Thomas Pride

Thomas Pride set up a successful business as a brewer in London during the 1630s. When the First Civil War broke out, he was serving as an ensign in the Red regiment of the London Trained Bands. On the formation of the New Model Army in 1645, Pride was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in Colonel Edward Harley's regiment. In Harley's absence during the campaigns of 1645, Pride was effectively commander of the regiment.

Pride was one of the most militant of the officers who supported the soldiers' right to petition Parliament for redress of their grievances. His commanding officer Colonel Harley accused Pride of using threats to extract signatures for a petition circulating amongst the soldiers. In July 1647, Pride helped draft the articles of impeachment drawn up by the Army against the Presbyterian Eleven Members who were regarded as its leading enemies in Parliament. Colonel Harley, who had been elected recruiter MP for Herefordshire in November 1646, was one of the Eleven. When Harley withdrew from the Army out of loyalty to Parliament, Pride was promoted to colonel and took over command of the regiment

During the Second Civil War, Pride's regiment marched with Oliver Cromwell to the siege of Pembroke and the battle of Preston. Pride was among the most vocal of the officers who demanded that King Charles I should be brought to account for provoking a second war. Under orders from Commissary-General Henry Ireton, Pride commanded the troops that ejected the Members of Parliament who continued to favour a negotiated settlement with the King, thus giving his name to Pride's Purge in December 1648. Appointed to the High Court of Justice, Pride sat as a judge at the King's Trial and was one of the 59 signatories of the death warrant.

Despite his republican principles however, he was knighted by Cromwell in 1656 and nominated to the Upper House as Lord Pride in 1658, prompting accusations of hypocrisy from radicals. Amongst other land and property acquisitions, Pride had bought Henry VIII's old palace of Nonesuch. At the Restoration, Pride was posthumously attainted a traitor. Like the corpses of Cromwell, Ireton and Bradshaw, his body was to be exhumed and hanged in chains at Tyburn, though in Pride's case, the order was never carried out

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Thomas Pride

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