Sydnam Poyntz

Colonel General Sydnam Poyntz, also Sydenham Poynts, (bap. 3 November 1607) was an English soldier who served in the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil War. After continental military service, he returned to England in 1644 and became an officer in the Parliamentary army. He became commander-in-chief of Parliament's Northern Association and governor of York. He commanded the victorious Parliamentary force in the battle of Rowton Heath on 24 September 1645. The Presbyterians Parliamentary party thought him to be likely to oppose the New Model Army, but in 1647 he was sent by his soldiers a prisoner to Thomas Fairfax. He fought for London against the New Model Army in 1647, and on the collapse of his cause he fled to Holland. He accompanied Lord Willoughby to the West Indies in 1650, and probably settled in Virginia. Work as a mercenary Poyntz was the fourth son of John Poyntz of Reigate, Surrey, and Anne Skinner. He was baptised on 3 November 1607. Poyntz was originally apprenticed to a London tradesman, but, being ill-treated by his master, he took service as a mercenary soldier in Holland, and in the Thirty Years' War. Poyntz wrote a memoir called Relation on his military service abroad between 1625 and 1636, and it gives some idea of what he did although D.N. Farr his biographer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography warns that it is "fitfully accurate". and relates that he: