The two women Prince Rupert loved are thought of — if they’re thought of at all — as his mistresses. But, says Mark Turnbull, they were much more than the bed partners of Rupert the Devil. As the Prince’s biographer, he believes: “Knowing them is knowing him.”
Think of the women linked to Prince Rupert of the Rhine, nephew of King Charles I, and two generally come to mind – Frances (or Francesca) Bard and Margaret (Peg) Hughes.
Each had a child with Rupert. They are forever referred to as the Prince’s mistresses, a label that sidelines these ladies and reflects just how little we know about them. As a result, Frances and Peg are transient figures that seem only to play a part in the bedroom of ‘Rupert le Diable’. But history has not robbed us of all information about Frances and Peg – rather, it is Rupert’s biographical narrative that has hitherto excluded them.
One of the most exciting aspects of writing a brand-new biography of Rupert is the chance, through much archival research, to bring forth their stories. Knowing them is knowing him.
Frances Bard was the daughter of Henry Bard, a younger son of the vicar of Staines, in Middlesex. Her mother was Anne Gardiner, daughter of a well-to-do family.
Henry was a courageous, ruthless, and headstrong man, as well as a staunch royalist. When he demanded financial contributions from the people of Twyning, near Tewkesbury, Henry threatened to burn houses, hang people, and even warned he would scare the ghosts of those he killed. Having lost an arm in 1644, he nevertheless scaled the walls of Leicester on the eve of the Battle of Naseby, courage that earned him an Irish peerage as Viscount Bellamont.
During the war he and his wife had four children – Anne, Frances, Persiana, and Charles Rupert. Though there is uncertainty about the order of birth, and dates, Bard’s son was named after the Prince of Wales and Prince Rupert, indicative of the divided world into which he had been born – a world turned upside down.
Henry survived the civil wars, but when sent by the exiled Charles II as envoy to Persia, he was consumed by a sandstorm near Agra, in 1656. His widow and children were left destitute. Matters took a turn for the better around 1664, following the restoration of the monarchy, when Rupert and Frances struck up a relationship. How this came to be is unknown, but the Prince was over 20 years her senior.
It’s said Frances disliked Charles II’s court. She went on to become a staunch Catholic, scandalising society over attempts to convert her two nieces. Though she and Rupert had a son (named Dudley after Frances’s paternal grandmother’s family) the relationship didn’t last long — but rumours about it did.
Frances insisted that she had been married to Rupert. In 1670, when he came to an agreement with his brother, Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, Rupert negotiated an annual pension. The agreement specifically mentioned that matters would change if ever he went on to have lawful children – a sign that Dudley was not so.
Rupert’s will, which called his son ‘Dudley Bard’, has been interpreted as an attempt to refute rumours of marriage by assigning the Bard surname. Dudley survived his father by just under four years, dying in an attack upon the Ottoman town of Buda.
Frances soon moved to the court of Rupert’s supportive sister, Sophia, who assumed she would enter a convent, but the bereaved mother dismissed the idea. Instead, she continued to assert her marriage and made claim to money owed to Rupert by the Holy Roman Emperor. An ardent Jacobite, Frances intrigued in favour of the Catholic King James VII and II, who was toppled in 1688.
Frances’s death in 1708 did not put an end to her marital claims. Her sister’s family etched it onto their memorial stone in the parish church of St John the Baptist, Aldbury, towards the end of the 18th century, by recording Frances as ‘Princess Rupert’.
It’s an extraordinary reference. As if to show how contentious this claim was, subsequent attempts have been made to erase the name.
In the late 19th century, Sarah Mary Sophia Deedes, nee Harcourt, four times great-niece of Frances, produced a key document. Signed by Henry Bignell, it states that he had married Frances and Rupert at Petersham, in Surrey.
Bearing a date of 30 July 1664, it’s unclear if this was when the ceremony was carried out or, if it is a retrospective affidavit, the date it was penned. It’s highly unlikely Bignell was the incumbent at Petersham after 1660.
This slip of paper has done more than anything else to perpetuate the marriage question. How far Frances might have taken matters had Dudley not been killed is unknown, but such evidence of marriage could have led to him inheriting the British throne in 1714.
As one sceptical English envoy noted, if Frances spoke the truth, then she would have been Duchess of Cumberland, yet she never laid claim to that title. Rather she styled herself Lady Bellamont, in reference to her father’s viscountcy.
Patrick Morrah, one of Rupert’s biographers, asserted he had seen a letter written by the Prince’s sister Louise, who dismissed the idea of marriage. Ladies such as Frances, Louise reputedly asserted, were quicker to tell lies than Rupert was to marry.
Correspondence from Rupert’s other sister, Elisabeth, written around the time of his split with Frances, seems to back that up. One of her letters tantalisingly hinted that Rupert could never be a friend to anyone, because he was no friend to his own good.
In Peg Hughes, however, Rupert did find his life partner. Though they did not marry, their relationship was a deep union of trust and respect which endured for 14 years.
In November, 1682, with an inkling the end was near, he enjoyed one last trip to the theatre. If that was with Peg, one of the first actresses on stage – if not the first – then it would have been quite fitting.
On 29 November, Rupert lay in a crimson velvet bed at his home in Spring Gardens. He died before dawn shone upon the red serge curtains of his bedroom. Pleurisy was the “happy Chariot sent by Heaven to convey his noble Soul in Triumph to the [Celestial] Paradise”.
Prince Rupert of the Rhine: King Charles I’s Cavalier Commander by Mark Turnbull is published on 30 May, 2025.
Mark is a biographer and novelist specialising in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (British Civil Wars). He produces a podcast dedicated to the period called CavalierCast — The Civil War in Words and is a co-founder of the Stuart History Festival, the first festival dedicated to Stuart history. Mark’s a regional chair of the Battlefields Trust and an associate fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Read Mark’s feature linked to his previous biography, Charles I – the boy who would be King .
You may also enjoy Good Boye or devil dog? Prince Rupert’s poodle by Frances Owen.
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The monarch with the magic touch by Andrew Taylor
Fiction and the English Civil Wars by Jemahl Evans
Bedlam, Robert Hooke and Henry Hunt by Robert J Lloyd
Fake news, or the Horrid Popish Plot by Anna Abney
And so to bed – a goodbye to Pepys’s diary by Deborah Swift
Thomas Blood and the Theft of the Crown Jewels by Angus Donald
Our features about Charles II’s Queen, Catherine of Braganza, by Linda Porter and Isabel Stilwell
Three of Charles II’s mistresses: Baby Face, Charles II’s French mistress by Andrew Taylor; Charles II’s last mistress by Linda Porter; and Barbara Villiers, beautiful, powerful… ravenous? by Andrea Zuvich
Images:
- Prince Rupert of the Rhine by Sir Peter Lely, 1665 to 1671: Yale Center for British Art (public domain)
- Frances Bard by Lely: Wikimedia (public domain)
- Prince Rupert by Lely, c1665: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (CC-BY-NC-ND)
- The Harcourt family memorial, St John the Baptist, Aldbury, showing where Frances’s name has been erased: © Gerald Massey for Geograph (CC BY-SA 2.0)
- Margaret (Peg) Hughes by Lely, 1672: Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art via Wikimedia (public domain)
