Charles Fleetwood - Ireland

Ireland

In 1652 he married Cromwell’s daughter, Bridget, widow of Henry Ireton, and became commander-in-chief of the Parliamentarian forces in Ireland, to which title that of Lord Deputy of Ireland was added. The first year of his tenure saw the mopping up of the last Catholic Irish guerrilla resistance to the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. Fleetwood negotiated with the remaining guerrilla bands (known as "tories") to either surrender or to leave the country for service in the army of a country not at war with the Commonwealth of England. The last organised Irish force surrendered in 1653.

The chief feature of his civilian administration, which lasted from September 1652 till September 1655, was the implementation of the Act of Settlement 1652, which decreed the settlement of the New Model Army's soldiers on the confiscated estates of Catholic landowners and the transplantation of the original owners. Fleetwood carried out these policies ruthlessly. (For details of this period see The Cromwellian Plantation). He showed also great severity in the prosecution of the Roman Catholic priests, and favoured the Anabaptists and the extreme Puritan sects to the disadvantage of the moderate Presbyterians, exciting great and general discontent, a petition being finally sent in for his recall.