Henry Ireton (1611-26 November 1651) was a Parliamentarian general during the English Civil War, an English MP, and Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1650 to 1651 (succeeding his father-in-law Oliver Cromwell and preceding Charles Fleetwood).
Biography[]
Henry Ireton was born in Attenborough, Nottinghamshire, England in 1611, and he became a lawyer in 1629. He joined the Parliamentarian army on the eve of the English Civil War and fought at the Battle of Edgehill and the Battle of Gainsborough before being appointed deputy governor of the Isle of Ely; he later served under Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester in the Yorkshire campaign and led the left wing of Oliver Cromwell's army at the Battle of Naseby, where his wing was broken and he was captured before Cromwell's counterattack rescued all of the prisoners. On 30 October 1645, he became MP for Appleby, and he moved from being a moderate to being an extremist. He later took part in Cromwell's Irish campaign, and he took Waterford in 1650 and had the dignitaries of Limerick hanged after the city's fall in 1651. That same year, he died of the plague in the aftermath of the siege.