An Puritan Fighting with Oliver Cromwell in Ireland

Religious strife in England was increasing. In 1645 George Cooke abandoned his

prosperous Massachusetts Bay Colony mill, sailed back across the Atlantic, and joined Cromwell’s army as Colonel of a regiment of foot soldiers. They sent him to Ireland. Alas, he was a fiendishly efficient officer. In 1649 Cooke's regiment captured Wexford. Members of the New Model Army slaughtered all the inhabitants who had gathered around a great cross (an unfortunate “Popish” symbol) in the marketplace, begging for mercy.  George became renowned for his cruelty and brutality. In 1652, Cooke's men imprisoned 300 men and children in a house and set it on fire, killing everyone inside. Atrocity followed atrocity. Finally in April 1652, Cooke and his mounted escort engaged in a running fight with the troops of an Irish patriot, Captain Nash. It all ended with Nash and Cooke falling “dead together to the ground”.

A contemporary writer lamented, “…the flower of chivalry in the county of Kilkenny faded with the death of Captain Nash.” I have found no lamentations for the death of Colonel George Cooke.

Oliver Cromwell and the New Model Army in Ireland. Source: http://www.nam.ac.uk/

 While George Cooke grimly pursued his destiny, most of his immediate family remained in Massachusetts and were reverently regarded by the other colonists as something akin to Puritan royalty. A relation of theirs, Richard Singletary (ca. 1600), was looking for a new wife, after a woman known as “Goodwife Singletary” died in 1638. George Cooke's daughter, Susannah was of a marriageable age.

There’s a strange rumor about Richard. Supposedly a nursemaid kidnapped him as an infant, so that ambitious members of his noble family could not murder him to inherit his title and wealth. She put him on a ship to the New World where he was raised as a foundling, in ignorance of his origins.

This is a fine plot for a Victoria Holt-ish potboiler romance novel, with a dollop of The Pirates of Penzance thrown in for extra spice, but it can’t be true. Records praise Richard for his good education, which would not have been obtainable for an obscure colonial orphan. He named his children after various Dunham-Singletary family members back in England, so obviously he was familiar with them. It turns out these people had long used the last names Dunham, Donham, Singleton and Singletary interchangeably, which confusion might have hinted at mysterious origins and inspired the swashbuckling conspiracy theory.

The Cooke family was not unknown to him, as his parents had been first cousins directly descended from Henry Cook IV, the brother of Sir Anthony Cooke of Gidea Hall.  Despite the dropped “e”, the Singletarys were extended members of the Cooke clan.

Richard was a suitable match for our Puritan princess. He was a prosperous “Freeman” of Salem when he married Susannah in 1639. He was twice elected as a “Select Man” and became a planter and proprietor. Together they produced seven children who married into other prominent families.