Oliver Ingham

English army commander (1287–1344)

Sir Oliver Ingham (about 1287–1344) was an English knight and landowner who served as a soldier and administrator under King Edward II of England and his successor, King Edward III. He was responsible for the civil government and military defence of the Duchy of Aquitaine during the War of Saint Sardos and the early part of the Hundred Years' War.

Born about 1287, he was the son and heir of Sir John Ingham (1260 1309) of Ingham, Norfolk, who had served in the wars of King Edward I against the Scots, and his wife Margery. In 1310 he not only inherited his father's lands in Norfolk, Suffolk, Wiltshire and Hampshire but was himself summoned by King Edward II for military service against Scotland. Appointed a household knight of the king, he received many royal grants including the custody of Ellesmere Castle in Shropshire, keeper for the counties of Cheshire and Flintshire, and official positions in Shropshire and Wiltshire. 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 of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent, who represented Edward as his lieutenant in Aquitaine. Tensions had led to the outbreak of war with France, which captured much of the ill defended Agenais. Ingham, dispatched to Aquitaine with a force of Spanish and other mercenary troops, regained some of the losses in the Agenais and Saintonge. After arranging a truce, the Earl of Kent departed for England in 1325. In 1326, Ingham was appointed Seneschal of Gascony, the highest post in what remained in English possession, holding extensive powers over the law and finance of the duchy. Though he appears to have earned the confidence of many members of the Gascon nobility, an agreement with the French in 1327 led to his removal from Aquitaine. the inscription, in medieval French, having been recorded as: Mounsier Oliver de Ingham gist icy et Dame Elizabeth sa compagne que luy Dieux de les almes eit mercy (Sir Oliver Ingham lies here and Dame Elizabeth his wife; may God have mercy on their souls).

With his wife Elizabeth Zouche, daughter of William la Zouche, 1st Baron Zouche, and his wife Maud Lovell, he had four children: Oliver (died 1326), John (died 1339), Elizabeth (dead by 1344), and Joan. As three of the children died before him, his inheritance was split between his granddaughter Mary, aged eight, only child of Elizabeth and her husband John Curzon, and Joan, aged 24. and the crest as: On a chapeau Gules turned up Ermine, an owl Proper sitting in holly leaves Vert.