The Journal of Military History

Florene Memegalos’s biography of Colonel George Goring is old-fashioned English military history at its most enjoyable. Employing the traditional narrative, she recites Goring’s adventures, particularly those during the reign of Charles I. The colonel fought on the Continent in the 1630s, in the English civil wars in the 1640s, and concluded a fairly distinguished career as a commissioned officer in the Spanish Army of Flanders in the 1650s. Although the events she recounts are familiar, Memegalos unearths new details (p. 225) in her treatment of a complicated and controversial warrior. Goring’s military reputation has been besmirched by allegations of debauchery and unprincipled behavior. Yet, his consistent [End Page 1277] employment, not to mention the trust placed in him by his king, queen, comrades, and several foreign governments, substantiates his dependability and talent.

The author perused manuscripts in county record offices, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, and overseas archives. The main repository for evidence concerning English military history is the National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office), now located in the London suburb of Kew. Whilst the author’s investigation of auxiliary archives is superlative, she chose not to explore the National Archives, relying instead on the dated, incomplete, and occasionally inaccurate Calendar of State Papers, Domestic. A goodly amount of uncalendared material bearing directly on English warfare survives in the Exchequer class of documents (E 101, E 351, E 407, etc.), the War Office (WO 49, WO 50, etc.), and the Privy Council Registers (PC 2, available in printed facsimile in many cases). The veritable gold mine for the English civil war, however, is State Papers 28, comprised of scores of boxes of military documentation that lacks a published calendar. Goring’s name (and likely his signature) would doubtless turn up in these darker corners of the National Archives, and Memegalos possesses the skill to have a good trawl through this material. The colonel’s biography might have been described as definitive if she had perhaps another year or so to cull through these intriguing classifications.

This book illuminates the royalist, rather than the parliamentary, officer corps. In the last decade a relatively complex historiography of the cavaliers has developed, and Goring’s royalism is a promising line of inquiry. His military identity and experiences may have been the determinants of those actions described by some as “deplorable”. As a veteran of the Low Countries’ Wars, Goring’s use of violence fits the continental model, and the latitude he granted his troops in plundering England’s West Country was more a matter of expediency than terror. His “unprincipled” political actions, such as divulging details of the Army Plot to Parliament, were based on a pragmatism and realpolitik that civilian royalists rarely fathomed, blinded as they were by ideology and family connection. Little wonder that some royalist courtiers, ministers, and politicians regarded Goring with disdain. In that sense, the book might appeal to a broader audience interested in how professional soldiers make their way through the political world.