On 29 January 1649, Charles I’s death warrant was signed by 59 men. One of these men, Richard Ingoldsby, later claimed during the restoration of the monarchy that Oliver Cromwell had forced him to sign it. Dr Andrew Barclay, senior research fellow of our House of Lords 1640-1660 project, investigates whether he was in fact forced to sign the death warrant.

The signing of the death warrant condemning Charles I on 29 January 1649 was, one must imagine, a moment of the highest drama. At least 57 of the 135 men who had been appointed to sit in judgement on the king assembled that day in the Painted Chamber at Westminster and added their signatures and seals to the parchment document. The original warrant is preserved as one of the most famous treasures of the Parliamentary Archives. Yet accounts of that fateful meeting are few and those that do exist are heavily coloured by hindsight and self-exculpation. Did Oliver Cromwell and Henry Marten playfully mark each other’s faces with ink? Such hijinks would actually not have been out of character for either man and the claim that they had done so was made under oath by a supposed eyewitness. But that sworn testimony was taken when Marten was on trial for high treason in 1660 after the Restoration. The idea that these regicides had been insufficiently serious even when committing the worst possible crime was, for the restored monarchy, most convenient.

The other celebrated tale relating to these events was that of Cromwell physically forcing his kinsman, Richard Ingoldsby, to sign the warrant. That too dates only from 1660. The 1660 Act of Indemnity and Oblivion exempted the regicides by name from its general pardon. When that bill had received its second reading on 12 May 1660, the Commons allowed six of its current Members who had in 1649 been named as judges for the king’s trial to speak in defence of themselves. Ingoldsby, who by then was the MP for Aylesbury, could not deny that he had signed the death warrant. But in an emotional speech, he claimed that Cromwell had literally forced his hand and then affixed his seal for him. Several contemporaries, including the 1st earl of Clarendon and Lucy Hutchinson, later repeated this story, not always uncritically, in their memoirs. Ingoldsby’s colleagues in Parliament were only too happy to accept this excuse and he was one of two men (the other being Matthew Thomlinson) specified in the Act of Indemnity as not liable for punishment for their roles in the regicide. Ingoldsby subsequently received a royal pardon from Charles II.

Little about Ingoldsby’s career before 1649 sheds much light on whether his story was true. He had been an officer in the parliamentarian armies since the very beginning of the civil war and he had been MP for Wendover since 1647. But, kept busy by his military duties, he had left few traces at Westminster. He probably did not attend the king’s trial at all. The idea that his cousin once removed metaphorically twisted his arm to sign the death warrant is possible. But that Cromwell had literally done so is rather less convincing; Ingoldsby’s signature on the surviving warrant looks normal.

It is his later career that is probably more relevant. During the 1650s Ingoldsby continued to serve in the army and as an MP. In 1657 he supported the offer of the crown to Cromwell and he was called to sit in the Other House. He remained conspicuous in his loyalty to the protectorate right up until the final removal of Richard Cromwell. But his real loyalties were to the Cromwells rather than the republic. Once Richard Cromwell had been removed, Ingoldsby was soon in contact with royalist agents acting for the exiled Charles II. In early 1660 he backed George Monck and supported the re-admission of the secluded MPs to the Rump. John Lambert, after escaping from the Tower of London in April 1660, attempted to raise an army in support of the doomed republic. Ingoldsby was sent to stop him. Their two forces met at Daventry on 24 April, whereupon Lambert was captured. There was then nothing to stop the new Parliament, which assembled the following day, restoring Charles II. This Parliament congratulated Ingoldsby for removing the threat from Lambert.

Even then Charles II was careful not to make any firm promises to Ingoldsby. One of the crucial provisions in Charles’s Declaration of Breda was that the fate of the regicides would decided by Parliament. As we have seen, this did end up working in Ingoldsby’s favour, as he was able to appeal to MPs directly and in person. But Ingoldsby had been unable to take anything for granted. While his capture of Lambert easily justified his reprieve, his claims of being suborned into being a regicide, handily further blackening Cromwell’s character, provided a very expedient pretext. Those newly re-established in power in 1660 had no reasons to interrogate his story too closely. Ingoldsby could be so bold in making a claim few were likely to believe because he knew that his more recent services counted for so much. He went on to sit for Aylesbury again in the next four Parliaments and was appointed as one of Charles II’s gentlemen of the privy chamber. Very different fates were met by 13 of the other men who had signed the death warrant, who, unable or unwilling to come up with their own cynical excuses, had been hanged, drawn and quartered.

AB

Further reading:

C.V. Wedgwood, The Trial of Charles I (1964)

The Letters, Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell ed. J. Morrill (2022), i. 650-2 (death warrant)

Biographies and articles of the MPs and constituencies mentioned in this blog can be found in the newly-published House of Commons 1640-60 volumes.