Richard Ingoldsby

Colonel Sir Richard Ingoldsby (10 August 1617 – 9 September 1685) was an English officer in the New Model Army during the English Civil War and a politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1647 and 1685. As a Commissioner (Judge) at the trial of King Charles I, he signed the king's death warrant but was one of the few regicides to be pardoned.

Richard Ingoldsby was the second son of Sir Richard Ingoldsby K.B. of Lethenborough in Buckinghamshire and Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Oliver Cromwell of Hinchingbrooke, Huntingdon (the uncle and godfather of Oliver Cromwell the Lord Protector). This meant that Ingoldsby was a cousin of the Lord Protector. He was educated at Lord Williams's School in Thame, Oxfordshire. He had four sisters and seven brothers, including the oldest, Francis Ingoldsby, and Sir Henry Ingoldsby, 1st Baronet.

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 was detached by Sir Thomas Fairfax in May 1645 to relieve Taunton. He took part in the western campaign and was involved in the capture of Bristol and Bridgewater. His regiment garrisoned Oxford when it surrendered in 1646. In the quarrel between the parliament and the army in 1647 Ingoldsby's regiment took the army's part with the army. The regiment was ordered to be disbanded on 14 June, and money was sent to pay it off. The money was recalled by subsequent vote, but it had already reached Oxford, and the soldiers forcibly took it and routed the escorting troops. Ingoldsby's regiment also petitioned against the Treaty of Newport and in favor of punishing the King. On 4 October 1647 Ingoldsby was elected Member of Parliament (M.P.) for Wendover in the Long Parliament. Ingoldsby himself was appointed one of the King's judges, which ended in his signing the death-warrant, although there is no evidence that he was present at any of previous court sessions. 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, although it was quickly suppressed by Ingoldsby and others, and 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.

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