Thomas Pride

English military leader

• Born: c. 1605
• Birthplace: Probably Ashcott, near Glastonbury, England
• Died: October 23, 1658
• Place of death: Worcester House, Nonsuch, Surrey, England

A member of Parliament’s New Model Army during the English Civil Wars, Pride fought in several significant battles. He is best remembered for excluding more than one hundred members of Parliament’s House of Commons on December 6, 1648, in Pride’s Purge and for serving as a member of the court that condemned Charles I to death.

Early Life

Almost nothing is known of Thomas Pride’s early life. He may have been born at Ashcott near Glastonbury, and contemporary sources say he was a foundling of Saint Bride’s parish who later became a drayman (a hauler of carts) or possibly a brewer. A portrait done during the civil wars shows a handsome man with light hair worn long, a mustache, and a small goatee, which was much in fashion.

During the English Civil Wars , Pride served in Parliament’s army against Charles I. Military service offered men of lowly social origins such as Pride the opportunity for adventure and advancement. Pride was a captain, then major, and when the New Model Army was created in 1645, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the infantry regiment of Colonel Edward Harley. Pride fought in Cornwall in the west of England as part of the forces of Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, who surrendered to Royalists in 1644. Other military action involved serving with distinction under Lieutenant General Oliver Cromwell at the Parliamentary victory at Naseby (June 14, 1645), and he participated in the captures of Bristol (September 10, 1645) and Dartmouth (January 19, 1646).

During 1646 and 1647, after the king’s surrender, Pride supported the right of the common Parliamentary soldiers to petition for back pay and for indemnity for acts committed during the First English Civil War (1642-1646); he was asked to appear before the House of Commons, which did not approve of such actions. Pride supported the army’s actions in July, 1647, against eleven members of Parliament who sought to conduct negotiations with the king and disband the army. In 1647, he was promoted to colonel and replaced Harley as commander of his regiment. When Charles I and his allies renewed the civil war in 1648, Pride served under Cromwell in Wales and at the crucial Battle of Preston (August 17-19, 1648) in northwestern England. After the defeat of the king, Pride, as did many in the army, advocated punishing the king for causing the civil wars.

Life’s Work

The army had gained control of Charles I and imprisoned him in Carisbrooke Castle. Attempts by Parliament to reach a negotiated settlement with the king that would accept many of his demands angered the army, which moved the king to Hurst Castle. The commander of the army, the third Baron Fairfax, and Cromwell’s son-in-law, Commissary General Henry Ireton, disagreed over the army’s course of action. Fairfax ordered the army to occupy London, which it did on December 2, 1648, but he did not support drastic action against Parliament, as did Ireton. On December 5, 1648, the House of Commons voted 129 to 83 to accept terms that would, in effect, have restored Charles I to power. This action led to the hasty formation of a committee of three army officers and three civilian supporters, which decided to remove from the House of Commons members who supported negotiating with the king.

On December 6, 1648, Colonel Pride, assisted by Edmund Ludlow and Lord Grey of Groby, members of the House of Commons, working from a prepared list, turned away more than one hundred members of the House of Commons. About forty-one of the most recalcitrant members were arrested. When challenged to show his authority for this action, Pride pointed to his troops. A number of other members had been forewarned and stayed away, leaving about fifty to sixty members in the House of Commons, who were derisively nicknamed the “Rump.” This episode, known as Pride’s Purge, set the stage for a series of revolutionary events. Pride’s role was that of a soldier following orders—a soldier entrusted with important orders who carried them out as instructed. Such loyalty and his reputation as one of the most radical members of the army led to his selection for this important assignment.

In mid-December, 1648, the army moved the king to Windsor Castle, closer to London. On January 4, 1649, the Rump’s attempt to create a special court to try the king was defeated by the House of Lords. Subsequently, the Rump passed resolutions proclaiming that it was the representative of the people and that it alone could make laws. Upon this dubious authority, the House of Commons created the High Court of Justice, made up of 150 men; however, 60 never sat on it. Pride, selected as a member, missed only one session of the king’s trial, January 20-27, 1649, and assented to the guilty verdict and sentence of death. His is one of fifty-nine signatures on the warrant for execution, which was carried out on a cold January 30, 1649, after a two-hour delay while the Rump made it illegal for anyone to declare the king’s oldest son, Charles, prince of Wales, as king.

Once again, Pride’s reputation had caused him to be selected to participate in this unprecedented event—the public trial and execution of a monarch. Although Pride did not play a significant part in the trial, once again, he was present at momentous events that shaped the course of British history. After the execution of the king, the Rump abolished the House of Lords and the monarchy, establishing the Commonwealth (1649-1660) and making England a republic. The army’s decision to bring the king to justice precipitated Pride’s Purge, which in turn led to regicide and government without a king.

The king’s execution touched off the Third English Civil War (1650-1651), as the Scots recognized Prince Charles as Charles II, and Cromwell marched the New Model Army north to assert control over Scotland. Pride was one of the officers who accompanied this force and saw action at the Battle of Dunbar on September 3, 1650, Cromwell’s birthday and his most spectacular victory. The difficulty in subduing Scotland and Cromwell’s poor health slowed the progress of the army; the Scots regrouped and took advantage of the lack of English forces in southwestern Scotland and western England to launch an invasion of England led by their newly proclaimed Charles II. Cromwell left the military actions in the hands of others in Scotland and wheeled south to catch the invading Scots. At Worcester in western England, the two forces clashed on September 3, 1651, exactly one year after Dunbar. Pride’s regiment was part of the English forces that defeated the Scots at Worcester and enabled Prince Charles to escape from the battlefield and flee to renewed exile in France.

Pride’s service in the army and to the Commonwealth would pay financial rewards in the form of lands worth five hundred pounds that were confiscated from Scottish rebels, and he, along with several others, in 1654 was given the contract to supply the navy with food. With the wealth he gained, he purchased the Great Park and Worcester House that were part of the Nonsuch royal estate in Surrey, and he became sheriff of Surrey in 1655. He was knighted in 1656 and was known by contemporaries as a vigorous suppressor of bear baiting, part of Cromwell’s Puritanical program concerning the national reform of morals, which also involved closing the theater and other forms of popular entertainment.

Pride, who had risen in importance politically, opposed the offer of the crown to Oliver Cromwell, who had been named lord protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1653. Pride’s role involved circulating a petition in the army regiments around London against offering kingship to Cromwell. After much soul-searching, Cromwell rejected the offer, largely because so many comrades in arms opposed it and because of his belief that God had destroyed the office of king in the British Isles. Pride’s opposition does not appear to have hurt him politically; he was one of the nominees to the “Upper House” of Parliament—a sort of a restored House of Lords—created in 1657.

Pride was also one of the signers of the proclamation that named Cromwell’s son Richard Cromwell as lord protector after his father’s death on September 3, 1658. Pride did not outlive his former commander very long; he died on October 23, 1658, and was buried on November 2, 1658, at Nonsuch, Surrey. After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, vengeance was taken on a number of regicides both alive and dead. Some of the living were executed in brutal fashion. The House of Commons had passed an act of attainder against Pride, which in effect condemned him for treason and confiscated his property, which was given to the Crown. It also ordered that his body be exhumed; hung up at Tyburn, the place for public execution in London; and reburied under the gallows. Apparently this desecration of his remains did not occur, although it did to the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, and several others.

Pride had married Elizabeth Monck, the niece of General George Monck , the key figure in the Restoration of monarchy. Their son Robert followed in his father’s footsteps, rising to the rank of captain in the military.

Significance

Although not a decisive figure in any one event, Pride participated in or was present at a number of significant, indeed revolutionary, events in British history. His rise from lowly social origins to officership in the army during the turbulent times was something that irritated many contemporaries. His name is linked to one of the important and controversial episodes of the time: Pride’s Purge was the use of naked military force against a legally constituted, if unrepresentative, legislative body. This action indicated the quickening radicalization of the army, which had determined to take drastic measures against the king, leading to an unprecedented public trial of a reigning monarch and an even more extraordinary public execution. Similar actions would be repeated by revolutionaries in France in 1792 and 1793 against Louis XVI.

The fact that Pride was one of the members of the court that condemned Charles I gives evidence of his advanced radical and republican views, which he maintained when he openly opposed the offer of the Crown to Oliver Cromwell. Opposition from trusted, loyal officers such as Pride, with whom Cromwell had served for more than a decade, was a key factor in his rejecting the chance to become king. Pride’s service at a number of key battles—Naseby, Preston, Dunbar, and Worcester—was duplicated by many other soldiers who helped defeat the king, Scots, and the prince of Wales and consolidate Cromwell’s control over the British Isles. Such control was previously unparalleled in Britain. Pride supported the power of Cromwell as military commander and lord protector, but his scruples would not allow him to serve under Cromwell as monarch.

Bibliography

Ashton, Robert. Counter-Revolution: The Second Civil War and Its Origins. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994. The origins and events surrounding the renewed English Civil War in 1648, which radicalized the army, are covered in this readable account.

Firth, Charles Harding. “Thomas Pride.” In The Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee. London: Oxford University Press, 1896. The premier reference source for people in British history gives the fullest treatment of Colonel Pride’s life in volume 16.

Gentles, Ian. The New Model Army in England, Ireland, and Scotland, 1645-1653. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1992. The definitive history of the actions of Parliament’s military forces in the three civil wars in the British Isles provides extensive coverage of the major battles in which Pride fought.

Hainsworth, Roger. The Swordsmen in Power: War and Politics Under the English Republic, 1649-1660. Herndon, Va.: Sutton, 1997. This recent summary of the Commonwealth and Protectorate emphasizes the role of the army in politics, including Cromwell’s rejection of the Crown.

Smith, Geoffrey Ridsdill, and Margaret Toynbee. Leaders of the Civil Wars, 1642-1648. Kineton, Warwick, England: Roundwood Press, 1977. This series of short biographical sketches accompanied by photographs of portraits and engravings of both royalist and parliamentary military, political, and religious figures contains an engraving of Colonel Pride.

Underdown, David. Pride’s Purge: Politics in the Puritan Revolution. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1971. Reprint. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1985. This is the most complete discussion of the background to, and the events and consequences of, Pride’s Purge. The author argues that these events amounted to a revolution.

Wedgewood, C. V. The Trial of Charles I. New York: Macmillan, 1964. This detailed account of the events that led to the trial and execution of a reigning monarch is written in a vivid, highly readable style.