Ireton, Henry

Ireton, Henry (ī`ərtən), 1611–51, English parliamentary general; son-in-law of Oliver Cromwell. He held various commands in the parliamentary army during the first civil war (see English civil war) and in 1646 married Cromwell's daughter Bridget. A conservative reformer and advocate of limited monarchy, he opposed the radical constitutional demands of the Levelers and drafted the peace settlement known as the Heads of the Proposals, presented to the king by the army in 1647. In 1648 he took the part of the army against Parliament, became a republican, and signed (1649) the death warrant of Charles I. Appointed (1650) lord deputy of Ireland, he sternly carried out Cromwell's policy of dispossessing the Irish and settling Englishmen there.

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Ireton, Henry

(born 1611, Attenborough, Nottinghamshire, Eng.—died Nov. 28, 1651, Limerick, County Limerick, Ire.) English politician, leader of the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil Wars. Joining the Parliamentary army at the outbreak of war, he was involved in many victories. He was elected to Parliament in 1645 and married Oliver Cromwell's daughter in 1646. In 1647 he proposed a scheme for a constitutional monarchy; after its rejection by Charles I, Ireton provided the ideological foundations for the assault on the monarchy. He helped bring Charles to trial and was one of the signers of his death warrant. As lord deputy of Ireland and commander in chief (1650), he fought against the Roman Catholic rebels and died after the siege of Limerick.

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Ireton, Henry 

Born 1611; died Nov. 26, 1651. Figure in the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century; ideologist of the moderate Independents; associate of O. Cromwell.

Ireton was one of the organizers of the new army (the so-called New Model Army), in which he served as commissary general. In 1645 he was elected to the Long Parliament. Ireton was the main opponent of the Levellers at the conference in Putney in 1647; he supported the continuation of the king and the House of Lords and opposed the ideas of the Agreement of the People. However, in the fall of 1648, when it became clear that the Independents could not retain power without executing the king, Ireton became one of the organizers and participants in the trial of Charles I. He set out on the Irish campaign in 1649 as an aide of Cromwell and remained in Ireland as lord lieutenant.

REFERENCE

Ramsey, R. W. Henry Ireton. London, 1949.