Sir Henry Tichborne

[7] He received large grants of land in counties Leitrim and Donegal that had been confiscated from Irish landowners.

In 1644 he went to England with the aim of advising the King in his negotiations with the Irish Confederacy, but was captured by Parliamentary forces on his way back and spent several months in the Tower of London,[17] until Parliament consented to his exchange.

Though he was initially regarded with some suspicion by his new masters, he relieved their doubts about his loyalty by fighting with distinction at the Battle of Dungan's Hill in April 1647 where Michael Jones crushed the Confederate army of Leinster; and he was highly rewarded as a result.

His famous letter to his wife, written in 1651, is a valuable first-hand description of the Siege of Drogheda and of his later military exploits.

[23] From 1650 on he lived in retirement until the Restoration of Charles II, when his submission to Parliament was not held against him (such conduct having been common enough among both English and Irish royalists).

In 1666 he was finally confirmed by the Court of Claims as owner of the confiscated estate of Christopher Plunket, 2nd Earl of Fingall in County Louth,[25] originally promised to him by Cromwell, where he began the building of a mansion, Beaulieu House, which still exists, although it was substantially rebuilt by his grandson, Lord Ferrard.

He was clearly a very rich man: as late as 1717 his great-granddaughter Judith brought a fortune to her husband Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland.

He fell ill towards the end of the year and planned to travel to Spa for his health but was too weak to leave home (he was now about eighty-five, a great age for the time).

[26] He married Jane, daughter of Sir Robert Newcomen of Keenagh, County Longford, first of the Newcomen baronets, and his first wife Katherine Molyneux, daughter of Sir Thomas Molyneux, Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland, and his wife Catherine Stabeort of Bruges.

Henry and Jane had eight children, five sons: —and three daughters: Tichborne was praised in his own time by the Confederate Ireland leader Richard Bellings as a man who was "trusty to the King, valiant and moderate",[32] but the accuracy of this verdict has since been questioned.

His willingness to come to an accommodation with Cromwell, and to be enriched by him, casts doubt on how "trusty" he was to either the King or his subsequent masters.

He was described by a contemporary, the regicide John Moore, later Governor of Dublin, as "so great an enemy to the rebels in Ireland, killing many hundreds of them at his own hand or standing by to watch them executed".