The moral advantage of this skirmish was very great. It gave increased courage to Rupert's troops and it "exceedingly appalled the adversary," to whom the Prince's name was henceforth "very terrible." To the Elector, and to some of the friends of his family, such a reputation was less gratifying than it was to Rupert himself. Dependent upon the English Parliament as the Palatines were,--for King Charles could no longer help them, and the Stadtholder was old and failing,--Rupert's zeal in his uncle's cause was a serious disadvantage to them. "I fear," wrote Roe to the Elector, "the freshness of his spirit and his zeal to his uncle may have drawn from him some words, if not deeds, that have begot a very ill odour; insomuch {89} that nothing is so much cried out against as his actions, which do reflect upon your whole family and cause, and there may be more need of a bridle to moderate him than of spurs. They will never forgive me the ill-fortune to have procured his liberty."[11] To this the Elector replied indignantly: "It is impossible either for the Queen--my mother, or myself to bridle my brother's youth and fieryness, at so great a distance, and in the employment he has. It were a great indiscretion in any to expect it, and an injustice to blame us for things beyond our help."[12] He did his best to appease the Parliament by exhibiting his own ingratitude towards his uncle. "The Prince Elector doth write kindly--others might say basely--to the Roundhead Parliament,"[13] reported Sir George Radcliffe. Further, Charles Louis published a manifesto in the names of himself and his mother, deprecating Rupert's actions, and disclaiming all sympathy with them. And in 1644 he came himself to London, and took the Covenant; in reward for which hypocrisy the Parliament lodged him in Whitehall, and granted him a large pension.[14] Elizabeth was less time-serving, and her intercepted letters to Rupert gave great offence to the Parliament. She tried to pacify the indignation she had roused, writing to the Speaker: "Albeit I cannot at present remember what I then particularly writ, yet if anything did perchance slip from my pen in the private relation between a mother and son, which might give them the least distaste, I entreat them to make no worse construction of it than was by me intended."[15] But she could not disguise her real sentiments, and her pension was stopped by the Parliament. "Our gracious Mistress hath her part, as who hath not, in these public sufferings," {90} wrote one of her gentlemen in 1643. "It is upon a full year that her entertainments have been stopped, and I believe that she fareth the worse for the impetuousness of Prince Rupert her son, who is quite out of her government."[16]