OWEN, Henry (d. 1660?), of Doneda, co. Kildare.

Little is known of Henry Owen’s career before 1649, when he appears as a major in Commissary-General John Reynolds’s regiment of horse in Cromwell’s army in Ireland. He may have been related to the Independent divine, Dr John Owen, who went to Ireland as Cromwell’s chaplain, and whose brother, Captain Philemon Owen, served in the same regiment. It is perhaps more plausible that he was connected to either Nicholas Owen of Blackhall, co. Kildare, or Edward Owens, a settler who owned lands in cos. Westmeath and Monaghan, but a direct link with these gentlemen has not been established.14Down Survey website; Irish Statute Staple Bks. 271. There is also uncertainty about Henry Owen’s military record before the Cromwellian invasion. He may have served with Reynolds before the invasion of Ireland: when the regiment was mustered ready to be transported to Dublin in May 1649, Leveller elements mutinied at Banbury, and were challenged by one ‘Captain Owen’.15The Moderate, no. 44 (8-15 May 1649), p. xx (E.555.16); A Moderate Narrative of Intelligence, no. 7 (12-19 May 1649), 50 (E.555.32); Regimental Hist. ii. 609. It is also possible that he was the ‘Serjeant-Major Owens’ recorded in Lord Castlestuart’s regiment in the parliamentarian garrison at Trim in co. Meath in 1648, and that he joined Reynolds’s regiment only when it arrived in Ireland in the summer of 1649.16TCD, MS 844, f. 48v. His later concern for the payment of arrears to soldiers who had served in Ireland before 1649 certainly suggests that he was already a veteran of the Irish war before he joined Reynolds.17Petty, Down Survey , 76.

During the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Owen was on active service in Leinster and Connaught. In March 1651, when his regiment was operating in King’s and Queen’s Counties, Owen was appointed governor of the town of Maryborough.18Ludlow, Mems. i. 262. In the following June he was assigned to the force, led by Edmund Ludlowe II*, which entered Connaught and joined with the army of Sir Charles Coote* at Loughrea near Galway. When Ludlowe moved on to Limerick, Owen was left with two troops to reinforce Coote.19Ludlow, Mems. i. 270. Throughout this period, Owen was involved in negotiations with Irish commanders willing to surrender rather than be hunted down by the victorious Cromwellians. In May 1650 he had been present when Reynolds and Dr Henry Jones interviewed the marquess of Antrim, who saved his own skin by revealing Charles I’s involvement in the Irish rebellion of 1641.20CCSP ii. 76; CSP Ire. 1660-2, p. 209. In March 1652 he witnessed articles between Reynolds and Colonel John Fitzpatrick at Streamstown in co. Westmeath; and in May he was part of a team which received the surrender of the forces under the earl of Westmeath, under the ‘Kilkenny Articles’.21Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 153, 201. By this time, Owen had become a respected figure in the Irish army. In May 1652 he signed a letter of the officers to Parliament, warning about leniency to the defeated Irish; and in October 1652 he was one of the witnesses in the trial of Colonel Daniel Axtell*, who was charged with war crimes, and who had insulted (among others), Owen’s regimental commander.22Ludlow, Mems. i. 513; TCD, MS 844, ff. 131-4. In December 1652 he was appointed commissioner for the high court of justice in Dublin; in January 1653 John Hewson*, governor of Dublin, appointed Owen sheriff of Queen’s County; and in the following summer he joined other prominent officers as a commissioner to consider appeals on the Kilkenny Articles.23TCD, MS 844, ff. 136, 158; Eg. 1762, f. 60. From October 1654 he was appointed to the assessment commissions for Kilkenny, King’s and Queen’s Counties.24An Assessment for Ire.

Owen’s close links with the Irish army were not, however, an indication of his radical sympathies. In 1655, for example, he became an agent for the soldiers seeking arrears for their service since June 1649 - a cause of great concern to the Old Protestant interest, whose welfare was treated with disdain by radical officers.25Petty, Down Survey, 76. Like his colonel, John Reynolds, Owen soon embraced with the more moderate policies advanced by Henry Cromwell*, who arrived in Ireland as lieutenant-general and acting-governor in the summer of 1655. This political connection provides one reason for his election for Westmeath, Longford and King’s County, along with another Cromwellian ally and Old Protestant commander, Sir Theophilus Jones*, in August 1656.26Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 624. In this, Owen also benefited from his social connections with the Leinster gentry, cemented by his marriage to the daughter of Sir William Peirce of Tristernagh, co. Westmeath (the sister of Sir Henry Peirce*), which was celebrated at about this time.27NLI, MS 2563, unfol.; Lodge, Peerage, ii. 116n. Owen’s political affiliations come across clearly in his activity at Westminster, when he joined Reynolds as an advocate of Henry Cromwell’s policies in Ireland. On 23 September Owen was named to the committee for Irish affairs, which was the principal forum for introducing reform, and thereafter he was named to committees to consider the abolition of wardship and tenures in Ireland (29 Oct.) and the bill attainting the Irish rebels (30 Mar. 1657).28CJ vii. 447a, 515a. Owen was also named to various committees which dealt with the land claims of individuals, notably Anthony Morgan* (10 Nov.), Sir Theophilus Jones (16 Feb.) and Charles Lloyd* (1 May).29CJ vii. 452a, 491b, 529a. In the various Irish committees, Owen was named alongside such key allies of Henry Cromwell as Morgan, Jones, Reynolds, William Aston and Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle). In early March Owen took the opportunity to approach the lord deputy, Charles Fleetwood, with a request that his governorship of Maryborough might be confirmed by a grant under the Irish great seal.30Henry Cromwell Corresp. 210-1.

Owen was also active in support of the Remonstrance (later renamed the Humble Petition and Advice) – another measure backed by Henry Cromwell and his friends at Westminster. On 20 March Owen was named to the committee on article 12 of the Remonstrance, which considered the position of Irish and Scottish royalists.31CJ vii. 508b. On 25 March he was one of the Irish MPs who voted to retain the offer of the crown in the 1st article of the Humble Petition and Advice, and when the monarchical version of the constitution was prepared for the protector’s consent, Owen was given ‘the honour’ of sending a copy of the document over to Henry Cromwell.32Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 23 (E.935.5); Henry Cromwell Corresp. 237. After the protector’s lukewarm reaction to the proposals, on 6 April Owen was appointed to a committee to prepare reasons why Parliament ‘adhered’ to the original form of the Humble Petition; and on 19 May, after the final rejection of the crown by Cromwell, he was involved in discussions how to limit and define the powers of the protector.33CJ vii. 520b, 535a. In the same month Owen’s political sympathies were spelled out even more clearly. When Sir Thomas Pride* objected to those who had denigrated the opponents of kingship, saying they should be called to the bar of the house, ‘Harry Owen replied ʼtwere fitter to call you to the bar for killing the bears, for which he was applauded by the crowd about him’. Anthony Morgan, who told Henry Cromwell the story, added, ‘thus your lordship sees we have an Irish champion considerable here’.34Henry Cromwell Corresp. 271-2.

After the death of his regimental commander, Sir John Reynolds, in the autumn of 1657, Owen was not chosen to replace him (the command being assigned to another Cromwellian, Daniel Redman*), but was instead transferred to be major of horse in Oliver Cromwell’s own regiment in Ireland.35Regimental Hist. ii. 594. Owen was present at the second sitting of Parliament in January 1658, but had little time to make an impression before it was dissolved.36CJ vii. 589a. On his return to Ireland he remained a close ally of Henry Cromwell, accompanying him on his progress into Munster in August, and on the protector’s death in September he continued with his regiment, now under the command of Richard Cromwell*.37Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 2 Aug. 1658; Wanklyn, New Model Army, ii. 245. By 1659 Owen had increased his stake in the peaceful settlement of Ireland through the acquisition of an estate in co. Kildare, possibly in lieu of pay arrears.38Irish Census, 1659, 405. After the fall of the protectorate in May 1659 his position as a Cromwellian loyalist put his future in question. In July, Owen was removed from his command, to be replaced by Edmund Ludlowe’s brother-in-law, Nicholas Kempson. He was still held in esteem by the army, however, and when the Irish officers rose in favour of a free Parliament in December 1659 Owen joined them, signing the proclamation against Ludlowe on 9 January 1660.39Ludlow, Mems. ii. 455; Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 137n. Thereafter, Owen disappears from the historical record. He was not re-commissioned to the army in February 1660, and did not sit in the General Convention in March, although he was named as a poll money commissioner in April.40Irish Census, 1659, 621; Wanklyn, New Model Army, ii. 264. He was also absence from the lists of those granted ‘general pardons’ for their activities during the interregnum, and this increases the likelihood that he died before the restoration. Owen had ‘several children’, but (according to one contemporary) ‘all died young’.41NLI, MS 2563, unfol.