Hezekiah Haynes (died 1693) supported the parliamentary cause during the English Civil War rising to the rank of major. During the Interregnum, under the patronage of his war time commander General Charles Fleetwood, he held a number of administrative posts in the under the early Commonwealth and Protectorate. He supported his old general during the late Commonwealth, and after spending 18 months in prison during the first couple of years of the Restoration, he retired to the family estate of Copford Hall in Essex. [1] [2]
Haynes supported the parliamentary cause during the English Civil War. At the outbreak of war he took a captains commission in Colonel Holborne's regiment of foot. He transferred to Charles Fleetwood's cavalry regiment and by 1645 had risen to the rank of major. He fought at Battle of Preston in 1648, commanded the regiment at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650 and may well have fought at Worcester in the last battle of the Civil War. [1]
During the Interregnum he held a number of administrative posts, all of them in and around his home region of East Anglia. [1] From August 1655 until January 1657 while England and Wales were under the rule of the Major-Generals, he was a deputy to Charles Fleetwood, along with George Fleetwood and William Packer. Each carried out the day-to-day administration in different counties in the region assigned to their governor. [3]
After the death of Oliver Cromwell, Haynes supported the Wallingford House party when they overthrew Richard Cromwell and in 1659 introduced the short lived second Commonwealth. In December, shortly before the Restoration, the Rump Parliament ordered him to leave London and return home, but he chose not to. In November 1660 he was arrested on suspicion of subversion, and held in the Tower of London for 18 months. He was released in April 1662 upon payment of a £5,000 bond for his future good behaviour. He retired to his family estate of Copford Hall and lived quietly until his death on 26 August 1693. [1]
Haynes was the second son of John Haynes of Copford Hall in Essex and Mary Thornton, daughter of Robert Thornton of Nottingham. In the early 1650s he married Anne, daughter of Thomas Smithsby, the former saddler to Charles I. They had at least one son. [1]
Haynes passed the family seat of Copford Hall over to his son in 1684, and moved to Coggeshall where he died in 1693. [1]
The Commonwealth was the political structure during the period from 1649 to 1660 when England and Wales, later along with Ireland and Scotland, were governed as a republic after the end of the Second English Civil War and the trial and execution of Charles I. The republic's existence was declared through "An Act declaring England to be a Commonwealth", adopted by the Rump Parliament on 19 May 1649. Power in the early Commonwealth was vested primarily in the Parliament and a Council of State. During the period, fighting continued, particularly in Ireland and Scotland, between the parliamentary forces and those opposed to them, as part of what is now generally referred to as the Third English Civil War.
Major-General Thomas Harrison sided with Parliament in the English Civil War. During the Interregnum he was a leader of the Fifth Monarchists. In 1649 he signed the death warrant of Charles I and in 1660, shortly after the Restoration, he was found guilty of regicide and hanged, drawn and quartered.
Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, KB, PC was an English Parliamentarian and soldier during the first half of the 17th century. With the start of the English Civil War in 1642 he became the first Captain-General and Chief Commander of the Parliamentarian army, also known as the Roundheads. However, he was unable and unwilling to score a decisive blow against the Royalist army of King Charles I. He was eventually overshadowed by the ascendancy of Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax and resigned his commission in 1646.
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Sir William Waller was an English soldier and politician, who commanded Parliamentarian armies during the First English Civil War, before relinquishing his commission under the 1645 Self-denying Ordinance.
The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, sometimes known as the British Civil Wars, were an intertwined series of conflicts that took place between 1639 and 1653 in the Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland – separate kingdoms which had the same king, Charles I. The wars were fought mainly over issues of governance and religion, and included rebellions, civil wars and invasions. The English Civil War has become the best-known of these conflicts. It ended with the English parliamentarian army defeating all other belligerents, the execution of the King, the abolition of the monarchy, and the founding of the Commonwealth of England; a unitary republic which controlled the British Isles until 1660.
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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.
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