Colonel Robert Phaire, (1619?–1682), was an officer in the Irish Protestant and then the New Model armies and one of the regicide of Charles I of England.
He was one of the three officers to whom the warrant for the execution of Charles I was addressed, but he escaped severe punishment at the Restoration by having married the daughter of Sir Thomas Herbert (1606–1682).
The senior line (descendants of Onesiphorus), continued the spelling Phaire until the early 1800s when they restyled to Phayre).
Like many Protestants he joined Murrough O'Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin to fight the Confederates and by September 1646 he had risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the regiment of Richard Townshend.
[5] On 4 October these four were exchanged for Inchiquin's son, and brought to Bristol in December by the Roundhead admiral William Penn.
On 10 April 1650, he took part, under Lord Broghill, in the victory at Macroom over the royalist forces under Boetius MacEgan, the Roman Catholic bishop of Ross.
[3] It is somewhat remarkable that Phaire himself married, as his second wife, Elizabeth, second daughter of Sir Thomas Herbert (1606–1682),[7] was the faithful attendant on Charles I in his last hours.
[8] On 8 July 1659, shortly after the fall of the protectorate, the London-based Committee of Safety gave Phaire a commission as colonel of foot to serve under Ludlow in Ireland.
On 2 November (Hacker had been hanged on 19 October; Huncks had saved himself by giving evidence) he petitioned the privy council to release his estate from sequestration, and permit him to return to Ireland.
[8] On 6 April 1665, Phaire was living at Cahermore, County Cork, when he was visited by Valentine Greatrakes, the stroker, who had served in his regiment in 1649.