Reprobates : the cavaliers of the English Civil War

"Stubbs [has] a storyteller's gift for atmosphere and drama."—Wall Street Journal From disastrous foreign forays to syphilitic poets, from political intrigues to ambitious young playwrights keen to curry favor with the king, John Stubbs brings alive the vibrant cast of characters that was at the center of the English Civil War. In Reprobates, the acclaimed biographer John Stubbs finds his new subject in England's turbulent decades of the mid-seventeenth century. With conflict between the monarchy and Parliament threatening to explode, a group of courtiers and army officers known as the Cavaliers emerged to defend the king. They were jeeringly labeled "Cavaliers"—then a term for a gallant or a rogue—by their opponents on the streets of London. Their movement was soon memorialized by poets such as Robert Herrick, whose poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time"—which begins, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may"—later became a carpe diem anthem for their lost cause. Often imagined as elegant gentlemen, chivalrous and dandified, the Cavaliers were also originally to be found in the form of the gambler and poet Sir John Suckling or his syphilitic friend William Davenant. Stubbs sheds new light on this groundbreaking group of men, on their world and their journeys through it, in peace and war, from the Blackfriars Playhouse to the battlefields of King Charles's kingdoms.

From disastrous foreign forays to syphilitic poets, from political intrigues to ambitious young playwrights keen to curry favor with the king, John Stubbs brings alive the vibrant cast of characters that was at the center of the English Civil War.

In Reprobates, the acclaimed biographer John Stubbs finds his new subject in England’s turbulent decades of the mid-seventeenth century. With conflict between the monarchy and Parliament threatening to explode, a group of courtiers and army officers known as the Cavaliers emerged to defend the king. They were jeeringly labeled “Cavaliers”—then a term for a gallant or a rogue—by their opponents on the streets of London. Their movement was soon memorialized by poets such as Robert Herrick, whose poem “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”—which begins, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”—later became a carpe diem anthem for their lost cause. Often imagined as elegant gentlemen, chivalrous and dandified, the Cavaliers were also originally to be found in the form of the gambler and poet Sir John Suckling or his syphilitic friend William Davenant.

Stubbs sheds new light on this groundbreaking group of men, on their world and their journeys through it, in peace and war, from the Blackfriars Playhouse to the battlefields of King Charles’s kingdoms.

A rich account of a group of royalist wits and their reluctant part in a national disaster. In the followup to his "vivid, ardent, and engaging" John Donne: The Reformed Soul ( New York Review of Books ), John Stubbs finds his next subject in the turbulent period of the English Civil War. With a centuries-old conflict between the monarchy and Parliament threatening to explode, a group of poets known as Cavaliers emerged to defend the king against the Protestant reformers and, in doing so, defined an artistic movement exemplified by lines such as Robert Herrick's "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." Often imagined as elegant gentlemen, chivalrous and dandified, they were just as likely to be found in the form of the degenerate Sir John Suckling or the syphilitic William Davenant. Biographer Stubbs sheds light on this groundbreaking group of men, on their world and their journeys through it, in peace and war, from the Blackfriars Playhouse to the battlefields of King Charles's kingdoms "Stubbs [has] a storyteller's gift for atmosphere and drama."— Wall Street Journal From disastrous foreign forays to syphilitic poets, from political intrigues to ambitious young playwrights keen to curry favor with the king, John Stubbs brings alive the vibrant cast of characters that was at the center of the English Civil War. In Reprobates , the acclaimed biographer John Stubbs finds his new subject in England's turbulent decades of the mid-seventeenth century. With conflict between the monarchy and Parliament threatening to explode, a group of courtiers and army officers known as the Cavaliers emerged to defend the king. They were jeeringly labeled "Cavaliers"—then a term for a gallant or a rogue—by their opponents on the streets of London. Their movement was soon memorialized by poets such as Robert Herrick, whose poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time"—which begins, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may"—later became a carpe... Presents A History Of The Mid-seventeenth Century Group Of Courtiers And Army Officers Referred To By Their Opponents As The Cavaliers That Emerged To Support The King During The English Civil War.