Daniel Axtell | |
---|---|
Born | 1622[ citation needed ] Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England |
Died | 19 October 1660 37–38) Tyburn, London | (aged
Resting place | His Head Set Up on Westminster Hall |
Occupation(s) | Soldier, Cromwellian, Roundhead |
Known for | Pride's Purge, Regicide |
Colonel Daniel Axtell, [1] c. 1622 to 19 October 1660, was a grocer and religious radical from Hertfordshire who served with the Parliamentarian army during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. He was in charge of security during the Trial of Charles I at Westminster Hall in January 1649, and as a result was excluded from the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion after the 1660 Stuart Restoration. He was hanged, drawn and quartered for treason on 19 October 1660.
Axtell was a Baptist from Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire, who was apprenticed as a grocer. He joined the New Model Army, serving in John Pickering's regiment of Foote, [2] and rose to the rank of colonel.
Axtell played a big part in the English Civil War after being recruited by Parliament in 1643. He fought as an infantryman and was present at the sieges of Lindon (May 1644) and York (June 1644), along with the battle of Marston Moor and many other sieges and battles. Axtell was a keen puritan and in 1646 he and some other puritan soldiers started preaching in churches in Oxford.[ clarification needed ] At that time it was illegal to preach unless one was a qualified clergyman, so he had to force the clergymen to give way.[ clarification needed ]
He participated as a lieutenant colonel in Pride's Purge of the Long Parliament (December 1648), arguably the only military coup d'état in English history, and commanded the Parliamentary Guard at the trial of King Charles I at Westminster Hall in 1649.
Axtell was a figure of some prominence in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. He played a role part in the storming of Drogheda and the massacre that ensued. [3] After the town's walls and the internal earthworks had been successfully stormed by English Parliamentarians, Arthur Aston, the Royalist governor of Drogheda, and others retreated to a citadel on Windmill Mount, which was heavily fortified and could not easily be taken by assault. [4]
Colonel Axtell, with some twelve of his men, went up to the top of the mount, and demanded of the governor the surrender of it, who was very stubborn, speaking very big words, but at length was persuaded to go into the windmill at the top of the mount, and as many more of the chiefest of them as it could contain, where they were disarmed, and afterwards all slain.
— Letter in Perfect Diurnal, 1–8 October 1649. [4]
It was on direct orders from Oliver Cromwell that the quarter that had been given to the defenders on Mill Mount by Axtell was overturned, and the unarmed prisoners were killed. [4]
Granny Grannagh castle [5] beside the River Nore is an imposing ruin. "In the civil wars" writes Grosse "it was strongly garrisoned for the King and commanded by Captain Butler, Colonel Axtell, the famous regicide who was governor of Kilkenny, dispatched a party to reduce it, but they returned without accomplishing their orders; upon which Axtell himself marched out with two cannon and summoned the castle to surrender on pain of military execution. Without any hope of relief it is no wonder the garrison submitted". [6]
On 25 October 1650 Axtell led the Parliamentarian army to victory at the battle of Meelick Island (a Crannog on the Shannon, on which the Connaught Irish army was camped) after launching a sudden attack on the Irish army under cover of darkness. After fierce hand-to-hand fighting the Parliamentarians were victorious, killing several hundred of the Irish soldiers and capturing their weapons and equipment. After the conflict, however, it was alleged that many of the Irish had been killed after the promise of quarter. Axtell was court-martialled for this by Henry Ireton and sent back to England. It is possible that Axtell was a scapegoat; Cromwell had committed similar atrocities a year earlier at Drogheda and at Wexford, in the sense that no quarter had been offered. It is possible that the leaders of the Parliamentarian forces in Ireland (if not the Parliamentarian leadership in Britain) felt that the 'shock' tactics initially adopted in Ireland were counter-productive. For example, Ireton's request for lenient surrender terms to be made known by Parliament were refused. Axtell's actions may have run counter to a less ruthless strategy putatively adopted by Ireton in the field.
After the fall of the Protectorate in May 1659, Axtell returned briefly to Ireland as a colonel under the command of Edmund Ludlow but was sent back to England to support John Lambert against Booth's Uprising in August 1659. Axtell was among the veterans of the Good Old Cause who attempted to oppose the Restoration in April 1660. He escaped from the fight at Daventry during which Lambert was captured by Colonel Richard Ingoldsby, but was himself arrested shortly afterwards.
He was arraigned for treason for his actions during the King's trial. His defence at his trial as a regicide, that he was only obeying orders at the trial of the King, was refuted by several witnesses who testified that Axtell had behaved discourteously towards the King, encouraging his men to jeer at or shout down the King when he tried to speak in his own defence. The court held: "[Axtell] justified all that he did was as a soldier, by the command of his superior officer, whom he must obey or die. It was... no excuse, for his superior was a traitor..., and where the command is traitorous, there the obedience to that command is also traitorous." [7]
On 19 October 1660 Axtell was executed by being hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn and his head set up on Westminster Hall. His commanding officer Colonel Francis Hacker had also been condemned as a Regicide and had been executed. Axtell went to his execution unrepentant, declaring "If I had a thousand lives, I could lay them all down for the [Good Old] Cause". [8] [9] During Cromwell's Protectorate, he appropriated Berkhamsted Place' [10] after his execution, the surveyor of Hertfordshire recommended that a new tenant and army officers were needed at Berkhamsted Place "to govern the people much seduced of late by new doctrine preacht unto them by Axtell and his colleagues." [11]
In 1678 Axtell's son, also named Daniel Axtell, fled to Carolina after his house in Stoke Newington was searched for seditious libels. He died in 1687. [12]
Major-General Thomas Harrison, baptised 16 July 1616, executed 13 October 1660, was a prominent member of the radical religious sect known as the Fifth Monarchists, and a soldier who fought for Parliament and the Commonwealth in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. One of those who approved the Execution of Charles I in January 1649, he was a strong supporter of Oliver Cromwell before the two fell out when The Protectorate was established in 1653. Following the 1660 Stuart Restoration, he was arrested, found guilty of treason as a regicide, and sentenced to death. He was hanged, drawn and quartered on 13 October 1660, facing his execution with a courage noted by various observers, including the diarist Samuel Pepys.
The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland took place in 1660 when King Charles II returned from exile in continental Europe. The preceding period of the Protectorate and the civil wars came to be known as the Interregnum (1649–1660).
Henry Ireton was an English general in the Parliamentarian army during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and the son-in-law of Oliver Cromwell. He died of disease outside Limerick in November 1651.
Pride's Purge is the name commonly given to an event that took place on 6 December 1648, when soldiers prevented members of Parliament considered hostile to the New Model Army from entering the House of Commons of England.
Sir Hardress Waller was born in Kent and settled in Ireland during the 1630s. A first cousin of Parliamentarian general William Waller, he fought for Parliament in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, becoming a leading member of the radical element within the New Model Army. In 1649, he signed the death warrant for the Execution of Charles I, and after the Stuart Restoration in 1660 was condemned to death as a regicide.
Colonel John Hewson, also spelt Hughson, was a shoemaker from London and religious Independent who fought for Parliament and the Commonwealth in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, reaching the rank of colonel. Considered one of Oliver Cromwell's most reliable supporters within the New Model Army, his unit played a prominent part in Pride's Purge of December 1648. Hewson signed the death warrant for the Execution of Charles I in January 1649, for which he reportedly sourced the headsman, while soldiers from his regiment provided security.
Colonel Adrian Scrope, also spelt Scroope, 12 January 1601 to 17 October 1660, was a Parliamentarian soldier during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and one of those who signed the death warrant for Charles I in January 1649. Despite being promised immunity after the Restoration in 1660, he was condemned as a regicide and executed in October.
The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland or Cromwellian war in Ireland (1649–1653) was the re-conquest of Ireland by the forces of the English Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Cromwell invaded Ireland with the New Model Army on behalf of England's Rump Parliament in August 1649.
The siege of Drogheda took place from 3 to 11 September 1649, at the outset of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. The coastal town of Drogheda was held by a mixed garrison of Irish Catholics and Royalists under the command of Sir Arthur Aston, when it was besieged by English Commonwealth forces under Oliver Cromwell. After Aston rejected an invitation to surrender, the town was stormed and much of the garrison executed, along with an unknown but "significant number" of civilians. The aftermath of the siege is viewed as an atrocity which still impacts Cromwell's modern reputation.
The Good Old Cause was the name given, retrospectively, by the soldiers of the New Model Army, to the complex of reasons that motivated their fight on behalf of the Parliament of England.
Colonel John Okey was a political and religious radical who served in the Parliamentarian army during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. A regicide who approved the Execution of Charles I in 1649, he escaped to the Dutch Republic after the 1660 Stuart Restoration, but was brought back to England and executed on 19 April 1662.
Sir Arthur Aston was a soldier, most noted for his support for King Charles I in the English Civil War, and in folklore for the gruesome manner of his death in Ireland. He was from a prominent Roman Catholic family originating in Cheshire. He was killed during the Siege of Drogheda during the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland.
The city of Waterford in southeastern Ireland was besieged twice during 1649 and 1650 during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. The town was held by Irish Confederate Catholic under General Richard Farrell and English Royalist troops under general Thomas Preston. It was besieged by English Parliamentarians under Oliver Cromwell, Michael Jones and Henry Ireton.
Hercules Huncks was an English soldier and one of the Regicides of King Charles I of England.
The Battle of Meelick Island took place on Meelick Island in the River Shannon, on the border between Connacht and Leinster in Ireland on 25 October 1650. It was fought between the Irish Confederates and the English Parliamentarians during the Irish Confederate Wars. The battle occurred when an English force under Colonel Daniel Axtell attacked the Connacht Irish army led by the Marquess of Clanricarde. The result was the rout of the Connacht army by Axtell's soldiers.
Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector and ruler of the English Commonwealth after the defeat and beheading of King Charles I during the English Civil War, died on 3 September 1658 of natural causes. He was given a public funeral at Westminster Abbey equal to those of the monarchs who came before him. His position passed to his son Richard, who was overthrown shortly afterwards, leading to the re-establishment of the monarchy.
Charles Fleetwood, c. 1618 to 4 October 1692, was an English lawyer from Northamptonshire, who served with the Parliamentarian army during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. A close associate of Oliver Cromwell, to whom he was related by marriage, Fleetwood held a number of senior political and administrative posts under the Commonwealth, including Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1652 to 1655.
Colonel Francis Hacker was an English soldier who fought for Parliament during the English Civil War and one of the Regicides of King Charles I of England.
Thomas Waite, also known as Thomas Wayte was an English soldier who fought for Parliament in the English Civil War, a Member of Parliament for Rutland, and one of the regicides of King Charles I.
Sir Henry Ingoldsby, 1st Baronet (1622–1701) was an English military commander and landowner.