Robert Venables
Robert Venables, was a English soldier from Cheshire, who fought for Parliament in the First English Civil War, and later took part in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.
When the Anglo-Spanish War began in 1654, he was made joint commander of an expedition against Spanish possessions in the West Indies, known as the 'Western Design'. Although he captured Jamaica, which remained a British colony for over 300 years, the project was considered a failure. This ended his military career, and he retired to an estate near Wincham, Cheshire.
Prior to the 1660 Restoration, he briefly served as Governor of Chester. Although considered politically loyal, he was also a Congregationalist; his religious views made him unacceptable to the new regime, and he was removed from office.
In 1662, he published a treatise on fishing, The Experienced Angler, with a preface by Izaak Walton, which went through five editions in his lifetime. He died in 1687.
Biography
Robert Venables was the son of Robert Venables of Antrobus, Cheshire and Ellen Simcox, daughter of Richard Simcox of Rudheath. The Venables were a cadet branch of a family that could trace their ancestry back to the Norman Conquest, and were classed as members of the minor gentry.His first wife was Elizabeth Rudyard; the exact date of their marriage and her death are unknown, but based on their children, they married sometime in mid 1630s, and she died after 1649. Only two of the five survived into adulthood; Thomas, and Frances.
In 1654, he married Elizabeth, mother of seven, and widow of Thomas Lee of Darnhall, Cheshire. Her eldest surviving son Thomas married Frances Venables, while Thomas Venables married her daughter Elizabeth Lee, despite already being already engaged to a girl in Dublin. Their marriage was not a success; she allegedly 'disliked his politics, disdained his religion, and disapproved of his manners.'
When he died, his property at Wincham was inherited by Frances.
Wars of the Three Kingdoms
Almost nothing is known of his career prior to 1642; when the First English Civil War began in August 1642, he raised a company for the Manchester garrison. In December, he was captured in a skirmish near Westhoughton, Lancashire but quickly released. The Venables family had long-standing connections to the Breretons, one of the most powerful families in Cheshire; for the rest of the war, he served under Sir William Brereton, the local Parliamentarian commander.Despite lacking military experience, Brereton proved an energetic and resolute commander, winning minor victories in March 1643 at Middlewich and Hopton Heath. Establishing his headquarters at Nantwich, he soon attained superiority over Arthur Capell, Royalist commander in Shropshire, Cheshire, and North Wales.
From August to September 1643, Venables was based at Cholmondeley, from where he launched a number of attacks on local Royalist positions. His actions were part of a wider objective of putting pressure on Royalist-held Chester, which was essential for funnelling men and material from their supporters in Ireland and North Wales. Their success led to Capell's replacement by Lord Byron in October 1643.
Byron assembled an army of over 5,000, many of them veterans from the war in Ireland, and defeated the Parliamentarians at Second Middlewich in December. Brereton appealed to Sir Thomas Fairfax for support. At Nantwich in January 1644, their combined force routed Byron, who lost over 1,500 men and most of his artillery. He retreated into Chester, where he remained. Venables spent much of the next two years as governor of Tarvin, part of the blockade of Chester, which finally surrendered in February 1646. By now, he was a Lieutenant-Colonel; although Brereton recommended him as governor of Chester, he was sent to reduce the remaining Royalist garrisons in North Wales before the war ended in June.
Despite victory, the cost of the war, a poor 1646 harvest, and a recurrence of the plague left Parliament unable to pay their soldiers. In summer 1647, the garrison of Nantwich mutinied; Venables restored order, and was rewarded with an appointment as governor of Liverpool in January 1648, a position he held during the Second English Civil War. In 1649, he was promoted colonel, and recruited a regiment of Cheshire veterans to serve in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. These troops sailed from Chester in time to take part in the Battle of Rathmines on 2 August, a decisive victory over the Irish Confederates.
After the storming of Drogheda—in which his regiment played a key role in preventing the retreating Royalists from raising the drawbridge to the north side of the town, assuring Cromwell's speedy victory and the massacre that followed it— Cromwell, who headed south towards Wexford, promoted Venables to major general of Ulster and Governor of Derry, and sent him in command of a detachment, to join Sir Charles Coote in Ulster. On his march Venables defeated Colonel Mark Trevor and Hugh, Lord Ards at the battle of Dromore, and captured Newry and Carlingford. Belfast surrendered to him early in October, and in December he and Sir Charles Coote defeated Hugh, Lord Ards at the Battle of Lisnagarvey, and took Carrickfergus.
On 21 June 1650 Venables assisted Coote to defeat the army of Bishop Heber McMahon at the Battle of Scariffhollis and to help in the failed assault of Charlemont, after which the garrison of the town surrendered with terms on 14 August. He was also involved in the campaign against the Earl of Clanricarde, the commander of the last Irish Confederate field army, who fled to France in December 1650. Over the next two years Venables fought a counter insurgency war against tories in the bogs of north Connaught and south-west Ulster, eventually forcing Colonel Tirlogh O'Neill and Lieutenant-general O'Farrell to capitulate.
On 9 December 1651 Irish lands to the value of £1,223 were ordered him for his arrears of pay, but that did not cover all his arrears and he was active in trying to get backpay for both himself and him men. In 1653 he was busy drafting regulation to impose the draconian 1652 Act of Settlement, but not so busy as to find time to oppose the imposition regulations that would have seen the reintroduction of enforced Presbyterianism in Ulster, presumably because like many in the New Model Army he was a Congregationalist.
The West Indies expedition
In May 1654 Venables left Ireland, and on 9 December following he was appointed general of the forces sent by the Protector Oliver Cromwell to attack the Spanish in the West Indies. The instructions of the Protector and his council gave Venables the full latitude of choice as to the point to attack, suggested various places, but declined to tie his hands, ordering him simply "to gain an interest in that part of the West Indies in possession of the Spaniards". He was, however, to consult with Sir William Penn, the admiral commanding the fleet employed in the expedition, and with two commissioners, Edward Winslow and Gregory Butler, on the method of carrying out his instructions.The expedition set sail in December 1654, reached Barbados at the end of January, where additional forces were embarked, and arrived at Hispaniola on 13 April. A landing was effected with about eight thousand men some forty miles west of the capital, and the army marched through the woods to attack it. After suffering two disastrous defeats from the Spaniards on 17 and 25 April, Venables, complaining loudly of the cowardice of his men, decided to give up the attempt, and sailed for Jamaica. That island was reached on 10 May, the chief town occupied with very little fighting, and the governor forced to capitulate on 17 May. The Spaniards retired into the woods and hills, whence they continued their resistance; the expedition was badly equipped with provisions and other necessaries, and sickness decimated the ranks of the army.
The Spanish freed their slaves, who became Jamaican Maroons in the mountainous interior, and they fought on the side of the Spanish against the English invaders. There were two separate bands of Maroons, led by Juan de Bolas and Juan de Serras respectively, and they effectively repelled any attempts by the English to subdue them.
Penn with part of the fleet sailed home on 25 June, and Venables himself followed in the Marston Moor on 4 July. Venables had been ill ever since reaching Hispaniola, and by this time was thought to be at the point of death. But, apart from reasons of health, he was anxious to get to England to clear himself from responsibility for the failure at Hispaniola, and to represent to the Protector the needs of the colony at Jamaica. When he arrived at Portsmouth on 9 September 1655, he described himself as "in a recovering condition", but almost a skeleton, and so weak that he could neither stand nor ride.
On 20 September he appeared before the Council of State, and was immediately committed to the Tower of London. Penn shared the same fate. On 30 October Venables was released from his imprisonment, on condition of surrendering his general's commission and his command in Ireland, and obtained no further employment during the protectorate.
The historian C.H. Firth, writing in the DNB in 1889, was of the opinion that the main cause of the failure at Hispaniola and the reason for the imprisonment of the two generals was the lack of cordial co-operation on the part of both. The errors committed by Venables himself in the management of his attack were equally fatal, and he never obtained the confidence either of his officers or his soldiers. His army, however, was composed of very inferior and undisciplined troops hastily got together and badly equipped. His wife, who accompanied him, says in her journal: "The success was ill, for the work of God was not like to be done by the devil's instruments. A wicked army it was, and sent out without arms or provisions". In the opinion of the historian John Morrill, writing in the ODNB in 2004, " was over-promoted and under-supported in a high-profile fiasco in the Caribbean that cost him his reputation. He had to live out his life as a disgraced man with a sharp-tongued wife who disapproved of all he stood for".
Later Career
After the dismissal of the Second Protector Richard Cromwell, Venables began to promote the restoration of the monarchy, though he cautiously avoided taking part in Booth's Insurrection.When George Monck, the English military governor of Scotland, came into England at the head of his troops, he appointed Venables governor of Chester. Initially Edward Hyde, a close advisor to Charles II of England while the latter was in exile, was in favour of the appointment, but on taking advise from the local Cheshire Royalists, pressed successfully for his dismissal because of the worries expressed over Venables religious Independency.
Venables obtained nothing at the Restoration. In 1664 he was informed against as concerned in what was known as the Farnley Wood Plot, but the charge met with no belief. He sheltered William Veitch when he was in hiding in England after the Pentland Rising, and seems to have remained a nonconformist. He died in July 1687, aged 75.