The seventeenth century saw several aristocrats accrue legendary occult powers to explain their prowess in battle. After the Duke of Luxembourg, François Henri de Montmorency (1628-95), defeated the English at Namur, pamphlets circulated across Europe claiming that he had made a pact with the Devil. Perhaps the template for this diabolical rumour-mongering was Charles I''s nephew Prince Rupert, the most renowned cavalry commander of the British Civil War.Mark Stoyle''s entertaining and thorough detective work pieces together the various religious, cultural and political elements that coalesced to formRupert''s demonic reputation. Rumours that he was ''shot free'' by magic means circulated before he crossed to England to defend his uncle. Once in the country and in the thick of the conflict, reports of his swarthy, dark complexion prompted insinuations of his familiarity with the Devil''s sooty domain. In 1642, shortly after the Royalist retreat from Turnham Green, Parliamentarian propagandists saw an opportunity to blacken Rupert''s reputation in print. One of the tracts, A True and Perfect Relation of the Chief Passages in Middlesex, reported that he charged ''like a Devil, rather than a man'', and that, although he was shot at a thousand times, not one bullet found its mark.

Such propaganda could backfire, of course, just as it did with regard to the Duke of Luxembourg. It would hardly help to give courage to Roundhead soldiers, while, at the other end of the scale, it provided an opportunity for Cavaliers to paint the Parliamentarians as deluded and superstitious. Stoyle''s account of the formation of these rumours, their dissemination and reception, is skilfully related against the backdrop of the development of the war on the ground and on the page.What makes Stoyle''s account original and absorbing is that the book is as much about Rupert''s dog, Boy, as it is about his master. It is a story of how a poodle was transformed by propaganda and popular pamphlet literature into a Faustian, demonic, canine familiar. The innocent fluffy poodle in an early portrait became the half-dog/half-lion depicted in the first woodcut depiction of him in 1643. Stoyle has looked everywhere for scraps of information about Boy, deducing what breed he was, when Rupert acquired him, and, in the process, investigating the history of an undated portrait of the dog. All these smaller interests add flavour to the main dish.

A major portion of the second half of the book concerns the significance of a pamphlet entitled Observations upon Prince Ruperts White Dog, Called Boy (1643), purportedly written by a Roundhead spy with the initials T.B. Not only did this curious work reinforce the notion that Boy was Rupert''s demonic familiar, but it also related the unhealthy sexual activities of both dog and master, referring to Boy''s ''very loose and strumpet-like'' behaviour. As Stoyle explains, Observations was a ''mocking parody of a witch-tract'', a satire on the credulity of Parliamentarians with regard to witchcraft. He places importance on the pamphlet by suggesting that it ''marked an important new stage in the development of war-time writing about the subject of witchcraft as a whole''. The satire invigorated the use of insinuations and accusations of witchcraft to smear the opposition. New accounts followed that mixed witchcraft motifs with the political cause. The title page of A Dogs Elegy (1644), for example, includes the rhyme:Sad Cavaliers, Rupert invites you allThat doe survive, to his Dogs Funerall.

Close-mourners are the Witch, Pope, & devil,That much lament yo''r late befallen evill.One of the pleasures of this book is the author''s dogged interest in pursuing the manner in which the reputations of Rupert and Boy were repeated, altered, misused and misunderstood over ensuing centuries--including in recent histories of the Civil War. Stoyle concludes by describing Boy''s time in the limelight as a 368-year-old hoax, and that all that is certain about Boy could be written on the back of a beer-mat. The success of the book is that Stoyle wrings numerous valuable insights about Civil War propaganda and the politicisation of witchcraft motifs, and how they have been subsequently represented, from such minimal historical fact and dubious contemporary reportage. Owen Davies, EHR , CXXIX. 540.