Michael Woodhouse (1601 - bef. 1655)

Born 1601 in Leiden, Holland, Nederland

Ancestors

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Biography

Colonel Sir Michael Woodhouse was a Royalist soldier in the English Civil War and military governor of Ludlow Castle.

Michael Woodhouse was the oldest son of Henry Woodhouse and his wife Judith Manby.^[1] He was probably born in 1601 at Leiden in Holland, while his father was fighting in the war against the Spanish occupation.^[2]

Michael Woodhouse followed his father into the military, seeing service in Ireland and then in the Royalist forces of King Charles I in the Civil War. He may have been the Captain Michael Woodhouse listed as an officer in the Bishops War of 1640.^[3]

In 1641-2, he served in the army in Ireland under Lord Ormond as Serjeant-Major (Major) in Sir Simon Harcourt's Regiment of Foot.^[4]

In 1643, the king recalled his forces from Ireland to serve in the Civil War in England, and Michael Woodhouse was named colonel of the Prince of Wales Regiment of Foot, which he led on the Welsh borderlands and Shropshire until the end of the war.^[5] He was knighted 22 September 1643, after the (first) Battle of Newbury.^[6] He was also named Governor of Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, where the regiment was quartered in the town, to the misery of the inhabitants, according to their petition: "That the souldiers which are under the command of Sir Michael Woodhouse have broken open severall mens doores and taken away to the number of a hundred beds at least with furniture to them."^[5]

Sir Michael Woodhouse is best known (or notorious) for the February 1644 siege of Hopton Castle in which the defenders were said to be massacred at his order after their surrender.

In June 1646, after a defeat in the field, Sir Michael Woodhouse was beseiged in Ludlow, which he finally surrendered.^[7]

In 1655, his brother Horatio presented a petition to the king requested that Sir Michael's arrears of pay be honored, which assumes that he had died before that date.^[8]

Sources

1. ↑ Jester, Annie Lash. Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia, 1607-1625, vol. III. Princeton University Press, 4th edition, 2009. pp. 678-9.
2. ↑ Rootsweb: Selected Families and Individuals. Horatio
3. ↑ BCW Project: English Officers of 1640. 1640
4. ↑ BCW Project: Sir Simon Harcourt's's Regiment of Foot. Woodhouse
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} BCW Project: Prince of Wales (Welsh Marches) Regiment of Foot. Regiment
6. ↑ Shaw, William Arthur. The Knights of England. London: Sherratt and Hughes, 1906. p. 216. Woodhouse
7. ↑ Reid, Stuart. All the King's ArmiesSpellmount, 2007. p. 207.
8. ↑ Petition of Horatio Woodhouse to the King. Petition