Surnames beginning 'D'

The Cromwell Association Online Directory of Parliamentarian Army Officers . Originally published by British History Online, , 2017.

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'Surnames beginning 'D'', in The Cromwell Association Online Directory of Parliamentarian Army Officers , (, 2017) pp. . British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/cromwell-army-officers/surnames-d [accessed 19 April 2024]

Surnames beginning 'D'

Daily, John John Daily
Ensign in Lord Mandeville’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 36.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Dalbier, John John Dalbier (died 1648)
Dalbier’s date of birth, family and background are unknown. Probably of German or Dutch ancestry. Merchant, administrator, negotiator and soldier, he was briefly attached to the duke of Buckingham’s military ventures and was probably involved in the Ile de Rhe expedition. In 1642 he became a captain and then colonel of horse in the earl of Essex’s Army and for a time was his quartermaster general of horse. He was commissioned by Essex to command a newly-raised regiment of horse in spring 1643, which he led to the relief of Gainsborough in July 1643. He was with Essex in the relief of Gloucester and the first battle of Newbury. He and his regiment formed part of Balfour’s brigade which supported Waller in spring 1644 and thus he fought at the battle of Cheriton. He was back with Essex in summer 1644 for the doomed march into the South West and may have been at the second battle of Newbury. However, by autumn 1644 he was under suspicion and was detained in London for much of autumn and winter 1644-5, during which his regiment shrank through desertion. In spring 1645 he effectively lost command of his horse regiment and what was left of it was sent west and absorbed into Massey’s regiment of horse. However, Dalbier was not completely out of favour, for he was back in the field by late summer 1645 and he and men under him took part in the final and successful sieges of Basing, Donnington and Wallingford castles between autumn 1645 and spring 1646.
In 1647 he supported the political Presbyterians against the New Model Army and he joined the royalist rising in Surrey in summer 1648. He fled north and was part of the group of rebels caught and surprised at St Neots, Huntingdonshire, where he perished, either cut to pieces on the spot by former colleagues disgusted at his side-changing or from wounds sustained before his capture.
References: Oxford DNB.
Armies: Earl of Essex; Waller (Southern Association)
Daldorne, Henry Henry Daldorne
In the 1642 listing of the earl of Essex’s Army he is shown as cornet in Captain Edward Wingate’s troop of horse.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 54.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Dale, Daniel Daniel Dale
Captain-Lieutenant in Edward Whalley’s troop within Cromwell’s horse regiment in the Eastern Association Army. By July 1645 he was captain-lieutenant in Whalley’s New Model Army horse regiment and he was still there in 1649.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.19; Wanklyn, New Model Army, I, 74, 84, 95, 108.
Armies: Eastern Association; New Model Army
Dales, Robert Robert Dales
Towards the end of its lifespan, before it was disbanded in spring 1645, Dales superseded Sheringham as captain of a company in the regiment of foot in the Eastern Association Army commanded first by Sir John Palgrave and later by Sir Thomas Hoogan.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 2.81.
Armies: Eastern Association
Dancer, Thomas Thomas Dancer
Captain in Thomas Ayloffe’s regiment of foot in the Eastern Association Army by the time of its disbandment in Apr. 1645. Though not on Fairfax’s original list for the New Model Army, he became a captain in Thomas Rainsborough’s regiment of foot. He was still in the regiment, by then Deane’s, in 1649.
On 24 Aug. 1652 parliament named Thomas Dancer of Putney, gentleman, as one of the commissioners for determining the accounts of the officers and soldiers of the Army in Ireland.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.10; Firth & Davies, Regimental history, 2.418; JHC, 7.167; Wanklyn, New Model Army, I, 57, 68, 79, 88, 100.
Armies: Eastern Association; New Model Army
Dandie, - - Dandie (died 1644)
Of Tarleton, Lancashire, son of Captain William Dandie of Tarleton.
An officer in Lancashire, lieutenant to Major Edward Robinson. He is presumably the Lieutenant Dandy wounded and captured in a skirmish in Feb. 1644 during the opening stages of the first siege of Lathom House. Father and son were both killed at the fall of Bolton on 28 May 1644.
References: Lancashire military proceedings, 162; Warr in Lancashire, 50.
Armies: Lancashire
Dandie, William William Dandie (died 1644)
Of Tarleton, Lancashire.
A captain, slain, like his son, Lieutenant Dandie, at the fall of Bolton on 28 May 1644.
References: Warr in Lancashire, 50.
Armies: Lancashire
Daniel, William William Daniel
A lieutenant in Staffordshire. In Oct. 1644 he petitioned the county committee about his mother’s horses, which had been taken away by people in Walsall. He was authorized to arrest the offenders and detain them until he received satisfaction. He was also granted £50 because his father had died in the state’s service owed at least £20 and back pay. At one point he was serving in the garrison of Wrottesley, Staffordshire.
References: Pennington and Roots, Committee at Stafford, xlix, 186, 338.
Armies: Staffordshire
Daniell, John John Daniell
Probably John Daniell junior, son of John Daniell of Daresbury, Cheshire.
By Mar. 1644 he was a captain in Cheshire. By the end of Apr. 1645 Daniell as major was in command of the 70-strong colonel’s company of George Booth’s regiment of foot. A few days later at Knutsford Daniell was one of only two serving Cheshire officers who signed the anti-Brereton petition. In 1659 he took part took part in Sir George Booth’s Rising.
References: Dore, Brereton letter books, 1. 325, 329-30; TNA, SP28/125, Part 3, f. 311.
Armies: Cheshire
Daniell, William William Daniell
Of Over Tabley, Cheshire. Son of Peter Daniell (1583/3-1652) of Over Tabley, MP for Cheshire 1626, and his wife Christian Grosvenor (died 1663), sister of Sir Richard Grosvenor, first baronet (for whom, see Oxford DNB). The funeral certificate of William’s grandfather Richard Grosvenor, in 1619, omits him, and gives his brother Henry as Peter and Christian’s fourth son; Sir Peter Leycester’s notes at the Restoration give William as fourth son and Henry as fifth. William’s elder brother John Daniell was auditor of the forces in the expedition to the West Indies in 1655, and was just possibly Major John Daniell in the Cheshire forces (although Dore considers John Daniell, junior, of Daresbury as a more likely identification). William’s eldest brother Peter was a royalist in the regiment of John, earl Rivers. His brother Henry Daniell was killed at Brentford in Nov. 1642; and while he is not recorded as a parliamentarian officer, the much greater death toll in Essex’s regiments coupled with Sir William Brereton’s claim to have been at Brentford, makes it more likely that Henry Daniell fought for parliament than the king. William’s sister married Simon Finch.
By Apr. 1645 William Daniell was captain of a sixty-strong company in Colonel Henry Brooke’s regiment of foot at the siege of Chester. In Jan. 1646 he was with a force sent into Wales against the castles at Hawarden and Holt, and by mid-Apr. was serving with the Cheshire forces besieging Lichfield Close. By the end of Apr. Daniell had been promoted major and on 26 May had command of a 92-strong company. In June 1648, holding the rank of colonel, Daniell was the acting governor of Chester Castle. On 4 May 1650, holding the rank of major, Daniell was ordered to raise a regiment of foot for service in Ireland. His officers included several who had served in the Cheshire forces in 1645-6, including as captains his lieutenant and ensign. Instead of being posted to Ireland, in July 1650 Daniell’s regiment joined Cromwell’s army in the invasion of Scotland and fought at Dunbar on 3 Sept. In 1651 Daniell’s regiment played an important role in Lambert’s victory at Inverkeithing on 20 July. For much of the 1650s the regiment was stationed at Perth. Daniel was active against the royalist rising of 1653-4, culminating in the surrender of the earl of Atholl in Aug. 1654. In June 1657 Monck appointed Daniell as commander in northern Scotland. He recommended to Thurloe that for this ‘very troublesome and chargeable’ appointment, Daniell be paid an extra 6s per day: ‘itt would bee a good incouragement to him to carry on his businesse, being hee is to bee constantlie at Aberdene from his familie, which is new settled att St. Johnston’s, where hee is governour’ (Firth and Davies, Regimental History, 2, 493). Daniell was alarmed by the growth of Quakerism, its converts including his own Captain-Lieutenant Davenport, declaring: ‘Where all are equals I expect little obedience in governement’ (Firth and Davies, Regimental History, 2, 493). A Cromwellian loyalist, Daniell was discharged from his command in summer 1659. However, his request for a formal discharge, which would confirm he was not dismissed for baseness or unworthiness, was ignored. Daniell’s replacement was his lieutenant-colonel, John Pearson.
References: Dore, Brereton letter books, 1. 325, 330, 2. 52, 384, 402, 435, 488, 489, 496, 511, 520, 525; Carr and Atherton, Brereton Staffs., 126, 241-2, 271, 325, 328, 330, 349, 354; HMC, Portland Mss, 1, 463;Firth and Davies, Regimental History, 2, 489-96; Ormerod, Cheshire, 1.ii, 475-6.
Armies: Cheshire; Scotland
Danser, Thomas Thomas Danser
Quartermaster to Colonel John Warner (the Green regiment, London Trained Bands) in summer 1642.
References: Thrale 1642.
Armies: London
Danvers, Henry Henry Danvers (born in or before 1619, died 1687/8)
Danvers does not seem to have served in Staffordshire during the first civil war, and his military service is obscure. In 1647-8 he participated in discussions of The Agreement of the People with radical officers such as Thomas Harrison.
Commissioned major of horse in the Leicesterhire militia, Mar. 1650, and colonel of foot in the Staffordshire militia, May 1650. Governor of Stafford, 1650-2.
In 1662/3 a survey of the allegiances of the Staffordshire gentry described him as of ‘Perry Hall but dweleth at Newinton Greene neare London’, aged about 40. Worth £300 per annum in Staffordshire ‘Of very dangerouse parts (and a very great Annabaptist)’ (‘Staffs. Gentry’, 13).
References: Oxford DNB; CSPD, 1650, 505-6; ‘Staffs. gentry’, 13.
Armies: Staffordshire; Leicestershire
Dare, William William Dare
Captain [of foot]
References: Mayo, Dorset Standing Committee, 377.
Armies: Dorset
Darley, Richard Richard Darley (c. 1602-1681)
Of Buttercrambe, Yorkshire (North Riding). A Yorkshire parliamentarian captain.
Recruiter MP for Malton, c. Oct. 1645; MP for the East Riding in the second Protectorate parliament.
References: Hopper, ‘Yorkshire parliamentarians’, 93; HoP: The Commons, 1640-1660 (forthcoming).
Armies: Yorkshire
Darley, William William Darley
Darley was a captain of foot under Sir Hugh Cholmley in command of a garrison of 100 men at Stamford Bridge, near York, from late 1642 until the post was abandoned in Feb. 1643. He was probably the Captain Darley given a company previously under the command of a captain at Hull, and a supporter of the Hothams, who was killed on 30 June 1643 in an engagement at Cholmley near Beverley.
References: Jones, ‘War in the North’, 378.
Armies: Yorkshire
Dashwood, Edward Edward Dashwood (died 1667)
Ensign in company of Captain John Seward, raised by order 11 Jan. 1643. A clothier of Dorchester. Assistant to governor of Freemen, 1625-6, 1629-30, 1633-4; governor, 1626-7; ensign in county militia, 1627; warden of Company of Merchants, 1636; mayor, 1662-3.
References: Peachey and Turton, Fall of the West,5.521; Whiteway, Diary, 175.
Armies: Dorset
Davenport, Anthony Anthony Davenport
Captain in the earl of Denbigh’s regiment of foot based at Wem, Shropshire by Sept. 1644. Probably the Captain Davenport captured at High Ercall on 5 July 1645. Perhaps the Captain Davenport, by then serving in Thomas Hunt’s regiment, killed in skirmishing near Bridgnorth and buried at St Mary’s, Shrewsbury, on 13 Mar. 1645.
References: Warws. RO, CR2017/C10/34; BL, Harl. Ms. 6852, f. 274; J. Blakeway and H. Owen, A History of Shrewsbury (1825), II, 386.
Armies: Earl of Denbigh; Shropshire
Davenport, Christopher Christopher Davenport
Of Coventry. Son of Henry Davenport, draper, of Coventry, and mayor there, 1613-14. Christopher, a clothier, was admitted to Coventry’s First Council in June 1639 and was mayor in 1641-2. In the summer of 1642 he was a lukewarm parliamentarian: John Barker reported to Lord Brooke that Davenport had refused to implement the Militia Ordinance but, he thought, could be won over. In 1645 Davenport sat on the Coventry accounts sub-committee, a forum for the opponents of the more militant county committee.
Davenport appears in the earl of Denbigh’s accounts as captain-lieutenant (23 Mar. and 13 Apr. 1644), and then as captain (27 Apr., 4 May and 6 May 1644). Another account details a payment to ‘Lieut. Danpoorte his company’ (TNA, SP28/147, Part 3, f. 471r.).
References: TNA, SP28/131, Part 12, ff. 16, 21, 25 [23 Mar. 1643/4, 13 Apr. 1644], TNA, SP28/147, Part 3, f. 471r.); Hughes, Warwickshire, 13, 139, 141, 239-40; Poole, Coventry, 372.
Armies: Warwickshire; Earl of Denbigh
Davidson, - - Davidson
In spring 1644 he was made lieutenant-colonel in Colonel Edward Apsley’s short-lived and abortive regiment of foot in Waller’s Southern Association army.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 15.
Armies: Sussex
Davidson, - - Davidson
Captain in Edward Cooke’s regiment of foot, which existed from Aug. 1643 to May 1644. Possibly the Captain William Davidson who later served in James Wemyss’s regiment.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 29.
Armies: Waller (Southern Association)
Davidson, George George Davidson
Lieutenant-Colonel. A Scottish professional soldier. On 24 Oct. 1642 he was allowed two months’ allowance as captain of foot. He came down to Gloucestershire with two other Scottish officers, Lieutenant-Colonel James Carr and Colonel Arthur Forbes, and in Feb. 1643 Sergeant-Major Davidson was put in charge of training the Gloucester soldiers. In early July, by when he had risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, he was at the siege of Bristol, where he advised Fiennes to counter-attack and opposed a parley. He went to Gloucester for the siege, and returned there again after a journey to London. On 7 Oct. 1643 £4 15s. was paid at Gloucester for his use. Peachey and Turton, Fall of the West opine that, ‘Davidson’s movements indicate he may have progressed to second in command of one of the volunteer regiments of foot from Gloucestershire, probably a regiment destroyed at Roundway Down. Sir Robert Cooke’s is the most likely although Sir Horatio Carey’s is possible’.
References: Peachey and Turton, Fall of the West, 6.619-20.
Armies: Gloucestershire
Davidson, William William Davidson
Captain in James Wemyss’s regiment of foot by Dec. 1644 when he took his company to the relief of Taunton. He remained in the regiment until 25 Apr. 1645. He then became a trooper in Baker’s troop in Henry Sanderson’s regiment of reformadoes. Very possibly the Captain Davidson who had previously served in Edward Cooke’s regiment of foot.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 155-6.
Armies: Waller (Southern Association)
Davie, Richard Richard Davie (died 1644)
Of Newton, Poulton-le-Fylde parish, Lancashire.
Davie was one of the captains commissioned in summer 1643 by Alexander Rigby senior to raise a company in Bispham and Poulton, Poulton-le-Fylde parish, for his regiment of Amounderness and Leyland foot. Davie served at the siege of Lathom House and was killed on 28 May 1644 during the assault on Bolton.
References: Warr in Lancashire, 5; Lancashire Record Office, QSP 30/8; he is named Davis in Gratton, Lancs. war effort, 293.
Armies: Lancashire
Davies, Abraham Abraham Davies
Ensign in Wroth Rogers’s company in Edward Montagu’s regiment of foot in the Eastern Association Army. By 1647 he was captain-lieutenant in the New Model Army foot regiment of Richard Ingoldsby. In the late 1650s he was serving as a major in the regiment of foot campaigning in Flanders.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 2.70; Wanklyn, New Model Army, I, 71, 81, 91.
Armies: Eastern Association; New Model Army
Davies, Charles Charles Davies
Ensign in Lord Mandeville’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 36.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Davies, Henry Henry Davies
At least between late 1644 and early 1645, lieutenant in John Jenkins’s company in John Pickering’s regiment of foot in the Eastern Association Army. By the end of 1646 he had become a captain in Hewson’s New Model Army foot regiment.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 2.86.
Armies: Eastern Association; New Model Army
Davies, John John Davies
Captain. An officer serving under Thomas Morgan at Gloucester. In Sept. 1645 he was at the taking of Berkeley Castle and profited from its plunder.
References: HMC, Fifth Report, 356-7.
Armies: Gloucestershire
Davies, John John Davies
On 22 Aug. 1650 commissioned a captain in Henry Brooke’s Cheshire militia regiment of foot.
References: CSPD, 1650, 509.
Armies: Cheshire
Davies, Robert Robert Davies
Lieutenant in Thomas Ballard’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 43.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Davies, Thomas Thomas Davies
Captain. In the autumn of 1643 he commanded the guard at the parliamentarian outpost at Huntley, Gloucestershire. He betrayed both Huntley and the garrison at Westbury, gaining entrance as a friend and leading the enemy in behind him: ‘both places were surprised in two houres, and above eighty men and armes lost in that great exigence. This villaine was posted on the gallowes in Gloucester, and the lord generall was desired that his name might stand upon the gibbet in all the parliament garrisons’.
References: Bibliotheca, 75.
Armies: Gloucestershire
Davies, Thomas Thomas Davies
Ensign in Lord Mandeville’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 36.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Davies, William William Davies (died 1643)
Probably the William Davis who had been major in Sir John Merrick’s regiment of foot raised for Ireland early in 1642 to be part of Lord Wharton’s army. Instead, by or from 10 Aug. 1642 he served as lieutenant-colonel of the earl of Essex’s own regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army. As such, given Essex’s other duties, he effectively had day-to-day command of the regiment. He continued in that role until sometime between 24 Aug. and 14 Oct. 1643. By or in May 1644 he succeeded James Holborne as colonel of his regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army and commanded that regiment for around a year, until it was broken up and largely disbanded in spring 1645, though a handful of officers from it – but not Davies himself – transferred to the New Model Army at that point.
References: Peacock, Army Lists, 81, 25; TNA, SP28/1a/41; SP28/9/174; SP28/10/153; Davies, ‘Essex’s army’, 47.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Davies, William William Davies
Of Ashton-juxta-Tarvin, Cheshire.
By Oct. 1645 an officer in Sir William Brereton’s regiment of foot and a member of the Tarvin committee.
References: Dore, Brereton letter books, 2. 112-3.
Armies: Cheshire
Davile, Thomas Thomas Davile
Of Kirkby Fleetham, Yorkshire (North Riding).
A captain in Yorkshire.
References: Hopper, ‘Yorkshire parliamentarians’, 94 [citing BL, Add Ms. 21,418, f. 17; TNA,E121/4/1, no. 30].
Armies: Yorkshire
Davis, George George Davis
Sergeant-Major. Sergeant-Major in John Berrow’s regiment of foot raised in the Forest of Dean. He served 1 Nov. 1642-31 Mar. 1643, when he left the regiment.
References: Peachey and Turton, Fall of the West, 6.615.
Armies: Gloucestershire
Davis, John John Davis
Ensign in Lord Brooke’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 34.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Davis, Robert Robert Davis
Member of the Vintners’ Company.
‘A Slop-maker For Seamen neare Billingsgate’ (BL, Harl. 986, p. 10). Captain in the London Trained Bands in 1639.
Major in the White regiment, London Trained Bands (Colonel Isaac Penington), 1642; by Sept. 1643 lieutenant-colonel of the same regiment, but was no longer there by Oct. 1646.
References: Nagel, ‘London militia’, 314;Barriffe, Militarie Discipline (1639), sig. ¶ r.; Overton 1642; Thrale 1642; BL, Harl. 986, p. 10.
Armies: London
Davison, - - Davison
Captain in Lord Willoughby’s regiment of horse in the earl of Essex’s Army and the Eastern Association Army.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 2.109.
Armies: Earl of Essex; Eastern Association
Davy, William William Davy
Captain In Lyme garrison, from a local family.[See below]. He gave his name to, and presumably commanded, one of the town’s forts/blockhouses during the siege, Apr.-May 1644.
References: Bayley, Civil War in Dorset, 138.
Armies: Dorset
Davyes, John John Davyes
Possibly Captain William Davy, of Thomas Ceely’s regiment of foot at Lyme, 1 June 1643-Apr. 1647.
References: Peachey and Turton, Fall of the West, 5.515-6.
Armies: Dorset
Davyes [Davies], Thomas Thomas Davyes [Davies]
Identified in pay warrants from Aug. and Sept 1643 and Mar. 1644 as ensign of Captain Robert Venables’s company of the garrison of Cholmondeley House, Cheshire. A warrant dated 30 Dec. 1647, authorising a payment of £29 15s 6d to Davyes, confirms that he had served commendably in Cheshire as ensign to the freehold band, or company, of Macclesfield under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Venables.
References: BL, Harl. Ms. 2128, f. 61v.; TNA, SP28/125, Part 3, f. 313; SP28/224 f. 276.
Armies: Cheshire
Dawes, Robert Robert Dawes
In spring 1645 he was cornet in Lieutenant-Colonel Graves’s troop in the earl of Essex’s own regiment of horse, commanded by Stapleton. Like several other officers of this regiment, he then transferred to the New Model Army, promoted to lieutenant in the troop of Captain Gabriel Martin (who had also been a captain in Essex’s regiment) in the New Model regiment of horse of Thomas Sheffield. He appears to have left the regiment and the army in 1647.
References: Wanklyn, New Model Army, 1. 122, 150.
Armies: Earl of Essex; New Model Army
Dawkins, Anthony Anthony Dawkins
At its muster in Nov. 1643, major of the earl of Warwick’s regiment of foot formed from the Essex militia, part of the Eastern Association Army that contributed to the siege of Reading in spring 1643, the siege of Greenland House in summer 1644 and probably to some other actions in which the army was involved.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.31.
Armies: Eastern Association
Dawkyns, Peter Peter Dawkyns
Lieutenant in Captain Axtell’s company in Pickering’s regiment of foot in the Eastern Association Army, 1644-5.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 2.85.
Armies: Eastern Association
Dawson, Christopher Christopher Dawson
Of Stainforth, Yorkshire (West Riding), a parliamentarian lieutenant in Yorkshire.
References: Hopper, ‘Yorkshire parliamentarians’, 108.
Armies: Yorkshire
Day, - - Day
Major in the Yellow regiment, London Auxiliaries (Colonel John Owen) in Oct. 1646.
References: Nagel, ‘London militia’, 317; Marshall, Essex funeral, 11.
Armies: London
Day, William William Day
Commissioned to raise a company of volunteers for a Kentish regiment on 17 May 1643, probably the St Augustine Lathe regiment of volunteers.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 77.
Armies: Kent
Daye, William William Daye
Lieutenant in Captain Adrian Scrope’s troop of horse in the earl of Essex’s Army, and received a month’s pay for the troop at the end of Aug. 1642. By late Oct. Maximilian Petty had succeeded as the troop’s lieutenant.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 54;TNA, SP28/3b/343.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Daynes, John John Daynes
Ensign in Captain Husband’s company in Pickering’s regiment of foot in the Eastern Association Army. Possibly the Daynes (no forename given) who in 1644-45, was lieutenant-colonel in Francis Russell’s regiment of horse in the Eastern Association Army.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 2.95.
Armies: Eastern Association
De Gennis, Jo Jo De Gennis
Lieutenant in Henry Ireton’s troop in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642 and then in Oliver Cromwell’s regiment of horse in the Eastern Association Army. In due course, though perhaps not until later in the 1640s, he became captain-lieutenant in Ireton’s New Model regiment of horse. He died in Ireland in the early 1650s, serving with and under Ireton.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.24; Wanklyn, New Model Army, I, 64.
Armies: Earl of Essex; Eastern Association; New Model Army
De LaToure, James Francis James Francis De LaToure
Captain in Colonel Henry Marten’s regiment of horse, 10 Apr. to 19 Aug. 1643. On 29 Aug. his troop was transferred to Sir William Waller’s regiment of horse, in which he served until its disbandment in Apr. 1645. On 1 Sept. 1643 the House of Commons ruled that all papists in captain de LaToure’s troop be discharged.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 142.
Armies: Waller (Southern Association)
Deacon, John John Deacon
From early 1643 ensign and then lieutenant in the regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army commanded by Hampden, Tyrrill and Ingoldsby. He was still there in spring 1645 and transferred with the regiment into the New Model Army, but was killed at Tiverton in late 1645.
References: Wanklyn, New Model Army, 1. 148.
Armies: Earl of Essex; New Model Army
Deakin, John John Deakin
A captain of dragoons in Shropshire.
References: TNA, E121/9, f. 12.
Armies: Shropshire
Deane, Nicholas Nicholas Deane
By autumn 1643, lieutenant in the Colonel’s troop in Sir John Norwich’s regiment of horse in the Eastern Association Army.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 2.72.
Armies: Eastern Association
Deane, Robert Robert Deane
Captain in the Blue regiment, London Trained Bands (Colonel William Underwood), approved by the Presbyterian City militia committee.
References: Nagel, ‘London militia’, 318.
Armies: London
Deane, Stephen Stephen Deane
Lieutenant in Thomas Grantham’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 41.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Deansley, M. M. Deansley
By spring 1645 an officer, probably captain, in Sir William Constable’s regiment of horse of the Northern Army serving under Sir William Brereton in Cheshire.
References: Jones, ‘War in the North’, 378; Dore, Brereton letter books, 1. 178, 415, 522.
Armies: Yorkshire; Northern Army (Fairfax)
Dearing, Edward Edward Dearing
A captain in Staffordshire. On 25 Jan. 1644 the county committee ordered that he should be confined in his chamber for words that he had spoken at Leek, and after his release be ordered to quit the Stafford garrison. In Mar. 1643 he may have been serving with the royalists at Lichfield, and it is not clear whether he was a royalist or parliamentarian officer.
References: Pennington and Roots, Committee at Stafford, 43; Shaw, Staffs., I, ‘General History’, 53.
Armies: Staffordshire
de Boyes [de Bois], Philibert Emmanuel Philibert Emmanuel de Boyes [de Bois] (died 1643)
A Frenchman or, more probably, a Walloon. Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance in the earl of Essex’s Army by 18 Aug. 1642 until at least mid-Oct. He was also captain of 100 firelocks and a member of Essex’s council of war in 1642.
Peter Young states that he was dismissed from the Ordnance after Edgehill because of his useless performance there. Even the official parliamentarian account of the battle admits that in the run-up to the battle, as the army marched out from Worcester to intercept the king’s army, ‘our Train of Artillery was so unready, through want of Draught-Horses, and through other Omissions of Monsieur Du-Boys, that we were forced to leave it behind ro follow us’ (Young, Edgehill, 306).By 6 June 1643 he was quartermaster general of the Foot in Essex’s Army. He was dead by 17 Aug. 1643, when his widow, Mrs Geertuit de Boyes, claimed for his arrears.
References: Young, Edgehill, 69, 103, 156, 306; Stoyle, Soldiers and strangers, 102; Peacock, Army lists, 23, 25, 47; TNA, SP28/1a/151, SP28/2a/36, 215, 276, SP28/7/355, SP28/9/96.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Deering, Edward Edward Deering
Lieutenant in Rochford’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 32.
Armies: Earl of Essex
de la Blancheur, John John de la Blancheur
In the 1642 list of the earl of Essex’s Army, he is shown as cornet in Langrish’s troop of horse.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 54.
Armies: Earl of Essex
de la Hay, John John de la Hay
In 1642 listed as lieutenant in Arthur Evelyn’s troop of horse in the earl of Essex’s Army.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 51.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Delves, - - Delves (died 1645)
Delves died of his wounds, a prisoner in Chester, 26 Nov. 1645; possibly of the family of Delves of Nantwich.
References: Dore, Brereton letter books, 2. 272-3.
Armies: Cheshire
Delves, John John Delves
On 22 Aug. 1650 commissioned a captain in Thomas Croxton’s Cheshire militia regiment of foot.
References: CSPD, 1650, 510.
Armies: Cheshire
Dendy [Denby], Edward Edward Dendy [Denby]
Originally from London, captain-lieutenant and (by Apr. 1644) captain in the earl of Manchester’s regiment of horse in the Eastern Association Army; later served as a captain in Sidney’s/Rich’s New Model Army horse regiment, though he left the regiment in the course of 1646, probably to devote his time to his role as serjeant at arms to parliament at Westminster.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.50, 55; Holmes, Eastern Association, 175; Wanklyn, New Model Army, I, 52.
Armies: Eastern Association; New Model Army
Denn [Venn], John John Denn [Venn]
Captain of a troop of volunteer horse, probably from the St Augustine Lathe regiment, at the siege of Arundel Castle at the end of 1643.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 76.
Armies: Kent; Waller (Southern Association)
Dennet, - - Dennet
Lieutenant to Lieutenant-Colonel George Duncombe in Sir Richard Onslow’s regiment of Surrey foot by 12 July 1644; in Dec. 1648 he was awarded arrears of pay.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 113.
Armies: Surrey; Waller (Southern Association)
Denning, Thomas Thomas Denning
By spring 1644, lieutenant in the Colonel’s own troop in William Purefoy’s regiment of horse.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 121.
Armies: Warwickshire
Dennis, - - Dennis
By the beginning of 1645, captain in Sir Miles Hobart’s regiment of foot in the Eastern Association Army.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.44.
Armies: Eastern Association
Denroll, - - Denroll
Lieutenant. Captain of the Watch at Gloucester on 14 Apr. 1643; evidently an officer in one of the three Gloucestershire regiments raised under Waller’s commission in early 1643.
References: Peachey and Turton, Fall of the West, 6. 662.
Armies: Gloucestershire
Dent, John Robert Dent (died 1645)
Of Bilsdale township, Helmsley parish, Yorkshire (North Riding), a gentleman or esquire.
By July 1643 Dent was a captain when taken prisoner at Bradford and was held captive for 16 weeks. By 1645 he was a major serving at the siege of Scarborough, and was killed on 10 May. Between Feb. 1643 and Oct. 1644 Dent served on all North Riding committees.
References: Jones, ‘War in the North’, 378; Hopper, ‘Yorkshire parliamentarians’, 93 [citing Speight, Nidderdale, 121]; TNA, E121/4/9, no. 98.
Armies: Yorkshire
Denton, Arthur Arthur Denton
An officer in the unit of reformado horse under Major James Baker’s command that in late 1645 marched from London to the siege of Chester. On 27 Nov. Denton was among those officers who signed a letter to Sir William Brereton, explaining that social slighting and their lack of pay and adequate quarters had resulted in the unit disobeying a direct order to march.
References: Dore, Brereton letter books, 2. 275.
Armies: London; Cheshire
Denton, Arthur Arthur Denton
Lieutenant in Captain Robert Mainwaring’s troop in Colonel Edmund Harvey’s regiment of London horse, quartered in Grub Street 11 Jan.-26 May 1644.
References: TNA, SP28/15/66.
Armies: London
Derickbore, Albion Albion Derickbore
Lieutenant in William Bampfield’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 40.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Dering, - - Dering
Captain in Colonel Richard Hardy’s Kentish regiment, possibly the Scraye Lathe regiment of foot.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 75.
Armies: Kent; Waller (Southern Association)
de Salanova, Peter Peter de Salanova
Captain and surgeon in the Weymouth garrison. His pay was reduced to 20s. per week, 25 Mar. 1647, although the following month his salary reverted to £3 per week upon the petition of ‘Peter Desilanova, chirugion and apothecary’.
References: Mayo, Dorset Standing Committee, 208, 253; Peachey and Turton, Fall of the West, 5.538.
Armies: Dorset
Devereux, Nicholas Nicholas Devereux
Colonel. Presumably a kinsman of the earl of Essex.
A lieutenant-colonel and captain of dragoons by commission of the earl of Essex (probably that of Colonel Arthur Forbes in Gloucestershire), 15 Apr.-12 Sept. 1643.
12 Sept. 1643-16 June 1644: colonel of a regiment of foot in Gloucestershire. On the latter date he was ordered out of Gloucestershire to Malmesbury Garrison by the earl of Essex and Massey. In Feb. 1645 he marched to the (unsuccessful) relief of Thomas Stephens at Rawden House.
References: Peachey and Turton, Fall of the West, 6.628, 634; Warmington, Glos., 58, 62, 69.
Armies: Gloucestershire
Devereux, Robert, third earl of Essex Robert Devereux, third earl of Essex (1591-1646)
Born in London, the eldest son and heir of the second earl of Essex, the Elizabethan courtier whose luck ended with his execution in 1601. Robert’s fortunes and titles were restored by James 1. though his time as a young courtier of the first Stuart king was cut short when he was humiliated by the adultery of and graphic annulment proceedings brought by his wife. He spent the next few years in semi-retirement on his Staffordshire estates.
During the 1620s he divided his time between campaigning and fighting on the continent in the Thirty Years War and taking his seat in the Lords during the frequent parliaments of that decade. The 1630s were marked by a fairly disastrous second marriage and growing distance between him and royal policies. He held military office in the English army raised for the First Scots War but not the Second; by summer 1640 he was clearly identified as a prominent critic of royal government.
He was one of the leading members of the Lords who were active in dismantling much of the personnel and policies of the Personal Rule in 1640-1. In summer 1641 the king appointed him commander of such troops as were based south of the Trent while he went north to ratify the Anglo-Scottish treaty. Essex accepted the drift to war in 1642 and on 12 July was appointed lord general and commander-in-chief of parliament’s armies. He retained that role for most of the main civil war, until forced to relinquish his command in spring 1645 under the terms of the Self-Denying Ordinance.
Essex’s military performance and record 1642-5 seem mixed. He was often quite cautious, tended to move slowly and often reacted to events and royalist moves rather than taking the initiative himself. But he was careful and methodical, took very few risks and was perhaps more concerned with not losing the war than with winning it.
In autumn 1642 he marched his fledgling army across the Midlands, securing and garrisoning key towns, before engaging the king’s armies in the major but drawn battle at Edgehill and then getting back to London in time to bolster the capital’s defences and to frighten off the king’s advance.
In 1643 and 1644 Essex and his army were based and campaigned in the main in and around the Thames valley. In both years they also observed quite brief campaigning seasons, not coming out of winter quarters and taking to the field until Apr. or May and ending the year’s campaign in Sept. or Oct.
The 1643 season began brightly enough, with the capture of Reading, and ended successfully by marching westwards to relieve Gloucester and then by getting back to the London area almost unscathed despite the king’s attempt to block the route at the first battle of Newbury. However, the summer period in between was marked by a lot of inactivity.
The following year also began positively, with Essex and Waller co-operating in a drive to encircle Oxford, forcing the king to bolt across the Cotswolds to elude them and to reach the Severn Valley. But at that point, the antipathy between the two men prevailed, their combined force divided and they went their separate ways – Waller to a ragged pursuit of the king leading to the rebuff of his army at Cropredy Bridge, Essex to a curious march into the South West, initially, sensibly and successful relieving the pressure on isolated Lyme Regis, but then plunging on through Devon and Cornwall, pursued by the king, until at the beginning of Sept. his army ran out of ground and hope; although he and other senior officers got away by boat and much of his horse was able to cut its way out, his foot had to surrender en masse south of Lostwithiel.
Essex survived in office for a while, genuinely and quite seriously ill during the autumn and so unable able to play any part in the desultory second battle of Newbury and associated campaign. During winter 1644-5, as during the previous two winters, he returned to London, to the Lords and to his political career. Although he opposed and resisted some elements of the ensuing major reorganisation of the parliamentary war effort, in spring 1645 he was forced to relinquish command in line with the Self-Denying Ordinance.
Although he was lord general from summer 1642 until spring 1645, at no time did Essex have full control over the war and war effort. He had to struggle with parliamentary and political initiatives and involvement and he had only loose control over the other regional armies in the Midlands, the East and the North.
As lord general he commanded his own army, always operating in southern England and generally based at the London end of the Thames valley; even at the height of the campaigning seasons, Essex maintained a strong military presence to the west and north-west of London to guard those approaches to the capital. He had his own regiments of foot and of horse, though given his wider duties the day-to-day command of those regiments really rested with subordinate officers. He also had a cluster of other horse and foot regiments which generally operated with and directly under him.
But his army was quite fluid and operated within a semi-porous membrane. Thus parts of Essex’s Army were sometimes deployed to reinforce or to garrison key parliamentarian strongholds in the southern half of England, including the Dorset ports and Plymouth, Gloucester and Newport Pagnell. Parts of his army were temporarily redeployed to strengthen other southern armies, especially Waller’s, including a brigade under Balfour which supported Waller’s (Cheriton) campaign of spring 1644. Equally, Essex could draw on other forces to strengthen his own Army for particular operations – most notably for the expedition to relieve Gloucester and the ensuing engagement at Newbury in late summer 1643, when he was reinforced by London units as well as some of Waller’s troops. Even though the two men had an uneasy, sometimes poor, relationship, at times it is hard to discern whether certain units were really Essex’s or Waller’s.
After leaving the army and giving up his military role, Essex’s final eighteen months were spent in richly-rewarded semi-retirement. He died quite suddenly, probably of a stroke, in Sept. 1646 and was accorded a grand state funeral. His equally grand funerary monument in Westminster Abbey was removed at the Restoration, but his body was left undisturbed.
References: Oxford DNB.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Dewy, James James Dewy (1606/7-1675)
Of Bloxworth. Memorial records his death on 28 Feb. 1675 [?or 1676]. Sequestration commissioner 1650-54; presided (with Anthony Ashley Cooper and James Baker) at commission for the engagement to be taken at Blandford, 29 Jan. 1650; MP for Dorset, 1656, and Wareham, 1659.
Arrears claims of Joseph Underwood and Anthony Combs place Dewy as captain of a troop of horse in Bruen’s regiment between summer 1644 and spring 1645.
Order, 20 Oct. 1648, places Dewy’s men on Portland.
Order, 21 Dec. 1648, notes Dewy to have received cows for the Wareham garrison about 4 years earlier.
References: Bayley, Civil War in Dorset, 19, 23, 359; Mayo, Dorset Standing Committee, xxii-xxiv, 240-1, 444, 485; HoP: The Commons, 1640-1660 (forthcoming).
Armies: Dorset
Dibdale, Nicholas Nicholas Dibdale
Lieutenant in Lord Mandeville’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 36.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Dickens, William William Dickens
Captain in Lord Willoughby’s possibly short-lived regiment of dragoons in the Eastern Association Army.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 2.110.
Armies: Eastern Association
Dike, - - Dike
Captain in Colonel Richard Hardy’s Kentish regiment, possibly the Scraye Lathe regiment of foot.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 75.
Armies: Kent; Waller (Southern Association)
Dike [Dick, Dix], Lewis Lewis Dike [Dick, Dix]
Captain and later major of a company at Dartmouth and Plymouth in 1642-3.
References: Peachey and Turton, Fall of the West, 3.358.
Armies: Devon
Dines, - - Dines
Captain in Richard Turner’s/George Thompson’s regiment of horse.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 137.
Armies: Waller (Southern Association)
Dingley, Francis Francis Dingley
Paid as a reformado lieutenant of foot on 2 Aug. 1642. He became lieutenant (under Captain Mathew Draper) of the earl of Essex’s own troop of harquebusiers and was probably killed or mortally wounded at Edgehill; his Captain’s claim for reimbursement of his burial expenses was dated 27 October, a few days after the battle.
References: TNA, SP28/1d/481, SP28/2b/456.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Dingley, John John Dingley
In the 1642 list of the earl of Essex’s Army, he is shown as lieutenant in Langrish’s troop of horse.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 54.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Dingley [Dineley], William William Dingley [Dineley] (1607/8-1653)
Of Hanley Castle, Worcestershire. His name is consistently spelt Dingley in the records, but the family name is more usually rendered Dineley. A younger son of Henry Dineley (died c. 1640) and his second wife Magdalen, daughter of Richard Egioke of Salford, Warwickshire. He married Alice, daughter of Edmund Waller of Gregories, Buckinghamshire (not the poet and plotter) and his wife Mary.
Dingley was a major when commissioned governor of Evesham and colonel of the foot regiment there by orders of the Lords and Commons on 25 Apr. 1646.
He brought his forces to the siege of Worcester, when it was known as ‘the Evesham regiment’ (TNA, SP28/138, Part 17).
The monumental inscription placed in Hanley Castle parish church by his widow makes clear that he had served in foreign service, and suggests that his promotion came rapidly once he returned to England. It also portrayed him as a man eager to release his county from the burdens of war: ‘To the happy and perpetual commemoration of Colonel William Dingley, of Hanley-Castle, a branch from the antient and eminent family of Charlton, and consequently allied to the great and noble of this county and nation; educated from his youth in a foreign militia, wherein his progress was so exact and conspicuous, that returning he was deservedly advanced to the government of Worcester; this opportunity spake the obligeingness of his noble nature to his endeared country, often by his ingenious industry, freed from the severe and numerous quarterings both of horse and foot; neither was he wanting to the civil government, being enrolled a justice of peace and quorum for this county, of which, in peace and war, he was most highly deserving, if not more fitly stiled the better genius, who for the great infelicity thereof was withdrawn by the great Jehovah, May 5, 1653, in the 46th. of his age’ (Nash, Worcestershire, 1.565).
References: Nash, Worcs., 1.565; Vis. Worcs., 1634, 40; CSPD 1645-1647, 422; TNA, SP28/138, Parts 16 and 17.
Armies: Worcestershire
Dingley, William William Dingley
Originally from Worcestershire. Possibly began the civil war as a captain of foot in Essex’s Army. By Mar. 1644 and continuing until the regiment was absorbed into the New Model Army in spring 1645, captain in the earl of Manchester’s regiment of horse in the Eastern Association Army.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.51; Holmes, Eastern Association, 175, 240.
Armies: ?Earl of Essex; Eastern Association
Dipford [alias Merchant], George George Dipford [alias Merchant]
‘Linen draper near Bow Church in the church yard’.
Third captain of the Blue regiment, London Trained Bands (Colonel Thomas Adams), commanding the St Antholin’s, Bow Lane, company, by Sept. 1643.
References: BL, Harl. 986, p. 30.
Armies: London
Disborne, - - Disborne
Major of horse. Undated account for constablewick of Pelsall, Offlowe Hundred, Staffordshire, records free quarter for seven men and eight horses under his command.
References: Pennington and Roots, Committee at Stafford, 336 [quoting TNA, SP28/200].
Armies: Staffordshire
Disbrowe [Desborough], - - Disbrowe [Desborough]
Lieutenant in Lieutenant-General Thomas Hammond’s regiment of foot (a regiment of firelocks guarding the artillery train) in the Eastern Association Army.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.38.
Armies: Eastern Association
Disbrowe [Desborough], John John Disbrowe [Desborough] (1608-1680)
Born a younger son of James Disbrowe of Eltisley, Cambridgeshire. He married in 1636 a sister of Oliver Cromwell.
He served under Cromwell from the outbreak of the civil war, initially as quartermaster of his troop of horse in Essex’s Army and from Apr. 1643 as captain in his horse regiment in the Eastern Association Army. In autumn 1643 he became its major and he stayed in the regiment until it was absorbed into the New Model Army in spring 1645, whereupon he became major in Fairfax’s horse regiment. He was prominent in several New Model actions during the last year of the war, including the battles of Naseby and Langport.
In the renewed fighting of 1648 he served in East Anglia, both restoring order in and around Bury and then taking part in the lengthy siege of Colchester. Fairfax appointed him governor of Yarmouth, so he was out of London at the time of, and had no direct part in, the regicide.
In Sept. 1649 he became colonel of a New Model horse regiment formerly commanded by Cromwell, assigned to the South West. Indeed, for much of the 1650s he was linked militarily to that region. Thus he did not campaign in Ireland or Scotland, though he and his men did take part in the battle of Worcester. In Mar. 1655 he took the lead in mopping up and restoring order after Penruddock’s royalist rising and his regional military command over the south-western counties served as a prototype for the regime of the major-generals; he was major-general of the South West. Although he also held naval office during the 1650s, he never went to sea.
He was an MP in the first and second Protectorate parliaments and became a member of the Other House. He was also a Protectoral Councillor. He was one of a small group of senior officers who, rapidly growing disenchanted with Richard Cromwell’s Protectorate, acted in spring 1659 to remove him and it; in the autumn he supported the removal of the Rump and the imposition of more direct military rule. As such, he fell from power during the opening months of 1660 and he was arrested at the Restoration and imprisoned in the Tower, though he escaped and fled to the continent. He was imprisoned again upon his return to England in the mid-1660s,, but he was released later in the 1660s and spent his last years in retirement in Hackney.
References: Oxford DNB; Spring, Eastern Association, 1.19; Holmes, Eastern Association, 78, 172.
Armies: Earl of Essex; Eastern Association; New Model Army
Disher, William William Disher
Began as a junior officer in William Ayres’s troop in Oliver Cromwell’s horse regiment in the Eastern Association Army, by Feb. 1644 he had been promoted to lieutenant in that troop. He probably then joined the New Model Army as a lieutenant in Fairfax’s own regiment of horse, promoted to captain in the regiment by Aug. 1647.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.22; Wanklyn, New Model Army, I, 92, 105.
Armies: Eastern Association; New Model Army
Disney, Mullineux Mullineux Disney
By late 1643, captain in Lord Willoughby’s regiment of horse in the Eastern Association Army.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 2.109.
Armies: Eastern Association
Disney, William William Disney
By spring 1644, and continuing to serve until the regiment was disbanded in spring 1645, captain of a company in Sir Miles Hobart’s regiment of foot in the Eastern Association Army. He became a captain in the New Model Army foot regiment of Richard Hammond and in 1649, by which time he was major, he served in Ireland; he was badly wounded in the assault of Drogheda in autumn 1649, but he survived and recovered and returned to England to raise further troops.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.44; Wanklyn, New Model Army, I, 45, 56, 66, 70, 77, 86, 99.
Armies: Eastern Association; New Model Army
Dixon, William William Dixon (born after 1612)
Of Bowling, near Bradford, Yorkshire (West Riding). A younger son of John Dixon of Heaton Royds and his wife Mary Baylie. They were a strongly Puritan family, below or on the fringes of gentility.
Dixon was a captain in Yorkshire, who in 1648 claimed £339 6s in arrears.
References: Jones, ‘War in the North’, 378.
Armies: Yorkshire
Dixwell, John John Dixwell (c. 1607-1689)
Younger son of Edward Dixwell of Coton, Warwickshire and his wife Mary (née Hawksworth), although he may have been brought up by his uncle Henry Dixwell of Brome, Kent. He was also the younger brother of Colonel Mark Dixwell, whose estates he inherited upon the latter’s death.
He was captain in the Aylesford Lathe regiment of foot by Nov. 1643 and up to at least 1 May 1645. He was more significant as a political and religious activist in the county, named to many committees by parliament and elected Recruiter MP for Dover in 1646; also MP for Kent in 1654 and 1656, and Dover in 1659.
He was a regicide, and after the Restoration fled to Connecticut, dying there in 1689.
References: Oxford DNB;Spring, Waller’s army, 74.
Armies: Kent; Waller (Southern Association)
Dixwell, Mark Mark Dixwell
Son of Edward Dixwell of Coton, Warwickshire and his wife Mary (née Hawksworth); elder brother of John Dixwell. By the end of 1643, when he took part in the siege of Arundel Castle, down to his death by spring 1644 – it is just possible that he was the officer shot and killed on 28 Dec. 1643, while walking next to Waller, by a parliamentarian musketeer hoping to assassinate Waller – he was serving as colonel of the Aylesford Lathe Kentish regiment of foot.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 83.
Armies: Kent; Waller (Southern Association)
Dobbin, - - Dobbin
Captain of a troop of horse in Jonas Vandruske’s regiment in Sir William Waller’s Army, previously commanded by Captain Cooper and later commanded by Captain Ennis.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 139.
Armies: Waller (Southern Association)
Dobson, Isaac Isaac Dobson
In Sept. 1642 a captain in the regiment of foot which formed part of the earl of Essex’s Army under the earl of Stamford and which then formed the core of Edward Massey’s garrison and army at Gloucester.
References: Peachey and Turton, War in the West,6.646-7.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Dobson, Isaac Isaac Dobson
Major. Captain in the earl of Stamford’s regiment of foot, in which he served in the Gloucester garrison until at least 11 Feb. 1643. He then transferred as major in the regiment of Gloucester townsmen raised in spring 1643, initially commanded by Henry Stephens and later by Edward Massey. He was major until the regiment’s disbandment in Jan. 1648. In 1647 he was arrested twice in one month for debts owing Gloucester householders from the quartering of troops.
References: Peachey and Turton, Fall of the West, 6. 626, 642, 645; Warmington, Glos., 90: TNA, SP28/129, Part 6, fol. 2.
Armies: Gloucestershire
Dobson, William William Dobson
Of Hull, Yorkshire (East Riding).
From early July 1643 an alderman of Hull and a captain in the garrison. In Feb. 1645 he was appointed to the Hull committee for levying the Scottish assessment. Dobson was named on committees during the 1650s, having in 1649 being cleared of charges of delinquency.
References: Jones, ‘War in the North’, 378.
Armies: Yorkshire
Docket, Thomas Thomas Docket
Ensign in Lieutenant-Colonel Brewster’s company in Sir Miles Hobart’s regiment of foot in the Eastern Association Army; he did not go on to serve in the New Model Army.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.41.
Armies: Eastern Association
Dod, - - Dod
Lieutenant in Lawrence Crawford’s regiment of foot in the Eastern Association Army in Apr. 1644.
References: TNA, SP28/22/335.
Armies: Eastern Association
Dodding, George George Dodding (died 1650)
Of Conishead in Furness, Lancashire. Eldest son of Miles Dodding of Conishead (died c. 1632) and his wife Ursula Daivill. He married Sarah, daughter of Rowland Backhowse, a London alderman.
In early 1642, as a colonel, Dodding raised forces for parliament in Lonsdale Hundred. In early 1643 he was captured at Lancaster by the earl of Derby’s forces while attempting to escape by sea. Released, in Apr. 1643 Dodding was made a county sequestrator. He had been appointed a JP in 1642 and was also a deputy-lieutenant, although being in the remote north of Lancashire he played little part in the politics of the county committee. Dodding continued to serve as a colonel, his regiment including both horse and foot, and in spring 1644 was appointed governor of Lancaster. His organisation of its defences deterred Prince Rupert from attacking the town. Having fought at Marston Moor, Dodding returned to recruit his forces in Blackburn Hundred. On 26 Aug. 1644 he and Colonel Nicholas Shuttleworth defeated royalists under Lord Oglevie and Colonel Hudleston near Preston. In Sept. he and Joseph Rigby commenced the lengthy siege of Greenhalgh Castle. In 1648 Dodding was colonel of a militia regiment of foot in the Lancashire county forces.
References: Vis. Lancs., 1664, 99; Warrin Lancashire, 9-10, 26, 49-50, 58, 60, 134; Blackwood, Lancashire gentry, 51, 63; Lancashire military proceedings, 252-3; Gratton, Lancs. war effort, 5, 81, 94, 99, 109-10, 129, 169-77, 180, 186, 190-1, 195-6, 206, 224, 237, 253, 286-7, 296; Dore, Brereton letter books, 1. 105.
Armies: Lancashire
Dodey [Dolly], [?]David [?]David Dodey [Dolly]
Lieutenant in John Jubbes’s company in John Pickering’s regiment of foot in the Eastern Association Army.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 2.85.
Armies: Eastern Association
Dodson, - - Dodson
Lieutenant-Colonel in a regiment of foot which served under Oliver Cromwell and later under Colonel Francis Russell in their capacity as governors of the Isle of Ely and which probably originated as an auxiliary regiment of the Cambridgeshire militia. Dodson was serving in this regiment in autumn 1643; by Jan. 1645 he had become governor of Crowland House.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.27.
Armies: Eastern Association
Dodson, Gervase Gervase Dodson
Cornet to Captain Robert Farrer’s troop of horse in the North Wales forces. By 5 Dec. 1645 Dodson was a wounded prisoner held at Chester.
References: Dore, Brereton letter books, 1. 311, 496-7.
Armies: North Wales
Dodsworth, John John Dodsworth
Of Thornton Watlass, Yorkshire (North Riding).
A captain and a JP in Yorkshire.
References: Hopper, ‘Yorkshire parliamentarians’, 96 [citing BL, Add. Ms 15,858, f. 215; TNA, SP19/10/308; SP19/120/120-8].
Armies: Yorkshire
D’Oilie [Doyley], Charles Charles D’Oilie [Doyley] (1611/12-1694)
D’Oilie is his own spelling of his name.
Fourth son of Sir Cope Doyley (1573/4-1633) of Chislehampton, Oxfordshire. He matriculated from Wadham College, Oxford on 15 June 1627, aged 15, graduated BA in 1629 and proceeding MA in 1632. He was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in 1642. He later claimed that he was a student at Oxford, ‘but being obliged to fly thence, was plundered of his whole study of books, and other things of some value’ (Firth and Davies, Regimental history, 1.47). (He is the only Charles Doyley in the Oxford records at roughly the right date.)
D’Oilie was a cornet in the earl of Essex’s lifeguard when he was wounded at the first battle of Newbury (20 Sept. 1643). By Sept. 1644 he commanded the lifeguard, part of the cavalry which escaped when Essex’s Army surrendered in Cornwall. A premature royalist account of the second battle of Newbury claimed that he had been shot dead when the lifeguard, who had been in the van of the attack, were driven back.
With the creation of the New Model Army, D’Oilie (then of Colonel Graves’s regiment) was appointed commander of Sir Thomas Fairfax’s lifeguard. He went with Cromwell into Oxfordshire in May 1645 and distinguished himself at Naseby. When Fairfax rode up to his lifeguard in the middle of the battle, D’Oilie tried to press on him his own helmet, which the general refused. Then, ‘seeing a body of the King’s foot stand, and not at all broken, he asked D’Oilie if he had charged that body, who answered, that he had twice charged them, but could not break them’ (Firth and Davies, Regimental history, 1.45). A third attack, with D’Oilie charging from the front and Fairfax from the rear, broke them.
Later in the summer the troop was disbanded.
By 12 Aug. he was serving governor of Henley, from where he reported to parliament a mutiny. However, three days earlier the Commons had appointed him governor of Newport Pagnell; he was the candidate for the post of Fairfax, who had proposed him two months earlier.
He entered as governor on 28 Aug. 1645 and later claimed arrears as colonel of the garrison regiment, captain of a troop of horse and governor from 19 Aug. 1645 to 1 Sept. 1646.
On 17 June 1647 a vote passed the Commons that he should be governor of Bristol Fort and Castle, but it was not agreed by both houses. However, when he arrived at Bristol with the commission on 20 July 1647 he carried a commission signed by the Army’s Presbyterian enemies, and Captain Sampson, ‘When he saw the names of Holles, Stapleton, Waller, Lewis, Clotworthy, Massey were at it [the commission], he told Captain D’oyly his commission was signed by those that were impeached by an army that had persevered in their fidelity to the public, which those members had not, and therefore he was resolved to disobey his commission, and live and die with the army; and so the new intended governor was dismissed’ (Firth and Davies, Regimental history, 1.47).
On 27 Dec. 1647 D’Oilie petitioned the Commons for the payment of £1,000 of the arrears due to him, or at least the interest on that sum quarterly. He cited the expenses he had incurred for the post at Bristol from which he had been suspended, and said how he would have gone to Ireland himself ‘though unfit’, if he might have had his regiment with him. But he laid great emphasis on how he had ‘been many times dangerously wounded, by which his health and constitution, formerly strong and sound, have been so greatly impaired, as to render him not only unfit for study, but for any hard service. He has himself suffered great cruelty as a prisoner of war, and has been plundered to his shirt’ (Firth and Davies, Regimental history, 1.47).
References: Alumni Oxonienses;Firth and Davies, Regimental history, 1.44-7; JHC, 4, 235, 239; TNA, SP28/127, Part 1, f. 12v.; SP28/127, Part 9.
Armies: Earl of Essex; New Model Army
Dolphin, Richard Richard Dolphin
Captain-Lieutenant of the colonel’s own troop in John Hutchinson’s Nottinghamshire-based regiment of horse. In the later 1640s he was serving as a captain in the Francis Thornhaugh’s regiment of horse then on the New Model Army payroll.
References: Hutchinson, Life, 147; Wanklyn, New Model Army, I, 164.
Armies: Nottinghamshire; New Model Army
Domock [Dimmock], Humphrey Humphrey Domock [Dimmock]
Lieutenant in Rochford’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 32.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Done, John John Done (died 1645)
Captain in Lawrence Crawford’s regiment of foot in the Eastern Association Army from 18 Mar. 1644. He was a friend of the regiment’s Independent Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Warner, who left £30 in his will to ‘my very loveing frend Mr John Done’ (TNA, PROB11/193, f. 321r.).
In the New Model Army Done became major in Thomas Rainsborough’s regiment of foot, but was killed at the siege of Sherborne Castle on 11 Aug. 1645.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.16; Davies, ‘Eastern Association’, 94; Temple, ‘New Model Army’, 58; TNA, PROB11/193, f. 321r. ; Wanklyn, New Model Army, I, 46, 57.
Armies: Eastern Association; New Model Army
Done, Michael Michael Done
Lieutenant in Cholmley’s probably short-lived regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642-3.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 36-7.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Dormer, - - Dormer
Lieutenant of a troop of Kentish dragoons commanded by Captain Skinner in June 1644. Possibly the same man as Captain Francis Dormer.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 80.
Armies: Kent; Waller (Southern Association)
Dormer, Francis Francis Dormer
What dates there are seem consistent with him being Lieutenant Dormer of Captain Skinner’s troop of dragoons in June 1644. By Dec. 1644 he was a captain in Ralph Weldon’s regiment of Kentish foot. He continued in the regiment after it became part of the New Model Army. In spring 1647 the regiment (now commanded by Robert Lilburne) split over the question of service in Ireland and Dormer was one of those willing to serve there under its lieutenant-colonel, Nicholas Kempson. He was to be major in the regiment which split off from Lilburne’s, and arrested Ensign Nicholls for circulating the Army petition prohibited by parliament. In the events of June-July 1647 this regiment was itself disbanded and Dormer left Lilburne’s regiment.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 157; Firth and Davies,Regimental history, 1.362, 2.452, 454-5.
Armies: Kent; Waller (Southern Association); New Model Army
Doughty, - - Doughty
Captain of one of the Shrewsbury town companies in Humphrey Mackworth’s regiment of foot. In 1647 he became captain within the Shrewsbury militia.
References: TNA, Sp28/174; National Library of Wales, Aston Hall estate records D1, Ms. 2469.
Armies: Shropshire
Douglas, - - Douglas
Captain in Sir William Waller’s regiment of foot, briefly commanding a company (22 Mar.-29 Apr. 1644).
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 150.
Armies: Waller (Southern Association)
Douglas, Alexander Alexander Douglas
In 1642 listed as captain of a troop of horse in the earl of Essex’s Army.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 51.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Douglas, George George Douglas
By autumn 1644, lieutenant in James Boswell’s troop in Sir William Balfour’s regiment of horse.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 20.
Armies: Earl of Essex; Waller (Southern Association)
Douglas, James James Douglas
Cornet in Captain Robert Bruce’s troop in Edward Cooke’s regiment of horse in Apr. 1645.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 50.
Armies: Waller (Southern Association)
Dove, Daniel Daniel Dove
Ensign in Captain Henry Jarvis’s [Jervoise’s] company in the Portsmouth garrison regiment of foot of Sir William Lewis by 10 Jan. 1643.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 62.
Armies: Hampshire
Downe, - - Downe
Lieutenant in Captain Roger Oram’s company in Herbert Morley’s regiment of foot.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 109.
Armies: Waller (Southern Association)
Downes, - - Downes
Perhaps from Purslow, Shropshire, a captain in the county forces captured at High Ercall on 5 July 1645.
References: BL, Harl. Ms. 6852, f. 274.
Armies: Shropshire
Downes, Edward Edward Downes
Major of foot in Staffordshire during the first civil war. In Jan. 1645 the Staffordshire county committee granted him the tenancy of a royalist property. By Dec. 1645 he was at the siege of Chester, one of the commanders of the Staffordshire foot there and sat on Brereton’s council of war on 20 Dec. 1645. Commissoned lieutenant-colonel of foot in the Staffordshire militia, 14 May 1650.
References: Pennington and Roots, Committee at Stafford, 246; Dore, Brereton Letter Book, 2.382, 396, 402, 510; CSPD 1650, 506.
Armies: Staffordshire
Downes, Lawrence Lawrence Downes
On 22 Aug. 1650 commissioned as lieutenant-colonel in Henry Bradshaw’s regiment of foot in the Cheshire militia. Downes’s service record is obscure. By the time the regiment fought at Worcester on 3 Sept. 1651 Alexander Newton, originally the unit’s Major, had replaced him as lieutenant-colonel.
References: CSPD, 1650, 510.
Armies: Cheshire
Doyle, - - Doyle
Lieutenant to Robert Tichburne, promoted major of the Yellow regiment, London Trained Bands (Colonel Ralph Harrison) in the purging of Presbyterian officers after the failure of the coup in 1647. According to a hostile pamphlet, he had been at Cheriton.
References: A paire of spectacles for the Citie (1648), 11.
Armies: London
Drake, Sir Francis, second baronet Sir Francis Drake, second baronet (1617-62)
Of Buckland. Colonel of horse [and of foot?]. Eldest son of Sir Francis Drake, first baronet (1588-1637) and his second wife Joan, daughter of Sir William Strode. He married Dorothy (died 1661), daughter of John Pym in Jan. 1641. Hence nephew and son-in-law to two of the Five Members and cousin of Alexander Pym.
Vis. Devon, 301 describes Drake as colonel of the Plymouth regiment of horse; HoP: The Commons, 1660-1690, 1.233, records him as colonel of the Plymouth regiment of foot, 1642-44. Peachey and Turton show payments of £10, £20 and £20 in late 1642 by the mayor of Plymouth to Sir Francis Drake. There is an undated reference to a trooper serving under Colonel Sir Francis Drake; moreover, William Chapman of Plymouth, husbandman, was noted as a trooper under Baronet Drake, wounded at Braddock Down (19 Jan. 1643).
Possibly also commissioned by the earl of Stamford. Captain of a troop of horse in the service of Devon, 22 Sept. 1643-17 Jan. 1643 (if so, the colonelcy may be a later date, but given his status and connections likely that he was a colonel from early in the war). Later colonel of a regiment of horse, also known as the Plymouth regiment from its origins, in Edward Massey’s Western Brigade, 1645-7: on 10 Nov. 1645 he was still its colonel but with his appointment as sheriff of Devon command of the regiment passed to Colonel Eliziar Leighton.
Recruiter MP for Bere Alston (1646), he abstained from attending after Pride’s Purge; MP for Newport in the Convention Parliament of 1660 (where he was totally inactive) and in 1661.
References: Vis. Devon, 299-301; HoP: The Commons, 1660-1690, 1.233; Peachey and Turton, Fall of the West, 4.439; Temple, ‘Massey Brigade’, 440, 442; TNA, SP28/144, Part 10, f. 125v.; HoP: The Commons, 1640-1660 (forthcoming).
Armies: Devon; Massey Brigade
Drake, John John Drake
Assuming it is the same person, a much travelled civil war infantry officer. He began the war as major in the earl of Manchester’s regiment of foot and as such fought at the battle of Edgehill as part of Essex’s Army. After a spell as major in Sir William Fairfax’s regiment of foot, from June to Nov. 1643 he was lieutenant-colonel of Thomas Leighton’s regiment of foot. After a spell as a reformado, he moved south and in Sept. 1644 he became lieutenant-colonel in Herbert Morley’s Sussex-based regiment of foot, staying with that regiment until its reduction in spring 1645.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 109; Peacock, Army lists, 36; TNA, SP28/2a/129.
Armies: Earl of Essex; Yorkshire; Sussex; Waller (Southern Association)
Drake, Thomas Thomas Drake
Captain in Rochford’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army by 13 Sept. 1642, and until its disbandment in May or June 1643.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 32; TNA, SP28/2b/417, SP28/9/138.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Drake, Thomas Thomas Drake
Second son of Sir Francis Drake (1588-1637) of Buckland, first baronet and his second wife Joan, daughter of Sir William Strode (and hence younger brother of Sir Francis Drake). He married Susan, sister of Ellis Crymes.
Drake possibly commanded a Trained Band company in 1642 and took over his brother Sir Francis’s troop on 17 Jan. 1643. He played a notable part in the parliamentarian victory at Sourton Down, near Okehampton (25 Apr. 1643). He was captain of one of the three troops who advanced first upon the enemy and led the first charge, and according to one account ‘skew 12 or 13 with his battle axe and sword…he charged through and through the midst of the Armie’.
Drake later defected to the royalists. On 26 July 1644, the Commons ruled that:
‘Upon the humble Petition of Major Tho. Drake, now in Custody of the Serjeant at Arms; and upon the Report from the Committee of the West, to whom the Consideration of this Business was referred; it is Ordered, That the said Tho. Drake be forthwith discharged from any further Restraint: But he is not to depart the Town, without first acquainting the Committee of the West, and their Leave obtained’ (JHC, 3.570).
References: Vis. Devon, 298, 300; Peachey and Turton, Fall of the West, 4.439-40; Cotton, Barnstaple, 141, 152-8, 274; JHC, 3.570.
Armies: Devon
Draper, Matthew Matthew Draper
Captain of a troop of horse and perhaps also captain of the earl of Essex’s own troop of harquebusiers from 30 July 1642 (though one published list, which calls him Nathaniel, says the troop was of 50 cuirassiers). He was still serving in Essex’s regiment of horse, in effect commanded by Stapleton, in spring 1645, but unlike several other officers in that regiment he did not transfer to the New Model Army.
References: TNA, SP28/2a/120, 143, 160; Peacock, Army lists, 26, 50.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Draper, Matthew Matthew Draper
Captain of a troop, probably raised in Sussex, in Colonel Jonas Vandruske’s regiment of horse from 29 Aug. 1643 to 30 Apr. 1645. (Probably not the Matthew Draper who commanded the earl of Essex’s troop in Sir Philip Stapleton’s regiment of horse).
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 139.
Armies: Waller (Southern Association)
Drapes [Draper], John John Drapes [Draper]
Captain in Sir Samuel Luke’s Newport Pagnell-based regiment of foot. As such, he is mentioned several times in Luke’s letter books, and one letter to and one from him survive there.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 95; Luke Letter Books, nos. 1252, 1603.
Armies: Bedfordshire
Drinkwater, - - Drinkwater
Captain-Lieutenant of the colonel’s company in Sir John Gell’s regiment of foot in Derbyshire, serving in the Derby garrison. Twice, in Dec. 1644 and Jan. 1645, he and his men invaded the room of the Derbyshire county committee, presumably over pay. Drinkwater reportedly said, ‘that hee had as good bee killed before 5 as 500 and uttered desperate words’ (Slack, Man at War, 121). Gell, then present, signed a warrant (presumably for pay) without consulting his colleagues on the committee: some followed suit but his enemy Clarke refused and the implication is that Gell was sympathetic and not averse to his men’s protests. Drinkwater was wounded at Stoke on 25 Mar. 1646.
References: Slack, Man at War, 121.
Armies: Derbyshire
Drinkwater, Thomas Thomas Drinkwater
Ensign in the Blue regiment, London Trained Bands (Colonel Thomas Adams) in summer 1642.
References: Thrale 1642.
Armies: London
Drury, George George Drury (died 1649x50).
Captain in Thomas Ayloffe’s regiment of foot in the Eastern Association Army from its formation in Mar. 1643; at its disbandment he transferred to Thomas Rainsborough’s regiment of foot in the New Model Army. Major Drury died in Ireland, leaving a widow, Elizabeth.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.8; Firth & Davies, Regimental History, 418; JHC, 7.38; Wanklyn, New Model Army, I, 57, 68, 78-9, 88, 100.
Armies: Eastern Association; New Model Army
Drury, Robert Robert Drury
Ensign in Captain Thomas Dancer’s company in Thomas Ayloffe’s regiment of foot by the time of its disbandment in Apr. 1645.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.10.
Armies: Eastern Association
Ducane, - - Ducane
Captain in the Orange regiment, London auxiliaries (Colonel Thomas Gower) in Oct. 1646. The major of that regiment was Major Houblon, probably his kinsman, as James Houblon’s wife and Peter Houblon’s mother were both Marie Du Quesne (Ducane). Four Du Quesnes were elders or deacons of the French Church between 1637 and 1652: Benjamin, Pierre and two Jeans.
References: Nagel, ‘London militia’, 317; Marshall, Essex funeral, 11; French Church Letter Books, 93.
Armies: London
Duckenfeild, Francis Francis Duckenfeild
A captain-lieutenant in Cheshire. Identified by a pay warrant dated 16 Dec. 1645, granting him arrears of £5 and acknowledging his service for parliament in Cheshire since 1642. Although perhaps a kinsman of Robert Duckenfeild, Francis is absent from the family pedigree in Earwaker, East Cheshire.
References: TNA, SP28/225.
Armies: Cheshire
Duckenfeild, Robert Robert Duckenfeild (1619-1689)
Eldest of seven children of Robert Duckenfeild, esquire (baptised 1597, died 1630), of Duckenfield Hall, Stockport, Cheshire, and his wife Frances (died 1663), daughter of George Preston of Holker, Lancashire. He married (1) before 1662, Martha Fleetwood (died 1669), daughter of Sir Miles Fleetwood of Aldwincle, Northamptonshire, and sister to Charles Fleetwood; (2) Judith Bottomley (1653?–1739), daughter of Nathaniel Bottomley of Cawthorne, Yorkshire.
On Whit Tuesday 1642 Duckenfeild mustered a company of foot under his captaincy at Brinnington Moor, Stockport; in 1647 he was not allowed payment for this service, ‘being no Comysson’, although payment was allowed for his later colonelcy of a regiment of foot (until its disbandment in 1646) and captaincy of a troop of horse. He led his company and a troop of horse during the operations around the siege of Manchester. In Feb. 1643 Duckenfeild brought his company to Sir William Brereton at Nantwich. In Nov. he was commissioned colonel and raised a regiment of foot officered by north-east Cheshire men. In Jan. 1644 he fought at the battle of Nantwich, but in May was among the Cheshire commanders forced to withdraw before Prince Rupert’s advance. In summer 1645 at the siege of Chester he acted as governor of the suburbs in Brereton’s absence. Although his regiment was disbanded in 1647, Duckenfeild succeeded Michael Jones as governor of Chester, occupying the post until 1653. He was commissioned colonel of militia regiments of horse and of foot on 8 July and 22 Aug. 1650 respectively. In 1651 he commanded the force that captured the Isle of Man.
An Independent in religion, who built a chapel for Samuel Eaton at Duckenfeild, in politics in the 1640s he was an ally of his fellow Independent Sir William Brereton. By the mid-1650s, however, Duckenfeild was withdrawing from the regime. In Mar. 1655 he declined a commission as colonel of a regiment of horse, amongst other reasons explaining to Oliver Cromwell his unease about the direction he was taking: ‘Because that the extreames that the levelling party do run furiously upon, doth, as I humbly conceive, drive your highnes upon direct contrary extreames; and I desire to imitate Caleb and Josua in the wildernes, as neare as may be, and not to seeke a confederacy with those, who limitt God to their passions, and against whom God hath an evident controversy, andc. I beleive firmely, that the roote and tree of piety is alive in your lordship, though the leaves theirof, through abundance of temptations and flatteries, seeme to mee to be withered much of late; yet I hope time and experience will have a good influence upon your lordship (Deo juvente) andc.’ (Thurloe state papers, 3, 294).
At the Restoration he lost much of the property he had acquired during and after the civil war and he spent the 1660s under suspicion and occasionally under arrest and imprisoned, in Hull, the Tower and the Isle of Wight. He supported and offered to lead Cheshire forces in support of the Glorious Revolution.
References: Oxford DNB; Cheshire tracts, 36, 117, 130, 215, 241, 243, 247, 250, 252, 255; Dore, Brereton letter books, esp. 1. 102-3, 325, 330-1; Carr and Atherton, Brereton Staffs., esp. 73-4, 133; CSPD, 1650, 507 509.
Armies: Cheshire
Duckett, Charles Charles Duckett
In the course of the war, probably in 1643, he became a captain in the regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army commanded successively by Hampden, Tyrrill and Ingoldsby. He was still there in spring 1645 and transferred in that capacity with the regiment into the New Model Army. He had become major by the end of 1645, but left the regiment during 1647.
References: Wanklyn, New Model Army, 1. 148.
Armies: Earl of Essex; New Model Army
Duckett, William William Duckett
By spring 1645 he was lieutenant in the colonel’s own company in Ingoldsby’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army. He transferred with the regiment under Ingoldsby into the New Model Army, and he continued to serve as captain-lieutenant, possibly later promoted to Captain, until 1647.
References: Wanklyn, New Model Army, 1. 148.
Armies: Earl of Essex; New Model Army
Ducton, Thomas Thomas Ducton
A captain in Waller’s Army who was cleared of being a royalist spy in July 1644.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 52.
Armies: Waller (Southern Association)
Duddell, - - Duddell
Captain in the Lancashire regiment of foot of Alexander Rigby.
References: Gratton, Lancs. war effort, 294 [citing TNA, SP28/114/11, SP28/300/421].
Armies: Lancashire
Duett [Dowett], Francis Francis Duett [Dowett]
A Frenchman, earmarked for the Irish expedition in 1642, but instead he began the civil war as a captain or major of horse in the earl of Essex’s Army. He served in Waller’s regiment of horse in 1643, first as a captain and becoming its major by the summer. In Aug. 1643 he may have been appointed colonel of what turned out to be an abortive regiment of horse and he may be the Captain Duett who by 3 Nov. 1643 was commanding a company of foot in Waller’s Army. By August 1644 he was the major of Edmund Ludlow’s regiment of horse. As such, he fought at the second battle of Newbury, though Ludlow claimed that he ensured he and his men were in the rear and so quite safe. He then served for a time in the garrison at Malmesbury, Wiltshire, but defected to the king in spring 1645 and was killed in a skirmish at Lechlade in Wiltshire before the end of the year.
Before Duett changed sides, Mercurius Civicus praised ‘the gallant major’, contrasting his fidelity to the parliamentarian cause with that of other foreign commanders (Stoyle, Soldiers and strangers, 104). After his defection, a royalist newsletter defended his behaviour, to which one pamphlet responded, ‘Aulicus would not have us call Major Dowet a perjured renegade [but] no matter what he is, he is no Englishman, and whether he hath any Christian name I know not’ (Stoyle, Strangers and soldiers, 149, citing Mercurius Britannicus, 25 Aug.-1 Sept. 1645).
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 91; TNA, SP28/1a/48, 63; Stoyle, Soldiers and strangers, 93, 104, 138, 149, 195, 215; Peacock, Army lists, 50; Peachey and Turton, Fall of the West, 7.706.
Armies: Earl of Essex; Waller (Southern Association)
Dugdaile, John John Dugdaile
Lieutenant in Sir William Constable’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 42.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Dugdale, - - Dugdale
Captain in James Kerr’s regiment of foot by 6 Dec. 1643.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 25.
Armies: Waller (Southern Association)
Dukeson, Gilbert Gilbert Dukeson
Commissioned of captain of foot in the Warwickshire militia, under William Purefoy in 1650.
References: CSPD 1650, 507.
Armies: Warwickshire
Duncan, John John Duncan
He began the civil war in a London dragoon regiment before becoming a cornet in George Mills’s regiment of dragoons. By the latter half of 1643 he was lieutenant in the company of Major Moreton within Colonel James Kerr’s [Carr’s] regiment of foot raised in Surrey. In spring 1644 he was made captain in Colonel Edward Apsley’s short-lived and abortive Sussex regiment of foot in Waller’s Southern Association Army, but with the abandonment of that initiative in summer 1644 he entered Waller’s lifeguard, where he served until the disbanding of the lifeguard in spring 1645 when Waller resigned his commission. He appears to have ended the civil war as a major back in Kerr’s/Carr’s regiment.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 16, 37.
Armies: London; Surrey; Sussex; Waller (Southern Association)
Dundas, George George Dundas
Captain in or lieutenant-colonel of James Wardlawe’s regiment of dragoons in the earl of Essex’s Army, later captain of a separate troop of dragoons in that Army once the regiment had been broken up in 1644.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 47, 57.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Dungan, John John Dungan
Not one of the original officers in the earl of Peterborough’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army, but he was captain-lieutenant of a company of firelocks by 18 Nov. 1642 and still there on 23 Jan. 1643. He may have served in 1643-4 as a captain in Francis Thompson’s regiment of foot.
References: TNA, SP28/3b/391; SP28/5/175.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Dunscombe, George George Dunscome
By summer 1644, lieutenant-colonel in Colonel Sir Richard Onslow’s Surrey regiment of foot/the Surrey auxiliaries.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 113.
Armies: Surrey; Waller (Southern Association)
Durdo, Thomas Thomas Durdo
Lieutenant in William Bampfield’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army in 1642.
References: Peacock, Army lists, 40.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Durham, - - Durham
Captain in the regiment of dragoons of George Mills/Sir William Waller.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 147.
Armies: Waller; Waller (Southern Association)
Dursey, Severimus Severimus Dursey
Captain in the regiment of foot commanded successively by Henry Bulstrode, Adam Cunningham and Richard Fortescue. By spring 1645 he had become the regiment’s major, and he transferred as major into what became Fortescue’s New Model Army regiment of foot. When the regiment’s lieutenant-colonel was killed at Taunton shortly afterwards he was promoted in his place, but he perished later in the year, killed at Bristol in Sept. 1645.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 48.
Armies: Earl of Essex; Waller (Southern Association); New Model Army
Dutton, - - Dutton
A lieutenant serving under Colonel Mainwaring in Cheshire, he had allegedly plundered horses in Staffordshire and so was imprisoned by order of the Stafford committee in Mar. 1644.
References: Pennington and Roots, Committee at Stafford, 84.
Armies: Cheshire
Dutton, Philip Philip Dutton
Reformado lieutenant of foot on 2 Aug. 1642. Shortly afterwards captain in the earl of Peterborough’s regiment of foot in the earl of Essex’s Army.
References: TNA, SP28/1d/481; Peacock, Army lists, 28.
Armies: Earl of Essex
Dutton, Thomas Thomas Dutton
Captain in Edward Harley’s regiment of foot. In Dec. 1643 he was one of the officers, en route for Plymouth, who complained of the bad accommodation and want of supplies of the men. In Apr. Dutton appealed to Edward Harley or his father Sir Robert to adjudicate in a question of precedence between himself and Captain Edmund Hall. Dutton remained in the Plymouth garrison, later in James Kerr’s regiment of foot, and was part of a sortie in May 1644. He was still there in 1645-6.
References: Spring, Waller’s army, 52; HMC, Portland Mss, 3.120, 122; Relation, 1-2;Worth, History of Plymouth, 134.
Armies: Devon
Dye, - - Dye
A lieutenant serving under Major Snow, in Apr. 1645 he was ordered imprisoned by the Stafford committee for a drunken alehouse outburst opposing being sent to fight with and under Brereton in Cheshire.
References: Pennington and Roots, Committee at Stafford, 291-2.
Armies: Staffordshire
Dymond, Tristram Tristram Dymond
Served in a regiment of foot which Oliver Cromwell and later Colonel Francis Russell commanded in their capacity as governors of the Isle of Ely and which probably originated as an auxiliary regiment of the Cambridgeshire militia. Dymond was a captain in this regiment by Aug. 1644 and was present at the siege of Crowland House in Oct. 1644. By summer 1646 he had become a lieutenant-colonel, probably in the same regiment.
References: Spring, Eastern Association, 1.27.
Armies: Eastern Association
Dyneley, Robert Robert Dyneley
Of Bramhope, Yorkshire (West Riding), a parliamentarian captain in Yorkshire.
References: Hopper, ‘Yorkshire parliamentarians’, 116.
Armies: Yorkshire