Sir Simon Harcourt (1603–1642) was an English soldier of fortune, and wartime governor of the city of

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

Life

Harcourt was the eldest son of

Robert Harcourt Sir Robert John Rolston Harcourt, JP (1902 – 25 August 1969) was a Northern Irish politician. Robert Harcourt, known as John, became the director of F. E. Harcourt and Company coal merchants. He was High Sheriff of Belfast in 1949, and later ...

and Frances, daughter of Geoffrey Vere, third son of John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxford. Succeeding to a somewhat embarrassed estate, he sought a military career abroad. At the age of sixteen he served under his uncle,

Sir Horace Vere Horace Vere, 1st Baron Vere of Tilbury (1565 – 2 May 1635) (also ''Horatio Vere'' or ''Horatio de Vere'') was an English military leader during the Eighty Years' War and the Thirty Years' War, a brother of Francis Vere. He was sent to the P ...

, against the Spanish forces in the

Low Countries The term Low Countries, also known as the Low Lands ( nl, de Lage Landen, french: les Pays-Bas, lb, déi Niddereg Lännereien) and historically called the Netherlands ( nl, de Nederlanden), Flanders, or Belgica, is a coastal lowland region in N ...

, and was knighted at

Whitehall Palace The Palace of Whitehall (also spelt White Hall) at Westminster was the main residence of the English monarchs from 1530 until 1698, when most of its structures, except notably Inigo Jones's Banqueting House of 1622, were destroyed by fire. Hen ...

on 26 June 1627. The greater part of his life was spent in Holland in the service of the

Prince of Orange Prince of Orange (or Princess of Orange if the holder is female) is a title originally associated with the sovereign Principality of Orange, in what is now southern France and subsequently held by sovereigns in the Netherlands. The title ...

. He was also in favour with

Elizabeth of Bohemia Elizabeth Stuart (19 August 159613 February 1662) was Electress of the Palatinate and briefly Queen of Bohemia as the wife of Frederick V of the Palatinate. Since her husband's reign in Bohemia lasted for just one winter, she is called the Win ...

, who commended him to

Archbishop Laud William Laud (; 7 October 1573 – 10 January 1645) was a bishop in the Church of England. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Charles I in 1633, Laud was a key advocate of Charles I's religious reforms, he was arrested by Parliament in 1640 ...

, when business of a domestic nature (connected probably with the recovery of Stanton Harcourt) obliged him to repair to England in 1636. Though holding a commission as sergeant-major from the Prince of Orange, he took an active part in the

Bishops' Wars The 1639 and 1640 Bishops' Wars () were the first of the conflicts known collectively as the 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which took place in Scotland, England and Ireland. Others include the Irish Confederate Wars, the First and ...

against Scotland in 1639–40, as commander of a regiment of foot. A diary kept by him during this campaign still exists. On the outbreak of the

Irish rebellion of 1641 The Irish Rebellion of 1641 ( ga, Éirí Amach 1641) was an uprising by Irish Catholics in the Kingdom of Ireland, who wanted an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, greater Irish self-governance, and to partially or fully reverse the plantatio ...

, he was appointed, with the rank of colonel and with a commission as governor of the city of Dublin, to conduct a detachment of foot into that kingdom for the relief of the Protestants there. He arrived in Dublin on 31 December, but finding that in the meanwhile Sir Charles Coote had been appointed governor by the lords justices, some time elapsed before he was invested with the government of the city. During the winter he was mortally wounded during an attack on Kilgobbin Castle, County Dublin; he was moved to Merrion, where he died the next day, 27 March 1642.

Family

Harcourt married Anne, daughter of William Paget, 4th Baron Paget, who afterwards married Sir William Waller as his third wife. In consideration of his services in Ireland his widow received a parliamentary grant on 3 August 1648 of the lands of Corbally in County Dublin,Julia Gasper, ‘Waller , Anne, Lady Waller ther married name Anne Harcourt, Lady Harcourt(d. 1661)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 201
accessed 29 April 2017
/ref> formerly in possession of Luke Netherville, an attainted rebel.

References

;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Harcourt, Simon 1603 births 1642 deaths English mercenaries English army officers Place of birth missing People of the Anglo-Spanish War (1625–1630)