Jealousy and division lurks beneath the happy unity displayed by King Charles and his senior officers on Meriden Heath in Warwickshire yesterday at a review of the troops they will lead to battle against Parliament.

The Scots-born Charles – whose legendary public coldness rests on his firm belief that displays of mirth or wrath are beneath his dignity as Christ’s representative on earth – smiled on at least three occasions as his nine thousand or foot, commanded by Sir Jacob Astley, and some three thousand horse and seven hundred dragoons, led by his nephew Prince Rupert of the Rhine, marched past a hurriedly-erected reviewing stand on the only day of the last fifteen the Sun has roused itself to chase rain and cloud from the damp and muddy fields of the South Midlands.

“There is perfect faction between the Foot and the Horse,” an advisor near to the broodings of the Royal Mind, told Anglia Rediviva. At issue, the advisor whispered, is a clause in Prince Rupert’s commission exempting him from receiving orders from any but his Uncle – meaning the spirited twenty-year-old Prince is exempt from the command of the King’s commanding general, Sir Robert Bertie, the Earl of Lindsay.

Lindsay, in his sixth decade, served with Parliamentary general-in-chief the Earl of Essex in Netherlands, in the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau. He is perhaps best known as a speculator in various Fen-drainage projects in his native Lincolnshire, where his seizure of common grazing-lands earned him the opprobrium of commoners.

The Dutch fashion, Lindsay says, that he learned from Prince Maurice is best for the King's foot: three brigades in the front and two in the back; each brigade organized into six files of eight men deep, with pikemen in the center and musketeers to either side. Rupert prefers the formations pioneered by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, whereby each brigade is divided into four diamonds, with the pikemen at front and in the diamond’s center, musketeers to the sides.

Lindsay, known to have indulged himself "in great liberties of life" as a youth, (according to the advisor) thinks the Swedish method is too complicated for the King’s raw troops. Rupert thinks the Dutch method reduces his cavalry to support for the ignoble Foot. The final decision is, of course, in the hands of Christ’s representative on earth, King Charles.

“The King is wildly indulgent of Rupert,” the advisor said. “He takes his advice in all things related to the army. How do you think he will decide?”

What’s most likely, the advisor said, that the King will “dither about” and defer any firm decision – meaning his impetuous nephew will act “however the mood strikes him” on the day of battle.

“On that day,” the advisor said, “it’s my prayer God doesn’t forget us. ”

Charles Stuart, crowned Charles I in 1625, has pushed England to civil war through eleven years of divine-right rule, introduction of Roman elements into the worship of the Church of England, persecution of the Puritans, and the ruination of trade through monopolies and taxes. Pious, articulate despite a stutter, and a man of great personal dignity, he enjoys collecting paintings, dancing in Masques, and spending time with his wife, Henrietta of France.