Within a few days of Rupert's first arrival at Kinsale, the execution of Charles I had taken place. For some weeks Rupert remained ignorant of this final disaster, but in February a vague rumour reached him, and he wrote in great agitation to Ormonde: "I beseech your Lordship to let me know whether you have any certain news of the King's misfortune."[45] The dreadful rumour was only too soon confirmed. From the Hague he received dismal accounts of the general depression and confusion--"all men being full of designs to be counsellors and officers;" and he was entreated to write a few lines to cheer and encourage his young cousin, now Charles II.[46] Very shortly he received {237} his commission as Lord High Admiral, which the new King had now power to grant, and he thereupon published a solemn declaration of his intention to fight the Parliament to the death. "The bloody and inhumane murder of my late dread uncle of ever renowned memory hath administered to me fresh occasion to be assistant, both in Counsel and to the best of my personal power, to my dear cousin, now Charles II of England... I do protest and really speak it, it was ever my intention to do him service and employ my best endeavours for enthroning him, as bound by consanguinity, but more particularly engaged by reason of former favours received from his late royal father, my murdered uncle. Yet I do ingeniously confess it was never my desire to be employed in this great and weighty matter of His Majesty's Admiral. I should willingly have been satisfied with an inferior place, where I might have had the freedom, in part, to bring to condign punishment such great traitors and rebels who had a hand in the murder of my late uncle, and do still persist in their perverse way of rebellion and cruelty. And my reasons why I did not wish so great a command were these--namely, I know, and was ascertained, myself had been rendered odious to many English who did not rightly understand my real intentions, but only believed lies and forged reports of my enemies' framing. And I did likewise consider that my undertaking the admiralty might be a means to draw away the affections of His Majesty's subjects, by reason such rumours had been upon me. These, and many other reasons which now I will omit, did move me several times to refuse what, at length, His Majesty's Council of Lords, knights and gentlemen, who are now about him, did, in a manner, thrust upon me."[47] Rupert's greatness had been, in truth, thrust upon him, but having accepted it, he resolved to use it {238} for avenging his uncle to the uttermost. "Prince Rupert," declared a sailor of the Parliament, who had been his prisoner, "is not ashamed openly to profess that, provided he may ruin and destroy the English interest, especially the estates of the merchants and mariners of London, he cares not whether he gets a farthing more while he lives than what will maintain himself, his confederates, and his fleet."[48]