Sydnam Poyntz

Colonel General Sydnam Poyntz (bap. 3 November 1607) was an English soldier who served in the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil War.

After continental military service, he return to England in 1644 and became an officer in the Parliamentary army. He became commauder-in-chief of the Northern Association and governor of York. He won the battle of Rowton Heath on 24 September 1645. The Presbyterians Parliamentary pary thought him to be likely to oppose the New Model Army, but in 1647 he was sent by his soldiers a prisoner to Thomas Fairfax. He fought for London against the New Model Army in 1647, and on the collapse of his cause he fled to Holland. He accompanied |Lord Willoughby to the West Indies in 1650, and probably settled in Virginia.

Poyntz was the fourth son of John Poyntz of Reigate, Surrey, and Anne Skinner, was baptised on 3 November 1607. Poyntz was originally apprenticed to a London tradesman, but, being ill-treated by his master, he took service as a mercenary soldier in Holland, and in the Thirty Years' War.

Poyntz wrote a paper called Relation on his military service abroad between 1625 and 1636, and it gives some idea of what he did although D.N. Farr his biographer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography warns that it is "fitfully accurate". and relates that he:

claimed to have served first in English regiments in the Netherlands, entering Lord Vaux's regiment as a private soldier under a Captain Reysby, and soon after that the earl of Essex's regiment under Captain William Baillie. He went on to join the army of Count Mansfeld in Germany and Hungary, and it was following the break up of the army that, he later claimed, he became a prisoner of the Turks.

In 1631 Poyntz fought for John George of Saxony at the Battle of Breitenfeld. He changed sides and fought as a captain in Wallenstein's army in the service of Emperor Ferdinand II at the Battle of Lützen in 1632. He remained in the Imperial army and the following year he campaigned in Silesia and was present at the Battle of Nordlingen in 1634. He left the army and Germany after the Peace of Prague in 1636. His time in Germany was lucrative and he bought an estate probably in the vicinity of Schorndorf. He returned to England that year and wrote his Relation, but when he failed to fined employment as a soldier in England, it is likely that he returned to the continent to find further employment in the Thirty Years' War. He may have risen to the rank of sergeant-major, and may have been knighted on the battle-field.

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