PRIDE, Sir Thomas (c.1608-1658), of London and Worcester House, Nonsuch Great Park, Surr.

Thomas Pride was the son of a yeoman from Pedwell, a manor in the parish of Ashcott, near Glastonbury, Somerset, where arable farming was the predominant economic activity.42VCH Som. viii. 18, 20. There was a family of his surname living in Ashcott in 1581, and Prides of the yeoman class were also to be found in the nearby parish of Cossington, as well as in parishes further afield between Glastonbury and Sherborne.43Two Tudor Subsidy Assessments ed. Webb (Som. Rec. Soc. lxxxviii), 16, 35, 36, 148; Dwelly’s Parish Records, Bishop’s Transcripts at Wells i. (1915), 330, 331; Som. Protestation Returns, 142, 245, 288. In the early 1650s it was believed by some that Pride had been born in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, which is not at all implausible in the light of trade links across the Bristol Channel.44Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 107. In 1622, the advowson of Ashcott, and possibly the manor of Pedwell, were taken by Abraham Burrell*, but that year, Pride moved to London to be apprenticed to Thomas Bradway, citizen and Haberdasher of London, on 30 January. He served the usual seven years’ apprenticeship and was made free of the company on 24 April 1629. Once out of his term of servitude, Pride was free to marry, and less than four months later was married to Elizabeth Tomson, the daughter of an ironfounder, Robert Tomson of St Botolph Aldgate, the London parish in which one of Pride’s sons and his daughter were to be married in 1654 and 1656. The parish register makes clear that it was Thomas Pride junior, ‘son to Colonel Pride’, and not Pride himself, who was married there in 1654, contrary to earlier assertions.45St Ann Blackfriars par. reg; St Botolph Aldgate par. reg.; DNB, Oxford DNB, Thomas Pride. At some point, perhaps during the 1630s, Pride gave up any inclination he may have had towards a business career in haberdashery, in favour of brewing. It is uncertain when he entered the brewery trade in London, but he was established in it by 1643 when the newly established excise tax became payable on his production.46SP18/77/98. In 1630 he was living in the parish of St Bride’s, Fleet Street, where his eldest son, who predeceased him, was baptized on 12 November.47LMA, P69/BRI/A/016/MS06545, item 2. When in June 1642, he contributed to the army of the 3rd earl of Essex ‘one brown horse with three white feet’ along with its rider, and equipage including breast, headpiece, carbine and pistols, it was as ‘Thomas Pride of Pye Corner, Haberdasher’.48SP28/131, pt 3 (London: Horse account, 21 June 1642-10 June 1643), f. 1. Though Pride evidently continued a parishioner of the eastern City parish of St Botolph Aldgate, it was with parishes further west in London, in and around Smithfield, that he was more strongly associated by residence.

When war broke out between king and parliament Pride was quick off the mark in support of the parliamentary cause. He had since August 1640 been a member of the Society of the Artillery Garden, later to be renamed the Artillery Company, and before the end of the summer of 1642 he was serving with the rank of ensign in the red regiment of the London trained bands.49Bodl. Rawl. B.48, f. 26. By late September he was a captain of foot in Colonel Henry Barclay’s regiment in Essex’s army, and was equipping his company of 100 men for combat.50SP28/298, f. 406. By 1644 he had risen to the rank of major, both in the orange auxiliaries and in Essex’s infantry when it was forced to surrender at Lostwithiel in Cornwall in September.51E121/4/8/100. In March 1645, initially no place was found for him in the formation of what became known as the New Model army, but through an intervention by the Lords, William Cowell, marked to be major of Barclay’s regiment, was reduced to captain, and Pride remained as major.52PA, Main Pprs. 10 Mar. 1645, f. 145v; Temple, ‘Original Officer List’, 60, 72. Command quickly passed to Col. Edward Harley*. However, as Harley was absent during the 1645 campaign, Pride was effectively in charge of the regiment, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

With Cols. Thomas Rainborowe* and Robert Hammond, Pride commanded the foot reserves at Naseby (14 June 1645), but was called upon to advance, and in doing so drove the royalist forces back, turning the tide of battle in favour of the parliamentarians.53Sprigg, Anglia Rediviva (Oxford, 1854), 41. He was at the storm of Bridgwater (22 July), and at Bristol was given the task of taking Prior’s Fort (10 Sept.), which he accomplished with distinction.54Sprigg, Anglia Rediviva, 105, 116, 117; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 67. With other New Model leaders, he signed the letter of solidarity to the Scots army in Scotland (2 Sept.), promising assistance if their political masters allowed it, and went on to help take Berkeley castle (23 Sept.) before marching further into the south west, eventually reaching Dartmouth. It was Pride who re-captured Mount Boone (18 Jan. 1646), the home of Thomas Boone*, and he was mentioned in Sir Thomas Fairfax’s* account to Parliament of the storming of Dartmouth itself, when Pride’s men were the first to enter the town from the north.55Sprigg, Anglia Rediviva, 77, 105, 107, 116, 117, 133, 136, 181, 182.

Edward Harley* only reappeared to take charge of his soldiers after the hard fighting had been done, which must have given Pride superior moral authority in the regiment, as well as de facto command. The two men in any case had little in common. Harley was not only from an ancient gentry family, but was a Presbyterian in politics and a conservative puritan in religion. Pride, the yeoman’s son, was by contrast a natural fit for the political complexion of the New Model, and was probably sympathetic to sectaries. The evidence for his religious views is scarce and allusive. Samuel Chidley, the Leveller, knew Pride and his wife very well, and described Pride as ‘a true friend’ of John Duppa.56Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 60. Duppa ministered to a separatist congregation that was descended, both in terms of personnel and polity, from the London church of Henry Jacob, who had died in 1624. In 1651 Pride and Duppa were said, again by Chidley, to have known each other ‘these many years’, but no further evidence of Pride’s membership of a particular church has yet been discovered.57Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 64; M. Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints (Cambridge, 1977), 22. He was unquestionably sympathetic towards religious Independents, however, evidenced, for example, by his signing in July 1649 a testimonial to the council of state in favour of the Independent divine, John Canne. His co-signatories were Edward Whalley*, Henry Whalley*, William Goffe*, John Okey* and Waldive Lagoe*.58SP46/95, ff. 155-6.

Despite his position of command, and doubtless because of his own endurance of combat, in 1647 Pride was among the most assertive officers who demanded that Parliament should meet the army’s grievances, including the arrears of pay owed to it and the felt lack of indemnity in the courts for actions performed in the public service, before any disbanding took place. At a rendezvous of his own soldiers, which he himself summoned, their petition was read out and Pride urged that all should sign it. Either the grievances were deeply harboured, or Pride was persuasive, as 1,100 men signed. Pride was alleged to have said (perhaps privately, perhaps to the assembled regiment) that any refusers ‘should be blotted out of the rolls and excluded and counted as no members of the army.’59Add. 31116, pp. 611-2; HMC Portland, i. 418; LJ ix. 115a. This was all too much for Harley, who reported Pride’s conduct in the Commons, portraying it in the worst possible light. Pride was ordered to attend the House to explain himself (29 Mar.).60CJ v. 129a. His actions at Saffron Walden, with Harley’s indignant reporting of them, contributed to the ‘Declaration of Dislike’ drafted by the Commons and worsened not only relations between army and Parliament, but also those between Presbyterian and Independent politicians. Pride duly attended the House on 1 April, and flatly denied the accusation that he had been promoting a petition in the army.61CJ v. 132a. Unintimidated by the order to suppress further petitions, and with the whole-hearted support of his regiment, he defiantly went on to join a high-level delegation that laid a Petition and Vindication of the Officers before the Commons on 27 April.62The Petition and Vindication of the Officers (1647, E.385.19); Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 83; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 360-4. On 10 June 1647 he was one of 13 officers who addressed a letter to the City of London from Royston, 43 miles from the capital, assuring its rulers that

We desire no alteration of the civil government ...We desire not to intermeddle with, or in the least to interrupt the settling of the Presbyterian government. Nor do we seek to open a way to licentious liberty, under pretence of obtaining ease for tender consciences ... We intend no evil towards you …63Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 554.

When later that month one-quarter of the army’s officers resigned their commissions out of loyalty to Parliament, Pride replaced Harley as colonel.64E121/4/8/100; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 591. In July 1647 Pride was appointed one of the officers to meet with lawyers to draft the New Model’s articles of impeachment against the Eleven Members, now seen by the officers as the instigators in the Commons of opposition to the army.65Clarke Pprs. i. 151. He also formed part of the delegation of officers who laid the charge before the House on 6 July. Among the 11 was his enemy and former nominal commander, Edward Harley.66Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 607; CJ vi. 236a. On 18 July, Fairfax included Pride among the committee of officers which advised him daily on army affairs.67Clarke Pprs. i. 217.

In August, Pride was sent to garrison Southwark, and men of his regiment guarded the Tower.68Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 364-5. Because of the great responsibility of protecting London that had been given him, he may not have been at Putney for the celebrated debates in October. He was in any case resuming his interest in the brewing industry while back in home territory. On 24 August 1647 he was one of 76 members of the ‘Company of Brewers of the City of London, and four miles compass of the same’ who signed a petition to the House of Lords demanding the elimination of the excise tax on beer and ale. The tax, they maintained, was much more oppressive to the poor than the rich; moreover, ‘strong beer and ale itself is generally for the service of the poor … as the cheapest food, and chiefest nourishment’. Pointing out that ‘malt is grown to an extraordinary price [and that] all sorts of people generally refuse to pay any excise’, they prayed that the excise should be lifted ‘from so native and necessary commodity as beer and ale, not only to prevent miseries amongst the poorer sort (already exceeding clamorous herein) but also to preserve your petitioners … from utter ruin and destruction’.69PA, Main Pprs. 24 Aug. 1647 (LJ ix. 402b). The Lords turned a deaf ear to these entreaties. At some point, quite possibly when his regiment was in Surrey, Pride acquired an interest in some brewhouses in Kingston-upon-Thames, which became very profitable; his partner in this venture was probably a fellow-soldier, Major John Yates.70PROB11/283, f. 213v; Surrey RO, 212/64/13.

Pride’s Purge and the Rump, 1648-50

In the second civil war (1648) Pride accompanied Oliver Cromwell* on his Welsh campaign, his regiment fighting ‘desperately’ at Chepstow.71Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 1118. He was also at the battle of Preston, where his regiment played a secondary role.72Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell ed. T. Carlyle and S.C. Lomas, 3 vols (1904), i. 338-9. In late September he was at the Scottish border, blocking up Tweedmouth and blowing up the guard house that the royalists had built on the bridge.73Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 1282. Once the war was over his regiment joined with Thomas Harrison I’s* and Richard Deane’s to present a petition demanding that Parliament should proceed against the king ‘as an enemy to the kingdom’.74Severall Petitions Presented to his Excellency the Lord Fairfax (1648), 8 (E.474.5). His regiment was a component in the 7,000-strong military presence that moved into London early in December 1648. It has been suggested that Pride was nothing more ‘than the obedient instrument of a policy dictated by others’ in the army at that time.75Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 141. If, however, as seems possible, he was one of the group of three officers who joined with three MPs on the evening of 5 December to plan the purge of the Commons of its Presbyterian, conservative and anti-military element, he was central to the event which has subsequently borne his name.76Ludlow, Mems. i. 209-10; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 141. In addition, there can be no doubt about his enthusiasm for the policy driven by Henry Ireton* and other radical officers and MPs.

Whether he was an architect of the purge or merely its executor, it was he who on the morning of 6 December commanded the guard around the House of Commons and stood on the stairs to the entrance, holding the list of Members that had been compiled the previous evening. He was assisted by Thomas Grey*, Lord Grey of Groby in identifying each Member as he turned up, and categorizing each as one who should be arrested, turned away or admitted. The number arrested was 45, but four times that number were refused admission or failed to make an appearance. Pride’s conduct was generally courteous and restrained. An exception was the case of William Prynne*, who tried to force his way through the cordon, but was met by firm resistance from Pride and some of his soldiers, who pulled him over to the great door of the court of requests. Prynne demanded ‘By what authority and commission, and for what cause, they did thus violently seize on and pull him down from the House’, to which Pride and Sir Hardress Waller* gestured towards their men and answered ‘there was their commission’. They then ‘forcibly pushed him up into the queen’s court’, where he and several other MPs were kept prisoner.77OPH xviii. 448-51.

Pride was present on one occasion at least of the council of army officers which worked on plans for a new constitution (18 Dec.), but his own views remain completely opaque.78B. Taft, ‘Voting Lists of the Council of Army Officers’, BIHR lii. 147. In January 1649 Pride was among those appointed to the high court of justice to try Charles I for treason against the people of England.79A. and O. i. 1254. He attended all but two of the 18 planning meetings of the court held in camera in the painted chamber, as well as all four meetings in Westminster Hall at which the king was tried.80Muddiman, Trial,76, 88, 96, 105, 195, 196-7, 199, 201, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 210, 212, 213, 222, 223, 224, 226, 227. He signed the death warrant, being the fourteenth to do so.81Rushworth, Hist. Collns., vi. 1426. Perhaps inevitably, on account of his prominence in the purge, Pride was widely thought to have conspired with Oliver Cromwell* and Sir Thomas Fairfax* to engineer the regicide, as suggested by the December 1649 court case against a Middlesex yeoman and his wife for slandering the three as ‘sons of whores’.82Mdx. County Recs. iii. 192, 284. As his regiment remained in the capital for the rest of 1649 as the guard on the palace of Westminster, Pride was able to play an active role in the civic affairs of London. He was an agent for the council of army officers in its dealings with Parliament, and in August 1649 took to the House the officers’ petition which urged the abolition of all restrictions on liberty of worship, ‘whereby many conscientious people are molested, and the propagation of the gospel hindered’, the suppression of sexual immorality and drunkenness, the release from prison of soldiers who had fought for ‘the interest of the nation’ but had subsequently offended and the reform of ‘the multiplicity of unnecessary laws’.83Kingdom’s Faithfull and Impartial Scout no. 29 (10-17 Aug. 1649), 224 (E.532.18).

The council of officers continued to meet regularly, and intervened in the common law trials of ‘delinquents’ where there was a military dimension. An appeal on behalf of Col. Morris, the former royalist governor of Pontefract, condemned after trial at York assizes, was dismissed by Pride as it ‘would not stand with the justice of the army’.84C. Walker, Anarchia Anglicana (1649), 252 (E.570.4). The army council was just as concerned at the persistence of sentiment in favour of the Levellers and religious radicalism, but the officers also planned to develop their own programme of reform of the law and church property, to be submitted to Parliament. During the early and middle periods of the Rump, Pride was on the side of the radicals. He was away on active service in Scotland in 1650, and may have been at Worcester in September 1651, but he was certainly in London by 26 December 1651, when he appeared at the door of the House, to remind Members without saying a word, of the events of 6 December 1648 and how easily they might be repeated unless they responded to the proposals of reformers.85Gentles, New Model Army, 396; CCAM 1061; Worden, Rump Parliament, 271, 280. The programme advocated by Pride and his colleagues encapsulated the demands of radical elements in both army and City, and as a soldier-citizen Pride was in a position of potentially great influence, seen as someone with access to power. By 1649, according to Clement Walker*, he was regularly sitting on the bench at the Old Bailey, presumably by virtue of being a Middlesex magistrate, and was elected to the common council of the City on 21 December 1649, on the same day as John Lilburne. Unlike Lilburne’s, however, his election was allowed to stand.86Walker, Anarchia Anglicana (1649), 252; Sharpe, London and Kingdom, ii. 270; A Perfect Diurnall no. 2 (17-24 Dec. 1649), 20 (E.533.31); Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1353; Worden, Rump Parliament, 215. He was named to a further high court of justice in London, to try royalist leaders, in 1650.87A. and O. ii. 365.

His occasional brooding presence in the palace of Westminster did not deter Members from accepting his report, on 17 February 1652, as one of a four-man delegation from the council of officers to negotiate with Captain John Blackwell, the deputy treasurer at war, and Captain Richard Deane, secretary to the Committee for the Army, about army arrears in Scotland.88CJ vii. 91a. Later that year (5 May) the Rump voted narrowly not to appoint Pride a commissioner under the Act for Relief of Persons upon Articles. His friends Thomas Grey, Lord Grey of Groby and Philip Skippon were tellers in favour of his appointment, but the motion was lost by seven votes.89CJ vii. 130a. Pride seems never to have got over his hostility towards the legal profession. One day in 1652 when he was Westminster Hall, he is reported by a writer who lived near him to have thundered ‘that it would never be well with England until … mercenary lawyers gowns were hung up by the Scotch-trophies’, meaning that their gowns should be displayed at Westminster alongside flags and other trophies captured at the rout of the Scots army the previous year.90[Nathaniel Burt], A New-yeers Gift for England (1653), 15 (E.684.19).

Pride’s hand can be detected in moves in 1652 to challenge the governing body of the Saddlers’ Company, and to dislodge the monopoly enjoyed by the conservative Rumper and attorney-general, Edmund Prideaux I*, over the inland postal service.91Worden, Rump Parliament, 318; LMA, Jor. 41, f. 10. Probably in the former case, and certainly in the latter, Pride was representing the reformers on the London common council, who saw the potential of the post office for raising revenue in order to meet the costs of its ambitious plans for setting the London poor on work.92V. Pearl, ‘Puritans and Poor Relief: The London Workhouse, 1649-1660’, in Puritans and Revolutionaries ed. Pennington and Thomas, 227; M. James, Social Policy during the Puritan Revolution (1930), 299. Nothing came of this particular scheme. In October 1652 he was one of five army officers and three citizens who put their names to a pamphlet ostensibly attacking Presbyterian intolerance, and defending press freedom. In fact they were just as intolerant as their enemies, advocating the suppression of six books by Presbyterians.93The Beacons Quenched (1652), 8-9, 14 (E.678.3). A further sign of his continuing good standing with the radicals in the mid-1650s is John Lilburne’s reference to him as ‘one of my faithful and beloved friends’, when he was petitioning for a pass to enable him to return to England legally.94A Defensive Declaration of Lieut. Coll. John Lilburn (1653), 8 (E.702.2).

By 1650, Pride’s regiment had taken on the Baptist preacher, Samuel Oates (father to the future informer of the ‘Popish Plot’, Titus Oates) as chaplain, surely with Pride’s personal approval. But although he was sympathetic towards religious separatists, he took an active interest in the affairs of the wider national state church during the interregnum. We know of two instances where he promoted clerical appointments under the Rump Parliament. On 4 December 1650 he ‘and several divines’ supported the presentation of John Salkeld, clerk and Master of Arts, to Barton Vicarage, Cambridge.95Add. 36792, f. 19. It is quite possible that this nominee was related to the Captain Salkeld in Pride’s regiment.96Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 365; E121/1/1/37. On 1 March 1652 he joined with Francis Allein*, Major-general Thomas Harrison I* and Lieutenant-general Charles Fleetwood* in backing the presentation of Christopher Blackwood, clerk, to Marden Vicarage, Kent.97Add. 36792, f. 39.

The Profits of revolution, 1650-3

In November 1650 Pride and seven other men won the lucrative contract with the navy commissioners to provide ‘good, sweet, wholesome and serviceable provisions’ to the fleet. They were to victual it at sea and in harbour at the ports of London, Dover, Harwich, Portsmouth, Plymouth and Liverpool, as well as Leith (Scotland) and Kinsale (Ireland).98Bodl. Rawl. A.216, pp. 261-2; CJ vi, 500b; Add 18986, ff. 128-9v.; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 450, 503. One would have expected this to be a profitable contract, although the victuallers were only allowed 7½d per day for men at sea, and 6½d per day for men in harbour. The contract between Pride and the government continued despite the changes of regime after the ejection of the Rump. In July 1653, however, there was ‘great complaint of victuals, especially of beer and water’. Pride was forced to condemn the beer on two ships, and ‘promise a better supply’. Before that could be procured, £1,600 of his own beer had been dumped overboard as undrinkable. Pride and the other victuallers now wanted out of the contract, petitioning the lord protector to that effect on 13 January 1654. Cromwell did not yield to their request until 17 October of that year, yet for some reason the navy commissioners extended the contract to 1 August 1655.99CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 6, 9; 1654, pp. 377, 426; Bodl. Rawl. A.216, pp. 261-2. Even if he was released from the contracts, he continued to be pursued by the commissioners for the excise for his arrears of payment dating back to 1643. He pleaded that he had been ‘absent in the army’, and that his arrears were pardoned by the Act of Oblivion. The commissioners replied that he had implicitly acknowledged that the Act of Oblivion did not exempt him from excise arrears, since he had paid £1,241 3s on the balance owing of £6,821 6s 6d that had accumulated before the Act was passed, and had promised to pay the balance. It is not known whether Pride paid the £5,580 3s 6d that the excise commissioners demanded of him, but he gave up a brewhouse in London in 1652, very likely because of his removal to Surrey, where he nurtured a major interest in brewing, at Kingston-upon-Thames.100SP18/77/99; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 426. He was also pursued by excise officers in Scotland who declared that he owed £200 on account of his obligation to pay £100 per year out of the £500 that had been granted to him out of confiscated lands there.101CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 93.

Pride was punctilious in seeking satisfaction for financial debts owed by the state to himself and his regiment. Because of his high standing with the post-1649 regime, he was successful in securing what was owed him. As an effective commanding officer, he well understood the importance, for maintaining morale and his own authority in his regiment, of dealing honestly with his soldiers, and seeing that they were regularly paid. On 14 January 1646 Lieutenant John Mason testified to the Committee of Accounts that during the time he served under Major Pride (7 Nov. 1642 until 5 Apr. 1645), ‘the said major did faithfully pay unto the officers and soldiers their due proportions of what money he received [for] them’.102SP28/253B, pt 2, f. 50. Pay arrears of £100 were bestowed on him in December 1647. On 18 December 1648, 12 days after the purge, the Committee for the Army issued a warrant to the treasurers at war to pay Pride the sum of £2,600 upon account, raised in Essex, for two months’ pay to the regiment under his command.103SP28/57, f. 350-v. During December 1648 and January 1649 warrants totalling £7, 961 were issued for the pay of his regiment, a sum which represented over five months’ pay. Hardly any other regiment was as generously treated at the climax of the English Revolution.104SP28/57, ff. 350-v, 462; SP28/58, ff. 65, 244, 278-v.

On 19 November 1651, a committee of the Rump was set up to consider priorities for action in Parliament. The first named to it were Sir Peter Wentworth, Robert Reynolds, Sir James Harington, Sir Henry Vane II and Henry Marten. The question of debts owed by the state to private lenders, the public faith, was deemed to be included in their brief, not least because petitions lay before the House on the matter.105CJ vii. 37b, 50a, 76b, 98b. By 30 January 1652, it had been resolved to issue a commission to a group of non-MPs, together with a set of instructions, and on 27 April the parliamentary committee, led it seems by Harington, was empowered to invite proposals from interested experts. Subsequently, a number of ‘undertakers’ met in the court of wards to be briefed by the parliament-men. First among the undertakers was Pride, who had undoubtedly been invited to the meeting not by virtue of his military rank or even his godliness, but by his prominence in business.106CJ vii. 79b, 121b, 127a; S. Chidley, A Remonstrance to the Valiant and Well-deserving Soldier (1653), 11 (E.92.5). Initially, it is clear that an alliance between Pride and his friend Samuel Chidley was in prospect, the latter claiming to speak for poor creditors to the state. In essence, the undertakers were to discover further state assets, such as concealed royal estates, in order to sell them off. In August, notices were published inviting small creditors to contact Pride and his colleagues, but in Chidley’s view, little or no progress was made, and he laid the blame for this on the parliamentary committee.107A Perfect Diurnall no. 143 (30 Aug.-6 Sept. 1652), 2141 (E.747.6); Chidley, A Remonstrance, 11-14. In late November, Chidley included Pride’s name in some proposals he issued to keep the matter moving forward, but this drew an indignant disclaimer from Pride, which in turn led to Chidley’s asserting that he would despite this be adhering to his own scheme. This marked a break between Pride and Chidley, and perhaps the opening of a gulf between Pride and the wider community of London radicals, which would only widen subsequently.108Severall Proceedings in Parliament no. 167 (2-9 Dec. 1652), 2628 (E.801.12); Flying Eagle no. 2 (4-11 Dec. 1652), 15-16 (E.801.15); I. Gentles, ‘London Levellers in the English Revolution: the Chidleys and their Circle’, JEH xxix. 304-5.

By the time of the breach between Pride and his radical former ally, he had become a landed proprietor. He submitted debentures of his own worth £1,418 for military arrears, as well as those valued at over £10,000 purchased from the men in his own regiment, probably at the going rate of one-third to one-half of their face value, to acquire Nonsuch Great Park (also known as Worcester Park) in Surrey from the trustees for the sale of crown lands (3 July 1652).109Gentles, ‘Debentures market and military purchases’, 77-9. The purchase price was £11,591, and the property included over 900 acres and Worcester House, which became his principal residence.110E121/4/8/100; VCH Surr. iii. 268. A gratuity of confiscated lands in Scotland up to the value of £500 a year was bestowed on him in May 1652, on condition that he should return £100 of that sum ‘to the use of the commonwealth’.111CJ vii. 132b.

After the Rump Parliament, 1654-6

Shortly after the expulsion of the Rump, Pride was one of several commissioners appointed by the Committee for the Army to look into the ‘ill managing’ of the court of upper bench, and in particular into the alleged mistreatment of prisoners for debt in the upper bench (formerly king’s bench) prison, and make recommendations for reform.112A Perfect Account no. 120 (27 Apr.-4 May 1653), 967-8 (E.694.3). He and his fellow commissioners published a list of 393 prisoners and the amount each one owed.113Moderate Occurrences no. 5 (26 Apr.-3 May 1653), 37 (E.693.15); A List of all the Prisoners in the Upper Bench Prison (1653) (E.213.8); Moderate Publisher of Every Daies Intelligence no. 131 (29 Apr.-13 May 1653), 1056 (E.213.12); Perfect Diurnall no. 179 (9-16 May 1653), 2701 (E.213.13). The commissioners were evidently aware that some debtors were persons of means who put their estates into trust in order to defraud their creditors. Nevertheless they also advocated that those who were genuinely bankrupt should be set free in order to ‘labour (if able) for bread for themselves or families; and if possible, to pay their just debts’.114The Faithful Post no. 133 (13-20 May 1653), 1058 (E.213.15). It is not clear what, if anything, was done for the relief of the poor debtors in the upper bench prison. At the same time Pride was part of a committee of six appointed by the council of state to examine the state of Fleet prison, another place where many hundreds of debtors were incarcerated. In late May 1653 they published a list of the prisoners who had sworn an oath under the Rump legislation for discharging debtors from prison. The reason for publishing the names was so that creditors who believed that some prisoners were fraudulently concealing their estates could have the opportunity to testify against their release from prison.115A Schedule, or, List of the Prisoners in the Fleet (1653), 14, 20 (E.698.13).

Pride played no active part in the dissolution of the Rump, but its demise was by no means a setback for his public career. His stock in fact rose after April 1653. In July that year, it was rumoured that he might become general-at-sea in succession to Robert Blake* if the latter did not recover from illness, and on 5 August the Nominated Assembly approved a motion to increase the strength of his and three other foot regiments to 1,000 men each.116Letters and Pprs. relating to First Dutch War v. (Navy Recs. Soc. xli.), 291; CJ vii. 296b. On 9 July 1652 he had been elected for two years a governor of St Bartholomew’s, one of the four great London hospitals, located in Smithfield, where Pride was living in the early 1640s. His appointment was a further illustration of the London corporation’s programme of reforming and modernizing City social provision. He only attended four governors’ meetings during his initial term, but it was evidently renewed, for he attended two more in 1655.117St Bartholomew’s Hospital Archives, HA/1/5, ff. 85v, 87, 121v, 130, 157v, 158. There is no direct evidence that he influenced hospital policy during his time as governor, though he may have had something to do with the regulation passed on 29 September 1655 allowing residents only one hour’s access on the sabbath, from 5 to 6 p.m., to strong beer from the hospital’s cellar. However, he was not present at the meeting when the regulation was voted on.118St Bartholomew’s Hospital Archives, HA/1/5, f. 154. He was, however, interested in religious provision at the institution. In 1653, Pride was one of a group of lay sequestrators managing the living of St Bartholomew-the-Less, the hospital church. They petitioned the lord protector and the council of state for a prolongation of their powers, and for a financial settlement to maintain a minister. They had faithfully followed the instructions of the Committee of Plundered Ministers and the previous council of state to provide for the spiritual needs of the congregation, but their mandate having expired, they were afraid that St Bartholomew’s parishioners would relapse ‘into their old malignant channel’.119CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 322; 1653-4, pp. 182, 322.

Pride was in demand as an inspector of other social provision. In May 1653 the interim council of state appointed him to the committee to look into the Savoy and Ely House hospitals, with a view to ascertaining the numbers of sick and injured soldiers who were inmates there, and to reforming the conditions in which they were housed. That this task was not intended as a purely humanitarian one is suggested in the injunction to ‘bestow their management that the treasure allowed them may not be wasted’.120CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 363-4. On 30 October 1655, Pride was listed as one of the commissioners for charitable uses in London.121Publick Intelligencer no. 7 (12-19 Nov. 1655), 98 (E.489.15). The following year he was one of three army officers appointed by the council of state to look into a petition from ‘sick and maimed soldiers’ in the Savoy Hospital, ‘concerning the disorderly proceedings of several persons there’.122CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 365.

Pride was able to make some impact in the London suburbs and in Surrey on social reform. In 1655 he was made sheriff of Surrey. In that capacity, as well as that of justice of the peace for Middlesex throughout the 1650s, he waged a campaign for the suppression of cock-fighting, bear- and bull-baiting, and ‘playing for prizes by fencers’ in Southwark and elsewhere.123CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 306. At Southwark in February 1656, he ordered the shooting of 7 bears at the Paris bear-gardens. This was rumoured to be the result of a feud between Pride and the bear-keeper.124T. Ordish, Early London Theatres (1894), 240; C. Durston, Cromwell’s Major-Generals (Manchester, 2001), 157; Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend ed. Porter, Roberts, Roy (Worcs. Hist. Soc. n.s. xxv), 273. He and other zealous magistrates were fortified in their campaign by an order from the Middlesex quarter sessions requiring them to suppress alehouses where the sabbath was profaned or where the drunk and disorderly congregated to play unlawful games.125Mercurius Politicus no. 309 (10-17 Apr. 1656), 6899-6900 (E.493.6). Indeed, Pride had been targeting alehouses for several years before this order was issued. In 1650 an angry journalist accused him of imposing heavy fines upon alehouse keepers, and of tearing up the licence of any ale-wife who sold ale on the sabbath.126Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 44 (26 Feb.-5 Mar 1650), sig. Xx1v (E.594.17). After 1660, his name provoked mirth in royalist wits such as Alexander Brome, said to be the author of a song of 1661 which mocked Pride’s campaign against the entertainments and diversions of the people.127Rump: Or an Exact Collection of the Choycest Poems and Songs (1662), pt. i, 299-302; H.F. Brooks, ‘Rump Songs: An Index with notes’, Oxf. Bibliographical Soc. Procs. and Pprs. v. 302, n. 155.

Parliamentary politics, 1656-8

Pride had no difficulty in adapting to the Cromwellian protectorate, even though he had previously appeared a fierce republican. Indeed, he was among the relatively small number of men knighted by Cromwell. According to Edmund Ludlowe II*, the lord protector performed the ceremony (17 Jan. 1656) with a faggot stick.128The Publick Intelligencer no. 21 (14–21 Jan. 1656), 266 (E.491.16). Ludlow, Mems. ii. 25. Later that year, he was named a commissioner under the act for the security of the lord protector, and was later made an assessment commissioner for Surrey, further evidence that he continued to enjoy Cromwell’s trust.129A. and O. Despite his strong associations with Parliament, Pride was elected to only one assembly, that of 1656, and then at a by-election. By the usual parliamentary conventions, he should not have stood, as he was sheriff of Surrey at the time, and therefore the returning officer. His candidature was a challenge to the army officer and ‘kingling’, Jerome Sankey*, a client of Charles Fleetwood*. Bulstrode Whitelocke* complained of Pride’s behaviour, but he received some support from John Lambert*, his neighbour at Nonsuch palace, and he persisted in returning himself, although he did not appear in the House until April 1657.130Reigate, supra.; Burton’s Diary, iii. 127; VCH Surr. iii. 268. He never served on the council of state, but retained his place on the influential council of army officers.131CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 141. The following year he played a leading part in the agitation among the officers against making Cromwell king. ‘He shall not’, he declared truculently.132Ludlow, Mems. ii. 25. He then set about organizing a petition aimed at dissuading the protector from accepting the crown. He need not have worried, as Cromwell had already made up his mind: as he said, ‘I would not build Jericho again’.133Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell ed. Carlyle and Lomas, iii. 71. Pride accused Francis Russell* of wanting Oliver Cromwell to be king so that Henry Cromwell* would in due course succeed.134Henry Cromwell Corresp. 264.

Shortly after the dust had settled over the offer of the crown to Cromwell, Pride was appointed to a large Commons committee to make recommendations about the disposal of forfeited estates in Ireland (29 Apr. 1657).135CJ vii. 526b. A day later he was named to a committee to consider the ordinance for the sale of four royal forests.136CJ vii. 528a. On 5 May, he acted as teller for the yeas on a bill that passed ‘against vagrants, and wandering, idle, dissolute persons’.137CJ vii. 530b. Three days after that he was named to a large committee to consider a bill to restrict and regulate building in the suburbs of London.138CJ vii. 531b-532a. Pride was furious with John Goodwyn* in the House on 12 May, ostensibly because he was not properly in the chamber for a vote, but really because he compared republican army officers to the ‘evil counsellors’ around the late king. Pride said Goodwyn should be called to the bar, but Henry Owen* retorted that Pride should be called to it for his recent slaughter of the bears in Southwark, a barb that provoked applause from bystanders.139Henry Cromwell Corresp. 271. On 19 May Pride was named to a large committee to consider the sensitive question of how the office of lord protector ‘may be bounded, limited, and circumstantiated’.140CJ vii. 535a. Four days later he found himself on a committee to inquire of the lord protector when the House could attend him with the Humble Petition and Advice.141CJ vii. 538b. On 30 May 1657 he was included in a committee of MPs and commissioners of the treasury who had been given the task of inspecting the treasuries of the three kingdoms in order to see to the raising of £1.3 million a year.142CJ vii. 543a. Soon after that he was named to a committee to draft a bill pardoning James Livingstone, earl of Callender [S] and William Cranstoun, Baron Cranstoun [S].143CJ vii. 557b-558a. On 17 June the House put him on a committee to draft a bill to re-introduce sumptuary legislation against extravagant living.144CJ vii. 559b.

Finally he got the chance to sink his teeth into a bill on a subject close to his heart: the excise, on which a bill was debated in detail on 22 June. His contribution to the debate is not recorded, but he did act as the first teller for the noes against putting the question on a clause relating to the excise on wine. He would have been disappointed that a proviso to allow brewers in and around London to deduct five barrels from every 25 upon which the excise was levied, to account for wastage in the brewing process, was defeated.145CJ vii. 568b. The bill itself was passed, and was published on 26 June.146CJ vii. 568b-569a; A. and O. From the Journal one draws the impression that Pride was vigorously active in the House, even though his attendance may have been irregular. Yet the diarist of the 1656 Parliament, Thomas Burton*, referred to him only once, on 24 April 1657, and then only to note his recent appearance in the chamber.147Burton’s Diary, ii. 20.

Pride’s final contribution to the business of the second protectorate Parliament came when he and three other members were named to prepare Westminster Hall for Cromwell’s oath-taking as lord protector under the Humble Petition and Advice (24 June).148CJ vii. 573b. A short while later he was pleased to accept appointment to Cromwell’s ‘Other House’. His knighthood had in the eyes of some Londoners made him ‘as bad as the rest’, and this latest elevation was excoriated by republican purists. He ‘hath now changed his mind and principles with the times’ alleged one of them sourly, ‘and the noble lawyers will be glad of his company and friendship, for that there is no fear of his hanging up their gowns by the Scottish colours in Westminster Hall’.149TSP iv. 621; A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament (1659), 23 (E.977.3). Pride attended the Other House every day it sat in the short sitting of 20 January to 3 Feb. 1658.150HMC Lords n.s. iv. 506-9, 511-12, 514, 516-21, 523. He was named to one committee, for naturalizing the wife of Nicholas Corselis, and his only other distinction among the members was to be included in the committee for petitions (28 Jan.).151HMC Lords n.s. iv. 519. Although he was never one of the protector’s closest advisers, he was if by no other reason than his faithful attendance in the Other House, marked out as a loyal Cromwellian.

Shortly after Oliver Cromwell’s death, Pride signed the proclamation of his son Richard* as the new lord protector.152Cromwelliana (1810), 176. Barely a month later, Pride too died (23 Oct.), and was said to have been buried on 2 November at Nonsuch.153Smyth’s Obit. 48. In his will, drawn up on 12 October, he declared himself ‘under the chastisement of the Lord’ and believed himself elected to salvation. His bequests, including the profitable brewhouses at Kingston, were all to his wife, children and son-in-law, Robert, son of Valentine Wauton*.154PROB11/283, f. 213v. At the Restoration, his body was voted by Parliament to be exhumed, drawn to Tyburn, hung up in its coffin, and buried under the gallows, along with the corpses of Cromwell, Henry Ireton* and John Bradshawe*.155CJ viii. 197b. Evidently he was regarded as one of the chief among the regicides. However, he alone of the four seems to have escaped the indignity ordered to be inflicted upon them. This was probably because his daughter-in-law (not his wife, as earlier accounts have asserted) was the niece of George Monck*, later 1st duke of Albemarle, the man who more than any other engineered the restoration of monarchy; much to the disgust of Edmund Ludlowe II, Pride’s son, Thomas, rode in the procession of the king’s entry to London in May 1660.156Ludlow, Voyce, 157. Despite this concession, Pride was attainted post mortem in the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion of 1660, and all his estates were thus forfeit to the crown.157SR.

The height of Pride’s political influence came with the event that is forever associated with his name. Even then, he was at best a significant contributor to the political process, rather than a leader. In the early 1650s he straddled the worlds of political and religious radicalism, military affairs and the London business community, but was not unique in doing so: George Thomson* personified the coming together of these facets at a much higher level in government. He was an energetic and steadfast proponent of the puritan ‘reformation of manners’, but his radicalism was defined by a commitment to justice in and for the army, fiercely expressed in 1647. Socially, he was evidently less wedded to any notions of equality, and was comfortable with the trappings of knighthood and ennoblement that went with the extensive estate in Surrey and its impressive residence. His loyalty to Oliver Cromwell as lord protector seems to have been an aspect of his enduring membership of the army high command. Despite the association of his name with Parliament, his own parliamentary career was no more than a coda to achievements in other arenas of public life.