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Miles Sindercombe (died 13 February 1657) was the leader of a group that tried to assassinate Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell during the period of the Protectorate in 1657.
Sindercombe was born in Kent and was apprenticed to a surgeon. During the English Civil War, he became a Roundhead and a Leveller. In 1649, he took part in the mutiny of his regiment and when it failed he fled. In 1655, he re-appeared as a member of a cavalry regiment in Scotland and took part in a plot to take control of the local army. This failed as well, and Sindercombe fled to the Netherlands.
In Flanders, he met another Leveller and anti-Cromwell plotter, Edward Sexby, in 1656. Sindercombe joined his plot to assassinate Cromwell in hope of restoring the Puritan republic as they saw it. Sexby supplied Sindercombe with money and weapons.
In 1656, Sindercombe returned to England and gathered a group of co-conspirators, including renegade soldier John Cecil, apparent conman William Boyes and John Toope, a member of Cromwell's Life-Guards. Toope gave the other plotters information about Cromwell's movements.
First, Sindercombe rented a house in King Street in Westminster, where they intended to shoot Cromwell when he rode past in his coach. However, they noticed that it would be a difficult place to escape from after the attempt, so they abandoned the plan.
Next, Sindercombe rented another house near Westminster Abbey, using the name "John Fish". He intended to shoot Cromwell with an arquebus on his way from Westminster Abbey to Parliament on 17 September 1656. However, when a large crowd gathered outside, Boyes panicked and left, and the attempt had to be abandoned.
Sindercombe's group then intended to shoot Cromwell when he left for Hampton Court, as he customarily did every Friday. They intended to shoot at Cromwell's coach while it was going through a narrow passage. As it happened, Cromwell changed his mind on that particular Friday, and the plotters waited in vain.
The next idea was to shoot Cromwell when he was walking in Hyde Park. They broke the hinges of the park gates to facilitate their escape, and John Cecil began to follow Cromwell and his entourage. However, Cromwell became interested in Cecil's horse and called him over. Cecil lost his nerve and could not shoot him. He afterwards claimed that the horse was ill and that he could not have escaped.
After so many failed attempts, Cromwell's spymaster, John Thurloe, had noticed the would-be assassins. He had already heard about the plot from his spies on the Continent.
Sindercombe's next idea was to burn down Whitehall Palace and the Lord Protector with it. Boyes made an explosive device out of gunpowder, tar and pitch, and the group planted it in the palace chapel on 8 January 1657. However, Toope, who had had a change of heart, revealed the plan to authorities. When the plotters left, guards disarmed the bomb.
Thurloe gave an order to arrest the plotters. Cecil was easily captured, but Boyes escaped. Sindercombe fought the guards until one guard cut off part of his nose. Cecil and Sindercombe were sent to the Tower.
Cecil decided to tell all. With Toope's aid, Thurloe learned Sexby's part in the plot and presented his findings to the Parliament.
Sindercombe remained uncooperative. On 9 February 1657, he was found guilty of High treason when both Cecil and Toope testified against him and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Sindercomb's sister brought him poison the night before he was to be executed, either to spare him the agony of such a death, or because he did not want to face the humiliation of execution. He drank it and was found dead in his cell in the Tower of London on 13 February 1657. His body was dragged to the erected gallows and buried beneath it by the hangman.
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John Lilburne, also known as Freeborn John, was an English political Leveller before, during and after the English Civil Wars 1642–1650. He coined the term "freeborn rights", defining them as rights with which every human being is born, as opposed to rights bestowed by government or human law. In his early life he was a Puritan, though towards the end of his life he became a Quaker. His works have been cited in opinions by the United States Supreme Court.
Postmaster General of the United Kingdom was a Cabinet ministerial position in HM Government. Aside from maintaining the postal system, the Telegraph Act 1868 established the Postmaster General's right to exclusively maintain electric telegraphs. This would subsequently extend to telecommunications and broadcasting.
Colonel Edward Sexby was an English Puritan soldier and Leveller in the army of Oliver Cromwell. Later he turned against Cromwell and plotted his assassination.
John Thurloe was an English politician who served as secretary to the council of state in Protectorate England and spymaster for Oliver Cromwell and held the position of Postmaster General between 1655 and 1660. He was from Great Milton in Oxfordshire and of Lincoln's Inn,
John Jones Maesygarnedd was a Welsh military leader and politician, known as one of the regicides of King Charles I following the English Civil War. A brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell, Jones was a Parliamentarian and an avid republican at a time when most of Wales was Royalist, and became one of 57 commissioners that signed the death warrant authorising the execution of Charles I following his trial. After the Restoration of the monarchy, Jones was one of few excluded from the general amnesty in the Indemnity and Oblivion Act, and was tried, found guilty, then hanged, drawn and quartered at Charing Cross.
The Second Protectorate Parliament in England sat for two sessions from 17 September 1656 until 4 February 1658, with Thomas Widdrington as the Speaker of the House of Commons. In its first session, the House of Commons was its only chamber; in the second session an Other House with a power of veto over the decisions of the Commons was added.
The Third Protectorate Parliament sat for one session, from 27 January 1659 until 22 April 1659, with Chaloner Chute and Thomas Bampfylde as the Speakers of the House of Commons. It was a bicameral Parliament, with an Upper House having a power of veto over the Commons.
Colonel Sir Richard Ingoldsby 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.
The Interregnum was the period between the execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649 and the arrival of his son Charles II in London on 29 May 1660 which marked the start of the Restoration. During the Interregnum, England was under various forms of republican government.
The Penruddock Uprising was a Royalist revolt launched on 11 March 1655, intending to restore Charles II to the throne of England. It was led by John Penruddock, a Wiltshire landowner who fought for Charles I in the First English Civil War; intended as one of a number of co-ordinated risings, the others failed to take place and it was easily suppressed.
Henry Cromwell was the fourth son of Oliver Cromwell and Elizabeth Bourchier, and an important figure in the Parliamentarian regime in Ireland.
Killing No Murder is a pamphlet published in 1657 during The Protectorate period of the English Interregnum era of English history. The pamphlet of disputed authorship advocates the assassination of Oliver Cromwell. The publication was in high demand at the time of its distribution. Cromwell was said to have been so disturbed after the publication of Killing No Murder that he never spent more than two nights in the same place and always took extreme precaution in planning his travel.
Events from the year 1657 in England.
John Reynolds (1625–1657) was a soldier in the English Civil War and during the Commonwealth. Reynolds may have been a member of the Middle Temple. He joined the parliamentary army, and in 1648 he commanded a regiment of horse. He took part in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. He was a member of the Westminster-based Protectorate Parliament for Galway and Mayo in 1654 and Waterford and Tipperary in 1656. He was knighted in 1655. In 1657 he commanded the English force which cooperated with the French in Flanders in the Anglo-Spanish War and was lost at sea when returning to England.
Matthew Thomlinson (1617–1681) was an English soldier who fought for Parliament in the English Civil War. He was a regicide of Charles I. Tomlinson was a colonel of horse (cavalry) in the New Model Army and was one of the officers presenting the remonstrance to parliament in 1647. He took charge of Charles I in 1648, until Charles's execution, but refused to be his judge. He followed Oliver Cromwell to Scotland in 1650.
John Claypole was an officer in the Parliamentary army in 1645 during the English Civil War. He was created Lord Claypole by Oliver Cromwell, but this title naturally came to an end with the Restoration of 1660.
John Claypole was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1654. He supported the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War.
During the Protectorate period (1653–1659) of the Commonwealth of England, the Lord Protector reserved the power previously held by the monarch to confer knighthoods, baronetcies and peerages.
John Sturgion was an English General Baptist preacher and pamphleteer.
Humphrey Mackworth was an English politician and soldier of Shropshire landed gentry origins. He was military governor of Shrewsbury, in succession to his father and namesake, for almost five years under the Protectorate, from 1655 until late in 1659. He represented Shrewsbury in the First, Second and Third Protectorate Parliaments.
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