Ingoldsby, Richard (c.1664/5–1712), soldier and lord justice, was a son of Sir George Ingoldsby and Mary Ingoldsby (née Gould). George Ingoldsby and his brother Henry Ingoldsby (qv) arrived in Ireland with the Cromwellian army in 1651 and became prominent landowners in and around Limerick city. Richard Ingoldsby, like his father, pursued a career in the army and entered Charles II's Irish army sometime before 1678. He left Ireland during the reign of James II (qv) joining his uncle Henry, who was raising a regiment in Staffordshire. He returned to Ireland in 1689, taking part in the Irish campaign of the duke of Schomberg (qv) as a volunteer. He was commissioned as a colonel in the Williamite army, and was supposed to take over his uncle's regiment. It was disbanded before he could take up his new command. Instead Ingoldsby retreated to London to petition parliament for the losses he suffered as a result of the war; he claimed that he was owed up to £12,000 in compensation for damage to his property and his expense in fighting as a volunteer in support of the protestant succession.
He was soon rewarded: in 1692 he held the rank of colonel, in 1693 he was given command of the Welch Regiment of Fusiliers in Flanders, and in 1696 Ingoldsby was promoted to brigadier-general. In 1701 he commanded the Irish troops that were sent to Holland, and was made major-general (1702) and lieutenant-general (1704). At the battle of Blenheim he was one of the principal commanders in the army of the duke of Marlborough (qv), earning the duke's praise for his bravery. In 1706 he was seriously wounded in the arm and returned to Ireland, where in 1707 he was made commander of the forces, master of the horse, and general of the artillery in Ireland. At the same time he held the office of comptroller of the ordnance in Ireland; in 1706/7 he negotiated the purchase of 10,000 new muskets from Holland.
Ingoldsby's political views chimed neatly with the prevailing tory interest during the reign of Queen Anne, and he had much influence at a local and national level. He was MP for the city of Limerick (1703–12), and served as one of the lords justices of Ireland on five separate occasions between September 1709 and his death in 1712. In 1711 the lord lieutenant, James Butler (qv), 2nd duke of Ormond, recommended that Ingoldsby should be elevated to the peerage since ‘he has estates sufficient to support the honour’ (HMC, Portland manuscripts, v, 102). His premature death prevented this ascent into the peerage. Ingoldsby purchased Carton House and demesne in Co. Kildare for £1,800 in 1703, from the Talbot family. He also owned a town house in Mary St., Dublin.
He married Frances, daughter of Col. James Naper of Co. Meath; they had at least one son, Henry Ingoldsby (d. 1731). Richard Ingoldsby died in Dublin in December 1712 and was accorded the rare honour of a state funeral. His long military cortège marched through the streets of Dublin and he was buried with great pomp at Christ Church cathedral. His son, Henry, who took the Limerick parliamentary seat after his death, married the daughter of arch-tory Sir Constantine Phipps (qv) and lost the seat to the whigs in 1715, though he regained it in 1727. He spent a great proportion of the wealth that his father had accumulated on high living in London. On his death, his estates were sold to pay off his debts, and Carton returned to its ancestral owners, the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, in 1738. Richard Ingoldsby's brother, Sir George Ingoldsby, pursued a military career and also rose to the rank of general. Richard Ingoldsby had two contemporary namesakes, with whom he is sometimes confused: Richard Ingoldsby (d. c.1720), lieutenant governor of New York, and Richard Ingoldsby (d. 1759), from Buckinghamshire, who rose to the rank of brigadier-general.