Solomon Richards

Solomon Richards was an Irish soldier of the War of the Three Kingdoms and the Williamite War in Ireland. He is best known for his part in a failed attempt to relieve the Siege of Derry in 1689.

During the War of the Three Kingdoms, Richards served in Oliver Cromwell's own regiment. Richards took part in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and was granted 3,000 acres of land in County Wexford. He was appointed Governor of Wexford town in 1659, but following the Restoration the following year he was briefly imprisoned. He was released and allowed to keep his newly acquired lands as part of the Act of Settlement.

For the following twenty-seven years he lived quietly on his Irish estate. In September 1688, threatened with an invasion by his Dutch nephew William of Orange, the Catholic James II commissioned Richards to raise a new regiment for the English Army. As a nonconformist Protestant Richards was a slightly unusual choice to appoint to command a newly raised regiment, but James was trying to pursue a tactic of creating an alliance of Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants, both of whom had traditionally suffered restrictions due to the Penal Laws. Rather than raising his regiment in Ireland as might be expected, Richards recruited them from London and the Home Counties.

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