Colonel Henry Sinclair
Colonel Henry (Harry) Sinclair was the brother of John Sinclair, the 10th and last Lord Sinclair. John was born in 1610, so it is likely Henry was born c.1612. At that time, John held the estates of Dysart and ‘Ravensheugh’ with Ravenscraig Castle and the barony of Newburgh.
One of the earliest references to Henry was in November 1641. He and several Covenanter officers had been detained after their ship sailing from the continent was driven into Tynemouth Shields by a storm. They were imprisoned for eight months in England and after their release they applied to the Scottish Parliament ‘for their and their servants’ diet, lodging, jailer fees and other necessary expenses, every one of them having truly testified.’
Because of the threat from Charles I and his army, in March 1641 Henry was sent by his brother with two hundred men to Moray, Ross, Caithness and Sutherland to recruit more men for John’s regiment, returning to Aberdeen on 2 May with 100 men and extra funds. They were billeted there at great expense until February 1642 and were accused of impregnating at least sixty-five ‘honest wemen seruandis’, were debauched, drank heavily, swaggered at night, fought and swore.
When Sir Phelim O’Neill’s rebellion broke out in Ireland in October 1641, Major General Robert Monro, at the request of Charles I and agreed by the English Parliament, was asked to lead a Scottish army into Ulster to suppress it. O’Neill had captured Charlemont, Dungannon, Tandragee, and Sir Con Magennis had seized Newry and made it his headquarters.
In mid-March, Sinclair’s regiment joined Monro’s army and embarked at Irvine, landing with 2,500 men at Carrickfergus on 3 April 1642; the regiment mustered 486 men and officers on 7 April. Monro left a sufficient garrison at Carrickfergus and marched west at the head of 1,800 men, including 200 men from Sinclair’s regiment, led by Henry, to join 2,000 horse and foot drafted from local regiments.
On 1 May, they entered Newry without resistance. Bagenal’s Castle was in rebel hands and held out for two days. On the third day, Monro had the prisoners, including two priests and 60 merchants and tradesmen of the town who had not been in the castle, taken to the bridge and killed by shooting, hanging and drowning as traitors, without any due legal process. Then, according to an eye-witness, ‘the common soldiers, without direction from the General-Major [Monro], took some eighteen of the Irish women of the town, and stript them naked and threw them into the river and drowned them, shooting some in the water; more had suffered so, but that some of the common soldiers were made examples of and punished.’
Life for the soldiers in the town was not happy. Only half of the regiment had permanent shelter and their first priority was the construction of fortifications. They had to live in pitiful quarters, with O’Neill’s forces always within a day’s march. During the winter months they were afflicted by ‘Irish agues’ and other diseases from which many died. According to Major James Turner, ‘Not one officer or sojor escaped sickness, except the Lieutenant Colonell’ [Henry].
Clearly, the lack of provisions for the garrison was dire, so much so that Henry was accused of selling goods to merchants, which were then seized by the army commissioners for their use. From its arrival in April 1642 until February 1644 the regiment only received three months’ pay.
The officers became so disillusioned they met at Carrickfergus on 13 February and decided the army should leave immediately. They swore an oath not to disband or lay down their arms after reaching Scotland until all arrears due to them were paid, and agreed Sinclair’s regiment should be the first to depart.
As early as December 1643 it was said that the Newry garrison had offered to sell the town to the Irish for 140 cows. Turner concluded a truce with Colonel Turlagh O’Neill to allow supplies and medicine to reach his men. A few days later, on 6 December, Henry offered to sell Newry to Ormond, Charles I’s representative in Ireland, for £80 sterling (£960 Scots) to reimburse him and Turner for the money they had spent on fortifying the town. They evacuated the town and sailed from Groomsport, near Bangor, on 26 February 1644.
Their arrival was a welcome reinforcement for the Scottish Covenanters. The regiment took part in the siege of Newcastle in 1644 and was the first Covenanter unit inside the town. It cleared part of the wall and captured 20 mounted gentlemen and 200 foot soldiers without killing anyone, although they lost one captain and three soldiers in the assault. It was merged with his brother’s ‘Levied Regiment’ of Foot and took part in the siege of Hereford from July to September 1645 and the siege of Newark from November to 6 May 1646.
It was quartered in Durham and returned to Scotland in January 1647. On behalf of the Committee of Estates, Turner and his men suppressed rebellion in Kintyre, Argyll and Bute, and then sailed to Islay where they attacked Dunnyvaig Castle. After its surrender the officers were allowed to go where they pleased, but the ‘sojors to be transported to France, and given to Henry Sinclare my old Lieutenant Colonell.’ This is the only reference to Henry being in France and in command of Scots troops serving Louis XIV.
The Anglo-Scottish war, known as the Third Civil War (1650–1652), began with Cromwell’s invasion of Scotland in 1650, trying to forestall the risk of Charles II invading England with a Scottish army.
On 20 July 1651, the Scots lost the Battle of Inverkeithing, and Major-General John Lambert marched his troops 6 miles to take the deep-water port of Burntisland, on the other side of the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh and Leith. Cromwell shipped most of his army there, assembling between 13,000 and 14,000 men by 26 July.
It is likely that Ravenscraig Castle, 8 miles from Burntisland, was attacked by Cromwell’s troops between those dates, inflicting some damage and occupying it. ‘It was inhabited in Oliver Cromwell’s time, and was fired upon by a party of his troops. It has, for many years, been uninhabited, and in a ruinous state.’ The Sinclair family abandoned the castle and relocated to ‘The Hermitage’, a house they had built on the site of the later Dysart House, constructed in 1722.
Henry was certainly back in Scotland by 12 June 1651 when the regiment he had been given permission to raise in Angus was quartered at Stirling. It then mustered 654 men. On 3 September, his ‘Regiment of Foot’ was present at the battle of Worcester. After this final defeat of the Royalist army of some 16,000 men by the Parliamentary army of 30,000 men, his brother John was committed to the Tower on 16 September 1651.
It is not recorded if Henry was imprisoned, but he may have been forced to live in London or escaped to the continent. He was back in Scotland in 1657 when, in September, Robert Dundas gave an account of monies disbursed ‘according to Colonel Henry Sinclair’s direction, mostly for Lady Sinclair’s expenses in Glasgow.’ Cromwell died on 3 September 1658 and Henry’s brother John was released from prison when Charles Stuart was proclaimed king on 8 May 1660.
Several notices of Henry appear in the records after that. One, dated 20 January 1668, makes for particularly interesting reading. The Rev J Anderson, minister at Dysart, entered into a process against him for his irregular and scandalous behaviour – ‘ye have never been a hearer of sermon this twelve month bygone …; as also considering how ye intertain that scandalous woman in your house notwithstanding of hir contempt of the discipline of the church.’
This reference to his relationship with a ‘scandalous woman’ mirrors that of his half-cousin William Sinclair of Roslin, who was repeatedly harangued by the Kirk for his philandering with Jean Dobie, his miller’s daughter.
Colonel Henry Sinclair died on 5 September 1670 at Dysart, Fife. According to the Sinclair family living in Newry during the nineteenth century, Henry was their ancestor. As yet, there is no documentary evidence, but a William Sinclair was living in the town in 1734. Henry could certainly have fathered children in Newry before he returned to Scotland in 1644. His second in command, Major Turner, left us a suggestive account of his own
… deare wife Mary White, with whom I was first acquainted, and then enamoured, at the Neurie. She was comd of very good parents; her father being the second son of a knight, and her mother of ane other good familie of the Whites. She was thought by others, much more by me, to be of a good beautie. For the qualities of her mind I have had such experience as they have rendered me happie amidst all the afflictions hath befallen me since. I did not marry her, because at that time she was tenacious of the Roman Catholick persuasion, which was very hatefull to our leading men of Scotland; neither, indeed, in the condition where in I was then could I maintain her in any good fashion.
