Colonel Edward Sexby (or Saxby; 1616 – 13 January 1658) was an English Puritan soldier and Leveller in the army of Oliver Cromwell. Later he turned against Cromwell and plotted his assassination.
Biography
Sexby was born in Suffolk in 1616, but little else is known about his life before the English Civil War. Reportedly he was a son of a gentleman, had been apprenticed as a grocer in London, and may have had family connections to Cromwell. In 1643 he was a trooper in Cromwell's Roundhead cavalry regiment (nicknamed the Ironsides).
In 1647, being still a private in the same regiment, which was then commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax, he took a leading part in the movement against disbanding the army, and was one of the three soldiers charged with the letter from the army to their generals which Skippon brought before the House of Commons on 30 April 1647. He became one of the leaders of the "Agitators", and acted as their chief spokesman in the Putney Debates of the Army Council in October 1647. In the debates, he drew a distinction between property ownership and political liberty: We have engaged in this kingdom and ventured our lives, and it was all for this: to recover our birthrights and privileges as Englishmen; and by the arguments urged there is none. There are many thousands of us soldiers that have ventured our lives; we have had little propriety in the kingdom as to our estates, yet we have had a birthright. But it seems now, except a man hath a fixed estate in this kingdom, he hath no right in this kingdom. I wonder we were so much deceived ... I shall tell you in a word my resolution. I am resolved to give my birthright to none. His contributions irritated Cromwell, who complained: "I confess I was most dissatisfied with that I heard Mr Sexby speak, of any man here, because it did savor so much of will." His speeches were vigorous and effective, opposing all compromise with King Charles I and demanding the immediate establishment of manhood suffrage. He may have been involved in the capture of the king at Holdenby House in 1647.
Sexby appears to have left the army about the close of 1647, but happening to be present at the Battle of Preston, with a letter from the Levellers leader John Lilburne to Cromwell, he was entrusted with a despatch from Cromwell to the speaker of the House of Commons announcing his victory. The House of Commons voted him £100 as a reward. In February 1649 Parliament entrusted him with the duty of arresting the Scottish commissioners, for which he was ordered £20. He was also appointed governor of Portland, is henceforth described as Captain Sexby, and was more than once charged with commissions requiring courage and dexterity.
In June 1650, at Cromwell's suggestion, Sexby was charged to raise a foot regiment for service in Ireland, but when completed it was ordered to Scotland. Sexby, who held the rank first of lieutenant-colonel and then of colonel, took part with his regiment in the siege of Tantallon Castle in February 1651. In June 1651 he was tried by court-martial for detaining the pay of his soldiers, and lost his commission.
A few months later Cromwell and the intelligence committee of the Council of State sent Sexby on a mission to France. He was charged to give an account of the political condition and the temper of the people. He negotiated with the Prince de Conti and the Frondeurs of Guienne, to whom he proposed an adaptation of the Agreement of the People as the basis of a republican constitution for France, and with the Huguenots of Languedoc. One of his emissaries was captured, and (according to Edmund Ludlow), Sexby had a narrow escape himself. Sexby returned to England about August 1653, and on 23 August 1654 was ordered £1,000 for his expenses during his mission.
Sexby was eager for an Anglo-Spanish league against France, and hoped to obtain the command of the levies which it was proposed to send to the support of the Frondeurs. Cromwell's abandonment of the projects against France, and still more his assumption of The Protectorate, caused a breach with Sexby, who allied himself with the disaffected republicans, disseminated pamphlets against the Protector, and took a leading part in the schemes for a joint rising of royalists and levellers in the spring of 1655. In February 1655 Cromwell's officers in the west of England were in hot pursuit of Sexby, but he succeeded in escaping to Flanders. At Antwerp he made the acquaintance of Colonel Robert Phelips and other royalists, to whom he described Cromwell as a false, perjured rogue, and affirmed that, if proper security for popular liberties were given, he would be content to see Charles II restored.