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 that no officer should be deprived of his commission without being heard in his own defence by a council of war, and, on the king's refusal, left Newark, and, proceeding to Belvoir, sent to the parliament for passports to leave the country (, pp. 145–7;, Diary, p. 270; , ii. 373). As passports were refused him unless he would promise never to draw his sword against the parliament again, the negotiation fell through (Lords' Journals, vii. 671, 699, viii. 2;, iii. 208). Finding that he could not go with the parliament's leave or stay with the king's, Rupert preferred to submit to his uncle, and, on his free acknowledgment of his errors, a reconciliation took place (8 Dec. 1645). He came to Oxford, kissed the king's hand, and was restored to some degree of favour, though his commissions were not given back to him (ib. iii. 212, 223; Clarendon State Papers, ii. 195). When King Charles (against Rupert's advice) escaped from Oxford and put himself into the power of the Scots, Rupert wished to accompany him, but the king declined, saying that he would be discovered by his height (, iii. 196, 225). He therefore stayed in Oxford, and was wounded in a skirmish during the siege (, Anglia Rediviva, p. 263). By the terms of the capitulation of that city Rupert and his brother Maurice were given leave to stay in England for six months, residing at a certain distance from London, and were then to have passes to go abroad with their servants and goods (ib. p. 168). But parliament, which in the Uxbridge propositions and in subsequent treaties had excluded Rupert from pardon, was not minded to let him stay so long in England, and on 25 June 1646 the brothers were ordered to leave the country within ten days, on the ground that they had broken the articles of capitulation by coming to Oatlands, which was within the prohibited distance from London (, Memorials of the Civil War, i. 114, 119, 121).

The reason for this severity was the odium which Rupert had incurred during the war. He was accused of cruelty and plundering. ‘Many towns and villages he plundered, which is to say robbed (for at that time was the word first used in England, being born in Germany when that stately country was so miserably wasted and pillaged by foreign armies), and committed other outrages upon those who stood affected to the parliament, executing some, and hanging servants at their masters' doors for not discovering of their masters’ (, History of the Long Parliament, ed. 1854, p. 244). The prince published a declaration in answer to these charges, but, however exaggerated, they were not altogether undeserved (Prince Rupert his Declaration, 1643;, ii. 119). He stuck at very little in raising contributions. The prisoners he took at Cirencester were treated with great barbarity, and when his troops stormed Liverpool and Bolton much slaughter took place. But when he granted articles he rigidly observed them, and the plundering which took place at Bristol and Newark he used every effort to prevent (, ii. 262;, v. 308; cf. , i. 15). And, though sometimes rigorously enforcing the laws of war against the vanquished, he was also capable of acting with chivalrous generosity towards them (, i. 391;, Civil War in Herefordshire, ii. 359). His execution of twelve prisoners in March 1645, which called forth a solemn denunciation from the parliament, was a justifiable reprisal for the execution of a like number of his own soldiers by a parliamentary commander (ib. ii. 142; Old Parliamentary History, xiii. 444, 455).

Rupert's unpopularity was still greater because his activity for the king's cause was looked upon as an act of ingratitude to the English nation. ‘Let all England judge,’ wrote Fairfax to Rupert, ‘whether the burning its towns, ruining its cities, and destroying its people be a good requital from a person of your family, which has had the prayers, tears, purses, and blood of its parliament and people’ (, p. 109). Three years earlier, in September 1642, Sir Thomas Roe urged the queen of Bohemia and the elector palatine to represent to Rupert the injury which his conduct was doing to the cause of his family (, vi. 10). In October 1642 a declaration was published on behalf of the queen and the elector palatine disavowing Rupert's actions, and lamenting the fruitlessness of their efforts to restrain him (Somers Tracts, iv. 498).

Rupert left England on 5 July 1646, and went at once to St. Germains. There he was solicited to enter the French service, and accepted the offer, reserving to himself liberty to return to the service of Charles I whenever that king's affairs would permit. The French government appointed him mareschal-de-camp, with command of all the English troops in French service, amounting to fifteen hundred or two thousand men (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 301;, iii. 236–47). Rupert served under Marshal Gassion in the campaign of 1647, showing his skill at the siege of Landrécy, and his courage in the rescue of Sir Robert Holmes