Ironsides

Ironsides, a name popularly applied to the regiment of a thousand horse which Cromwell raised mainly in the eastern counties for service against the king early in the great Civil War. The name, already given for his bravery to an English king, Edmund (q.v.), was first attached to Cromwell himself, but passed easily to the men at whose head he first appeared at Edgehill. Almost from the beginning he saw that real religious enthusiasm was the only force adequate to match the chivalry of the cavalier, and he spent his own money freely on the equipment of his men. 'Old decayed serving-men, and tapsters, and such kind of fellows will never be able to encounter gentlemen,' as he said to Hampden, and the soldiers he gathered round him were stalwart and substantial yeomen, emphatically 'men of religion,' who 'made some conscience of what they did,' who knew the fear of God and no other fear at all. Social distinctions and religious conformity were made subordinate to competence and honesty. 'Better plain men than none; but best to have men patient of wants, faithful and conscientious in their employment,' wrote Cromwell; and elsewhere, 'I have a lovely company; you would respect them did you know them; they are no Anabaptists; they are honest, sober Christians; they expect to be used as men.' And his Ironsides nobly justified their captain's expectations. At Winceby they charged 'singing psalms,' cleared Lincolnshire and the eastern counties of the Cavaliers, endured the shock of Rupert's horse at Marston Moor, and scattered them like chaff before the wind. The whole parliamentary army was next reorganised on the model of Cromwell's brigade, but it was still the stubborn valour of the Ironsides in the left at Naschy that changed the day from defeat to a crushing victory, and practically closed the war. 'Truly they were never beaten,' said Cromwell in a speech the year before his death, 'and whenever they were engaged against the enemy they beat continually.'