| Notes |
- Steward of Gascony; Seneschal of Aquitaine; Justice of Chester; Warden of Devizes and Marlborough castles.
From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (citation details below):
A household knight of Edward II, Ingham was the recipient of many royal grants, including the custody of the castle of Ellesmere, Shropshire, in June 1321. During the disturbances of the early 1320s, he served Edward II against the baronial rebels led by Thomas, earl of Lancaster (d. 1322), subsequently receiving grants of offices in Wiltshire and Shropshire and becoming keeper of Chester and Flint. As a knight-banneret, he served in Scotland with the king in August 1322. In 1324 he was appointed adviser to the king's half-brother Edmund, earl of Kent (d. 1330), who represented Edward as lieutenant in Aquitaine. Anglo-French tensions had led to the outbreak of war with France, and Ingham, dispatched to Aquitaine with a force of Spanish and other mercenary troops, conducted a successful campaign against the French in the Agenais.
As a trusted lieutenant of both the king and the Despensers, Ingham was appointed seneschal of Aquitaine on 7 October 1325, and in April 1326 extensive powers were granted him over the financial administration of the duchy. He appears to have gained the confidence of many members of the Gascon nobility, but the terms of an agreement made with the French in 1327 led to his temporary banishment from Aquitaine. Although he had been an associate of the Despensers, Ingham largely escaped the recriminations unleashed in England against the latter and their clients following the crises of 1326–7. Having become an adherent of Roger Mortimer, earl of March, he was summoned to parliament between June 1328 and September 1330, and was a partisan judge in the trial of the conspirators who attempted to overthrow Mortimer in February 1329. In October 1330, when Mortimer was toppled from power, Ingham was seized by the young Edward III at Nottingham and sent for trial to London. On 22 October his lands and goods were declared forfeit.
Nevertheless, Ingham was pardoned on 8 December 1330 because the young king acknowledged his loyal service to Edward II. His property was restored to him, with the important exception of grants from the crown. From this time onwards he was to serve the king in Aquitaine, and rarely returned to England until his death. On 29 June 1331 he was reappointed as seneschal in Aquitaine, an office he was to hold for twelve years—an unusually long tour of duty. Ingham was responsible for the peace, order, and defence of the duchy during a period of crisis in Anglo-French relations which led to the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War in 1337. By August 1336 the duchy was on a war footing and Ingham was ordered to forbid all Gascon men-at-arms to leave the land without licence, and to ensure that all major strongholds were properly garrisoned, equipped, and victualled.
Philippe VI of France confiscated Aquitaine on 24 May 1337. It fell to Ingham, as seneschal, to receive the French commissioners appointed to take possession of the duchy. He met them at Libourne, but refused to surrender his charge. Like their predecessors in 1294, the French envoys departed, proclaiming the duchy's confiscation. Ingham's services in Aquitaine were acknowledged on 15 July 1337, when his and his ancestors' debts were written off. Relieved of this burden, Ingham began military operations in Aquitaine, generally confined to the Agenais, but, despite the loss of Penne and Bourg, he successfully defended Bonnegarde, Montlaur, and other strongholds. He fought off a French attack on Bordeaux in 1339 and, financial stringency notwithstanding, retained substantial companies of Gascon nobles in his service.
In January 1342 Ingham was summoned to a council in England in order to report upon the state of affairs in Aquitaine, and on 6 April 1343 he was relieved of his post as seneschal. He died, probably at Ingham, on 29 January 1344. […]
His tomb survives, a masterly and unusual monument, in which Ingham lies upon a bed of stones, in a twisted posture, one hand grasping his sword as if to do battle with the Devil for possession of his soul. The significance of the bed of stones is unclear, but it may refer either to a cult of penitence or to Ingham's essentially martial qualities. A huge, publicly displayed, recumbent figure of a river-god on a bed of stones at Rome was popularly regarded as a statue of Mars during the middle ages, and the allusion to the god of war may have been reinforced by wall-paintings (now lost) above and behind Ingham's effigy which depicted hunting scenes and, perhaps, astrological references to the month of March (Mars). Whatever the case, Ingham's tomb is one of the finer examples of the monumental sculpture of the period.
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
1287 - 1344 (57 years)
[3, 4]