Bingley, Sir Ralph (c.1570–1627), servitor, and second of at least three brothers from Broughton, Flintshire, Wales, served with Drake and Hawkins on their last Caribbean raid (1595–6), helped to raise troops in southern England (1596–7), and commanded 150 foot under Sir Henry Docwra (qv) in the Lough Foyle campaign (1600). From May 1602 he received extensive leases of land and fishing rights in north Co. Donegal, and was knighted 25 July 1603. Peace reduced his prospects. Maritime ventures (1606–7) – one of which may have come about through contact with Sir John Bingley (qv), who was probably related – involved him in charges of piracy; but after the O'Doherty rising of 1608 his leases were confirmed and augmented, making him a key (and fairly representative) figure in the Ulster plantation. He secured further lands, some apparently by questionable means; served as sheriff of Donegal and as alderman and mayor (1624) of Derry city; and developed commercial links with his home area (which supplied him with some of his tenants and creditors) and London. Having proposed to the duke of Buckingham (1626) the use of Irish troops against Spain, Bingley was killed (October 1627) in Buckingham's La Rochelle expedition. He and his wife Anne (who later married Robert Harrington) had no children.
Sources
CSPI, 1603–32; George Hill, An historical account of the plantation in Ulster (1877), 519; R. J. Hunter, ‘Sir Ralph Bingley, c.1570–1627: Ulster planter’, Peter Roebuck (ed.), Plantation to partition: essays in Ulster history . . . (1981), 14–28