Poetic licentiousness

Reprobates were, in the Calvinist lexicon, those unfortunates not included among God’s elect and therefore sentenced to eternal damnation.

Reprobates were, in the Calvinist lexicon, those unfortunates not included among God’s elect and therefore sentenced to eternal damnation. For stern English puritans it was pleasing to think that Royalist ‘cavaliers’ were among them. Alas, there was no way of knowing. Gallingly, since life everlasting could be bought neither by good works (in the Roman tradition) nor by belief alone (in the Lutheran disposition), cavaliers had an equal chance of it with anyone else. But then, confusion reigns everywhere in the entangled mesh of roundhead versus cavalier. On the field, especially among commanders, there was nothing like the marked distinctiveness of dress and hair-length displayed in modern re-enactments of Civil War battles.