If the exploits of Gustavus Adolphus rank as "high cavaliering", some of the highest cavaliers - on this definition - were to be found among the future parliamentarians who joined his campaigns with even greater enthusiasm, and in greater numbers, than Stubbs's future Royalists.

Come the political crisis of 1641, when King Charles looked likely to be toppled by a Parliament-backed aristocratic clique, and this spirit of "high cavaliering" was on show once again: in the plots advanced by loyalist army officers to break Parliament's power in a daring, but ultimately abortive, military coup.