Sir Oliver Ingham (about 1287–1344) was an English knight and landowner who served as a soldier and administrator under King Edward II of England and his successor, King Edward III. He was responsible for the civil government and military defence of the Duchy of Aquitaine during the War of Saint-Sardos and the early part of the Hundred Years' War. Early life Born about 1287, he was the son and heir of Sir John Ingham (1260-1309) of Ingham, Norfolk, who had served in the wars of King Edward I against the Scots, and his wife Margery. In 1310 he not only inherited his father's lands in Norfolk, Suffolk, Wiltshire and Hampshire but was himself summoned by King Edward II for military service against Scotland. Appointed a household knight of the king, he received many royal grants including the custody of Ellesmere Castle in Shropshire, keeper for the counties of Cheshire and Flintshire, and official positions in Shropshire and Wiltshire. As a knight banneret, he served in Scotland with the king in August 1322. First term in Aquitaine In 1324 he was appointed adviser to the king's half-brother Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent, who represented Edward as his lieutenant in Aquitaine. Tensions had led to the outbreak of war with France, which captured much of the ill-defended Agenais. Ingham, dispatched to Aquitaine with a force of Spanish and other mercenary troops, regained some of the losses in the Agenais and in Saintonge. After arranging a truce, the Earl of Kent departed for England in 1325 and in 1326 Ingham was appointed Seneschal of Gascony, the highest post in what remained in English possession, holding extensive powers over the law and finance of the duchy. Though he appears to have earned the confidence of many members of the Gascon nobility, an agreement with the French in 1327 led to his removal from Aquitaine. Crises in England Partly as a result of English losses in the war, the political climate at home had changed dramatically. Edward II had been deposed and replaced by his young son Edward III, under the regency of his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer. As the regents wanted peace, in the final treaty with France the loss of the Agenais was accepted and Ingham’s conquests there abandoned. Although he had been an associate of the Despensers, he largely escaped the retaliations that followed their fall.