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Who was riichard Yardley?

Posted By: peter dzik
Date: Saturday, 9 December 2006, at 9:42 a.m.

Does anyone know anything of this person, and was he North Staffs? I came across him noted several times in Government records embarking for Jersey (Channel isles) as Governor - general under the republic (1649 – 1660), from Weymouth in Dorset. He is also recorded in Hansard (parliamentary records) in 1660 under interrogation over his “cruel” imprisonment of former Civil war hero Major General Overton. This showed unusual coincidence with a North Staffs Moorlands man of the same name and time, plus the unknown origin of placenames of Overton in Leek. The archivist at Jersey also informs me that Governor Yardley often signed his name as Yeardley on local documents.

The same man was noted in despatches for heroism in battle against the Scots in 1651 when Cromwell personally crushed the Scottish rebellion. The English army had come directly across from Ireland after putting down the rebellion there, so Yardley also served there. In a letter Cromwell refers to the aftermath of one siege, where he ordered execution of all enemy officers and one in ten soldiers. The remainder were sent to the Barbados sugar plantations, where white men didn’t last long. With the Restoration in May 1660, all republican military and administrators were sacked (there was no money to pay them anyway). These men would have to organise their own survival.

Further, at the outbreak of civil war in 1642, the only trained troops in England were the six London Trained Bands, each of a thousand men. The commander of the Red regiment was an older brother of Staffs Richard, who was also one of the 12 aldermen of the City of London.