Miles Sindercombe (died 13 February 1657) was the leader of a group that tried to assassinate Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell during the period of the Protectorate in 1657.
Early military career
Sindercombe was born in Kent and was apprenticed to a surgeon. During the English Civil War, he became a Roundhead and a Leveller. In 1649, he took part in the mutiny of his regiment and when it failed he fled. In 1655, he re-appeared as a member of a cavalry regiment in Scotland and took part in a plot to take control of the local army. This failed as well, and Sindercombe fled to the Netherlands.
Plotters
In Flanders, he met another Leveller and anti-Cromwell plotter, Edward Sexby, in 1656. Sindercombe joined his plot to assassinate Cromwell in hope of restoring the Puritan republic as they saw it. Sexby supplied Sindercombe with money and weapons. Boyes made an explosive device out of gunpowder, tar and pitch, and the group planted it in the palace chapel on 8 January 1657. However, Toope, who had had a change of heart, revealed the plan to authorities. When the plotters left, guards disarmed the bomb.
Thurloe gave an order to arrest the plotters. Cecil was easily captured, but Boyes escaped. Sindercombe fought the guards until one guard cut off part of his nose. Cecil and Sindercombe were sent to the Tower.
Cecil decided to tell all. With Toope's aid, Thurloe learned Sexby's part in the plot and presented his findings to the Parliament.
Trial and death
Sindercombe remained uncooperative. On 9 February 1657, he was found guilty of high treason when both Cecil and Toope testified against him and was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Sindercomb's sister brought him poison the night before he was to be executed either to spare him the agony of such a death or because he did not want to face the humiliation of execution. He drank it and was found dead in his cell in the Tower of London on 13 February 1657. His body was dragged to the erected gallows and buried beneath it by the hangman. (He was actually gibbeted on Shepherd's Bush Green.)
See also
- Killing No Murder, a pamphlet published in 1657
Notes
References
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