Daniel Axtell Colonel Daniel Axtell ( 1622 – 19 October 1660 ) was captain of the Parliamentary Guard at the trial of King Charles I at Westminster Hall in 1649 . Shortly after the Restoration he was hanged , drawn and quartered as a regicide . He was a Baptist from Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire , who was apprenticed as a grocer . He joined the New Model Army , serving in John Pickering ' s regiment of Foote , and rose to the rank of colonel . Apart from his participation in the regicide , he is best remembered for his participation in Pride ' s Purge of the Long Parliament . His defence at his trial as a regicide , that he was only obeying orders at the trial of the King , was refuted by several witnesses who testified that Axtell had behaved discourteously towards the King , encouraging his men to jeer at or shout down the King when he tried to speak in his own defence . He was executed by being hanged , drawn and quartered . His commanding officer Colonel Francis Hacker had also been condemned as a Regicide and had been executed . Axtell went to his execution unrepentant , declaring " If I had a thousand lives , I could lay them all down for the [ Good Old ] Cause " . The Civil War . Axtell played a big part in the Civil War after being recruited by Parliament in 1643 . He fought as an infantryman and was present at the sieges of Lindon ( May 1644 ) and York ( June 1644 ) , along with the battle of Marston Moor and many other sieges and battles . Axtell was a keen puritan and in 1646 he and some other puritan soldiers started preaching in churches in Oxford . At that time it was illegal to preach unless one was a qualified clergyman , so he had to force the clergymen to give way . Ireland . Axtell was a figure of some prominence in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland . He played a Promethean part in the storming of Drogheda and the massacre that ensued . After the towns walls and the internal earthworks had been successfully stormed by English Parliamentarians , Arthur Aston , the Royalist governor of Drogada , and others retreated to a citadel on Windmill Mount , which was heavily fortified and could not easily be taken by assault . It was on direct orders from Oliver Cromwell that the quarter that had been given to the defenders on Mill Mount by Axtell was overturned , and the unarmed prisoners were killed . On 25 October 1650 Axtell led the Parliamentarian army to victory at the battle of Meelick Island ( a Crannog on the Shannon , on which the Connaught Irish army was camped ) after launching a sudden attack on the Irish army under cover of darkness . After fierce hand - to - hand fighting the Parliamentarians were victorious , killing several hundred of the Irish soldiers and capturing their weapons and equipment . After the conflict , however , it was alleged that many of the Irish had been killed after the promise of quarter . Axtell was court - martialled for this by Henry Ireton and sent back to England . It is possible that Axtell was a scapegoat ; Cromwell had committed similar atrocities a year earlier at Drogheda and at Wexford , in the sense that no quarter had been offered . It is possible that the leaders of the Parliamentarian forces in Ireland ( if not the Parliamentarian leadership in Britain ) felt that the ' shock ' tactics initially adopted in Ireland were counter - productive . For example , Ireton ' s request for lenient surrender terms to be made known by Parliament were refused . Axtell ' s actions may have run counter to a less ruthless strategy putatively adopted by Ireton in the field . Granny Castle . Granny Castle beside the river Nore is an imposing ruin . Its early history is identified with that of its founders and proprietors the earls of Ormond . " In the civil wars " writes Grosse " it was strongly garrisoned for the King and commanded by Captain Butler , Colonel Axtell , the famous regicide who was governor of Kilkenny , dispatched a party to reduce it , but they returned without accomplishing their orders ; upon which Axtell himself marched out with two cannon and summoned the castle to surrender on pain of military execution . Without any hope of relief it is no wonder the garrison submitted " . Miscellaneous . In 1678 Daniel Axtell , the son of the regicide , fled to Carolina after his house in Stoke Newington was searched for seditious libels . He died in 1687 .