AXTELL, Daniel (1622-1660), of Berkhamsted, Herts.

Daniel Axtell came from a Hertfordshire family of prosperous yeoman status. His uncle, Henry Axtell, was described as a ‘rich man’ when he was buried at Berkhamsted in 1625, and his father, William, who was elected chief burgess of the borough in 1628 and common clerk before his death in 1638, owned several houses and tenements in the town.24PROB11/177/184. Berkhamsted parish had acquired a puritan reputation before the civil war, petitioning the House of Commons for a regular lectureship in 1640, and Axtell’s family seem to have been at the heart of this religious movement.25Urwick, Nonconformity in Herts. 374, 380. Daniel’s elder brother, Nathaniel, had connections among the puritan refugees in New England, and was planning to emigrate when he wrote his will in 1639. Nathaniel’s trust to gain eternal life ‘with other the elect children of God’, and his bequests to a minister and other friends who had already settled in New England, suggest that he was already a convinced puritan.26PROB11/183/314. Daniel shared his brother’s beliefs, but did not follow his example. By May 1638 he had moved to London, where he was admitted to the Grocer’s Company as an apprentice to Nicholas Beminge.27GL, MS 11593/1, f. 78v; MS 11571/12, f. 238v. Axtell’s activities in London during the early years of the 1640s are less than clear, although the appearance of his signature on a petition of the London apprentices against popery and prelacy in late 1641 suggests that he had already developed radical sympathies.28Eg. 1048, f. 28. His political views may have been influenced by his religious beliefs. On arrival in London he had joined an Independent church, and by the late 1640s he had become a member of William Kiffin’s* Baptist congregation.29M. Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints (Cambridge, 1977), 156.

In the spring of 1644 Axtell left his apprenticeship (a year early) to become a captain in John Pickering’s foot regiment in the Eastern Association army.30SP28/253A, f. 45v. He was on active service with Pickering during the summer of 1644, when his company was stationed at St Albans.31SP28/25, f. 60. The regiment transferred to the New Model Army in April 1645, and served at Naseby in June; Pickering died in November of that year, and after a hiatus the religious Independent, John Hewson, became its colonel around June 1646, with Axtell being promoted to major.32CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 387; Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 59-60. Hewson became an important influence on Axtell, and the two men became notorious for preaching at Wallington church, having evicted the minister by force.33T. Edwards, The Third Part of Gangraena (1646), p. 253. By May 1647 this religious radicalism had acquired a political dimension, with Axtell joining Hewson’s lieutenant-colonel, John Jubbs, in presenting the regiment’s grievances to Sir Thomas Fairfax*. In August 1647 Hewson’s regiment was one of those which entered London to secure the supremacy of the political Independents in Parliament.34Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 405-6. During the Leveller unrest in the autumn of 1647 the regiment remained loyal to Fairfax, and Axtell signed the remonstrance to the general protesting their fidelity and deploring the divisions among the soldiery.35Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 278. Axtell served as lieutenant-colonel of his regiment during the second civil war, when the unit was deployed against the royalist insurgents in Kent, and he attended the army councils in November and December 1648.36Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 91; Clarke Pprs. ii. 270-1. This record of loyalty may have encouraged the army’s commanders to put Axtell in charge of the guard at the king’s trial in early January 1649. According to later accounts, Axtell, not content just to keep the crowd in order, became an active participant in the trial. He threatened to kill Lady Fairfax when she protested against the proceedings, and urged his men to taunt the king and shout out ‘justice, justice’ and (after the sentence had been passed) ‘execution, execution’. He was also accused of having persuaded Colonel Huncks to sign the king’s death warrant.37State Trials, v. 1147.

Despite his radicalism, Axtell was unwavering in his support of the new commonwealth. In March 1649 he arrested Richard Overton and Thomas Prince, as part of a general plan to seize all the Leveller leaders, and he may have helped to persuade his fellow-Baptists to support the new regime.38Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints, 182, 188-9. He was also a keen supporter of the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland. Hewson’s regiment was chosen by lot to accompany Cromwell to Ireland.39SP28/60, ff. 424, 646. The regiment crossed to Ireland in August, and took part in the storm of Drogheda in the next month. During the winter of 1649-50 Axtell was given command of the town of Ross in co. Waterford.40A Brief Relation, no. 17 (1-8 Jan. 1650), 214 (E.589.7). After the capture of Kilkenny in April 1650, where Axtell and Hewson led the assault on the breach, Cromwell appointed him governor of the town and gave him command of a regiment of foot.41Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 225, 230; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 575. This was Axtell’s first independent command, and in the next few years he proved himself a skilled soldier, defeating a larger force at Meleek on the River Shannon in October 1650, and routing the earl of Westmeath’s army at Monasterevin a year later.42A Letter from William Basill, (1650), 3-6 (E.618.3); Mercurius Politicus, no. 79 (4-11 Dec. 1651), 1258-9. Axtell was not confined to Leinster, and his military responsibilities took him into other provinces, and, occasionally, back to London. It was on one journey to England, in March 1651, when he and other officers were captured by royalists and imprisoned on the Scilly Isles. When Robert Blake* forced the Scillies to capitulate in May, Axtell and the other officers were released unharmed.43Ludlow, Mems. i. 265; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 131, 215. On his return to Ireland, Axtell’s local position was strengthened by his appointment as governor of Kilkenny Precinct (which included the counties of Kilkenny, Wexford and Carlow) and as revenue commissioner for the region.44Ludlow, Mems. i. 261; SP28/82, ff. 65, 67.

During the early 1650s Axtell established a reputation for ruthless cruelty against enemy soldiers and civilians alike. His victory at Meleek was marked by the few Irish who survived the engagement.45A Letter from William Basill, 5-6. As governor of Kilkenny he waged an unsparing campaign against the Irish tories, killing women and innocent civilians who could not produce official permission to be in prohibited areas.46J.P. Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (1865), 165n; Warr in Ire. ed. Hogan, 140. The Irish came to hate Axtell above all other officers in Leinster. When he was captured by royalist pirates in March 1651, the Irish contingent ‘pressed hard’ for his immediate execution.47Ludlow, Mems. i. 265. In March 1652, when negotiating the terms of his surrender to the English, Colonel John Fitzpatrick included a clause ‘that I may not be under the power of Col. Axtell’.48Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 150. Similarly, in September 1652, the earl of Westmeath’s forces feared that, on their surrender, Axtell might treat them as murderers rather than soldiers, and begged his superior officer, Charles Fleetwood*, to intervene.49Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 274; Ludlow, Mems. i. 263. In the same month, Axtell’s mistreatment of one prisoner at Kilkenny, Colonel Walter Bagenal, became known.50Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 275. Other cases would come to light in the next few years.51HMC 8th Rep. 501; CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 27, 93. As the complaints against him mounted, Axtell was hauled before the army council in October 1652. His prosecutors (including Dr Henry Jones and Henry Owen*) brought charges of embezzlement and insubordination as well as arbitrary execution and murder, but he seems to have been acquitted, as he soon returned to his duties at Kilkenny.52TCD MS 844, ff. 131-4. In an ironic twist, in December 1652 Axtell was appointed as a commissioner for the high court of justice at Dublin.53TCD MS 844, f. 136.

Axtell’s persecution of the Irish seems to have been motivated by religious zeal. He later claimed to have acted as God’s ‘instrument’ of vengeance against ‘that bloody enemy’ who had slaughtered so many innocent Protestants, for ‘that word was much upon my heart, give her blood to drink, for she is worthy’.54State Trials, v. 1288. By this time, Axtell had become involved with the Baptist churches in Ireland, whose views on the fate of the Irish were similarly extreme, and he encouraged Baptists in Kilkenny.55TSP iv. 90; v. 670-1; B. White, Association Recs. of the Particular Baptists (2 vols. Baptist Hist. Soc. 1971-77), ii. 120. He may also have been encouraged by his close associates in the officer corps, who had already petitioned Parliament in May 1652, calling for harsher measures against the Irish, emphasising the ‘blood-guiltiness of this people in a time of peace’.56Bodl. Tanner 53, f. 20. Axtell and Colonel Jerome Sankey* were especially close in the early 1650s, with Sankey referring to him as ‘my brother Axtell’.57Tanner Lttrs. 343. They also seem to have engaged in an unsavoury competition to see how many tories they could kill in their respective precincts.58Mercurius Politicus no. 95 (23 Mar.-1 Apr. 1652), 1496. Other close allies included his former commanding officer, John Hewson (now governor of Dublin), the governor of Carlow, Henry Pretty, the governor of Wexford, Thomas Sadleir*, and Axtell’s own lieutenant-colonel, Alexander Brayfield*.59SP28/91, f. 296. Many of these men shared Axtell’s sympathies with the Baptists, and his growing opposition to the protectorate. Axtell’s election for Kilkenny, Carlow, Wexford and Queen’s Counties in August 1654 was presided over by his colleague, Sheriff Henry Pretty, and his fellow MP was his colleague and friend, Thomas Sadleir.60Mercurius Politicus, no. 219 (17-24 Aug. 1654), 3709 (E. 809.5); C219/44, unfol. In the end, both Axtell and Sadleir were kept in Ireland by Lord Deputy Fleetwood, to guard against any unrest from the Irish during Parliament.61TSP ii. 558.

Axtell commanded the support of the radical officers, but he was distrusted by the Dublin administration. Indeed, Fleetwood may have had party political as well as security concerns in mind when he prevented Axtell from taking up his seat in 1654. In early 1655 Axtell supported William Allen and other officers who had fallen foul of the government, and in the following June Fleetwood was probably making a political point when, during his progress through southern Ireland, he ‘gave godly exhortations’ to Axtell and his friends at Kilkenny.62TSP iii. 141; Mercurius Politicus no. 262 (14-21 June 1655), 5416-7. When the army was further reduced later in the summer, Fleetwood made sure that Axtell lost his regiment, although he remained governor of Kilkenny, with the rank of lieutenant colonel.63TSP iii. 710, 715. Thereafter, Axtell became a mouthpiece for the disbanded soldiers of his own and the other Leinster regiments, who felt themselves badly treated by the government.64W. Petty, Down Survey ed. T.A. Larcom, 73-6, 92. Axtell’s disillusion with the regime would soon go much further. In October 1655 there were reports that Axtell entertained a subversive Baptist preacher, Thomas Patient, and when the company heard news of Oliver Cromwell’s* coach accident, ‘they laughed heartily at it’.65TSP iv. 90.

Mistrust of Axtell was one of the few things that Fleetwood had in common with his brother-in-law, Henry Cromwell*, who became the acting governor of Ireland in the autumn of 1655. Axtell’s complaints of ill-treatment were not well received at Whitehall. In February 1656 Henry Cromwell was told by his London agent, Sir John Reynolds*, that ‘Colonel Axtell’s carriage is ill-taken, and before this happened it was desired that his commission as lieutenant colonel should be suspended’.66Henry Cromwell Corresp. 105. Reynolds went on to reassure Henry Cromwell of Fleetwood’s support, for ‘the lord deputy... is somewhat sensible of Axtell’s business’, and Fleetwood himself wrote to his brother-in-law: ‘I am sorry Colonel Axtell hath done anything of late unhandsome towards you’.67Henry Cromwell Corresp. 108-9, 113. During 1656 Axtell’s allies, Hewson and Sankey, were at the forefront of efforts to remove Henry Cromwell from Ireland. Axtell’s relations with Henry Cromwell also broke down at this time, and in December 1656 he joined Allen and others in resigning his command. Axtell seconded complaints that ‘the godly were discouraged’ under the new regime, and continued by ‘enumerating some particular injuries, which he said he had received from me in relation to his command’.68TSP v. 670-1.

After the resignations, the government expected further trouble from the officers, and from Axtell in particular. Yet in April 1657 Henry Cromwell, watching developments with interest, confessed to his father that ‘I cannot well tell how to interpret Axtell’s selling of all his stock, and letting long leases of all his land, together with his too sudden slipping away from hence; which course divers others of that party were also upon’.69TSP vi. 222-3. His sudden departure may reflect the depths of his despair at the situation in Ireland, rather than his intention to join any seditious groups in England, as he seems to have withdrawn from politics entirely during 1657 and 1658. His financial position looked increasingly precarious, as his possession of the land granted to him in co. Meath in lieu of military arrears was challenged by the previous Old English owner, Gerald Westley. Westley’s claim had been dismissed in 1655, but, with the support of his guardian, Dr Henry Jones, he had reopened the case in July 1657. In December Axtell petitioned the protector, protesting that Westley had been brought up a Catholic, and his close family were all rebels. Cromwell referred the matter to Henry Cromwell and the Irish council, and ordered the judicial proceedings to be suspended until an investigation had taken place.70CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 656-7, 855-6. The imminent legal decision may have influenced Axtell’s decision to co-operate with the authorities on his return to Ireland in the spring of 1658. In July 1658 Henry Cromwell wrote to the protector saying that ‘the bearer, Colonel Axtell, makes haste from hence, to the end he may receive your highness’s pleasure in order to some foreign service’, and added that ‘during his abode here, his carriage hath been very fair, not only well satisfied with the government, but ready (if need require) to maintain it with whatsoever is dear to him’.71TSP vii. 306-7.

Nothing is known of Axtell’s activities in the year from July 1658 until June 1659, but the fall of the protectorate soon brought him back into the political arena. On 16 June the committee of safety considered adding Axtell and Sadleir to their list of approved officers, along with Sankey and Brayfield.72CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 375. By early July, Axtell had been restored to the rank of colonel and was given command of Fleetwood’s old foot regiment.73CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 12. In August, Axtell and Sankey were put in charge of a brigade sent from Ireland to support John Lambert* in his campaign against Sir George Boothe* and the royalist insurgents in the north west of England.74Ludlow, Mems. ii. 110. Crossing to Holyhead, they advanced to Chester, and took part in the capture of Chirk Castle – a role which brought the praise of the council of state.75CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 193; HMC Portland, i. 684; Clarke Pprs. iv. 45. Thereafter, Axtell attached himself to army interest. On 20 October he signed a statement of the officers at Whitehall, calling on George Monck* and the Scottish army to accept Fleetwood as commander-in-chief.76Clarke Pprs. iv. 68. By the end of November the request had become a demand for compliance, as Monck continued to support the Parliament against the army.77Clarke Pprs. iv. 146. As Monck marched south against Lambert in early January 1660, Daniel Redman* was ordered to take over the Irish brigade from Sankey and Axtell; the troops immediately deserted, and ‘bade their new commanders, Axtell and Sankey, to shift for themselves, openly protesting they would serve hereafter under none but Colonel Redman’.78Clarke Pprs. iv. 251-2; Life of Dr John Barwick ed. P. Barwick (1724), 224.

After the victory of Monck’s faction, Axtell went to ground. He remained undetected in London until July 1660, when he was caught by a royalist officer who heard him denounce Charles II, threaten to lead an army revolt against the restored monarchy, and swear that he would kill any single person who would govern the three nations.79CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 116; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 290. Axtell was tried for high treason on 15 October 1660, accused of having been responsible for the king’s death as ‘commander of that black guard, that cruel and bloody guard’ which had policed his trial. His actions during the trial, his efforts to persuade Huncks to sign the death warrant, and his conduct while in Ireland, were all included in the charges. Axtell protested that he was merely obeying orders as a commissioned officer, and denied that he had encouraged his men to goad the king.80State Trials, v. 1146-74. Before his execution, which took place at Tyburn on 19 October, Axtell was more outspoken, praising the ‘Good Old Cause which we were engaged in’ and claiming that he was to be its ‘martyr’. He warned his friends to ‘keep close to Christ, and let them not touch with surplice or common prayer book’, and before being executed he hugged his Bible, saying ‘this hath the whole cause in it, and I may carry this without offence’.81State Trials, v. 1286-93; Ludlow, Voyce, 256-66. As a man attainted for high treason, Axtell could give his children no inheritance, and his Irish lands were given back to the original owners after 1660.82CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 26-7, 226. In later years, Axtell became something of an icon for religious radicals. His behaviour on the scaffold was praised by Edmund Ludlowe II*, who lauded his ‘fidelity, courage and conduct’, and the Fifth Monarchists called for ‘all righteous blood, from Abel to righteous Axtell ... to be called into account’.83Ludlow, Mems. ii. 322; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 569.