John Desborough

In 1645, he was present as major in the engagement at Langport on 10 July, at Hambleton Hill on 4 August, and on 10 September he commanded the horse at the Storming of Bristol.

If passed it would have helped to finance the Army by imposing a ten per cent "Decimation Tax", on known Royalists.

After the exclusion of the Rump Parliament from the Palace of Westminster by Fleetwood on 13 October, he was chosen by the officers a member of the new administration and commissary-general of the horse.

At the Restoration he was excluded from the 1660 Indemnity and Oblivion Act but not included in the clause of pains and penalties extending to life and goods, being therefore only incapacitated from public employment.

Accordingly, he was ordered home, in April 1666, on pain of incurring the charge of treason, and obeying was imprisoned in the Tower of London until February 1667, when he was examined before the council and set free.

His rough person and manners are the constant theme of ridicule in the royalist ballads, and he is caricatured by Samuel Butler in Hudibras and in the Parable of the Lion and the Fox.