Philip Skippon

[3] Luke and his elder brother William (born c. 1566) went to school at Dereham and studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

[4][5] Philip entered the military profession at an early age and in July 1620 volunteered to join Sir Horace Vere's expedition to aid Frederick V of Bohemia in the Electorate of the Palatinate.

With civil war looming, on 10 January 1642 he was made major-general and commander of the City of London's Trained Bands by Parliament in defiance of the king's authority, and two days later he mustered them to welcome the five members who Charles had failed to arrest.

However, his high level of experience meant that Parliament was unwilling to risk him in action early in the war, though he did serve alongside Essex at Gloucester.

He then gathered the infantrymen from that force in October and marched them to take part in the second Battle of Newbury, occupying the centre of the high ground near Stockcross and recapturing seven of the guns they had lost at Lostwithiel.

The appointment as Sergeant-Major-General of the New Model Army soon followed, as, apart from his distinguished services, there was scarcely another man in England with the knowledge of detail requisite for the post.

He led the centre at the Battle of Naseby, where he refused to leave the field while victory was still in the balance despite being dangerously wounded.

Skippon endeavoured to preserve a middle position between his own Presbyterianism and the Independents, and to secure a firm treaty with the king by any means.

During the Rule of the Major-Generals he was appointed to command the London military district (with John Barkstead as his deputy, who was zealous in suppressing immorality and ungodliness in the area under Skippon's control), where his popularity was always high[8]— but ceased to influence passing events.

He had first married Maria Comes of Frankenthal, Lower Palatinate, in the Netherland church there on 14 May 1622, by whom he had several children, most of whom did not survive infancy.

[12] There was a second marriage, for his widow Dame Katherine Skippon is first-named in his will written at Acton, Middlesex, which leaves lands there, and at Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, and in Norfolk and Suffolk.