with the King's children, lest he taught them to swear." Boye repaid the King's affection warmly: "Next to his master, he loves the King and the King's children, and cares very little for any others." We are told further, in a paragraph evidently aimed at Rupert, that the dog, "in exercises of religion, carries himself most popishly and cathedrally. He is very seldom at any conscionable sermons, but as for public prayers, he seldom or never misses {80} them.... But, above all, as soon as their Church Minstrel begins his arbitrary jig, he is as attentive as one of us private Christians are at St. Antholin's."[81] Boye is generally supposed to have been a poodle, and certainly he is so represented in the caricatures preserved of him. But he must have been in truth a remarkable one, for Lady Sussex relates in one of her letters, that when Rupert shot five bucks, "his dog Boye pulled them down."[82] To this "divill dog" were attributed supernatural powers of going invisible, of foretelling events, and of magically protecting his master from harm. "The Roundheads fancied he was the Devil, and took it very ill that he should set himself against them!" says Sir Edward Southcote.[83] Many of the Puritans did, in truth, imagine him to be Rupert's evil spirit, and it was reported that the dog fed on human flesh. Cleveland refers to their general fear of Boye in his "Rupertismus":-- "They fear the giblets of his train, they fear, "Even his dog, that four-legged Cavalier, "He that devours the scraps that Lunsford makes, "Whose pictures feeds upon a child in stakes, "'Gainst whom they have these articles in souse,-- "First that he barks against the sense o' th' House, "Resolved 'delinquent,' to the Tower straight, "Either to the Lyons, or the Bishop's gate. * * * * * * * "Thirdly he smells intelligence, that's better, "And cheaper too, than Pym's, by his own letter; "Lastly he is a devil without doubt, "For when he would lie down he wheels about, "Makes circles, and is couchant in a ring, "And therefore, score up one, for conjuring!"[84]