This dissertation investigates how printed pamphlets constructed Prince Rupert’s and broader Royalist military, political and religious identities during the First English Civil War (1642-1646). It contributes to two relatively underdeveloped fields of historiography, Royalist studies and printed pamphlets, and shows that pamphlets are valuable sources, rather than simply propaganda, by analysing both how and why they portrayed Rupert and the Royalists to a wider public audience. In particular, this dissertation will challenge Jason Peacey’s ‘stigma of print’, where contemporary elites distanced themselves from print culture as an unworthy and unreliable medium of information. Through the case study of Prince Rupert, it argues that elites, including Rupert, regularly engaged with print culture as the chief medium to shape their identities. This study is structured into three chapters to examine how pamphlets constructed Rupert’s military, political and religious representations, which reflected broader Royalist portrayals alongside depictions unique to him. In all three aspects, Rupert’s elite status as a successful military commander and a foreign-born prince was central to the shaping of these representations in print. Overall, this dissertation emphasises that elites commissioned, wrote and were influenced by pamphlets, with Rupert personally appearing in print culture, despite his princely status and the ‘stigma of print’, to defensively construct his identities against hostile Parliamentarian depictions.
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