George Goring: Royalist Commander and Debauchee
Maurice Ashley profiles the younger George Goring, one of the more successful of Cavalier generals, but one whose brave deeds and eclectic character have been little discussed.
George Goring the younger has not yet been awarded a biography, though he deserves it,1 for he was one of the oddest and most entertaining characters on the Royalist side during the first civil war. After Prince Rupert and Lord Hopton, he was the most successful of the Cavalier generals.
He distinguished himself at Marston Moor and in 1645 twice inflicted repulses on Oliver Cromwell, once in Dorset and once at Faringdon in Oxfordshire. He also took part in the defeat of the Earl of Essex, the Parliamentarian commander-in-chief, at the battle of Lostwithiel.
Sir Richard Bulstrode, who became his adjutant in Cornwall, declared that:
He was a person of extraordinary abilities as well as courage and was without dispute as good an officer as any that served the King and the most dexterous in any sudden emergency that I have ever seen.
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