GORING, George (1608-57), of Danny Park, Hurstpierpoint, Suss.

Goring’s family was a cadet branch of the Gorings of Burton, which had been established in Sussex since the reign of Edward I.30Berry, Suss. Pedigrees, 138-40. His great-grandfather and grandfather (both also George Goring) had been returned for Lewes on four occasions between 1559 and 1601, and his father represented the borough in every Parliament of the 1620s until his creation as Baron Goring of Hurstpierpoint in April 1628.31HP Commons 1558-1603; HP Commons 1604-29; CP. George Goring senior had made his career at court, and he excelled in the courtly arts of wit, easy manners and obtaining pensions and offices from his royal masters – for which he earned the unsavoury sobriquet of ‘captain projector’. Although of little account as a politician, being ‘more given to joking than to affairs’, his charm and amiability proved well suited to the informal, backstairs aspects of princely diplomacy.32Memegalos, Goring, 8-13; Aylmer, King’s Servants, 132, 339; HP Commons 1604-29; ‘George Goring, 1st earl of Norwich’, Oxford DNB. As a trusted follower of George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, he was one of the courtiers involved in the Madrid end of the projected Spanish Match between Prince Charles and the Infanta in 1623.33Harl. 1580, ff. 394-455; Memegalos, Goring, 14. The following year he played an important role in negotiating the prince’s marriage to Henrietta Maria.34Memegalos, Goring, 15-19. Through Buckingham and another court patron, James Hay, 1st earl of Carlisle, he was appointed vice-chamberlain of the new queen’s household in 1626, and in 1628 he became her master of horse – an office he held until 1639 when he was appointed vice-chamberlain of the king’s household and a privy councillor.35CP; Memegalos, Goring, 21-2.

Very little is known about Goring junior’s upbringing and education. In a letter of advice to him on his imminent departure from Cambridge university in the summer of 1623, his father urged him to nurture his friendships, keep good company and reverence God. Above all, he advised his son to comport himself with modesty: ‘of all sights there is none so uncomely as strong audacity in young years’. Goring would comprehensively ignore these strictures. His father also asked Goring to pass on his thanks to his tutor and one ‘Mr Herbert’ – which may well have been a reference to the poet and Cambridge university orator George Herbert†. If Goring did indeed receive instruction from the learned and pious Herbert there is little to suggest that he profited by it.36Beinecke Lib. Osborn files, 28.389: Goring to Goring, 16 June 1623.

On the other hand, Goring was to profit considerably from his father’s court connections. By the end of Charles I’s personal rule he had been granted several lucrative crown offices – either in partnership with Lord Goring or in reversion – and he almost certainly had his father to thank for his marriage in 1629 to a daughter of Richard Boyle, 1st earl of Cork, who brought him a dowry of £10,000.37E214/206, 717; CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 197; Coventry Docquets, 179, 202, 281; Memegalos, Goring, 28-31. Looking back from the 1640s, Sir Edward Hyde* (the future earl of Clarendon) was undoubtedly correct in claiming that Goring ‘had been bred in the court and owed all he had, and all he had to hope, to the immediate bounty of the crown’.38Clarendon, Hist. ii. 268. Soon after Goring’s marriage, his father sent him to the earl of Carlisle to be presented at court.39CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 20.

The young Goring took to court life as adroitly as his father had, and by 1630 was participating in masques and spending money on a lavish scale.40CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 416; Strafforde Letters, i. 85; Memegalos, Goring, 32-5. In his ready wit, his ‘gaiety of humour’ and his ‘winning and graceful’ ways, he was clearly his father’s son.41Clarendon, Hist. ii. 269. But he was not as constant in his friendships as Lord Goring, and he had a quarrelsome side to his nature that resulted in him fighting several duels during the 1630s.42C115/106/8433; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 444-5; HMC Le Fleming, 17; HMC Cowper, ii. 66; T. Birch, The Court and Times of Charles I (1848), ii. 270; Memegalos, Goring, 36-7, 48. However, his principal fault, certainly at the beginning of his court career, was his prodigality. By 1633 he had run up debts of between eight and nine thousand pounds and thought it politic to retire to France until his father could satisfy his creditors.43Strafforde Letters, i. 85; HMC Cowper, ii. 20; Memegalos, Goring, 38-9, 40, 49.

In order to redeem his fortunes, Goring decided to leave the court and enter military service on the Continent. This may not have been as dramatic a step as it appears, for if he was the ‘Captain Goring’ who had served under Sir Edward Conway† (the future Viscount Conway) in the Cadiz and Ile de Ré campaigns of 1625 and 1627, he would have had at least some military experience.44SP16/522/16, f. 22; Add. 21922, f. 104. With the help of Viscount Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†, the future earl of Strafford), the earl of Cork was persuaded to join Lord Goring in purchasing Lord Vere’s colonelcy of one of the British volunteer regiments serving in the Dutch army. Wentworth, who judged the young Goring to be of a ‘frank and sweet generous disposition’, believed that a career as a soldier would suit ‘extremely well with his genius’.45Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P8/122, 13/119, 14/2, 55; Strafforde Letters, i. 85-6, 119; Lismore Papers ed. Grosart, ser. 1, iii. 213-14; Memegalos, Goring, 40-1. Goring was sworn colonel of Lord Vere’s regiment in November 1633 and spent the next four years campaigning against the Spanish in the Low Countries.46CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 292, 301; Strafforde Letters, i. 166.Among those whom he fought alongside in the service of the Dutch were his future colleagues in the royalist army Sir Jacob Astley, George Monck*, Henry Wilmot* and Princes Rupert and Maurice.47Memegalos, Goring, 44, 51, 59. 60-1.

Although Goring apparently took his military duties seriously, he did not neglect his interests as a courtier. Indeed, he served as a royal envoy to the prince of Orange and the exiled Elizabeth of Bohemia on several occasions between 1637 and 1640, and he also acted as an intelligencer on foreign affairs to Secretary of state Francis Windebanke*.48CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 421, 422; 1637, pp. 473, 544; Memegalos, Goring, 52, 77-8. In October 1637, he was shot near the ankle when the Dutch re-took Breda from the Spanish, leading to rumours back in England that he had been killed.49Strafforde Letters, ii. 115; Memegalos, Goring, 56-9. To mark his reported demise, William Davenant wrote a poem in the form of a dialogue between their common friends Henry Jermyn* and Endymion Porter* in which Goring is compared with the Elizabethan Protestant hero Sir Philip Sidney† and his valour and bounty effusively praised.50The Works of Sir William Davenant (1673), 247-9; Memegalos, Goring, 61. The wound Goring received at Breda left him permanently lame, but his heroics fighting the Spanish established his reputation as a soldier.51Strafforde Letters, ii. 148; Memegalos, Goring, 61, 63.

In January 1639, courtesy of his father’s influence at court, Goring added the governorship of Portsmouth to his colonelcy in the Dutch army; and a few months later he was appointed lieutenant-general of horse (under his father’s friend Henry Rich, 1st earl of Holland) in the king’s army during the first bishops’ war.52E351/292; Lismore Papers ed. Grosart, ser. 2, v. 280; Coventry Docquets, 208; Memegalos, Goring, 67-8, 70. The poet Richard Lovelace – who served as an ensign and later a captain in Goring’s regiment – would write a sonnet extolling Goring’s ‘glories’ in this campaign.53R. Lovelace, Lucasta: Epodes, Odes, Sonnets, Songs, etc. (1649), 102-3 (E.1373.1); ‘Richard Lovelace’, Oxford DNB; Memegalos, Goring, 73. Yet when Holland had marched several thousand English troops to Kelso early in June to confront the Covenanters, Goring and Wilmot had both advised him to beat a hasty retreat in the face of what was apparently a superior enemy force.54Lismore Papers ed. Grosart, ser. 2, iv. 57; Memegalos, Goring, 72. Goring himself admitted that he had not had a good war, having lost the favour of the prince of Orange – who thought him guilty of encouraging English officers to quit Dutch service in order to fight against the Covenanters – and suffering an aggravation of his lameness.55Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 236-7; Lismore Papers ed. Grosart, ser. 2, iv. 69-70. With Viscount Conway (Sir Edward Conway II†) replacing Holland as general of horse for the second bishops’ war, Goring lost his place as lieutenant-general to Sir John Conyers, although he continued to command a regiment of horse.56E351/293. Despite having a seat on the high-powered council of war established early in 1640 to co-ordinate the war-effort, he was not happy with his reduced rank, and by May 1640 he was demanding a commission as colonel-general.57CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 332, 458; 1640, p. 115; Memegalos, Goring, 75, 77. When this was refused him, he accepted employment as a special emissary to the prince of Orange and did not return to the king’s army before its defeat at Newburn in August.58CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 354, 531, 540; 1640-1, p. 149; Memegalos, Goring, 77-8.

Goring was returned for Portsmouth in the elections to the Long Parliament – his fellow army officer Henry Percy* taking the senior place.59Supra, ‘Portsmouth’. It seems likely that Goring was returned on his own interest as the town’s governor. During his brief career in the Long Parliament, he served twice as a messenger to the Lords and was named to eight committees – the majority of these appointments coming in November 1640 and the summer of 1641 and relating to the disbandment of the armies in the north and the security of Portsmouth and Hull.60CJ ii. 23b, 25b, 188b, 212b, 240a, 257a, 259b, 325b, 457a; LJ iv. 313a, 453a. When his father was declared a monopolist by the Commons in January 1641, Goring managed to convince the committee on monopolies that he had nothing to do with Lord Goring’s activities as a projector (although there is evidence to the contrary); and on 2 February, the House duly declared that he was neither a monopolist nor a projector.61Lismore Papers ed. Grosart, ser. 2, v. 281; Procs. LP ii. 239, 341, 342, 346; CJ ii. 77a; Memegalos, Goring, 86. However, he made no contribution to debate on the floor of the House until mid-June 1641 and then only in defence of his role in the various court intrigues that would become known as the first army plot.62Procs. LP v. 255; C. Russell, ‘The first army plot of 1641’, TRHS ser. 5, xxxviii. 85-106.

Goring had been drawn into the army plot by Sir John Suckling*, who had come to his London lodgings late in March 1641 and informed him about a design to bring the English army south to overawe Parliament and that Goring had been earmarked for the place of lieutenant-general.63The Declaration or Remonstrance of the Lords and Commons (1642), 25, 31, 32 (E.148.17); HMC Portland, i. 20. Suckling and the originators of this design – Davenant, Jermyn, the queen and possibly the king himself – had baited the hook well, for Goring had been eager for some such honour since the previous spring.64HMC Portland, i. 17; Russell, ‘Army plot’, 87-8, 90, 92. From the moment he joined the conspiracy, Goring seconded Jermyn in proposing the most extreme courses – not only bringing the army south, but also seizing the Tower of London (and thereby liberating Strafford). The two men also pressed for the pro-Strafford courtier William Cavendish, 1st earl of Newcastle, as general of the army, whereas most of the other conspirators – Commissary-general Henry Wilmot*, Colonel William Ashbournham* and captains Sir John Berkeley*, Hugh Pollard* and Henry Percy – preferred Strafford’s enemies the earls of Essex or Holland. It seems likely that Goring and Jermyn were articulating the views of the queen in these discussions. However, their co-conspirators thought their proposals ‘wild’, ‘dangerous’ and ‘against the fundamental laws of the realm’. Goring later testified before the Commons that he had merely been playing devil’s advocate in order to impress upon the conspirators the illegality and folly of their enterprise. But this claim is inconsistent both with his unscrupulous character and the genuine interest he had shown in being made lieutenant-general.65Procs. LP v. 55-6, 134, 135, 141, 142, 146, 147, 148, 149, 152, 153, 154, 185-97, 254-5, 256, 258, 259-60, 261; Declaration or Remonstrance, 27, 29, 30; HMC Portland, i. 17-18; Memegalos, Goring, 89-93, 102-4, 112.

In the event, within a few days of joining the conspiracy Goring leaked its details to William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, and other parliamentary leaders and then withdrew quietly to Portsmouth. Naturally, he dressed up this betrayal of the plot and, in the process, the betrayal of several of his closest friends as the disinterested act of a good ‘commonwealth man’.66Procs. LP v. 56, 185-6, 188, 190-1, 194, 196, 255, 261; Declaration or Remonstrance, 27; Memegalos, Goring, 90, 93, 105-6. However, it has been conjectured that he revealed the plot at the request of the king on the assumption that the mere threat of force would bring Charles’s enemies at Westminster into line. Certainly Goring had several meetings with the king and the queen during the course of the conspiracy.67Declaration or Remonstrance, 25-6; Russell, ‘Army plot’, 100-1; Memegalos, Goring, 93. In addition, he may have become aware that several senior army officers would not stomach his appointment as lieutenant-general and that by turning state’s evidence he would gain the favour of the parliamentary leadership, if nothing else.68CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 531, 532, 535; Memegalos, Goring, 93-4. For its part, the Westminster ‘junto’ stood by Goring, declaring him ‘a very gallant gentleman’ and securing an entry in the Commons Journal that he ‘deserved very well of the commonwealth’.69Procs. LP iv. 363, 365; v. 34-5, 37, 62, 67, 69, 196, 261; CJ ii. 172a; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 268-9; Memegalos, Goring, 102, 107-8. Yet his complicity in the flight abroad of Jermyn and Suckling from Portsmouth on 7 May is clear evidence that he had not sold out entirely to the junto.70Procs. LP iv. 362-3, 365; CJ ii. 203b; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 269; Memegalos, Goring, 100. Furthermore, it suggests that, contrary to general report, he had retained (or very quickly regained) the trust of the army plot hardliners – Jermyn, Suckling and the queen – if not of his fellow officers Wilmot and Ashbournham.71CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 25; Memegalos, Goring, 106, 109.

Goring’s skill in dissimulation meant that by the winter of 1641-2 he was in the almost unique position of having patrons both at court and among the parliamentary leadership.72Memegalos, Goring, 112. Before the end of 1641, he had convinced the king and queen that he would fortify and defend Portsmouth on their behalf, for which he received at least £3,000 from the queen (having already received £3,000 from Parliament in August).73CJ ii. 260b; Procs. LP vi. 470; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 269, 270; Memegalos, Goring, 108, 117. At the same time, he continued to enjoy the complete confidence of the junto, despite reports from Portsmouth that he entertained papists and criticised Parliament.74Procs. LP v. 34; D’Ewes (C), 168, 169; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 270-1; Memegalos, Goring, 99-100, 111. With his customary insouciance, Goring attended the Commons in mid-November and comprehensively rebutted each allegation against him, ‘insomuch as no man presumed to whisper the least jealousy of him’.75D’Ewes (C), 168, 169-70; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 271-2; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 179-80; Memegalos, Goring, 111. Once again, he received the full backing of the Commons’ junto-men and returned to Portsmouth with the approval of the House and his honour vindicated.76D’Ewes (C), 169, 170; CJ ii. 320b. According to Hyde, he repeated this performance early in 1642 – attending the House to ‘wipe off some aspersions that which had been charged upon him ... and in a very short time prevailed with them to deliver him four thousand pounds’ for the maintenance of Portsmouth garrison.77Clarendon, Hist. ii. 269; PJ i. 276, 472; CJ ii. 457a, 668b; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 271.

Goring continued to extract money and testimonials of his loyalty and worth from the Commons until well into the summer of 1642.78CJ ii. 667b, 668b, 688b; PJ ii. 379; iii. 148; Memegalos, Goring, 118, 119. His hand was finally forced early in August, after yet more reports of his suspicious proceedings at Portsmouth had induced his friends at Westminster to send him word that though they still had confidence in his integrity he should come up to Westminster to clear himself.79CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 179-80; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 273. On receipt of this message, Goring promptly declared for the king, informing Parliament that he could not join in any act of hostility against his Majesty. Given his almost stereotypically cavalierish behaviour, his long association with the court, and not least his father’s abiding loyalty to the crown, Goring’s decision to side with the king in the civil war should not have come as any surprise. He owed his entire career and livelihood at one level or other to royal favour: ‘for our bread and drink and all that we have is derived and cometh from him [the king], and in his happiness and welfare our lives, liberties and fortunes do consist’.80Clarendon, Hist. ii. 273; True Newes from Portsmouth (1642), sigs. A2v-A3v (E.112.1); Memegalos, Goring, 120-1. Yet when news of Goring’s ‘revolt’ reached Westminster on 4 August, it ‘so staggered the hot spirits in both Houses as they scare knew what counsel to take’, and it was not until 16 August that he was disabled from sitting any longer as an MP.81PJ iii. 280; CJ ii. 723a; Memegalos, Goring, 121-2.

Despite the money that Goring had received from both sides to fortify Portsmouth, it quickly proved untenable in the face of a parliamentarian blockade by land and sea, and early in September 1642 he surrendered the town to Parliament and took ship for Holland.82Lismore Papers ed. Grosart, ser. 2, v. 107-10; Memegalos, Goring, 122-30. Hyde attributed the loss of Portsmouth to Goring’s negligence as governor, and it was said that the cavaliers around the king expressed ‘great spleen and malice’ against him for his ‘false and treacherous’ proceedings.83Clarendon, Hist. ii. 294, 314-15; Exceeding Joyfull Newes from the Cavaleers at Nottingham (1642), sigs. A-A2v (E.116.7); Memegalos, Goring, 131. On the other hand, the royalist Sir Robert Stryckland*, writing early in October, maintained that Goring had done as much at Portsmouth as any man could do and that ‘all men are well satisfied with him, insomuch that the king hath sent for him’.84Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/4/28.

Goring spent the autumn of 1642 raising men for the king in the Low Countries. It has been assumed that most of these soldiers came from the Dutch army.85LJ v. 486a; ‘George Goring’, Oxford DNB; Memegalos, Goring, 134-5. But according to several contemporary sources, he recruited principally among the English troops in French and Spanish service in Flanders, many of them presumably Catholics.86A Most True Relation of the Great and Bloody Battell (1642), unpag. (E.129.16); The King of France his Message to the Queene of England (1642), 2-4 (E.129.24); The Queenes Proceedings in Holland (1642), sig. A3 (E.83.33). He and his men landed at Newcastle late in December and, on the queen’s recommendation, the earl of Newcastle, the commander of the king’s northern army, appointed him his general of horse.87LJ v. 496a; HMC 10th Rep. vi. 93; CSP Ven. 1642-3, p. 223; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 466. Early in 1643, he was re-united with the queen, who landed in Yorkshire in February, and with his ‘dear partner’ Henry Percy.88Mems. of Prince Rupert, ii. 181-2. He also began to court Prince Rupert and George Lord Digby*, perhaps the two most influential figures in the royalist ‘war party’.89Bodl. Firth c.6, f. 164; Mems. of Prince Rupert, ii. 172-3. On 30 March 1643, in his first major engagement against the northern parliamentarians, he routed Sir Thomas Fairfax* at Seacroft Moor, near Leeds.90Life of Newcastle ed. Firth, 20; Memegalos, Goring, 141. Two months later, however, he was captured at the head of 3,000 troops when Fairfax stormed Wakefield with a force of around half that number.91Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 269; Life of Newcastle ed. Firth, 22-3; Memegalos, Goring, 145-7. Goring spent the next ten months or so a prisoner, before being exchanged for William Kerr, 1st earl of Lothian.92LJ vi. 133b; CJ iii. 169a, 182b, 200b, 279b, 404a; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 69, 71; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 749.

By mid-April 1644, Goring was back at the head of Newcastle’s horse, and by June the king was requesting Rupert to send Goring south to replace the politically untrustworthy Wilmot as lieutenant-general of horse in the main royalist field army.93Wm. Salt Lib. S. MS 550/18; Dugdale, Diary and Corresp. 64; Mems. of Prince Rupert, ii. 435-6; HMC 1st Rep. 5-6. However, Goring was still in the north in mid-July to command the left wing of the royalist cavalry at the battle of Marston Moor. Goring charged ‘so fiercely’ that he drove a large part of the parliamentarian right wing from the field, and – in the opinion of Sir Hugh Cholmeley*, at least – ‘if his men had but kept close together as did [Oliver] Cromwell’s*, and not dispersed themselves in pursuit, in all probability it had come to a drawn battle at worse and no great victory to be boasted of on either side’.94Cholmley Mems. ed. J. Binns (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. cliii), 137; Memegalos, Goring, 179-81, 183-4. In the aftermath of defeat, Digby assured Goring that ‘we owe you all the good of the day in the northern battle’ and, with Rupert, was instrumental in having Goring replace Wilmot on 8 August. Once again, Goring had proved adept at playing both ends against the middle, for Rupert and Digby were united in little more than their hatred of Wilmot.95Add. 30305, ff. 65-6; Mems. of Prince Rupert, ii. 475-6; iii. 2-3; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 389-90, 393; Memegalos, Goring, 187, 190-1.

Goring served creditably in the Lostwithiel campaign in August-September 1644 and led a gallant and successful charge at the second battle of Newbury in October.96Clarendon, Hist. iii. 434; Memegalos, Goring, 193-211. Yet though he repeatedly protested his desire to serve under the prince, it has been argued that his ambition – ‘the first deity he sacrificed to’ – drove him to intrigue for an independent command of his own – to the ruin of the royalist cause.97Clarendon, Hist. ii. 315; iv. 26; Add. 18981, ff. 200, 211v, 279; Mems. of Prince Rupert, iii. 16-17. With the support of Rupert’s great rival Digby, Goring – usually referred to as Lord Goring after his father’s promotion in the peerage to an earldom in November 1644 – prevailed upon the king to be sent into Hampshire and Sussex in December as lieutenant-general of the south east, ‘and meant by that device to withdraw himself from the command of Prince Rupert’.98Clarendon, Hist. iii. 450, 503; iv. 8-10, 23; Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 244; Memegalos, Goring, 217. Pleading that his own authority was insufficient to overcome a ‘universal deadness and backwardness’ among his troops, he wrote to the king in January 1645, requesting that he ‘receive your Majesty’s positive orders with your own hand’, to which the king agreed. This was interpreted by Rupert and others as an attempt to create an army separate from and in ‘counterpoise’ to that of the prince. Goring denied this charge, but did admit that one reason for seeking orders directly from the king was that Rupert would not oblige any of his requests.99Mems. of Prince Rupert, iii. 52; HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 385; Memegalos, Goring, 219, 220-1. That Goring was on particularly close terms with Digby in the early months of 1645 is perhaps further evidence he was complicit in a court design to weaken the prince’s authority.100Add. 18982, f. 29v; Bodl. Clarendon 24, f. 57; Clarendon, Hist. iv. 36. In February, he was ordered to help the royalist western association repulse Sir William Waller*, but according to Hyde he showed more interest in replacing Ralph Lord Hopton* as general of the army intended to serve under the prince of Wales in the west country.101Clarendon, Hist. iv. 23-7.

It is clear that Goring quickly fell out with the prince’s council (which included Hyde), to the extent that by June 1645 he was seriously considering quitting the king’s service altogether.102Bodl. Clarendon 24, f. 132; Firth c.7, f. 127; Staffs. RO, D(W)1778/I/i/46; Leeds Castle, Civil War corresp. C1/10; Mems. of Prince Rupert, iii. 215 [misdated as Jan. 1646]. However, several authorities attribute this more to the royalists’ lack of a clear chain of command in the west and the council’s shabby treatment of him than to caprice or ambition on his part.103M.D.G. Wanklyn, ‘The King’s Armies in the West of England 1642-6’ (Manchester Univ. MA thesis, 1966), 146, 159; R. Hutton, ‘Clarendon’s Hist. of the Rebellion’, EHR xcvii. 81, 84; ‘George Goring’, Oxford DNB; Memegalos, Goring, 230, 239-40, 245, 263, 273-4, 294, 300. Certainly Hyde’s denunciation of Goring’s conduct in the west is inconsistent with some of the evidence. Goring, it seems, was no more unpopular than any other royalist commander in the region, or indeed than the council, nor were his troops any more ill-disciplined.104C.H. Firth, ‘Clarendon’s Hist. of the Rebellion, pt. III’, EHR xix. 473-4, 475; Hutton, ‘Clarendon’s Hist. of the Rebellion’, 81-2, 83-4; Wanklyn, ‘King’s Armies in the West’, 119-21, 141. Equally, his desire for overall command in the west made sound military sense. Where Goring cannot be defended is in respect of his debauchery, which was acknowledged even by his friends. This was his principal failing as a commander – not so much in drinking to excess himself, for he was apparently able to hold his liquor, but in inducing drunkenness among his subordinates.105Lismore Papers ed. Grosart, ser. 2, v. 81; J.L. Sanford, Great Rebellion, 620-1; P. Warwick, Mems. Charles I (1701), 274; R. Bulstrode, Memoirs and Reflections upon the Reign and Government of King Charles the Ist (1721), 116, 134; Memegalos, Goring, 284, 291-2, 363, 365; Wanklyn, ‘King’s Armies in the West’, 227.

On the other hand, Goring can be cleared of the principal charge made against him – that his desire for an independent command was the key factor in obliging the king to divide his forces just a month before his army was outnumbered and overwhelmed at Naseby. In fact, the chief culprit here was Rupert, who, at a rendezvous of the royal armies at Stow-on-the-Wold on 8 May, persuaded the king to send Goring back into the west as commander of the prince’s forces, thereby removing a potential rival at court and in the main field army.106Bodl. Clarendon 24, f. 170; E. Walker, Historical Discourses (1705), 125-6; Clarendon, Hist. iv. 35-7, 47; HMC Portland, i. 222; Memegalos, Goring, 249-51. Rupert also did all he could to stir up further ill-feeling between Goring and the prince’s council, which he had opposed from its creation.107Clarendon, Hist. iv. 36, 52, 102. At the same time, there were sound strategic reasons for sending Goring back into the west – namely, the taking of Taunton, without which the king’s projected western army could not take shape.108M. Wanklyn, F. Jones, A Military Hist. of the English Civil War (Harlow, 2005), 234. Moreover, Goring was given clear instructions to rejoin the king’s main field whenever he was ordered to do so.

It was not Goring who proved the main obstacle to a reunion of the royalist forces to meet the New Model, but the prince’s council. When the king and Digby tried to recall Goring in mid-May and again early in June, they were forced to back down in the face of assertions from the prince’s council that if Goring’s army marched out of the west the entire region would be lost.109Bodl. Clarendon 24, ff. 155, 161; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 522, 581; HMC Portland, i. 224-5; HMC 1st Rep. 9; Secret Writing in the Public Records: Henry VIII-George II ed. S. R. Richards (1974), 122; T.H. Lister, Life and Admin. of Edward, First Earl of Clarendon (1837-8), iii. 10-12; Clarendon, Hist. iv. 48, 50; Memegalos, Goring, 261-2, 264. Goring himself was apparently willing to march his forces to the king’s assistance, but believed that to do so would have dangerous consequences while Taunton remained in parliamentarian hands. He therefore wrote to the king, advising him ‘to stand upon the defensive’ for just a few weeks until he (Goring) had reduced Taunton and the western army had joined the main royalist field army to engage the New Model.110Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 49; Perfect Occurrences of Parliament no. 25 (13-20 June 1645), sig. Bb (E.262.10); Warwick, Mems. Charles I, 285; Memegalos, Goring, 267; Wanklyn, ‘King’s Armies in the West’, 197-8, 216-18. Unfortunately for the royalist cause, Goring’s letter never reached the court, and the king opted instead to follow his civilian advisers and to seek battle while the royal army was still heavily outnumbered by Fairfax’s – with predictably disastrous results.111Wanklyn, Jones, Military Hist. 242-4; Memegalos, Goring, 267-8.

With the king’s defeat at Naseby, the fate of Goring and the other western royalists was sealed. Demoralised, outnumbered and short of pay and supplies, Goring’s army stood no chance against the New Model and was duly routed at Langport on 10 July.112Mems. of Prince Rupert, iii. 137-8; Memegalos, Goring, 285-8. While Fairfax turned his attention to Bristol and the surrounding royalist garrisons, Goring withdrew to Devon, where he tried to hold together his remaining forces and to assert his title to supreme command in the west, though with little success on either count. When the New Model approached Devon in October, he succeeded in beating up its vanguard, but was well aware that he had merely delayed its inexorable advance westwards.113Bodl. Clarendon 25, ff. 85-6; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 46-7; T. Carte, Life of Ormond, vi. 312-13; Clarendon, Hist. iv. 63, 78-80, 81-2, 88; Wanklyn, ‘King’s Armies in the West’, 214-2, 249-53; Hutton, ‘Clarendon’s Hist. of the Rebellion’, 85-6; Memegalos, Goring, 314, 315. Like most professional soldiers, he saw no point in fighting a lost cause, and therefore on 20 November he informed the prince of Wales of his intention to retire to France for the sake of his health; and without waiting for a reply, he took ship from Dartmouth in the company of Sir William Davenant.114Bodl. Clarendon 26, ff. 60-1, 85-6; Clarendon, Hist. iv. 98-9; Memegalos, Goring, 310, 316-7. On reaching France he made for Henrietta Maria’s court in Paris, but he was now persona non grata with the queen – or so it was reported – and he and Davenant withdrew to Rouen. His efforts to raise troops to take back to the west country foundered after reports reached France of the fall of Cornwall to Parliament in the spring of 1646.115BL, Verney Pprs.: Robert Leslie to Sir Ralph Verney, 19/29 Dec. 1645 [BL, mic. M636/6]; Add. 4200, f. 13v; Add. 12185, f. 126v; Bodl. Clarendon 27, ff. 10-11; HMC 7th Rep. 453; HMC Portland, i. 324, 328; Memegalos, Goring, 324.

In May 1646, Goring left France for Holland, apparently to resume command of his regiment in the Dutch army; and then early in 1647, he sold his colonelcy under the Dutch for £2,000 and took service with the Spanish in Flanders, commanding their British regiments against the French.116Add. 12185, f. 132v; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 534, 577; Nicholas Pprs. i. 82; Memegalos, Goring, 328-30. He was involved in the royalists’ negotiations with the duke of Lorraine for troops to fight in the second civil war – a conflict in which his father played a conspicuous and very nearly fatal role.117Bodl. Clarendon 31, ff. 226-7; Clarendon SP ii. 413, 414, 455-7; Memegalos, Goring, 336. And the prince of Wales’s advisers chose Goring to command a projected invasion of Guernsey, using the duke’s troops, but Goring argued that this plan was impractical and it was laid aside.118Clarendon SP ii. 457.

In the spring of 1650, Goring went to Spain ‘about the settlement of a pension promised him there’, and by 1652 he was serving in the Spanish army at the siege of Barcelona.119Original Letters and Pprs. ed. T. Carte, i. 359; HMC Leyborne-Popham, 72-3; Memegalos, Goring, 342-3, 348, 351. In September 1655, he wrote to Charles Stuart apologising for not having made contact in over four years and claiming that he was working constantly in the king’s interests at the Spanish court.120TSP i. 694. Even in his forties and after many years of hard drinking he still cut a dashing figure in the eyes of the diarist Lady Ann Fanshawe when she encountered him in Spain.

He was generally esteemed a good and great commander (and had been so brought up in Holland in his youth) of vast natural parts [talents] ... He was exceeding facetious and pleasant company and in converse, where good manners were due, the civilest person imaginable, so that he would blush like a girl, which was natural to him. He was very tall and very handsome ... His expenses were what he could get and his debauchery beyond all precedents, which at last lost him that love the Spaniards had for him, and that country not admitting his constant drinking, he fell sick of a hectic fever, in which he turned his religion.121Mems. of Anne, Lady Halkett and Ann, Lady Fanshawe ed. J. Loftis (1979), 130.

In claiming that Goring ‘turned his religion’ – i.e. converted to Catholicism – Lady Fanshawe was probably repeating a story related by Sir William Dugdale that the royalist reprobate ended his days dressed in the habit of a Dominican friar.122W. Dugdale, Baronage of England (1675), 460. He was certainly received into the Catholic church at some point before his death on 15/25 July 1657, for he was buried in St George’s Chapel of the English Fathers of the Society of Jesus, in Madrid.123CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 71; Memegalos, Goring, 357-8. No will is recorded. He died childless, and it was his younger brother Charles who succeeded to their father’s title as earl of Norwich and a seat in the Restoration House of Lords.124CP.