The Ironside is symbolic of the one occasion when the army took an active role in British politics.

He represents a unique period when ordinary people displaced the established order to take political control into their own hands. In the nineteenth century a rash of historical publications, paintings and statues with a civil war theme reflected the political divisions of Victorian society and Royalist and Parliamentarian causes were argued over again, reflecting the sub text of contemporary political struggles.

This is a wider view of the Ironside as a warrior who evolved from the experiments of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries to combine firepower with the armoured cavalryman.