cavalry, a decisive force in wars of that time and perfecting the cavalry tactics of the eleven regiments that he organized: the heavy horses, the best that money could buy, trained to perform all the evolutions of a flexible horse unit in a weighty charge. [11, p.86] horsemen were yeomen farmers and wealthy artisans; sometimes the officers were of the same classes. Cromwell was heard to say that he cared only for skill and devotion to the cause in his officers, not for titles and rank. Gradually the ten regiments of infantry were ideologically trained as determined fighters for the puritan cause so that Cromwell »s New Model Army became a formidable force, a party in fact of the revolutionary lower middle class, the independents, while in the army of Essex the Presbyterians, the party of the upper middle class, were the leading influence.the commander-in-chief of the New Model Army was Lord Fairfax with Cromwell as his deputy but Cromwell s growing influence with the army actually placed him in the position of highest command. The first Parliament success was the battle at Marston Moor (1644) when the king s army was defeated by Cromwell and his Ironsides. In June 1645 Cromwell s army defeated the Royalists at Naseby (Northamptonshire) and the king fled to Oxford, then to Scottish army at Newark. The Scots, however, were persuaded by the Parliament to accept the costs of 400,000 pounds sterling and on those terms they agreed to hand over the king who was heard to say I ve been sold and bought. [3, p.105]
.3.3 The Struggle within the Parliament Partythis time the division of the Parliament into two parties, the Presbyterians and Independents, was evident. The Presbyterians were in fact the right wing of the puritans. The oligarchy structure of the Presbyterian church made it acceptable for the wealthier part of the puritans. Their demand of the strict unification of church ritual, of church centralization distinguished them from the democratic trends of Puritanism. During the bourgeois revolution they became in fact a political party expressing the interests of the London merchants and bankers, and also of a certain part of land-owning aristocracy. The Presbyterians were in favour of only limiting the king «s power; the revolution was to end there and then, the new nobles and the upper layers of the big bourgeoisie were for a compromise with the king so that the revolution should not go further and deeper. [3, p. 105] Independents expressed the interests of the radical wing of the bourgeoisie and of the new commercially-minded nobility headed by Oliver Cromwell. As a religious trend they formed an opposition to Anglicanism. They were against any church that was sponsored by the state. As a political party the Independents made the radical wing in the Parliament camp and headed the movement against Stuart monarchy. All the enemies of the royalists rallied around the Independents. After the king was defeated in 1646 there came a division in the Independents » ranks. The bourgeois-aristocratic elements headed by Crowell considered the revolution finished. The democratic elements fought against Cromwell and his adherents; they created their own separate party of Levellers.Levellers were a radical petty bourgeois democratic group that sprang up in 1645-1646 with the deterioration in the living standard of the ordinary, mostly poor people when the wide masses expressed deep dissat...
