Yet More Parliamentarian Command

Continuing the theme of figures becoming somebody else, I thought I'd steal the reveal from Stars In Their Eyes...

I'm Oliver Cromwell, and tonight Matthew I'm going to be Colonel John Okey. 

Possibly my favourite figure from the entire range of 'characters'. This pose really lends itself to a vignette with the figure talking to a figure on foot. The perfect figure for this being the General Coaker collectable figure from PP.

Originally these limited free figures were available for attendees at PP game days, but more recently they have become a wonderful way of remembering gamers and friends of PP who have passed away. Limited to one per household, I'd already utilised my General Coaker figure in a regiment of foot, but was fortunate to be a gifted another (thanks Will). Maybe the figure on foot has just climbed down from a tree at Naseby and is reporting the location of the King to his colonel?

John Okey was a London merchant, and later an MP for Bedfordshire. He's probably much better known as a colonel of dragoons who lined the Sulby hedges at Naseby, and as a signatory of Charles I's death warrant.

Some claimed that Okey was a brewer, his family appear to have been relatively prosperous, and by 1640 he owned a ship chandlers in London. 

Okey was a captain in Richard Browne's Regiment of Dragoons before joining Lord Brooke's Regiment of Horse in February 1643, where he served until May of that year. He transferred to Hesselrigge's Regiment of Horse  initially as a captain, being promoted to major in July 1644. In April 1645 he would be promoted to colonel of the newly formed NMA Regiment of Dragoons.

At Naseby his dragoons famously lined the hedges at Sulby, and it is close to there that he is reputed to have seen the King.

In 1648, he was appointed a commissioner to the High Court of Justice, and was one of 135 men who were selected and appointed by "An Act of the Commons Assembled in Parliament" to try the King. Okey was present for most of the court's sittings of Charles's trial. In turn he would sign the King's death warrant.

Involved in The Humble Petition of Several Colonels of the Army in 1654, he would be disciplined and lose his commission.   

He lived in the Round House at Brogborough during the 1650s and his estates included the honour of Ampthill, the manor of Millbrook, Brogborough Park and Lodge and lands in Leighton Buzzard.  During this period he was active in Bedfordshire affairs and as a Justice of the Peace.  He may have been involved in the establishment of John Bunyan’s first Baptist church in Bedford.

After the Restoration he fled abroad, but was betrayed, arrested and returned to England where he was tried and executed as a regicide.  

I'm Black Tom, and tonight Matthew I'm going to be Sir Edward Rossiter. Sir Edward has graced these pages before, or rather his Regiment of Horse has.

Rossiter’s family acquired gentry status in Lincolnshire in the 16th century. He was indicted for treason at the Grantham assizes in 1643, and took a prominent part in the first Civil War as a Parliamentarian officer. He was again in arms against the Royalist garrison of Pontefract in 1648, but as a staunch Presbyterian abstained from the House after Pride’s Purge. 

He was excluded from Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, as a suspected Royalist; he had in fact been Lincolnshire's designated leader of Booth's Rebellion, but the rebellion failed before Rossiter could act.

He presented the Lincolnshire petition for a free Parliament to George Monck, and interrupted his wedding night to take part in the operations against John Lambert. He was re-elected for Lincolnshire at the general election of 1660, but was an inactive Member of the Convention, making no speeches and serving on only eight committees. He was involved in drawing up the instructions of how Charles II would be met upon his return to England.

He was knighted at Canterbury for his services to the Restoration, but refused to stand for re-election in 1661. Despite information that he was involved in a ‘great design … for restoring the Commonwealth’, he was commissioned to raise troops of horse to meet the threat of a Dutch invasion in 1667. 

He died of cancer of the mouth on 9th January 1669 after a long illness. 

Here endeth the painting season. Time to return my Sauron like gaze on the ECWtravelogue.

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