against parliament. Right, yeah, yeah, let's let's talk a
little bit about how how Boy gets on the scene. So,
like we said, because of his high social status, Rupert
is being treated better than your garden variety prisoner. And
(10:51):
there's a guy, an Englishman named the Earl of Arundel,
who is an old old friend of the family, and
he says, you know what's gonna help Rupert out here?
He might feel a little less less uh down on
himself if he has some companies. So I'm gonna send
him a puppy. Uh. This was a different time. I
hope everybody knows today that if you send, if you
(11:14):
give someone a dog as a gift, unless you know
explicitly what kind of dog they want, and they've said it,
then you're not giving them a gift, you're giving them
a responsibility. But this, this was a different circumstance. And uh,
the reason I said this guy and then changed it
to this dog is because even though they named the
(11:35):
dog Boy, she was female and like Noel said, she is,
she was down to ride. She was ride or die
for Rupert, that was her human. And you can see
these accounts of Rupert and Boy going on hunts together.
It's very Pixar, you know what I mean. It's very
like first act of a Disney or Pixar film. So
(11:55):
they know that, like you had said earlier, No, they
know that this was definitely a working dog, a hunting dog,
because there are stories about the dog helping him, you know,
hunt deer and whatnot. But this is important because it
carries onto Boy's behavior in war, right, like that those
same sets of skills are helping helping Boy. I want
(12:19):
to say, but also I have to ask do you think,
like how active do you think Boy really was? As
we'll see, this is kind of a tough question to answer.
I don't know. I mean, it's like it would take
some really specific training to train a poodle, uh to
two more than retrieved ducks, you know, to actually like
attack and go for the throat. But they are all
(12:40):
these like woodcuts of Prince Rupert and Boy where he
was so his brand right, it was like so tied
to this dog that you knew just from like they're
kind of proximity in these images, um who we were
dealing with. He invades the city of Birmingham and actually
sets fire to to several houses, and Boy is apparently
(13:01):
by his side during that battle. And you have images
of this that actually have to name the city of
Birmingham like in text in the background, even though there's
the fires. So like the burning and the sacking of
that city was less iconic than the man himself. And this,
you know, this devil dog. Oftentimes it's portrayed like a crazy,
ferocious black lion in some images. Weird that they get
(13:26):
the color so off. I mean, that's obviously for creative license,
you know. Yeah, there were two poodles. Actually, that's part
of one of the one of the stories is that
he was given two poodles, one of whom had a
black coat and died early on, so might explain some
of it, but we should also mention Rupert did get
out of prison in one and that's where and you
(13:49):
know boy went with him and maybe that other poodle,
and that's when he started, you know, just pillaging across
across Europe and and people people would see this on
the battlefield and they would, uh, they started making this
very effective propaganda about this. It's centered on the dog.
I mean, we're not like Rupert did do messed up
(14:12):
stuff like you said in April sixte Uh. He was
setting fire to houses in Birmingham, and you know his
dog is right there with him. And so these propaganda
pamphlets start to come out, and one of them is
a true relation Prince Rupert's barbarous cruelty against the town
of Birmingham. Yeah, the old only English. Let's just also
(14:38):
really quickly, just get a few terms straight. Not to
be labor it too much. We don't want to get
to um in the weeds here. But this was the
English Civil War, and this was a conflict between parliamentarians
and royalists, Parliamentarians being people that were loyal to parliament
and royalists being people that were loyal to royals. Uh.
And obviously Prince Rupert was firmly in that camp, given
(15:02):
his proximity and relation to all of these royal bloodlines. Yeah, yeah,
and there this is an information war, Make no mistake,
parliament supporters. We're trying to spread word about Rupert as
like a villain and non trustworthy, bloodthirsty dude. And they
(15:22):
also if you look at the wood cuts, which are
freely available online, if you look at the wood cuts
of Boy B A y E by the way, you
will see something that looks a lot less like a
poodle today and much more closely resembles a wolf like creature.
It's the kind of if you have ever had a
(15:45):
nightmare about a poodle. I think we're speaking to a
very specific part of the audience today, but if you've
ever had a poodle related nightmare, this is a nightmare poodle.
It's like whomever was drawing these pamphlets or creating these
wood cuts made Boy look more like a lion, wouldn't
you say? And it's it's probably bigger than it actually
(16:07):
was for sure. Like I said, there's lots of these
where there's definitely some styling going on, whether some of
them were depicting previous poodle or not. Um, they're all
pretty ferocious looking. And again there were these pamphlets let's
let's not forget this is a war against Parliament, and
there there's lots of different sex but I think that
the main cause of the Civil War was people who
(16:28):
are loyal to the royalists King Charles the first and
the second, and people who are loyal to Parliament, and
so that was where the beef came from. And so
Parliament was understandably trying to win over the hearts and
minds of the people, not only painting Rupert is this
kind of elitist royal sympathizer, but also literally like a
witch or demon of some kind, you know, with this
(16:50):
uh familiar devil dog at his side. Yeah, yeah, he was.
He was presented as a warlock, one who trafficked in
the occult and he was also called a shape shifter,
and these devilish bowers were attributed to him. This was
pretty effective during sixty two. Before he's burning Birmingham and
(17:12):
he's already been an agent of chaos across the land.
And during early hundreds and hundreds of pamphlets were printed
every single month to either talk trash about the king's friends,
which includes rupert or exalt the king's foes and make
them look good and noble and just so these claims
(17:35):
were made when we have to remember the majority of
people definitely just assumed witchcraft was a thing, even if
they didn't know too much about it. Like if the
the four of us, Uh, Noel, Max, Me and you
listening along at home, if we were back in that
time and we said, hey, I think somebody this just
(17:56):
point a random person, I think they might be a witch,
you know, and other people would say, uh, I don't. Yeah,
they're definitely out there, which is here a thing? Everybody agreed,
which is there a thing? So if you look at
the pamphlets, you see what the mission of the propaganda is.
It's to make people think that anyone who sides with
(18:17):
the Royalist is siding with the infernal powers. Like they're
trying to make you think it's the same thing as
supporting Lucifer or Satan and the opposition to the Royalists
were referred to, or at least one sect of them
were referred to as round heads. By the way, also
the Royalists and and Bruper they were referred to as
(18:38):
cavaliers because they apparently they their dress kind of was
reminiscent of the Couble arrows and Spain and just the
kind of like look of their kind of flowy silks
and their whole garb or whatever. And then you had
supporters of Parliament, um were often referred to as round heads.
And then you also had a group under Oliver Cromwell,
(19:01):
who you know, you know, absolutely meant business was about
as puritanical as they come. His men were known as
iron Sides. That makes me think of the actor Michael Ironsides. Yeah.
And then of course there was Parliament Funkadelic, which is
where the name of the band comes from, and if
you think about it, most of their songs are about
the English Civil War. Then I can't tell if you're
(19:22):
joking or not, but I love it either way, and
I do know you're joking. Parliament the underrated band that
people think of like only the George Clinton era, like
the really like spaceship kind of you know vibe. Their
album Maggot Brain is actually like a total psychedelic masterpiece.
Highly recommend if you have it. Checked that one out.
(19:42):
But okay, so we got your roundheads right, and they
were considered by the Royalists to be kind of dulty, right,
like a little bit slow on the uptake, So they
actually started writing their own propaganda. It was really interesting
flex it was almost like a like a sat was satire,
but it was satire masquerading as actual propaganda against their
own cause. So the Royalists were writing up these pamphlets
(20:05):
that were very similar to the ones the roundheads were
putting out to try to, you know, turn public opinion
against this devil dog and you know, Luciferian master. But
they would write these things that were almost so outlandish
they were feeding the room or mill. Uh. They knew
what they were doing, and it was a way of
mocking their you know, their enemies. But I think it
(20:25):
may have done I don't know, Like do you how
this seems like a good thing. If people are really
starting to believe this stuff, it could strike fear into
the hearts of people that would like, you know, meet
him in battle, you know, Rupert and and uh and
uh and and boy in battle. Yeah. Yeah, Because now
the information has spread such that even if you read
(20:48):
this kind of stuff, let's say your roundhead and you're like, oh, okay,
this is this is a little far there are witches,
but I don't know if this guy's which. And then
all of a sudden, knowing this information, you see him
in person on the on the battlefield, and you see
boy accompanying him. You might think, uh, I don't know,
is he shot free? Because now the rubbers hitting the road.
(21:11):
I love the satire though, because there's this one Royalist
poet that's that we found in the Atlas Obscura article
we mentioned earlier. His name is John Cleveland, and he
is probably the source of the beginning like comedic response
to the parliamentary and propaganda is. He has this poem
(21:35):
that he wrote called to Prince Rupert, which we've read.
You can find it online. Well, we're not gonna read
it right now because it is it is very long.
It is not a radio friendly poem if you look
at it, but it's it's funny the way that it
the way that it traces, uh, the powers attributed to Rupert. Anyway,
(22:00):
So there are two fronts of this war. There's an
information war and then there's the actual war. The King
tried to take London in November sixty two. He was
not able to do this successfully and he had to
return back to Oxford. And when this occurred, John Cleveland
(22:20):
hits back again. He's sort of like a maybe like
a John Oliver esque figure. You know, he's lampooning people,
and he writes a satirical poem that mocks the Roundheads
for being dumb enough to believe that Rupert has magic powers,
and he says, you know, the Roundheads all believe this
(22:42):
guy is a witch. They're all convinced that the Prince's
dog Boy is his familiar, a demon in the shape
of an animal, and this gives him this may indeed
be one of the sources of his power. Speaking of
his powers, yeah, his powers are Upert's uh boys. Um specifically,
(23:03):
I mean that this list started to grow and grow
and it got real specific. Um Again, we've mentioned the
idea that we people believe Rupert was a shape shifter. Oh,
not to mention that there was heavily implied in some
of these pamphlets. And then something that I didn't even
realize is apparently heavily implied in general with witches or
warlocks and they're familiars. Is that. Yeah, Rupert was definitely
(23:26):
having sex with Boy. Yeah, it was about there. There's
a there's an expression. There's something in one of these
pamphlets that says that describes them as laying together, sometimes
with Rupert upon boy and sometimes Boy upon Rupert's Uh.
So the yeah, you could cut that innu window with
(23:47):
a giant broadsword or something. Um. But so again obviously
intended to demean uh and to other and to make
Rupert into some sort of pariah, you know, or them
that people would be like, this guy is unnatural. He's
you know, evil in every way. But the dog had
these the following powers. Um, my favorite is that possessed
(24:10):
it was polylingual and possessed the ability to speak in
a quote mixed language. Uh m I x T love
the old English spellings somewhere between Hebrew and High Dutch. Okay, interesting. Um,
he could see the future or she could see the future.
So it's really confusing when you got a dog called
boy that's a not a boy at all. That she
(24:31):
could prophecy or to or predict the future. We've also
got yeah, we've already we've already mentioned being invulnerable, uh
two bullets and and just all around you know, godlike
and it's uh ability to withstand attack. Yeah, also could
find hidden treasure that was one of the powers attributed
(24:51):
to Boy. Also a couple of things these are coming
from John Cleveland, by the way, a lot of these
these are coming from a royalist. Uh, it's the definition
of a moment because he is a Roundheads are dumb.
They believe the following about this dog. But some of
the things he describes sound more like very specific political
(25:15):
jokes or very specific tricks that Boy was trained to do.
Like there's the idea that if you say the name Pim,
that boy will lift her leg like she's gonna pee
on him. And then there's the idea that if you
ever say the word Charles around Boy, uh, the dog
(25:38):
will immediately quote come aloft for whomever says that, Wait,
does that mean like come at them? I think so.
I think so. I think it means a come for you.
So it's like a dog that just goes beast mode
whenever here's but Charles. But I thought I thought Boy
liked Charles. I thought we were in Charles's camp. I know,
(25:59):
I thought it was like a Charles and Charged situation.
But but yeah, or maybe it means I come aloft.
As a little vague right for us, you may mean
that the dog just runs up to you and it
is your buddy. But may mean it's a flying tackle
they have, but maybe okay, like maybe it's like a
loving Dino to Fred Flintstone type tackle. You know what
(26:20):
I mean? Um, I love this one. It's just so simple.
The power to inflict death or injury on those who
had wronged him, Yes, exactly. Uh. This so this was
a big hit with other royalists. They thought it was
hilarious because they also said, yeah, we get it. Roundheads
(26:41):
are dumb. And by January it was apparently common for
supporters of the king when they're all around drinking right
to cheers to Prince Rupert's dog, so he'd be like,
cheers the y boy. I guess I just wanted to
throw a ye in there. He's fun, it's a good
one and I like eat as well. Unrelated, so surely,
(27:05):
I mean, I think this probably worked, right, I mean this, Uh,
these rumors that the royalists themselves started about, boy, I
mean I was taken in by it. I'm like, this
is the fun stuff to repeat. Did you hear about
the dog with the power to prevent others from making
rational decisions by making them impotent in their minds. Have
you heard of this been It totally sounds like it
(27:28):
checks out, totally seems legit. Terrified of this boy, Um,
I wouldn't he have the powers of the shadow from
the golden era of radio and comics? Right, he can
cloudman's mind? She boy can't? She boy can't. The last
one on the list is she possesses the power to
move you right that this is just a tribute. It
(27:51):
is the greatest to the greatest dog in the world.
So whatever of these you know, uh powers that the
round has. The parliamentarians actually believed they They definitely seemed
to be some stock put in this idea that Boy
(28:15):
and Rupert were of the devil were in some way, um,
wielding the black arts, you know, on the battlefield, and
it really got out of hands, it did. It did
because it started like imagine, it's the definition of not
getting the joke. Like imagine you saw a late night
(28:35):
monologue right from one of the late night hosts and
someone said, oh, yeah, no, this is whatever they're saying
is absolutely absolutely true, and you said, no, no, part
of it's true, but this part is the joke, and
they were like, you are a fool this This is
completely true. Why else would they bother to put it
on television? This stuff spread, people were like, why else
(28:57):
would someone bother to print it if it's not true?
And we have to keep in mind a lot of
people already wanted to hate this rupert guy. So if
you already want to dislike someone it doesn't like, you're
gonna be very open to stuff that confirms your opinion.
One of my favorites was that the idea that boy
was not a dog at all, but in fact to
(29:19):
quote lapland lady, meaning the Sami people of northern Europe,
and this area was infamous for its quote unquote, which
is because of the traditional practices of those people. But
as you said, the joke goes so out of hand.
Parliamentarians totally have that woosh moment. They don't get it.
They start to think that it is factual information. The
(29:42):
common folk, including some supporters of the Royalists, start believing
these rumors. It's like they were realing Mad magazine for
news kind of That's how that's how weird it got.
And the people who didn't take witchcraft seriously on the
Royalist side still thought it was hilarious. But eventually it
(30:04):
backfired and Boy gained a real reputation as a supernatural familiar.
People genuinely believed this and this pre existing association with witchcraft.
By being allegedly shot free, it didn't help tamp the
fire down right. Let' let's not forget. I mean it
was Rupert was already considered to be pretty witchy in
(30:27):
his own right before the dog even even came on
the scene. So the Royalists, though, really looked at Rupert
as this kind of symbol right of of of their
superiority on the battlefield, their whole brand right, and the
dog would be by his side. I mean the Rupert
(30:47):
was in fact a absolute beast on the battlefield. He
was a very very sharp tactician. Um he knew how
to sack, he knew how to pillage, and he could
like do no wrong. I mean, he was loved by
his troops because he was out there on the front
lines with them and with Boy and Boy in particular.
It's so incredibly popular word of mouth of this magical dog.
(31:12):
Again on their side, they're not calling it a devil dog.
They're calling it a magical dog. You know, I was
spreading all around Europe and the powers. This notion, these
powers even reached Murad the Fourth, uh, the Sultan of
the Ottoman Empire, who said, you know what, I want
to give me one of those. Yeah, the Sultan, he's
(31:32):
at the point where you can just hear stuff and
say I want one of those. Make it so, you know,
kind of like kind of like the way Prince was
able to make ridiculous demands and people would just follow
through with it. I'm talking about Prince the musical legend. Uh,
not European Prince, but this the Sultan was like that
(31:53):
was quite well to do, of course, and boy even
got the rank of sergeant. Made your general. She was
a mascot. She was a supporter on the battlefields. This
is this is a pattern we see in a lot
of militaries across human history. Animals, whether they're wild or
whether they belong to some specific person, end up becoming
(32:15):
these mascots and people people like having an animal on
their side or just hanging out cats. Uh, did we
ever do an episode on various military animals? I want
to someone to do it on military cats, in particular
military cats. Yeah, let's do it, let's do It's gotta
be some weird military cat, but probably belonging to a Frenchman. Yeah,
you know, it depends on the cat. I think we're
(32:37):
talking big cats. To be dope, to have a tiger
on your side. We just we we gotta work out
the logistics. But they're probably, to your point, Nold, probably
house cats. As this continues, royalists still think this is hilarious.
Roundheads are starting to get superstitious and genuinely believe that
boy has these powers. But we're taking a turn, Max.
(33:01):
Can we get some you know, like the music in
the third act of it Pixar Disney film where it
gets kind of serious. Yeah, there it is, Okay, let's
bring it down a lot. Yeah. So on July one, four,
Rupert's troops are coming into support the Royalist in York
(33:22):
and this is currently held by the Marquess of Newcastle.
The next day, Rupert and Newcastle put themselves in position
in a place west of York called Marston Moore, and
they prepare themselves for battle most of the day. If
you've been in a combat situation, you're probably familiar with this.
(33:43):
It's surprising how you can spend a lot of time
waiting just kind of waiting around for something to happen.
And that's what they did for most of the day.
But from what we understand, in the early evening, forces
commanded by a Lord Fairfax, the Earl of Manchester in
the Earl of Levin, got together. They vultron up and
they launched a surprise attack. They had the advantage in numbers,
(34:09):
and they had the advantage in training. The troops were
both better prepared and outnumbering the royalist, so they absolutely
mopped the floor with him. They the parliamentarians, won this battle.
Rupert during the battle, his horses shot under him, and
so he hides in a field of beans, which feels
(34:31):
like a piece of folklore, doesn't it. But that's what
he does, does it really does? And you know, the
pamphlets kept coming, and one of them that came out
later that month Um said the following He said, a
valle and Soda, who had skill in necromancy, saw boy
and killed the dog, possibly shooting in with a brass button,
(34:52):
which was like a consider I guess, like a silver
bullet kind of situation, like werewolf fools, and I was
supposed to be it was supposed to be a magical weapon.
I guess is the implication the real story feels. Accounts differ,
but it looks like when they were fighting, Boy had
been tied up in the Royalist camp but somehow got
(35:15):
free and went to find went to find Rooper her person,
but she didn't make it, and it turns out that
sadly she was not bullet proof and expired on the
field of battle. No one sure what happened to Boy's body.
But back to Mark style, he has an interesting suggestion.
(35:35):
He says, you know what, if the parliamentary and soldiers
knew that this poodle was Boy, wouldn't they have wanted
to take the body with them as a trophy because
it's the most it is the most famous dog in
England at the time by far. Sorry, there's I don't
even know if there's a second place. Well, you gotta
wonder too if maybe there was a sense that they
(35:56):
could honess his abilities even in death. I don't know.
Maybe they were may maybe I'm just have read too
much fantasy and sci fi. And a fun fact, Boy
was actually one of the oldest living London dogs that
have been detailed in historical records of the time. Um
and that because it had very specific data about its birth, breed, color,
(36:22):
and the exact date of his death. Yeah. Yeah, and
this story is still told today to a lot of
school kids in England. But according to Mark Style, all
we have really we don't have a ton of evidence.
All we have our fragments of evidence and the propagandist
campaign about the dog. So this is this, this whole
(36:46):
kerfuffle is kind of fake news, at least in the
propaganda aspect of it. And and it didn't stop. That's
the thing. When Boy passed away, unfortunately, very sad. When
Boy passed away, propagandists printing pamphlets about this they did.
I mean, it was good fodder, you know, it was.
It did gave folks something to fear and despise. Oh
(37:10):
and this is when he turns black. Aha, Okay, maybe
it's because it was you know, somehow reanimated, unholy or
something like that, you know, come from the Great Beyond,
sort of like when Gandalf becomes goes from Gandalf the
Grade a Gandolf the White, you know, but like in
reverse I could see that, So yeah, I get like
(37:30):
black Philip. For example, the the demonic goat in the
film The David Agger's film or the Robert Actors film
rather the Witch, So that makes sense. It was really
kind of leaning into this whole idea of it being
a a satanic demon from from the pit. So yeah,
we actually have a publication of one of those pamphlets
that we have a record of called a Dog's Elegy
(37:53):
or Rupert's Tears, and that was published in July secon
six and sort of starts to build on that mythology
because apparently you know, History mag the BBC piece that
we referenced as it really makes a really great point
that in death the dog was even more useful than
in life for this propaganda war because now they could
(38:15):
say whatever they wanted about it. There would be no
way for anyone to question it or or have it
be backed up. Um. It was absolutely just the perfect
storm of like you know, generating these like larger than
life stories about this uh, this cursed creature um. And
so the royalists they never really seemed to mention boy
again because I think for them, they realize that they're
(38:36):
joke kind of backfired and now the you know, parliamentarian
Um pamphleteers were using this against them even still, so
I think they were probably just like kind of tired
of it at that point. Yeah, and it also would
probably feel like bad form to continue propaganda for this
poor guy's dog, because Ruper is still alive, is still alive,
(38:58):
So he was probably sad about this, you know, and
all his people I think that they didn't want to
maybe didn't want to, you know, pour salt on the wound. Yeah.
So sixty six, as you know, Royalist cause collapses, Rupert
high tails it for the European continent, and eventually, after
the restoration of the monarchy, he returns to England and
(39:20):
he is buried at Westminster Abbey in sixteen eighty two.
By this time, boy is old old news and no
one is really talking about this pooch until the eighteenth
and twenty century when scholars rediscover the satirical text of
John Cleveland. And you have to think this is something
(39:44):
that soil ask in history. Extra You have to think
how tickled John Cleveland would have been to know that
the joke he started way back in sixteen forty two
would still be around today. Luckily we have a better
understanding of it. Of course. You know, while I've yet
to see a magic dog, if you have one or
(40:06):
proof of one. I think we'd all love to see it.
If you have a dog that can change shape, that's
I mean, do a little video clip all here please?
Oh man, you can send all of that and more
to us in our apparently working email, which is ridiculous
at I heart media dot com. Thanks as always to
our super producer Max Williams thinks as well to Casey Pegram.
(40:29):
Thanks to our own devil Dog, Jonathan Stricklands, a k a.
The Quister, who I have a feeling will be returning suit.
There's a restaurant in my hometown of Augusta, Georgia called
Knuckle Sandwiches. I've always thought a very cute name, and
they do a really fantastic spicy hot dog called a
devil Dog. I'mnna have to ask if it was named
after boy that be hilarious person who you're talking to.
(40:52):
The restaurant owner says, yes, you know, really, I only
run a restaurant to support my primary love, which is
learning more of the English Civil War. I think we
need more history themed restaurants were like each you know,
I love a food item in some way teaches you
a lesson about history. Revolution, revolution, and let us know
your history themed restaurant ideas or any food related history puns.
(41:15):
Again ridiculous. I heart media dot com so happy that
it exists, going to say one more time ridiculous at
I heeart media dot com. You can also set us
up on social media individually. I am how now Noel
Brown on Instagram. You can learn more about my misadventures
my ongoing research where I am at Ben Bullen on Instagram. Also,
I got a bone to pick with you guys, because
(41:37):
I went to the trouble of getting that email address
set up and I don't think I'm getting it, so
I'm gonna I'm gonna try to fix it. But word
on the street is Max and Noel can see them,
so I know, I know you sent that test the
other day and it came right through to me and
Max that is absurd. We'll give it a try, ridiculous historians.
Hopefully Ben will get them, and if he doesn't, I
(42:00):
must you've been We will forward them to you immediately.
But let's get to the bottom of a big big
thanks to Eaves, Jeff Cope, Big thanks to Christopher hascy
Otis Big Big thanks to boy or Puddle a shoe
is sometimes called uh you just you can't beat having
a cruel dog, you know, it's it's something to aspire to.
I'd love to see people's dog pictures over on the
(42:22):
Facebook page Ridiculous Historians. We'll see you next time, folks.
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