Thomas Pride
English general
Colonel Thomas Pride (c. 1607 – 23 October 1658) was an English army officer who fought on the Parliamentarian side during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. He is best known for being one of the regicides of Charles I, and the instigator of Pride's Purge in December 1648.
Personal details
Thomas Pride was born in Ashcott, Somerset, son of William Pride, a local tradesman. His exact date of birth is unknown but he was apprenticed to a City of London merchant in January 1622 and since the normal age for this was between 14 and 17 years old, he was probably born between 1606 and 1608.
Shortly after his seven-year apprenticeship finished in 1629, he married Elizabeth Tomson, daughter of another London merchant. His 1658 will made bequests to four sons, Thomas, Joseph, William and Samuel, and a daughter, Elizabeth.
Career
Pride went into business as a brewer, and by the early 1640s owned two brewhouses in Surrey and possibly one in Edinburgh. He was also an ensign in the London Trained bands and when the First English Civil War began in August 1642, he served as a captain in the Parliamentarian under Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, and was eventually promoted to the rank of colonel. He distinguished himself at the Battle of Preston in 1648 and with his regiment took part in the military occupation of London in December 1648, which was the first step towards bringing King Charles I to trial.
Trial of King Charles I
The next step was the expulsion of the Presbyterian and Royalist elements in the House of Commons, who were thought to be prepared to reach a settlement with Charles.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Pride” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.