Bob Shaftoe

Overview

Jack Shaftoe’s older brother. Where Jack is chaos and impulse, Bob is discipline and endurance. Both start as mudlarks in the Thames; Jack becomes King of the Vagabonds, Bob becomes a sergeant in the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards. The Shaftoe brothers represent two responses to being born at the absolute bottom of 17th-century English society.

In the Novel

• Book 2 — Introduced in the flashback to the Shaftoe brothers’ childhood in 1665 London. All three boys (Dick, Bob, and Jack) began as mudlarks under the tutelage of Jack Cole.
• Book 3 — Bob has risen to Sergeant in the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards, one of the elite regiments. He’s present at the Battle of Sedgemoor (1685), the defeat of Monmouth’s rebellion. He woos Abigail Frome, a Taunton schoolgirl, using his brother Jack’s more glamorous name.
• Becomes a major character in The Confusion and The System of the World, where his military career parallels the rise of John Churchill (the future Duke of Marlborough).

What’s real

Fictional, but representative of a real class. The King’s Own Black Torrent Guards were a real regiment, later renamed the 6th Dragoon Guards. The career path — street urchin to professional soldier — was common in an era when the army offered one of the few routes out of poverty. “Bobby Shafto” is also a famous English folk song, though the connection is playful rather than direct.