Nathaniel Rich (soldier)

Colonel Nathaniel Rich (died c. 1701) sided with Parliament in the English Civil War. He was a colonel in Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army.

Nathaniel was the son of Robert Rich of Felsted, Essex, the younger son of Richard Rich, illegitimate son of Richard Rich, 1st Baron Rich. His father having died before 1636, when Nathaniel was still in his minority, his uncle, the Merchant Adventurer Sir Nathaniel Rich (who died in that year) left him the manor of Stondon Massey in Essex. Rich was educated at Felsted School (1632-1637) under the care of the godly minister Samuel Wharton, and at St Catharine's College, Cambridge (where he matriculated in 1637), and was admitted to Gray's Inn in 1639.

At the start of the Civil War, like many other young gentlemen from the Inns of Court, he entered the lifeguards of the Earl of Essex. In the summer of 1643 he received a commission as Captain, raised a troop of horse in the County of Essex, and joined the Earl of Manchester's army. In December 1644 he held the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and was one of the witnesses on whom Cromwell relied to prove his charges against Manchester. When the New Model Army was formed, Rich, in spite of some opposition from the House of Commons, became Colonel of a regiment of horse. He fought at Naseby, and distinguished himself in an attack on the royalist quarters in March 1646 when he led a party of horse and dragoons that routed a royalist outpost at St Columb Major, Cornwall. He was also one of Thomas Fairfax's commissioners at the surrender of Oxford.

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