English Civil War year, Oliver Cromwell formed his troop of "Ironsides", a disciplined unit that demonstrated his military leadership ability. With their assistance, he won a victory at the Battle of Gainsborough in July. At this stage, from 7 to 9 August 1643, there were some popular demonstrations in London—both pro and against war. They were protesting at Westminster. A peace demonstration by London women, which turned violent, was suppressed by William Waller's regiment of horse. Some women were beaten and even killed, and many arrested. Following these events of August, the representative of Venice in England reported to the doge that the
English overseas possessions in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms Bermudian families and new emigrants from England, who sailed from Bermuda under the same Independent William Sayle who had led the Parliamentarian and Puritan exiles from Bermuda to the Bahamas during the war. From 1630 through 1640 approximately 20,000 Puritans emigrated to New England in a Great Migration. In 1642, after the English Civil War began, a sixth of the male colonists returned to England to fight for Parliament, and many stayed, since Oliver Cromwell was himself a Puritan. In 1643, most of the colonies formed the New England Confederation, a defensive alliance. In the early years of the Commonwealth,