Sydenham Poyntz

Sydenham Poyntz (1607–c.1663) was an English soldier and mercenary, fourth son of John Poyntz of Reigate, Surrey, who ran away from apprenticeship in 1625 to fight in the Dutch army and later in the Thirty Years' War, switching sides multiple times and rising to major-general.[1][2][3] He returned to England in the 1640s, initially serving Parliament by leading victories at Rowton Heath and the siege of Newark, but quarrelled with Cromwell, switched allegiances, and faced arrest by his own troops.[4][6] After the Second Civil War, he fled to the West Indies as governor of the Leeward Islands and possibly to Virginia, with his fate thereafter unknown.[3][4]