Edward Broughton

Sir Edward Broughton (died 1665) was a Welsh landowner and soldier with a long service in Royalist armies during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Imprisoned in the Gatehouse Prison in Westminster in 1659 following a Royalist rebellion, he later married the prison keeper's widow and took on the lease of the prison himself. Broughton was fatally wounded in the Battle of Lowestoft during the Second Anglo-Dutch War and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was created a baronet the same year, although it is unclear if the legal process was complete at the time of his death. Early life Edward Broughton was born in around 1620 into a gentry family, the Broughtons of Marchwiel, Denbighshire, with a tradition of military service in the Royal armies of England. The family probably originated in Cheshire; they first appear in Welsh records in the 16th century. Broughton's father, Sir Edward Broughton, was knighted in 1618. He was pardoned on his wife's petition for being accessory to murder in 1639. He was a Commissioner of Array for Denbighshire in 1642. Broughton's mother was Frances Tyrrell, daughter of Sir Edward Tyrrell and his second wife Margaret Egerton. At least two of Broughton's uncles and one brother were Royalist officers during the Civil War, while another brother, Francis, was said to have served as a captain in Parliament's army. Holding the rank of captain, Broughton accompanied his uncle, the peripatetic professional soldier and Thirty Years' War veteran Colonel Robert Broughton, to Ireland in 1641 as part of Charles I's efforts to suppress a serious rebellion. Broughton remained in the country for 18 months, fighting in the subsequent Confederate War and returning with the rank of major.