Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick
Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick KB, PC (May/June 1587 – 19 April 1658) was an English naval officer, politician and peer who commanded the Parliamentarian navy during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. A Puritan, he was also lord of the Manor of Hunningham.[1]
Earl of Warwick
May/June 1587
Leez Priory, Essex
Holy Cross Church, Felsted
Frances Hatton (m. 1605)
Susan Rowe (m. c. 1625)
Eleanor Wortley (m. 1646)
The Long Parliament[edit]
By the summer of 1640 Warwick had emerged as the centre of the resistance to Charles I. [14] This was the result of decades of resisting actions including opposing Charles I's compulsory loans during the 1620s and in January 1937 – 12 years into Charles I’s personal rule – personally presenting the case for a new parliament to the king. [15]
In September 1640, Warwick signed the Petition of Twelve to Charles I, asking the king to summon another parliament.[16]
Over the early part of the new parliament, Warwick led one wing of the opposition to Charles I. The Warwick House group pushed for further reform than the more conciliatory Bedford House group, and in particular urged the need for the execution of the Earl of Stratford. [15]
Civil War period[edit]
In 1642, following the dismissal of the Earl of Northumberland as Lord High Admiral, Warwick was appointed commander of the fleet by Parliament.[17] In 1643, he was appointed head of a commission for the government of the colonies, which the next year incorporated Providence Plantations, afterwards Rhode Island, and in this capacity, he exerted himself to secure religious liberty.[11]
As commander of the fleet, in 1648, Warwick retook the 'Castles of the Downs' (at Walmer, Deal, and Sandown) for Parliament, and became Deal Castle's captain 1648–53.[18] The subject was criticized for not recapturing the royalist fleet in 1648 when Prince Rupert suffered mutiny and disarray in Hellevoetsluis.[19] However, he was dismissed from office on the abolition of the House of Lords in 1649. He retired from national public life, but was intimately associated with the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, whose daughter Francis married his grandson and heir, also Robert Rich, in 1657 (the marriage was a short one as the grandson died the following year).[11]
