Richard Ingoldsby

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Colonel Sir Richard Ingoldsby (1617–1685) was an officer in the New Model Army and a Regicide who as a Commisoner (Judge) at the trial of King Charles I signed his death warrant.

Richard Ingoldsby was the second son of Sir Richard Ingoldsby K.B. of Lenborough in Buckinghamshire and Elizabeth (nee Cromwell). Her father was Sir Oliver Cromwell of Hinchinbroke, Hunts, the grandfather of Oliver Cromwell the Lord Protector. This meant that Ingoldsby was a cousin of the Lord Protector.

During the English Civil war he joined John Hampden's regiment as a Captain and followed Oliver Cromwell into the New Model Army where he served as Colonel. He took part in the western campaign and the was involved in the capture of Bristol and Bridgewater. His regiment garrisoned Oxford when it surrendered in 1646. In 1649 his regiment was one of the regiments which supported the Bishopsgate mutiny and for a time he was held prisoner by his own men. Some Levellers, notably Col. William Eyres, were imprisoned in Oxford after the Banbury mutiny, and contrived to inspire a second mutiny in the garrison, it was quickly suppressed by Ingoldsby and others; two of the ring-leaders were shot in Broken Hayes. In May 1651 Ingoldsby's regiment left Oxford and joined the army which fought at the Battle of Worcester the last battle of the English Civil War.

Ingoldsby sat in the second house of Parliament commonly known as Cromwell's Other House from 1657–1659. When Oliver Cromwell died he supported Richard Cromwell as Lord Protector. But after the Rump Parliament removed Richard he threw in his lot with General George Monck and the move towards the restoration of the English monarchy.

After the restoration he was pardoned for his regicide for two reasons. He had captured John Lambert on Sunday 22 April 1660, when Lambert had escaped from the Tower where General George Monck had imprisoned him, and had tried to raise the supporters of the Good Old Cause in a last ditch attempt to stop the English Restoration in 1660. Ingoldsby also pleaded that he had been forced to sign the death warrant by his cousin Oliver Cromwell, in that "he refused but Cromwell and the others held him by violence; and Cromwell, with a loud laugh, taking his hand in his, and putting the pen between his fingers, with his own hand wrote Richard Ingoldsby"^[1]. He was Member of Parliament for the constituency of Aylesbury from 1660 until 1681.

[edit] Notes

^ Quote from Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England from David L.Smith; Oliver Cromwell 1640-1658. See online The Cromwell Association Quotes about Oliver Cromwell