JOHN HAMPDEN

_(December 1831)

Some Memorials of John Hampden, his Party, and his Times. By LORD

NUGENT. Two vols. 8vo. London: 1831._

WE have read this book with great pleasure, though not exactly with that

kind of pleasure which we had expected. We had hoped that Lord

Nugent would have been able to collect, from family papers and local

traditions, much new and interesting information respecting the life and

character of the renowned leader of the Long Parliament, the first of

those great English commoners whose plain addition of Mister has, to our

ears, a more majestic sound than the proudest of the feudal titles. In

this hope we have been disappointed; but assuredly not from any want of

zeal or diligence on the part of the noble biographer. Even at

Hampden, there are, it seems, no important papers relating to the

most illustrious proprietor of that ancient domain. The most valuable

memorials of him which still exist, belong to the family of his friend

Sir John Eliot. Lord Eliot has furnished the portrait which is engraved

for this work, together with some very interesting letters. The portrait

is undoubtedly an original, and probably the only original now in

existence. The intellectual forehead, the mild penetration of the eye,

and the inflexible resolution expressed by the lines of the mouth,

sufficiently guarantee the likeness. We shall probably make some

extracts from the letters. They contain almost all the new information

that Lord Nugent has been able to procure respecting the private

pursuits of the great man whose memory he worships with an enthusiastic,

but not extravagant veneration.

The public life of Hampden is surrounded by no obscurity. His history,

more particularly from the year 1640 to his death, is the history of

England. These Memoirs must be considered as Memoirs of the history of

England; and, as such, they well deserve to be attentively perused. They

contain some curious facts which, to us at least, are new, much spirited

narrative, many judicious remarks, and much eloquent declamation.

We are not sure that even the want of information respecting the private

character of Hampden is not in itself a circumstance as strikingly

characteristic as any which the most minute chronicler, O’Meara, Mrs.

Thrale, or Boswell himself, ever recorded concerning their heroes. The

celebrated Puritan leader is an almost solitary instance of a great man

who neither sought nor shunned greatness, who found glory only because

glory lay in the plain path of duty. During more than forty years he was

known to his country neighbours as a gentleman of cultivated mind, of

high principles, of polished address, happy in his family, and active

in the discharge of local duties; and to political men as an honest,

industrious, and sensible member of Parliament, not eager to display

his talents, stanch to his party and attentive to the interests of his

constituents. A great and terrible crisis came. A direct attack was made

by an arbitrary government on a sacred right of Englishmen, on a right

which was the chief security for all their other rights. The nation

looked round for a defender. Calmly and unostentatiously the plain

Buckinghamshire Esquire placed himself at the head of his countrymen,

and right before the face and across the path of tyranny. The times grew

darker and more troubled. Public service, perilous, arduous, delicate,

was required, and to every service the intellect and the courage of this

wonderful man were found fully equal. He became a debater of the first

order, a most dexterous manager of the House of Commons, a negotiator, a

soldier. He governed a fierce and turbulent assembly, abounding in

able men, as easily as he had governed his family. He showed himself as

competent to direct a campaign as to conduct the business of the petty

sessions. We can scarcely express the admiration which we feel for

a mind so great, and, at the same time, so healthful and so well

proportioned, so willingly contracting itself to the humblest duties,

so easily expanding itself to the highest, so contented in repose, so

powerful in action. Almost every part of this virtuous and blameless

life which is not hidden from us in modest privacy is a precious and

splendid portion of our national history. Had the private conduct of

Hampden afforded the slightest pretence for censure, he would have

been assailed by the same blind malevolence which, in defiance of the

clearest proofs, still continues to call Sir John Eliot an assassin.

Had there been even any weak part in the character of Hampden, had his

manners been in any respect open to ridicule, we may be sure that no

mercy would have been shown to him by the writers of Charles’s faction.

Those writers have carefully preserved every little circumstance which

could tend to make their opponents odious or contemptible. They have

made themselves merry with the cant of injudicious zealots. They have

told us that Pym broke down in speech, that Ireton had his nose pulled

by Hollis, that the Earl of Northumberland cudgelled Henry Martin,

that St. John’s manners were sullen, that Vane had an ugly face, that

Cromwell had a red nose. But neither the artful Clarendon nor the

scurrilous Denham could venture to throw the slightest imputation on

the morals or the manners of Hampden. What was the opinion entertained

respecting him by the best men of his time we learn from Baxter. That

eminent person, eminent not only for his piety and his fervid devotional

eloquence, but for his moderation, his knowledge of political affairs,

and his skill in judging of characters, declared in the Saint’s Rest,

that one of the pleasures which he hoped to enjoy in heaven was the

society of Hampden. In the editions printed after the Restoration, the

name of Hampden was omitted. “But I must tell the reader,” says Baxter,

“that I did blot it out, not as changing my opinion of the person....

Mr. John Hampden was one that friends and enemies acknowledged to be

most eminent for prudence, piety, and peaceable counsels, having the

most universal praise of any gentleman that I remember of that age.

I remember a moderate, prudent, aged gentleman, far from him, but

acquainted with him, whom I have heard saying, that if he might choose

what person he would be then in the world, he would be John Hampden.” We

cannot but regret that we have not fuller memorials of a man who, after

passing through the most severe temptations by which human virtue can be

tried, after acting a most conspicuous part in a revolution and a civil

war, could yet deserve such praise as this from such authority. Yet the

want of memorials is surely the best proof that hatred itself could find

no blemish on his memory.

The story of his early life is soon told. He was the head of a family

which had been settled in Buckinghamshire before the Conquest. Part of

the estate which he inherited had been bestowed by Edward the Confessor

on Baldwyn de Hampden, whose name seems to indicate that he was one of

the Norman favourites of the last Saxon king. During the contest between

the houses of York and Lancaster, the Hampdens adhered to the party of

the Red Rose, and were, consequently, persecuted by Edward the Fourth,

and favoured by Henry the Seventh. Under the Tudors, the family

was great and flourishing. Griffith Hampden, high sheriff of

Buckinghamshire, entertained Elizabeth with great magnificence at his

seat. His son, William Hampden, sate in the Parliament which that Queen

summoned in the year 1593. William married Elizabeth Cromwell, aunt of

the celebrated man who afterwards governed the British islands with more

than regal power; and from this marriage sprang John Hampden.

He was born in 1594. In 1597 his father died, and left him heir to a

very large estate. After passing some years at the grammar school of

Thame, young Hampden was sent, at fifteen, to Magdalen College, in the

University of Oxford. At nineteen, he was admitted a student of the

Inner Temple, where he made himself master of the principles of the

English law. In 1619 he married Elizabeth Symeon, a lady to whom he

appears to have been fondly attached. In the following year he was

returned to parliament by a borough which has in our time obtained a

miserable celebrity, the borough of Grampound.

Of his private life during his early years little is known beyond what

Clarendon has told us. “In his entrance into the world,” says that

great historian, “he indulged himself in all the licence in sports,

and exercises, and company, which were used by men of the most jolly

conversation.” A remarkable change, however, passed on his character.

“On a sudden,” says Clarendon, “from a life of great pleasure and

licence, he retired to extraordinary sobriety and strictness, to a more

reserved and melancholy society.” It is probable that this change took

place when Hampden was about twenty-five years old. At that age he was

united to a woman whom he loved and esteemed. At that age he entered

into political life. A mind so happily constituted as his would

naturally, under such circumstances, relinquish the pleasures of

dissipation for domestic enjoyments and public duties.

His enemies have allowed that he was a man in whom virtue showed itself

in its mildest and least austere form. With the morals of a Puritan, he

had the manners of an accomplished courtier. Even after the change

in his habits, “he preserved,” says Clarendon, “his own natural

cheerfulness and vivacity, and, above all, a flowing courtesy to all

men.” These qualities distinguished him from most of the members of his

sect and his party, and, in the great crisis in which he afterwards took

a principal part, were of scarcely less service to the country than his

keen sagacity and his dauntless courage.

In January 1621, Hampden took his seat in the House of Commons. His

mother was exceedingly desirous that her son should obtain a peerage.

His family, his possessions, and his personal accomplishments were such

as would, in any age, have justified him in pretending to that honour.

But in the reign of James the First there was one short cut to the House

of Lords. It was but to ask, to pay, and to have. The sale of titles was

carried on as openly as the sale of boroughs in our times.

Hampden turned away with contempt from the degrading honours with which

his family desired to see him invested, and attached himself to the

party which was in opposition to the court.

It was about this time, as Lord Nugent has justly remarked, that

parliamentary opposition began to take a regular form. From a very early

age, the English had enjoyed a far larger share of liberty than had

fallen to the lot of any neighbouring people. How it chanced that a

country conquered and enslaved by invaders, a country of which the soil

had been portioned out among foreign adventurers and of which the laws

were written in a foreign tongue, a country given over to that worst

tyranny, the tyranny of caste over caste, should have become the seat

of civil liberty, the object of the admiration and envy of surrounding

states, is one of the most obscure problems in the philosophy of

history. But the fact is certain. Within a century and a half after the

Norman conquest, the Great Charter was conceded. Within two centuries

after the Conquest, the first House of Commons met. Froissart tells us,

what indeed his whole narrative sufficiently proves, that of all the

nations of the fourteenth century, the English were the least disposed

to endure oppression. “C’est le plus périlleux peuple qui soit au monde,

et plus outrageux et orgueilleux.” The good canon probably did not

perceive that all the prosperity and internal peace which this dangerous

people enjoyed were the fruits of the spirit which he designates as

proud and outrageous. He has, however, borne ample testimony to the

effect, though he was not sagacious enough to trace it to its cause.

“En le royaume d’Angleterre,” says he, “toutes gens, laboureurs et

marchands, ont appris de vivre en paix, et à mener leurs marchandises

paisiblement, et les laboureurs labourer.” In the fifteenth century,

though England was convulsed by the struggle between the two branches

of the royal family, the physical and moral condition of the people

continued to improve. Villenage almost wholly disappeared. The

calamities of war were little felt, except by those who bore arms.

The oppressions of the government were little felt, except by the

aristocracy. The institutions of the country when compared with the

institutions of the neighbouring kingdoms, seem to have been not

undeserving of the praises of Fortescue. The government of Edward the

Fourth, though we call it cruel and arbitrary, was humane and liberal

when compared with that of Lewis the Eleventh, or that of Charles the

Bold. Comines, who had lived amidst the wealthy cities of Flanders, and

who had visited Florence and Venice, had never seen a people so well

governed as the English. “Or selon mon avis,” says he, “entre toutes

les seigneuries du monde, dont j’ay connoissance, ou la chose publique

est miel traitée, et ou règne moins de violence sur le peuple, et ou

il n’y a nuls édifices abbatus n’y démolis pour guerre, c’est Angleterre;

et tombe le sort et le malheur sur ceux qui font la guerre.”

About the close of the fifteenth and the commencement of the sixteenth

century, a great portion of the influence which the aristocracy had

possessed passed to the crown. No English king has ever enjoyed such

absolute power as Henry the Eighth. But while the royal prerogatives

were acquiring strength at the expense of the nobility, two great

revolutions took place, destined to be the parents of many revolutions,

the invention of Printing, and the reformation of the Church.

The immediate effect of the Reformation in England was by no means

favourable to political liberty. The authority which had been exercised

by the Popes was transferred almost entire to the King. Two formidable

powers which had often served to check each other were united in a

single despot. If the system on which the founders of the Church of

England acted could have been permanent, the Reformation would have

been, in a political sense, the greatest curse that ever fell on our

country. But that system carried within it the seeds of its own death.

It was possible to transfer the name of Head of the Church from Clement

to Henry; but it was impossible to transfer to the new establishment

the veneration which the old establishment had inspired. Mankind had not

broken one yoke in pieces only in order to put on another. The supremacy

of the Bishop of Rome had been for ages considered as a fundamental

principle of Christianity. It had for it everything that could make a

prejudice deep and strong, venerable antiquity, high authority, general

consent. It had been taught in the first lessons of the nurse. It was

taken for granted in all the exhortations of the priest. To remove it

was to break innumerable associations, and to give a great and perilous

shock to the principles. Yet this prejudice, strong as it was, could not

stand in the great day of the deliverance of the human reason. And it

was not to be expected that the public mind, just after freeing itself

by an unexampled effort, from a bondage which it had endured for ages,

would patiently submit to a tyranny which could plead no ancient title.

Rome had at least prescription on its side. But Protestant intolerance,

despotism in an upstart sect, infallibility claimed by guides who

acknowledged that they had passed the greater part of their lives in

error, restraints imposed on the liberty of private judgment at the

pleasure of rulers who could vindicate their own proceedings only by

asserting the liberty of private judgment, these things could not long

be borne. Those who had pulled down the crucifix could not long continue

to persecute for the surplice. It required no great sagacity to perceive

the inconsistency and dishonesty of men who, dissenting from almost all

Christendom, would suffer none to dissent from themselves, who

demanded freedom of conscience, yet refused to grant it, who execrated

persecution, yet persecuted, who urged reason against the authority of

one opponent, and authority against the reasons of another. Bonner acted

at least in accordance with his own principles. Cranmer could vindicate

himself from the charge of being a heretic only by arguments which made

him out to be a murderer.

Thus the system on which the English Princes acted with respect to

ecclesiastical affairs for some time after the Reformation was a system

too obviously unreasonable to be lasting. The public mind moved while

the government moved, but would not stop where the government stopped.

The same impulse which had carried millions away from the Church of Rome

continued to carry them forward in the same direction. As Catholics

had become Protestants, Protestants became Puritans; and the Tudors and

Stuarts were as unable to avert the latter change as the Popes had been

to avert the former. The dissenting party increased and became strong

under every kind of discouragement and oppression. They were a sect.

The government persecuted them; and they became an opposition. The old

constitution of England furnished to them the means of resisting the

sovereign without breaking the law. They were the majority of the House

of Commons. They had the power of giving or withholding supplies; and,

by a judicious exercise of this power, they might hope to take from the

Church its usurped authority over the consciences of men, and from the

Crown some part of the vast prerogative which it had recently acquired

at the expense of the nobles and of the Pope.

The faint beginnings of this memorable contest may be discerned early in

the reign of Elizabeth. The conduct of her last Parliament made it clear

that one of those great revolutions which policy may guide but cannot

stop was in progress. It was on the question of monopolies that the

House of Commons gained its first great victory over the throne. The

conduct of the extraordinary woman who then governed England is an

admirable study for politicians who live in unquiet times. It shows how

thoroughly she understood the people whom she ruled, and the crisis in

which she was called to act. What she held she held firmly. What she

gave she gave graciously. She saw that it was necessary to make a

concession to the nation; and she made it not grudgingly, not tardily,

not as a matter of bargain and sale, not, in a word, as Charles the

First would have made it, but promptly and cordially. Before a bill

could be framed or an address presented, she applied a remedy to the

evil of which the nation complained. She expressed in the warmest

terms her gratitude to her faithful Commons for detecting abuses

which interested persons had concealed from her. If her successors had

inherited her wisdom with her crown, Charles the First might have died

of old age, and James the Second would never have seen St. Germains.

She died; and the kingdom passed to one who was, in his own opinion, the

greatest master of king-craft that ever lived, but who was, in truth,

one of those kings whom God seems to send for the express purpose of

hastening revolutions. Of all the enemies of liberty whom Britain has

produced, he was at once the most harmless and the most provoking. His

office resembled that of the man who, in a Spanish bull-fight, goads the

torpid savage to fury, by shaking a red rag in the air, and by now and

then throwing a dart, sharp enough to sting, but too small to injure.

The policy of wise tyrants has always been to cover their violent acts

with popular forms. James was always obtruding his despotic theories

on his subjects without the slightest necessity. His foolish talk

exasperated them infinitely more than forced loans or benevolences would

have done. Yet, in practice, no king ever held his prerogatives less

tenaciously. He neither gave way gracefully to the advancing spirit of

liberty nor took vigorous measures to stop it, but retreated before

it with ludicrous haste, blustering and insulting as he retreated. The

English people had been governed during near a hundred and fifty years

by Princes who, whatever might be their frailties or their vices, had

all possessed great force of character, and who, whether beloved or

hated, had always been feared. Now, at length, for the first time since

the day when the sceptre of Henry the Fourth dropped from the hand of

his lethargic grandson, England had a king whom she despised.

The follies and vices of the man increased the contempt which was

produced by the feeble policy of the sovereign. The indecorous

gallantries of the Court, the habits of gross intoxication in which even

the ladies indulged, were alone sufficient to disgust a people whose

manners were beginning to be strongly tinctured with austerity.

But these were trifles. Crimes of the most frightful kind had been

discovered; others were suspected. The strange story of the Gowries was

not forgotten. The ignominious fondness of the King for his minions, the

perjuries, the sorceries, the poisonings, which his chief favourites

had planned within the walls of his palace, the pardon which, in direct

violation of his duty and of his word, he had granted to the mysterious

threats of a murderer, made him an object of loathing to many of his

subjects. What opinion grave and moral persons residing at a distance

from the Court entertained respecting him, we learn from Mrs.

Hutchinson’s Memoirs. England was no place, the seventeenth century no

time, for Sporus and Locusta.

This was not all. The most ridiculous weaknesses seemed to meet in the

wretched Solomon of Whitehall, pedantry, buffoonery, garrulity,

low curiosity, the most contemptible personal cowardice. Nature and

education had done their best to produce a finished specimen of all that

a king ought not to be. His awkward figure, his rolling eye, his rickety

walk, his nervous tremblings, his slobbering mouth, his broad Scotch

accent, were imperfections which might have been found in the best and

greatest man. Their effect, however, was to make James and his office

objects of contempt, and to dissolve those associations which had been

created by the noble bearing of preceding monarchs, and which were in

themselves no inconsiderable fence to royalty.

The sovereign whom James most resembled was, we think, Claudius Caesar.

Both had the same feeble vacillating temper, the same childishness, the

same coarseness, the same poltroonery. Both were men of learning; bath

wrote and spoke, not, indeed, well, but still in a manner in which

it seems almost incredible that men so foolish should have written or

spoken.

The follies and indecencies of James are well described in the words

which Suetonius uses respecting Claudius: “Multa talia, etiam privatis

deformia, nedum principi, neque infacundo, neque indocto, immo etiam

pertinaciter liberalibus studiis dedito.” The description given by

Suetonius of the manner in which the Roman prince transacted business

exactly suits the Briton. “In cognoscendo ac decernendo mira varietate

animi fuit, modo circumspectus et sagax, modo inconsultus ac praeceps,

nonnunquam frivolus amentique similis.” Claudius was ruled successively

by two bad women: James successively by two bad men. Even the

description of the person of Claudius, which we find in the ancient

memoirs, might, in many points, serve for that of James. “Ceterum et

ingredientem destituebant poplites minus firmi, et remisse quid vel

serio, agentem multa dehonestabant, risus indecens, ira turpior,

spumante rictu, praeterea linguae titubantia.”

The Parliament which James had called soon after his accession had been

refractory. His second Parliament, called in the spring of 1614, had

been more refractory still. It had been dissolved after a session of

two months; and during six years the King had governed without having

recourse to the legislature. During those six years, melancholy and

disgraceful events, at home and abroad, had followed one another in

rapid succession; the divorce of Lady Essex, the murder of Overbury, the

elevation of Villiers, the pardon of Somerset, the disgrace of Coke,

the execution of Raleigh, the battle of Prague, the invasion of the

Palatinate by Spinola, the ignominious flight of the son-in-law of the

English king, the depression of the Protestant interest all over the

Continent. All the extraordinary modes by which James could venture to

raise money had been tried. His necessities were greater than ever;

and he was compelled to summon the Parliament in which Hampden first

appeared as a public man.

This Parliament lasted about twelve months. During that time it visited

with deserved punishment several of those who, during the preceding six

years, had enriched themselves by peculation and monopoly. Mitchell, one

of the grasping patentees who had purchased of the favourite the power

of robbing the nation, was fined and imprisoned for life. Mompesson,

the original, it is said, of Massinger’s Overreach, was outlawed and

deprived of his ill-gotten wealth. Even Sir Edward Villiers, the brother

of Buckingham, found it convenient to leave England. A greater name is

to be added to the ignominious list. By this Parliament was brought

to justice that illustrious philosopher whose memory genius has half

redeemed from the infamy due to servility, to ingratitude, and to

corruption.

After redressing internal grievances, the Commons proceeded to take into

consideration the state of Europe. The King flew into a rage with them

for meddling with such matters, and, with characteristic judgment,

drew them into a controversy about the origin of their House and of its

privileges. When he found that he could not convince them, he dissolved

them in a passion, and sent some of the leaders of the Opposition to

ruminate on his logic in prison.

During the time which elapsed between this dissolution and the meeting

of the next Parliament, took place the celebrated negotiation respecting

the Infanta. The would-be despot was unmercifully browbeaten. The

would-be Solomon was ridiculously over-reached. Steenie, in spite of the

begging and sobbing of his dear dad and gossip, carried off baby Charles

in triumph to Madrid. The sweet lads, as James called them, came back

safe, but without their errand. The great master of king-craft, in

looking for a Spanish match, had found a Spanish war. In February 1624,

a Parliament met, during the whole sitting of which, James was a mere

puppet in the hands of his baby, and of his poor slave and dog. The

Commons were disposed to support the King in the vigorous policy which

his favourite urged him to adopt. But they were not disposed to place

any confidence in their feeble sovereign and his dissolute courtiers,

or to relax in their efforts to remove public grievances. They

therefore lodged the money which they voted for the war in the hands

of Parliamentary Commissioners. They impeached the treasurer, Lord

Middlesex, for corruption, and they passed a bill by which patents of

monopoly were declared illegal.

Hampden did not, during the reign of James, take any prominent part in

public affairs. It is certain, however, that he paid great attention to

the details of Parliamentary business, and to the local interests of

his own country. It was in a great measure owing to his exertions that

Wendover and some other boroughs on which the popular party could depend

recovered the elective franchise, in spite of the opposition of the

Court.

The health of the King had for some time been declining. On the

twenty-seventh of March 1625, he expired. Under his weak rule, the

spirit of liberty had grown strong, and had become equal to a great

contest. The contest was brought on by the policy of his successor.

Charles bore no resemblance to his father. He was not a driveller, or

a pedant, or a buffoon, or a coward. It would be absurd to deny that

he was a scholar and a gentleman, a man of exquisite tastes in the fine

arts, a man of strict morals in private life. His talents for business

were respectable; his demeanour was kingly. But he was false, imperious,

obstinate, narrow-minded, ignorant of the temper of his people,

unobservant of the signs of his times. The whole principle of his

government was resistance to public opinion; nor did he make any real

concession to that opinion till it mattered not whether he resisted or

conceded, till the nation, which had long ceased to love him or to trust

him, had at last ceased to fear him.

His first Parliament met in June 1625. Hampden sat in it as burgess for

Wendover. The King wished for money. The Commons wished for the redress

of grievances. The war, however, could not be carried on without funds.

The plan of the Opposition was, it should seem, to dole out supplies by

small sums, in order to prevent a speedy dissolution. They gave the King

two subsidies only, and proceeded to complain that his ships had been

employed against the Huguenots in France, and to petition in behalf of

the Puritans who were persecuted in England. The King dissolved them,

and raised money by Letters under his Privy Seal. The supply fell far

short of what he needed; and, in the spring of 1626, he called together

another Parliament. In this Parliament Hampden again sat for Wendover.

The Commons resolved to grant a very liberal supply, but to defer the

final passing of the act for that purpose till the grievances of the

nation should be redressed. The struggle which followed far exceeded in

violence any that had yet taken place. The Commons impeached Buckingham.

The King threw the managers of the impeachment into prison. The Commons

denied the right of the King to levy tonnage and poundage without their

consent. The King dissolved them. They put forth a remonstrance. The

King circulated a declaration vindicating his measures, and committed

some of the most distinguished members of the Opposition to close

custody. Money was raised by a forced loan, which was apportioned among

the people according to the rate at which they had been respectively

assessed to the last subsidy. On this occasion it was, that Hampden

made his first stand for the fundamental principle of the English

constitution. He positively refused to lend a farthing. He was required

to give his reasons. He answered, “that he could be content to lend

as well as others, but feared to draw upon himself that curse in Magna

Charta which should be read twice a year against those who infringe it.”

For this spirited answer, the Privy Council committed him close prisoner

to the Gate House. After some time, he was again brought up; but he

persisted in his refusal, and was sent to a place of confinement in

Hampshire.

The government went on, oppressing at home, and blundering in all its

measures abroad. A war was foolishly undertaken against France, and

more foolishly conducted. Buckingham led an expedition against Rhé, and

failed ignominiously. In the mean time soldiers were billeted on the

people. Crimes of which ordinary justice should have taken cognisance

were punished by martial law. Near eighty gentlemen were imprisoned for

refusing to contribute to the forced loan. The lower people who showed

any signs of insubordination were pressed into the fleet, or compelled

to serve in the army. Money, however, came in slowly; and the King was

compelled to summon another Parliament. In the hope of conciliating

his subjects, he set at liberty the persons who had been imprisoned

for refusing to comply with his unlawful demands. Hampden regained his

freedom, and was immediately re-elected burgess for Wendover.

Early in 1628 the Parliament met. During its first session, the Commons

prevailed on the King, after many delays and much equivocation, to

give, in return for five subsidies, his full and solemn assent to that

celebrated instrument, the second great charter of the liberties of

England, known by the name of the Petition of Right. By agreeing to this

act, the King bound himself to raise no taxes without the consent of

Parliament, to imprison no man except by legal process, to billet no

more soldiers on the people, and to leave the cognisance of offences to

the ordinary tribunals.

In the summer, this memorable Parliament was prorogued. It met again in

January 1629. Buckingham was no more. That weak, violent, and dissolute

adventurer, who, with no talents or acquirements but those of a mere

courtier, had, in a great crisis of foreign and domestic politics,

ventured on the part of prime minister, had fallen, during the recess of

Parliament, by the hand of an assassin. Both before and after his death

the war had been feebly and unsuccessfully conducted. The King had

continued, in direct violation of the Petition of Right, to raise

tonnage and poundage without the consent of Parliament. The troops had

again been billeted on the people; and it was clear to the Commons that

the five subsidies which they had given as the price of the national

liberties had been given in vain.

They met accordingly in no complying humour. They took into their most

serious consideration the measures of the government concerning tonnage

and poundage. They summoned the officers of the custom-house to their

bar. They interrogated the barons of the exchequer. They committed one

of the sheriffs of London. Sir John Eliot, a distinguished member of

the Opposition, and an intimate friend of Hampden, proposed a resolution

condemning the unconstitutional imposition. The Speaker said that

the King had commanded him to put no such question to the vote. This

decision produced the most violent burst of feeling ever seen within

the walls of Parliament. Hayman remonstrated vehemently against the

disgraceful language which had been heard from the chair. Eliot dashed

the paper which contained his resolution on the floor of the House.

Valentine and Hollis held the Speaker down in his seat by main force,

and read the motion amidst the loudest shouts. The door was locked. The

key was laid on the table. Black Rod knocked for admittance in vain.

After passing several strong resolutions, the House adjourned. On the

day appointed for its meeting it was dissolved by the King, and several

of its most eminent members, among whom were Hollis and Sir John Eliot,

were committed to prison.

Though Hampden had as yet taken little part in the debates of the House,

he had been a member of many very important committees, and had read and

written much concerning the law of Parliament. A manuscript volume of

Parliamentary cases, which is still in existence, contains many extracts

from his notes.

He now retired to the duties and pleasures of a rural life. During the

eleven years which followed the dissolution of the Parliament of 1628,

he resided at his seat in one of the most beautiful parts of the county

of Buckingham. The house, which has since his time been greatly altered,

and which is now, we believe, almost entirely neglected, was an old

English mansion, built in the days of the Plantagenets and the Tudors.

It stood on the brow of a hill which overlooks a narrow valley. The

extensive woods which surround it were pierced by long avenues. One of

those avenues the grandfather of the great statesman had cut for the

approach of Elizabeth; and the opening which is still visible for many

miles, retains the name of the Queen’s Gap. In this delightful retreat,

Hampden passed several years, performing with great activity all the

duties of a landed gentleman and a magistrate, and amusing himself with

books and with field sports.

He was not in his retirement unmindful of his persecuted friends. In

particular, he kept up a close correspondence with Sir John Eliot, who

was confined in the Tower. Lord Nugent has published several of the

Letters. We may perhaps be fanciful; but it seems to us that every one

of them is an admirable illustration of some part of the character of

Hampden which Clarendon has drawn.

Some of the correspondence relates to the two sons of Sir John Eliot.

These young men were wild and unsteady; and their father, who was now

separated from them, was naturally anxious about their conduct. He at

length resolved to send one of them to France, and the other to serve

a campaign in the Low Countries. The letter which we subjoin shows that

Hampden, though rigorous towards himself, was not uncharitable towards

others, and that his puritanism was perfectly compatible with the

sentiments and the tastes of an accomplished gentleman. It also

illustrates admirably what has been said of him by Clarendon: “He was of

that rare affability and temper in debate, and of that seeming humility

and submission of judgment, as if he brought no opinion of his own with

him, but a desire of information and instruction. Yet he had so subtle

a way of interrogating, and, under cover of doubts, insinuating his

objections, that he infused his own opinions into those from whom he

pretended to learn and receive them.”

The letter runs thus: “I am so perfectly acquainted with your clear

insight into the dispositions of men, and ability to fit them with

courses suitable, that, had you bestowed sons of mine as you have

done your own, my judgment durst hardly have called it into question,

especially when, in laying the design, you have prevented the

objections to be made against it. For if Mr. Richard Eliot will, in the

intermissions of action, add study to practice, and adorn that lively

spirit with flowers of contemplation, he will raise our expectations

of another Sir Edward Vere, that had this character--all summer in the

field, all winter in his study--in whose fall fame makes this kingdom a

greater loser; and, having taken this resolution from counsel with the

highest wisdom, as I doubt not you have, I hope and pray that the same

power will crown it with a blessing answerable to our wish. The way you

take with my other friend shows you to be none of the Bishop of Exeter’s

converts; [Hall, Bishop of Exeter, had written strongly, both in verse

and in prose, against the fashion of sending young men of quality to

travel.] of whose mind neither am I superstitiously. But had my opinion

been asked, I should, as vulgar conceits use me to do, have showed my

power rather to raise objections than to answer them. A temper between

France and Oxford might have taken away his scruples, with more

advantage to his years.... For although he be one of those that, if

his age were looked for in no other book but that of the mind, would

be found no ward if you should die tomorrow, yet it is a great hazard,

methinks, to see so sweet a disposition guarded with no more, amongst

a people whereof many make it their religion to be superstitious in

impiety, and their behaviour to be affected in all manners. But God,

who only knoweth the periods of life and opportunities to come, hath

designed him, I hope, for his own service betime, and stirred up your

providence to husband him so early for great affairs. Then shall he be

sure to find Him in France that Abraham did in Shechem and Joseph in

Egypt, under whose wing alone is perfect safety.”

Sir John Eliot employed himself, during his imprisonment, in writing a

treatise on government, which he transmitted to his friend. Hampden’s

criticisms are strikingly characteristic. They are written with all that

“flowing courtesy” which is ascribed to him by Clarendon. The objections

are insinuated with so much delicacy that they could scarcely gall

the most irritable author. We see too how highly Hampden valued in the

writings of others that conciseness which was one of the most striking

peculiarities of his own eloquence. Sir John Eliot’s style was, it

seems, too diffuse, and it is impossible not to admire the skill with

which this is suggested. “The piece,” says Hampden, “is as complete an

image of the pattern as can be drawn by lines, a lively character of

a large mind, the subject, method, and expression, excellent and

homogeneal, and, to say truth, sweetheart, somewhat exceeding my

commendations. My words cannot render them to the life. Yet, to show

my ingenuity rather than wit, would not a less model have given a full

representation of that subject, not by diminution but by contraction

of parts? I desire to learn. I dare not say. The variations upon each

particular seem many; all, I confess, excellent. The fountain was full,

the channel narrow; that may be the cause; or that the author resembled

Virgil, who made more verses by many than he intended to write. To

extract a just number, had I seen all his, I could easily have bid him

make fewer; but if he had bade me tell him which he should have spared,

I had been posed.”

This is evidently the writing not only of a man of good sense and

natural good taste, but of a man of literary habits. Of the studies of

Hampden little is known. But as it was at one time in contemplation to

give him the charge of the education of the Prince of Wales, it cannot

be doubted that his acquirements were considerable. Davila, it is said,

was one of his favourite writers. The moderation of Davila’s opinions

and the perspicuity and manliness of his style could not but recommend

him to so judicious a reader. It is not improbable that the parallel

between France and England, the Huguenots and the Puritans, had struck

the mind of Hampden, and that he already found within himself powers not

unequal to the lofty part of Coligni.

While he was engaged in these pursuits, a heavy domestic calamity fell

on him. His wife, who had borne him nine children, died in the summer

of 1634. She lies in the parish church of Hampden, close to the

manor-house. The tender and energetic language of her epitaph still

attests the bitterness of her husband’s sorrow, and the consolation

which he found in a hope full of immortality.

In the meantime, the aspect of public affairs grew darker and darker.

The health of Eliot had sunk under an unlawful imprisonment of several

years. The brave sufferer refused to purchase liberty, though liberty

would to him have been life, by recognising the authority which had

confined him. In consequence of the representations of his physicians,

the severity of restraint was somewhat relaxed. But it was in vain. He

languished and expired a martyr to that good cause for which his friend

Hampden was destined to meet a more brilliant, but not a more honourable

death.

All the promises of the king were violated without scruple or shame.

The Petition of Right to which he had, in consideration of moneys duly

numbered, given a solemn assent, was set at nought. Taxes were raised by

the royal authority. Patents of monopoly were granted. The old usages of

feudal times were made pretexts for harassing the people with exactions

unknown during many years. The Puritans were persecuted with cruelty

worthy of the Holy Office. They were forced to fly from the country.

They were imprisoned. They were whipped. Their ears were cut off. Their

noses were slit. Their cheeks were branded with red-hot iron. But

the cruelty of the oppressor could not tire out the fortitude of the

victims. The mutilated defenders of liberty again defied the vengeance

of the Star-Chamber, came back with undiminished resolution to the place

of their glorious infamy, and manfully presented the stumps of their

ears to be grubbed out by the hangman’s knife. The hardy sect grew up

and flourished in spite of everything that seemed likely to stunt it,

struck its roots deep into a barren soil, and spread its branches wide

to an inclement sky. The multitude thronged round Prynne in the pillory

with more respect than they paid to Mainwaring in the pulpit, and

treasured up the rags which the blood of Burton had soaked, with a

veneration such as mitres and surplices had ceased to inspire.

For the misgovernment of this disastrous period Charles himself is

principally responsible. After the death of Buckingham, he seems to

have been his own prime minister. He had, however, two counsellors who

seconded him, or went beyond him, in intolerance and lawless violence,

the one a superstitious driveller, as honest as a vile temper would

suffer him to be, the other a man of great valour and capacity, but

licentious, faithless, corrupt, and cruel.

Never were faces more strikingly characteristic of the individuals to

whom they belonged, than those of Laud and Strafford, as they still

remain portrayed by the most skilful hand of that age. The mean

forehead, the pinched features, the peering eyes, of the prelate, suit

admirably with his disposition. They mark him out as a lower kind of

Saint Dominic, differing from the fierce and gloomy enthusiast who

founded the Inquisition, as we might imagine the familiar imp of a

spiteful witch to differ from an archangel of darkness. When we read

His Grace’s judgments, when we read the report which he drew up, setting

forth that he had sent some separatists to prison, and imploring the

royal aid against others, we feel a movement of indignation. We turn to

his Diary, and we are at once as cool as contempt can make us. There we

learn how his picture fell down, and how fearful he was lest the fall

should be an omen; how he dreamed that the Duke of Buckingham came to

bed to him, that King James walked past him, that he saw Thomas Flaxney

in green garments, and the Bishop of Worcester with his shoulders

wrapped in linen. In the early part of 1627, the sleep of this great

ornament of the church seems to have been much disturbed. On the fifth

of January, he saw a merry old man with a wrinkled countenance, named

Grove, lying on the ground. On the fourteenth of the same memorable

month, he saw the Bishop of Lincoln jump on a horse and ride away. A

day or two after this he dreamed that he gave the King drink in a silver

cup, and that the King refused it, and called for glass. Then he dreamed

that he had turned Papist; of all his dreams the only one, we suspect,

which came through the gate of horn. But of these visions our favourite

is that which, as he has recorded, he enjoyed on the night of Friday,

the ninth of February 1627. “I dreamed,” says he, “that I had the

scurvy: and that forthwith all my teeth became loose. There was one in

especial in my lower jaw, which I could scarcely keep in with my finger

till I had called for help.” Here was a man to have the superintendence

of the opinions of a great nation!

But Wentworth,--who ever names him without thinking of those harsh dark

features, ennobled by their expression into more than the majesty of an

antique Jupiter; of that brow, that eye, that cheek, that lip, wherein,

as in a chronicle, are written the events of many stormy and disastrous

years, high enterprise accomplished, frightful dangers braved, power

unsparingly exercised, suffering unshrinkingly borne; of that fixed

look, so full of severity, of mournful anxiety, of deep thought, of

dauntless resolution, which seems at once to forebode and to defy a

terrible fate, as it lowers on us from the living canvas of Vandyke?

Even at this day the haughty earl overawes posterity as he overawed his

contemporaries, and excites the same interest when arraigned before the

tribunal of history which he excited at the bar of the House of Lords.

In spite of ourselves, we sometimes feel towards his memory a certain

relenting similar to that relenting which his defence, as Sir John

Denham tells us, produced in Westminster Hall.

This great, brave, bad man entered the House of Commons at the same time

with Hampden, and took the same side with Hampden. Both were among the

richest and most powerful commoners in the kingdom. Both were equally

distinguished by force of character and by personal courage. Hampden had

more judgment and sagacity than Wentworth. But no orator of that time

equalled Wentworth in force and brilliancy of expression. In 1626 both

these eminent men were committed to prison by the King, Wentworth, who

was among the leaders of the Opposition, on account of his parliamentary

conduct, Hampden, who had not as yet taken a prominent part in debate,

for refusing to pay taxes illegally imposed.

Here their path separated. After the death of Buckingham, the King

attempted to seduce some of the chiefs of the Opposition from their

party; and Wentworth was among those who yielded to the seduction. He

abandoned his associates, and hated them ever after with the deadly

hatred of a renegade. High titles and great employments were heaped upon

him. He became Earl of Strafford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, President

of the Council of the North; and he employed all his power for the

purpose of crushing those liberties of which he had been the most

distinguished champion. His counsels respecting public affairs were

fierce and arbitrary. His correspondence with Laud abundantly proves

that government without parliaments, government by the sword, was his

favourite scheme. He was angry even that the course of justice between

man and man should be unrestrained by the royal prerogative. He grudged

to the courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas even that measure

of liberty which the most absolute of the Bourbons allowed to the

Parliaments of France. In Ireland, where he stood in place of the King,

his practice was in strict accordance with his theory. He set up the

authority of the executive government over that of the courts of law.

He permitted no person to leave the island without his licence. He

established vast monopolies for his own private benefit. He imposed

taxes arbitrarily. He levied them by military force. Some of his acts

are described even by the partial Clarendon as powerful acts, acts which

marked a nature excessively imperious, acts which caused dislike and

terror in sober and dispassionate persons, high acts of oppression.

Upon a most frivolous charge, he obtained a capital sentence from a

court-martial against a man of high rank who had given him offence. He

debauched the daughter-in-law of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and

then commanded that nobleman to settle his estate according to the

wishes of the lady. The Chancellor refused. The Lord Lieutenant turned

him out of office and threw him into prison. When the violent acts of

the Long Parliament are blamed, let it not be forgotten from what a

tyranny they rescued the nation.

Among the humbler tools of Charles were Chief-Justice Finch and Noy

the Attorney-General. Noy had, like Wentworth, supported the cause of

liberty in Parliament, and had, like Wentworth, abandoned that cause for

the sake of office. He devised, in conjunction with Finch, a scheme

of exaction which made the alienation of the people from the throne

complete. A writ was issued by the King, commanding the city of London

to equip and man ships of war for his service. Similar writs were sent

to the towns along the coast. These measures, though they were direct

violations of the Petition of Right, had at least some show of precedent

in their favour. But, after a time, the government took a step for

which no precedent could be pleaded, and sent writs of ship-money to the

inland counties. This was a stretch of power on which Elizabeth herself

had not ventured, even at a time when all laws might with propriety

have been made to bend to that highest law, the safety of the state. The

inland counties had not been required to furnish ships, or money in

the room of ships, even when the Armada was approaching our shores. It

seemed intolerable that a prince who, by assenting to the Petition of

Right, had relinquished the power of levying ship-money even in the

out-ports, should be the first to levy it on parts of the kingdom where

it had been unknown under the most absolute of his predecessors.

Clarendon distinctly admits that this tax was intended, not only for the

support of the navy, but “for a spring and magazine that should have no

bottom, and for an everlasting supply of all occasions.” The nation well

understood this; and from one end of England to the other the public

mind was strongly excited.

Buckinghamshire was assessed at a ship of four hundred and fifty tons,

or a sum of four thousand five hundred pounds. The share of the tax

which fell to Hampden was very small; so small, indeed, that the sheriff

was blamed for setting so wealthy a man at so low a rate. But, though

the sum demanded was a trifle, the principle involved was fearfully

important. Hampden, after consulting the most eminent constitutional

lawyers of the time, refused to pay the few shillings at which he was

assessed, and determined to incur all the certain expense, and the

probable danger, of bringing to a solemn hearing, this great controversy

between the people and the Crown. “Till this time,” says Clarendon, “he

was rather of reputation in his own country than of public discourse or

fame in the kingdom; but then he grew the argument of all tongues, every

man inquiring who and what he was that durst, at his own charge, support

the liberty and prosperity of the kingdom.”

Towards the close of the year 1636 this great cause came on in the

Exchequer Chamber before all the judges of England. The leading counsel

against the writ was the celebrated Oliver St. John, a man whose temper

was melancholy, whose manners were reserved, and who was as yet little

known in Westminster Hall, but whose great talents had not escaped the

penetrating eye of Hampden. The Attorney-General and Solicitor-General

appeared for the Crown.

The arguments of the counsel occupied many days; and the Exchequer

Chamber took a considerable time for deliberation. The opinion of the

bench was divided. So clearly was the law in favour of Hampden that,

though the judges held their situations only during the royal pleasure,

the majority against him was the least possible. Five of the twelve

pronounced in his favour. The remaining seven gave their voices for the

writ.

The only effect of this decision was to make the public indignation

stronger and deeper. “The judgment,” says Clarendon, “proved of more

advantage and credit to the gentleman condemned than to the King’s

service.” The courage which Hampden had shown on this occasion, as

the same historian tells us, “raised his reputation to a great height

generally throughout the kingdom.” Even courtiers and crown-lawyers

spoke respectfully of him. “His carriage,” says Clarendon, “throughout

that agitation, was with that rare temper and modesty, that they who

watched him narrowly to find some advantage against his person, to

make him less resolute in his cause, were compelled to give him a just

testimony.” But his demeanour, though it impressed Lord Falkland

with the deepest respect, though it drew forth the praises of

Solicitor-General Herbert, only kindled into a fiercer flame the

ever-burning hatred of Strafford. That minister in his letters to Laud

murmured against the lenity with which Hampden was treated. “In good

faith,” he wrote, “were such men rightly served, they should be whipped

into their right wits.” Again he says, “I still wish Mr. Hampden, and

others to his likeness, were well whipped into their right senses. And

if the rod be so used that it smart not, I am the more sorry.”

The person of Hampden was now scarcely safe. His prudence and moderation

had hitherto disappointed those who would gladly have had a pretence for

sending him to the prison of Eliot. But he knew that the eye of a tyrant

was on him. In the year 1637 misgovernment had reached its height. Eight

years had passed without a Parliament. The decision of the Exchequer

Chamber had placed at the disposal of the Crown the whole property

of the English people. About the time at which that decision was

pronounced, Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton were mutilated by the sentence

of the Star-Chamber, and sent to rot in remote dungeons. The estate and

the person of every man who had opposed the court were at its mercy.

Hampden determined to leave England. Beyond the Atlantic Ocean a few of

the persecuted Puritans had formed, in the wilderness of Connecticut, a

settlement which has since become a prosperous commonwealth, and which,

in spite of the lapse of time and of the change of government, still

retains something of the character given to it by its first founders.

Lord Saye and Lord Brooke were the original projectors of this scheme of

emigration. Hampden had been early consulted respecting it. He was now,

it appears, desirous to withdraw himself beyond the reach of oppressors

who, as he probably suspected, and as we know, were bent on punishing

his manful resistance to their tyranny. He was accompanied by his

kinsman Oliver Cromwell, over whom he possessed great influence, and in

whom he alone had discovered, under an exterior appearance of coarseness

and extravagance, those great and commanding talents which were

afterwards the admiration and the dread of Europe.

The cousins took their passage in a vessel which lay in the Thames, and

which was bound for North America. They were actually on board, when

an order of council appeared, by which the ship was prohibited from

sailing. Seven other ships, filled with emigrants, were stopped at the

same time.

Hampden and Cromwell remained; and with them remained the Evil Genius

of the House of Stuart. The tide of public affairs was even now on the

turn. The King had resolved to change the ecclesiastical constitution

of Scotland, and to introduce into the public worship of that kingdom

ceremonies which the great body of the Scots regarded as Popish. This

absurd attempt produced, first discontents, then riots, and at length

open rebellion. A provisional government was established at Edinburgh,

and its authority was obeyed throughout the kingdom. This government

raised an army, appointed a general, and summoned an assembly of the

Kirk. The famous instrument called the Covenant was put forth at this

time, and was eagerly subscribed by the people.

The beginnings of this formidable insurrection were strangely neglected

by the King and his advisers. But towards the close of the year 1638 the

danger became pressing. An army was raised; and early in the following

spring Charles marched northward at the head of a force sufficient, as

it seemed, to reduce the Covenanters to submission.

But Charles acted at this conjuncture as he acted at every important

conjuncture throughout his life. After oppressing, threatening, and

blustering, he hesitated and failed. He was bold in the wrong place, and

timid in the wrong place. He would have shown his wisdom by being afraid

before the liturgy was read in St. Giles’s church. He put off his fear

till he had reached the Scottish border with his troops. Then, after a

feeble campaign, he concluded a treaty with the insurgents, and withdrew

his army. But the terms of the pacification were not observed. Each

party charged the other with foul play. The Scots refused to disarm.

The King found great difficulty in re-assembling his forces. His late

expedition had drained his treasury. The revenues of the next year had

been anticipated. At another time, he might have attempted to make up

the deficiency by illegal expedients; but such a course would clearly

have been dangerous when part of the island was in rebellion. It was

necessary to call a Parliament. After eleven years of suffering, the

voice of the nation was to be heard once more.

In April 1640, the Parliament met; and the King had another chance

of conciliating his people. The new House of Commons was, beyond all

comparison, the least refractory House of Commons that had been known

for many years. Indeed, we have never been able to understand how, after

so long a period of misgovernment, the representatives of the nation

should have shown so moderate and so loyal a disposition. Clarendon

speaks with admiration of their dutiful temper. “The House, generally,”

says he, “was exceedingly disposed to please the King, and to do him

service.” “It could never be hoped,” he observes elsewhere, “that more

sober or dispassionate men would ever meet together in that place, or

fewer who brought ill purposes with them.”

In this Parliament Hampden took his seat as member for Buckinghamshire,

and thenceforward, till the day of his death, gave himself up, with

scarcely any intermission, to public affairs. He took lodgings in Gray’s

Inn Lane, near the house occupied by Pym, with whom he lived in habits

of the closest intimacy. He was now decidedly the most popular man in

England. The Opposition looked to him as their leader, and the servants

of the King treated him with marked respect.

Charles requested the Parliament to vote an immediate supply, and

pledged his word that, if they would gratify him in this request, he

would afterwards give them time to represent their grievances to him.

The grievances under which the nation suffered were so serious, and

the royal word had been so shamefully violated, that the Commons could

hardly be expected to comply with this request. During the first week of

the session, the minutes of the proceedings against Hampden were laid on

the table by Oliver St. John, and a committee reported that the case was

matter of grievance. The King sent a message to the Commons, offering,

if they would vote him twelve subsidies, to give up the prerogative

of ship-money. Many years before, he had received five subsidies in

consideration of his assent to the Petition of Right. By assenting to

that petition, he had given up the right of levying ship-money, if he

ever possessed it. How he had observed the promises made to his third

Parliament, all England knew; and it was not strange that the Commons

should be somewhat unwilling to buy from him, over and over again, their

own ancient and undoubted inheritance.

His message, however, was not unfavourably received. The Commons were

ready to give a large supply; but they were not disposed to give it

in exchange for a prerogative of which they altogether denied the

existence. If they acceded to the proposal of the King, they recognised

the legality of the writs of ship-money.

Hampden, who was a greater master of parliamentary tactics than any

man of his time, saw that this was the prevailing feeling, and availed

himself of it with great dexterity. He moved that the question should

be put, “Whether the House would consent to the proposition made by the

King, as contained in the message.” Hyde interfered, and proposed that

the question should be divided; that the sense of the House should be

taken merely on the point whether there should be a supply or no

supply; and that the manner and the amount should be left for subsequent

consideration.

The majority of the House was for granting a supply, but against

granting it in the manner proposed by the King. If the House had divided

on Hampden’s question, the court would have sustained a defeat; if on

Hyde’s, the court would have gained an apparent victory. Some members

called for Hyde’s motion, others, for Hampden’s. In the midst of the

uproar, the secretary of state, Sir Harry Vane, rose and stated that the

supply would not be accepted unless it were voted according to the tenor

of the message. Vane was supported by Herbert, the Solicitor-General.

Hyde’s motion was therefore no further pressed, and the debate on the

general question was adjourned till the next day.

On the next day the King came down to the House of Lords, and dissolved

the Parliament with an angry speech. His conduct on this occasion has

never been defended by any of his apologists. Clarendon condemns it

severely. “No man,” says he, “could imagine what offence the Commons

had given.” The offence which they had given is plain. They had, indeed,

behaved most temperately and most respectfully. But they had shown a

disposition to redress wrongs and to vindicate the laws; and this was

enough to make them hateful to a king whom no law could bind, and whose

whole government was one system of wrong.

The nation received the intelligence of the dissolution with sorrow

and indignation, The only persons to whom this event gave pleasure were

those few discerning men who thought that the maladies of the state were

beyond the reach of gentle remedies. Oliver St. John’s joy was too great

for concealment. It lighted up his dark and melancholy features, and

made him, for the first time, indiscreetly communicative. He told Hyde

that things must be worse before they could be better, and that the

dissolved Parliament would never have done all that was necessary. St.

John, we think, was in the right. No good could then have been done by

any Parliament which did not fully understand that no confidence could

safely be placed in the King, and that, while he enjoyed more than the

shadow of power, the nation would never enjoy more than the shadow of

liberty.

As soon as Charles had dismissed the Parliament, he threw several

members of the House of Commons into prison. Ship-money was exacted

more rigorously than ever; and the Mayor and Sheriffs of London were

prosecuted before the Star-Chamber for slackness in levying it.

Wentworth, it is said, observed, with characteristic insolence and

cruelty, that things would never go right till the Aldermen were hanged.

Large sums were raised by force on those counties in which the troops

were quartered. All the wretched shifts of a beggared exchequer were

tried. Forced loans were raised. Great quantities of goods were bought

on long credit and sold for ready money. A scheme for debasing the

currency was under consideration. At length, in August, the King again

marched northward.

The Scots advanced into England to meet him. It is by no means

improbable that this bold step was taken by the advice of Hampden, and

of those with whom he acted; and this has been made matter of grave

accusation against the English Opposition. It is said that to call in

the aid of foreigners in a domestic quarrel is the worst of treasons,

and that the Puritan leaders, by taking this course, showed that they

were regardless of the honour and independence of the nation, and

anxious only for the success of their own faction. We are utterly unable

to see any distinction between the case of the Scotch invasion in

1640, and the case of the Dutch invasion in 1688; or rather, we see

distinctions which are to the advantage of Hampden and his friends. We

believe Charles to have been a worse and more dangerous king than his

son. The Dutch were strangers to us, the Scots a kindred people speaking

the same language, subjects of the same prince, not aliens in the eye of

the law. If, indeed, it had been possible that a Scotch army or a Dutch

army could have enslaved England, those who persuaded Leslie to cross

the Tweed, and those who signed the invitation to the Prince of Orange,

would have been traitors to their country. But such a result was out of

the question. All that either a Scotch or a Dutch invasion could do was

to give the public feeling of England an opportunity to show

itself. Both expeditions would have ended in complete and ludicrous

discomfiture, had Charles and James been supported by their soldiers

and their people. In neither case, therefore, was the independence of

England endangered; in both cases her liberties were preserved.

The second campaign of Charles against the Scots was short and

ignominious. His soldiers, as soon as they saw the enemy, ran away as

English soldiers have never run either before or since. It can scarcely

be doubted that their flight was the effect, not of cowardice, but of

disaffection. The four northern counties of England were occupied by the

Scotch army and the King retired to York.

The game of tyranny was now up. Charles had risked and lost his last

stake. It is not easy to retrace the mortifications and humiliations

which the tyrant now had to endure, without a feeling of vindictive

pleasure. His army was mutinous; his treasury was empty; his people

clamoured for a Parliament; addresses and petitions against the

government were presented. Strafford was for shooting the petitioners by

martial law; but the King could not trust the soldiers. A great council

of Peers was called at York; but the King could not trust even the

Peers. He struggled, evaded, hesitated, tried every shift, rather than

again face the representatives of his injured people. At length no shift

was left. He made a truce with the Scots, and summoned a Parliament.

The leaders of the popular party had, after the late dissolution,

remained in London for the purpose of organizing a scheme of opposition

to the Court. They now exerted themselves to the utmost. Hampden, in

particular, rode from county to county, exhorting the electors to give

their votes to men worthy of their confidence. The great majority of the

returns was on the side of the Opposition. Hampden was himself chosen

member both for Wendover and Buckinghamshire. He made his election to

serve for the county.

On the third of November 1640, a day to be long remembered, met that

great Parliament, destined to every extreme of fortune, to empire and

to servitude, to glory and to contempt; at one time the sovereign of its

sovereign, at another time the servant of its servants. From the first

day of meeting the attendance was great; and the aspect of the members

was that of men not disposed to do the work negligently. The dissolution

of the late Parliament had convinced most of them that half measures

would no longer suffice. Clarendon tells us, that “the same men who, six

months before, were observed to be of very moderate tempers, and to wish

that gentle remedies might be applied, talked now in another dialect

both of kings and persons; and said that they must now be of another

temper than they were the last Parliament.” The debt of vengeance was

swollen by all the usury which had been accumulating during many years;

and payment was made to the full.

This memorable crisis called forth parliamentary abilities such as

England had never before seen. Among the most distinguished members

of the House of Commons were Falkland, Hyde, Digby, young Harry Vane,

Oliver St. John, Denzil Hollis, Nathaniel Fiennes. But two men exercised

a paramount influence over the legislature and the country, Pym and

Hampden; and by the universal consent of friends and enemies, the first

place belonged to Hampden.

On occasions which required set speeches Pym generally took the lead.

Hampden very seldom rose till late in a debate. His speaking was of that

kind which has, in every age, been held in the highest estimation

by English Parliaments, ready, weighty, perspicuous, condensed. His

perception of the feelings of the House was exquisite, his temper

unalterably placid, his manner eminently courteous and gentlemanlike.

“Even with those,” says Clarendon, “who were able to preserve themselves

from his infusions, and who discerned those opinions to be fixed in him

with which they could not comply, he always left the character of an

ingenious and conscientious person.” His talents for business were as

remarkable as his talents for debate. “He was,” says Clarendon, “of

an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most

laborious, and of parts not to be imposed upon by the most subtle

and sharp.” Yet it was rather to his moral than to his intellectual

qualities that he was indebted for the vast influence which he

possessed. “When this parliament began”--we again quote Clarendon--“the

eyes of all men were fixed upon him, as their patriae pater, and the

pilot that must steer the vessel through the tempests and rocks which

threatened it. And I am persuaded his power and interest at that time

were greater to do good or hurt than any man’s in the kingdom, or than

any man of his rank hath had in any time; for his reputation of honesty

was universal, and his affections seemed so publicly guided, that no

corrupt or private ends could bias them.... He was indeed a very wise

man, and of great parts, and possessed with the most absolute spirit of

popularity, and the most absolute faculties to govern the people, of any

man I ever knew.”

It is sufficient to recapitulate shortly the acts of the Long Parliament

during its first session. Strafford and Laud were impeached and

imprisoned. Strafford was afterwards attainted by Bill, and executed.

Lord Keeper Finch fled to Holland, Secretary Windebank to France. All

those whom the King had, during the last twelve years, employed for the

oppression of his people, from the servile judges who had pronounced

in favour of the crown against Hampden, down to the sheriffs who had

distrained for ship-money, and the custom-house officers who had levied

tonnage and poundage, were summoned to answer for their conduct. The

Star-Chamber, the High Commission Court, the Council of York, were

abolished. Those unfortunate victims of Laud who, after undergoing

ignominious exposure and cruel manglings, had been sent to languish in

distant prisons, were set at liberty, and conducted through London in

triumphant procession. The King was compelled to give the judges patents

for life or during good behaviour. He was deprived of those oppressive

powers which were the last relics of the old feudal tenures. The Forest

Courts and the Stannary Courts were reformed. It was provided that the

Parliament then sitting should not be prorogued or dissolved without its

own consent, and that a Parliament should be held at least once every

three years.

Many of these measures Lord Clarendon allows to have been most salutary;

and few persons will, in our times, deny that, in the laws passed

during this session, the good greatly preponderated over the evil.

The abolition of those three hateful courts, the Northern Council, the

Star-Chamber, and the High Commission, would alone entitle the Long

Parliament to the lasting gratitude of Englishmen.

The proceeding against Strafford undoubtedly seems hard to people living

in our days. It would probably have seemed merciful and moderate to

people living in the sixteenth century. It is curious to compare the

trial of Charles’s minister with the trial, if it can be so called, of

Lord Seymour of Sudeley, in the blessed reign of Edward the Sixth. None

of the great reformers of our Church doubted the propriety of passing

an act of Parliament for cutting off Lord Seymour’s head without a legal

conviction. The pious Cranmer voted for that act; the pious Latimer

preached for it; the pious Edward returned thanks for it; and all the

pious Lords of the council together exhorted their victim to what they

were pleased facetiously to call “the quiet and patient suffering of

justice.”

But it is not necessary to defend the proceedings against Strafford by

any such comparison. They are justified, in our opinion, by that which

alone justifies capital punishment or any punishment, by that which

alone justifies war, by the public danger. That there is a certain

amount of public danger which will justify a legislature in sentencing

a man to death by retrospective law, few people, we suppose, will

deny. Few people, for example, will deny that the French Convention was

perfectly justified in placing Robespierre, St. Just, and Couthon under

the ban of the law, without a trial. This proceeding differed from the

proceeding against Strafford only in being much more rapid and violent.

Strafford was fully heard. Robespierre was not suffered to defend

himself. Was there, then, in the case of Strafford, a danger sufficient

to justify an act of attainder? We believe that there was. We believe

that the contest in which the Parliament was engaged against the King

was a contest for the security of our property, for the liberty of our

persons, for everything which makes us to differ from the subjects

of Don Miguel. We believe that the cause of the Commons was such as

justified them in resisting the King, in raising an army, in sending

thousands of brave men to kill and to be killed. An act of attainder is

surely not more a departure from the ordinary course of law than a civil

war. An act of attainder produces much less suffering than a civil

war. We are, therefore, unable to discover on what principle it can be

maintained that a cause which justifies a civil war will not justify an

act of attainder.

Many specious arguments have been urged against the retrospective law by

which Strafford was condemned to death. But all these arguments proceed

on the supposition that the crisis was an ordinary crisis. The attainder

was, in truth, a revolutionary measure. It was part of a system of

resistance which oppression had rendered necessary. It is as unjust to

judge of the conduct pursued by the Long Parliament towards Strafford on

ordinary principles, as it would have been to indict Fairfax for murder

because he cut down a cornet at Naseby. From the day on which the Houses

met, there was a war waged by them against the King, a war for all that

they held dear, a war carried on at first by means of parliamentary

forms, at last by physical force; and, as in the second stage of that

war, so in the first, they were entitled to do many things which, in

quiet times, would have been culpable.

We must not omit to mention that those who were afterwards the most

distinguished ornaments of the King’s party supported the bill of

attainder. It is almost certain that Hyde voted for it. It is quite

certain that Falkland both voted and spoke for it. The opinion of

Hampden, as far as it can be collected from a very obscure note of one

of his speeches, seems to have been that the proceeding by Bill was

unnecessary, and that it would be a better course to obtain judgment on

the impeachment.

During this year the Court opened a negotiation with the leaders of the

Opposition. The Earl of Bedford was invited to form an administration on

popular principles. St. John was made solicitor-general. Hollis was to

have been secretary of state, and Pym chancellor of the exchequer. The

post of tutor to the Prince of Wales was designed for Hampden. The death

of the Earl of Bedford prevented this arrangement from being carried

into effect; and it may be doubted whether, even if that nobleman’s

life had been prolonged, Charles would ever have consented to surround

himself with counsellors whom he could not but hate and fear.

Lord Clarendon admits that the conduct of Hampden during this year was

mild and temperate, that he seemed disposed rather to soothe than to

excite the public mind, and that, when violent and unreasonable motions

were made by his followers, he generally left the House before the

division, lest he should seem to give countenance to their extravagance.

His temper was moderate. He sincerely loved peace. He felt also great

fear lest too precipitate a movement should produce a reaction. The

events which took place early in the next session clearly showed that

this fear was not unfounded.

During the autumn the Parliament adjourned for a few weeks. Before the

recess, Hampden was despatched to Scotland by the House of Commons,

nominally as a commissioner, to obtain security for a debt which the

Scots had contracted during the last invasion; but in truth that he

might keep watch over the King, who had now repaired to Edinburgh, for

the purpose of finally adjusting the points of difference which remained

between him and his northern subjects. It was the business of Hampden to

dissuade the Covenanters from making their peace with the Court, at the

expense of the popular party in England.

While the King was in Scotland, the Irish rebellion broke out. The

suddenness and violence of this terrible explosion excited a strange

suspicion in the public mind. The Queen was a professed Papist. The King

and the Archbishop of Canterbury had not indeed been reconciled to the

See of Rome; but they had, while acting towards the Puritan party with

the utmost rigour, and speaking of that party with the utmost contempt,

shown great tenderness and respect towards the Catholic religion and

its professors. In spite of the wishes of successive Parliaments, the

Protestant separatists had been cruelly persecuted. And at the same

time, in spite of the wishes of those very Parliaments, laws which were

in force against the Papists, and which, unjustifiable as they were,

suited the temper of that age, had not been carried into execution. The

Protestant nonconformists had not yet learned toleration in the school

of suffering. They reprobated the partial lenity which the government

showed towards idolaters; and, with some show of reason, ascribed to bad

motives conduct which, in such a king as Charles, and such a prelate

as Laud, could not possibly be ascribed to humanity or to liberality

of sentiment. The violent Arminianism of the Archbishop, his childish

attachment to ceremonies, his superstitious veneration for altars,

vestments, and painted windows, his bigoted zeal for the constitution

and the privileges of his order, his known opinions respecting the

celibacy of the clergy, had excited great disgust throughout that large

party which was every day becoming more and more hostile to Rome, and

more and more inclined to the doctrines and the discipline of Geneva.

It was believed by many that the Irish rebellion had been secretly

encouraged by the Court; and, when the Parliament met again in November,

after a short recess, the Puritans were more intractable than ever.

But that which Hampden had feared had come to pass. A reaction had taken

place. A large body of moderate and well-meaning men, who had heartily

concurred in the strong measures adopted before the recess, were

inclined to pause. Their opinion was that, during many years the country

had been grievously misgoverned, and that a great reform had been

necessary; but that a great reform had been made, that the grievances of

the nation had been fully redressed, that sufficient vengeance had been

exacted for the past, that sufficient security had been provided for the

future, and that it would, therefore, be both ungrateful and unwise to

make any further attacks on the royal prerogative. In support of this

opinion many plausible arguments have been used. But to all these

arguments there is one short answer. The King could not be trusted.

At the head of those who may be called the Constitutional Royalists

were Falkland, Hyde, and Culpeper. All these eminent men had, during the

former year, been in very decided opposition to the Court. In some of

those very proceedings with which their admirers reproach Hampden, they

had taken a more decided part than Hampden. They had all been concerned

in the impeachment of Strafford. They had all, there is reason to

believe, voted for the Bill of Attainder. Certainly none of them voted

against it. They had all agreed to the act which made the consent of

the Parliament necessary to a dissolution or prorogation. Hyde had

been among the most active of those who attacked the Council of York.

Falkland had voted for the exclusion of the bishops from the Upper

House. They were now inclined to halt in the path of reform, perhaps to

retrace a few of their steps.

A direct collision soon took place between the two parties into which

the House of Commons, lately at almost perfect unity with itself, was

now divided. The opponents of the government moved that celebrated

address to the King which is known by the name of the Grand

Remonstrance. In this address all the oppressive acts of the preceding

fifteen years were set forth with great energy of language; and, in

conclusion, the King was entreated to employ no ministers in whom the

Parliament could not confide.

The debate on the Remonstrance was long and stormy. It commenced at nine

in the morning of the twenty-first of November, and lasted till after

midnight. The division showed that a great change had taken place in the

temper of the House. Though many members had retired from exhaustion,

three hundred voted and the Remonstrance was carried by a majority

of only nine. A violent debate followed, on the question whether

the minority should be allowed to protest against this decision. The

excitement was so great that several members were on the point of

proceeding to personal violence. “We had sheathed our swords in each

other’s bowels,” says an eye-witness, “had not the sagacity and great

calmness of Mr. Hampden, by a short speech, prevented it.” The House did

not rise till two in the morning.

The situation of the Puritan leaders was now difficult and full of

peril. The small majority which they still had might soon become a

minority. Out of doors, their supporters in the higher and middle

classes were beginning to fall off. There was a growing opinion that the

King had been hardly used. The English are always inclined to side with

a weak party which is in the wrong, rather than with a strong party

which is in the right. This may be seen in all contests, from contests

of boxers to contests of faction. Thus it was that a violent reaction

took place in favour of Charles the Second against the Whigs in 1681.

Thus it was that an equally violent reaction took place in favour of

George the Third against the coalition in 1784. A similar action was

beginning to take place during the second year of the Long Parliament.

Some members of the Opposition “had resumed” says Clarendon, “their old

resolution of leaving the kingdom.” Oliver Cromwell openly declared

that he and many others would have emigrated if they had been left in a

minority on the question of the Remonstrance.

Charles had now a last chance of regaining the affection of his people.

If he could have resolved to give his confidence to the leaders of the

moderate party in the House of Commons, and to regulate his proceedings

by their advice, he might have been, not, indeed, as he had been, a

despot, but the powerful and respected king of a free people. The nation

might have enjoyed liberty and repose under a government with Falkland

at its head, checked by a constitutional Opposition under the conduct

of Hampden. It was not necessary that, in order to accomplish this happy

end, the King should sacrifice any part of his lawful prerogative, or

submit to any conditions inconsistent with his dignity. It was necessary

only that he should abstain from treachery, from violence, from gross

breaches of the law. This was all that the nation was then disposed to

require of him. And even this was too much.

For a short time he seemed inclined to take a wise and temperate course.

He resolved to make Falkland secretary of state, and Culpeper chancellor

of the exchequer. He declared his intention of conferring in a short

time some important office on Hyde. He assured these three persons that

he would do nothing relating to the House of Commons without their joint

advice, and that he would communicate all his designs to them in the

most unreserved manner. This resolution, had he adhered to it, would

have averted many years of blood and mourning. But “in very few days,”

says Clarendon, “he did fatally swerve from it.”

On the third of January 1642, without giving the slightest hint of his

intention to those advisers whom he had solemnly promised to consult, he

sent down the attorney-general to impeach Lord Kimbolton, Hampden, Pym,

Hollis, and two other members of the House of Commons, at the bar of the

Lords, on a charge of High Treason. It is difficult to find in the whole

history of England such an instance of tyranny, perfidy, and folly. The

most precious and ancient rights of the subject were violated by this

act. The only way in which Hampden and Pym could legally be tried for

treason at the suit of the King, was by a petty jury on a bill found

by a grand jury. The attorney-general had no right to impeach them. The

House of Lords had no right to try them.

The Commons refused to surrender their members. The Peers showed no

inclination to usurp the unconstitutional jurisdiction which the King

attempted to force on them. A contest began, in which violence and

weakness were on the one side, law and resolution on the other. Charles

sent an officer to seal up the lodgings and trunks of the accused

members. The Commons sent their sergeant to break the seals. The tyrant

resolved to follow up one outrage by another. In making the charge, he

had struck at the institution of juries. In executing the arrest, he

struck at the privileges of Parliament. He resolved to go to the House

in person with an armed force, and there to seize the leaders of the

Opposition, while engaged in the discharge of their parliamentary

duties.

What was his purpose? Is it possible to believe that he had no definite

purpose, that he took the most important step of his whole reign without

having for one moment considered what might be its effects? Is it

possible to believe that he went merely for the purpose of making

himself a laughing-stock, that he intended, if he had found the accused

members, and if they had refused, as it was their right and duty to

refuse, the submission which he illegally demanded, to leave the House

without bringing them away? If we reject both these suppositions, we

must believe, and we certainly do believe, that he went fully determined

to carry his unlawful design into effect by violence, and, if necessary,

to shed the blood of the chiefs of the Opposition on the very floor of

the Parliament House.

Lady Carlisle conveyed intelligence of the design to Pym. The five

members had time to withdraw before the arrival of Charles. They left

the House as he was entering New Palace Yard. He was accompanied by

about two hundred halberdiers of his guard, and by many gentlemen of the

Court armed with swords. He walked up Westminster Hall. At the southern

end of the Hall his attendants divided to the right and left and formed

a lane to the door of the House of Commons. He knocked, entered, darted

a look towards the place which Pym usually occupied, and, seeing it

empty, walked up to the table. The Speaker fell on his knee. The members

rose and uncovered their heads in profound silence, and the King took

his seat in the chair. He looked round the House. But the five members

were nowhere to be seen. He interrogated the Speaker. The Speaker

answered, that he was merely the organ of the House, and had neither

eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, but according to their direction. The

King muttered a few feeble sentences about his respect for the laws of

the realm, and the privileges of Parliament, and retired. As he

passed along the benches, several resolute voices called out audibly

“Privilege!” He returned to Whitehall with his company of bravoes, who,

while he was in the House, had been impatiently waiting in the lobby for

the word, cocking their pistols, and crying, “Fall on.” That night he

put forth a proclamation, directing that the ports should be stopped,

and that no person should, at his peril, venture to harbour the accused

members.

Hampden and his friends had taken refuge in Coleman Street. The city

of London was indeed the fastness of public liberty, and was, in those

times, a place of at least as much importance as Paris during the

French Revolution. The city, properly so called, now consists in a great

measure of immense warehouses and counting-houses, which are frequented

by traders and their clerks during the day, and left in almost total

solitude during the night. It was then closely inhabited by three

hundred thousand persons, to whom it was not merely a place of business,

but a place of constant residence. The great capital had as complete

a civil and military organization as if it had been an independent

republic. Each citizen had his company; and the companies, which now

seem to exist only for the sake of epicures and of antiquaries, were

then formidable brotherhoods, the members of which were almost as

closely bound together as the members of a Highland clan. How strong

these artificial ties were, the numerous and valuable legacies anciently

bequeathed by citizens to their corporations abundantly prove. The

municipal offices were filled by the most opulent and respectable

merchants of the kingdom. The pomp of the magistracy of the capital was

inferior only to that which surrounded the person of the sovereign. The

Londoners loved their city with that patriotic love which is found only

in small communities, like those of ancient Greece, or like those which

arose in Italy during the middle ages. The numbers, the intelligence,

the wealth of the citizens, the democratical form of their local

government, and their vicinity to the Court and to the Parliament, made

them one of the most formidable bodies in the kingdom. Even as soldiers

they were not to be despised. In an age in which war is a profession,

there is something ludicrous in the idea of battalions composed of

apprentices and shopkeepers, and officered by aldermen. But in the

early part of the seventeenth century, there was no standing army in the

island; and the militia of the metropolis was not inferior in training

to the militia of other places. A city which could furnish many

thousands of armed men, abounding in natural courage, and not absolutely

untinctured with military discipline, was a formidable auxiliary in

times of internal dissension. On several occasions during the civil war,

the trainbands of London distinguished themselves highly; and at the

battle of Newbury, in particular, they repelled the fiery onset of

Rupert, and saved the army of the Parliament from destruction.

The people of this great city had long been thoroughly devoted to the

national cause. Many of them had signed a protestation in which they

declared their resolution to defend the privileges of Parliament. Their

enthusiasm had, indeed, of late begun to cool. But the impeachment

of the five members, and the insult offered to the House of Commons,

inflamed them to fury. Their houses, their purses, their pikes, were at

the command of the representatives of the nation. London was in arms all

night. The next day the shops were closed; the streets were filled

with immense crowds; the multitude pressed round the King’s coach,

and insulted him with opprobrious cries. The House of Commons, in the

meantime, appointed a committee to sit in the city, for the purpose of

inquiring into the circumstances of the late outrage.

The members of the committee were welcomed by a deputation of the common

council. Merchant Taylors’ Hall, Goldsmiths’ Hall, and Grocers’ Hall,

were fitted up for their sittings. A guard of respectable citizens,

duly relieved twice a day, was posted at their doors. The sheriffs were

charged to watch over the safety of the accused members, and to escort

them to and from the committee with every mark of honour.

A violent and sudden revulsion of feeling, both in the House and out of

it, was the effect of the late proceedings of the King. The Opposition

regained in a few hours all the ascendency which it had lost. The

constitutional royalists were filled with shame and sorrow. They saw

that they had been cruelly deceived by Charles. They saw that they

were, unjustly, but not unreasonably, suspected by the nation. Clarendon

distinctly says that they perfectly detested the counsels by which the

King had been guided, and were so much displeased and dejected at the

unfair manner in which he had treated them that they were inclined to

retire from his service. During the debates on the breach of privilege,

they preserved a melancholy silence. To this day, the advocates of

Charles take care to say as little as they can about his visit to the

House of Commons, and, when they cannot avoid mention of it, attribute

to infatuation an act which, on any other supposition, they must admit

to have been a frightful crime.

The Commons, in a few days, openly defied the King, and ordered the

accused members to attend in their places at Westminster and to resume

their parliamentary duties. The citizens resolved to bring back the

champions of liberty in triumph before the windows of Whitehall. Vast

preparations were made both by land and water for this great festival.

The King had remained in his palace, humbled, dismayed, and bewildered,

“feeling,” says Clarendon, “the trouble and agony which usually attend

generous and magnanimous minds upon their having committed errors”;

feeling, we should say, the despicable repentance which attends the

man who, having attempted to commit a crime, finds that he has only

committed a folly. The populace hooted and shouted all day before the

gates of the royal residence. The tyrant could not bear to see

the triumph of those whom he had destined to the gallows and the

quartering-block. On the day preceding that which was fixed for their

return, he fled, with a few attendants, from that palace which he was

never to see again till he was led through it to the scaffold.

On the eleventh of January, the Thames was covered with boats, and

its shores with the gazing multitude. Armed vessels decorated with

streamers, were ranged in two lines from London Bridge to Westminster

Hall. The members returned upon the river in a ship manned by sailors

who had volunteered their services. The trainbands of the city, under

the command of the sheriffs, marched along the Strand, attended by a

vast crowd of spectators, to guard the avenues to the House of Commons;

and thus, with shouts, and loud discharges of ordnance, the accused

patriots were brought back by the people whom they had served, and

for whom they had suffered. The restored members, as soon as they had

entered the House, expressed, in the warmest terms, their gratitude to

the citizens of London. The sheriffs were warmly thanked by the Speaker

in the name of the Commons; and orders were given that a guard selected

from the trainbands of the city, should attend daily to watch over the

safety of the Parliament.

The excitement had not been confined to London. When intelligence of the

danger to which Hampden was exposed reached Buckinghamshire, it excited

the alarm and indignation of the people. Four thousand freeholders of

that county, each of them wearing in his hat a copy of the protestation

in favour of the Privileges of Parliament, rode up to London to defend

the person of their beloved representative. They came in a body to

assure Parliament of their full resolution to defend its privileges.

Their petition was couched in the strongest terms. “In respect,” said

they, “of that latter attempt upon the honourable House of Commons, we

are now come to offer our service to that end, and resolved, in their

just defence, to live and die.”

A great struggle was clearly at hand. Hampden had returned to

Westminster much changed. His influence had hitherto been exerted rather

to restrain than to animate the zeal of his party. But the treachery,

the contempt of law, the thirst for blood, which the King had now shown,

left no hope of a peaceable adjustment. It was clear that Charles must

be either a puppet or a tyrant, that no obligation of law or of honour

could bind him, and that the only way to make him harmless was to make

him powerless.

The attack which the King had made on the five members was not merely

irregular in manner. Even if the charges had been preferred legally,

if the Grand Jury of Middlesex had found a true bill, if the accused

persons had been arrested under a proper warrant and at a proper time

and place, there would still have been in the proceeding enough of

perfidy and injustice to vindicate the strongest measures which the

Opposition could take. To impeach Pym and Hampden was to impeach the

House of Commons. It was notoriously on account of what they had done as

members of that House that they were selected as objects of vengeance;

and in what they had done as members of that House the majority had

concurred. Most of the charges brought against them were common between

them and the Parliament. They were accused, indeed, and it may be with

reason, of encouraging the Scotch army to invade England. In doing this,

they had committed what was, in strictness of law, a high offence, the

same offence which Devonshire and Shrewsbury committed in 1688. But

the King had promised pardon and oblivion to those who had been the

principals in the Scotch insurrection. Did it then consist with his

honour to punish the accessaries? He had bestowed marks of his favour on

the leading Covenanters. He had given the great seal of Scotland to one

chief of the rebels, a marquisate to another, an earldom to Leslie, who

had brought the Presbyterian army across the Tweed. On what principle

was Hampden to be attainted for advising what Leslie was ennobled

for doing? In a court of law, of course, no Englishman could plead an

amnesty granted to the Scots. But, though not an illegal, it was

surely an inconsistent and a most unkingly course, after pardoning and

promoting the heads of the rebellion in one kingdom, to hang, draw, and

quarter their accomplices in another.

The proceedings of the King against the five members, or rather against

that Parliament which had concurred in almost all the acts of the

five members, was the cause of the civil war. It was plain that either

Charles or the House of Commons must be stripped of all real power in

the state. The best course which the Commons could have taken would

perhaps have been to depose the King, as their ancestors had deposed

Edward the Second and Richard the Second, and as their children

afterwards deposed James. Had they done this, had they placed on the

throne a prince whose character and whose situation would have been a

pledge for his good conduct, they might safely have left to that prince

all the old constitutional prerogatives of the Crown, the command of the

armies of the state, the power of making peers, the power of appointing

ministers, a veto on bills passed by the two Houses. Such prince,

reigning by their choice, would have been under the necessity of acting

in conformity with their wishes. But the public mind was not ripe for

such a measure. There was no Duke of Lancaster, no Prince of Orange, no

great and eminent person, near in blood to the throne, yet attached to

the cause of the people. Charles was then to remain King; and it was

therefore necessary that he should be king only in name. A William the

Third, or a George the First, whose title to the crown was identical

with the title of the people to their liberty, might safely be trusted

with extensive powers. But new freedom could not exist in safety under

the old tyrant. Since he was not to be deprived of the name of king,

the only course which was left was to make him a mere trustee, nominally

seised of prerogatives of which others had the use, a Grand Lama, a Roi

Faineant, a phantom resembling those Dagoberts and Childeberts who wore

the badges of royalty, while Ebroin and Charles Martel held the real

sovereignty of the state.

The conditions which the Parliament propounded were hard, but, we are

sure, not harder than those which even the Tories, in the Convention of

1689, would have imposed on James, if it had been resolved that James

should continue to be king. The chief condition was that the command of

the militia and the conduct of the war in Ireland should be left to the

Parliament. On this point was that great issue joined, whereof the two

parties put themselves on God and on the sword.

We think, not only that the Commons were justified in demanding for

themselves the power to dispose of the military force, but that it would

have been absolute insanity in them to leave that force at the disposal

of the King. From the very beginning of his reign, it had evidently been

his object to govern by an army. His third Parliament had complained,

in the Petition of Right, of his fondness for martial law, and of the

vexatious manner in which he billeted his soldiers on the people. The

wish nearest the heart of Strafford was, as his letters prove, that the

revenue might be brought into such a state as would enable the King to

keep a standing military establishment. In 1640 Charles had supported

an army in the northern counties by lawless exactions. In 1641 he had

engaged in an intrigue, the object of which was to bring that army to

London for the purpose of overawing the Parliament. His late conduct had

proved that, if he were suffered to retain even a small body-guard of

his own creatures near his person, the Commons would be in danger of

outrage, perhaps of massacre. The Houses were still deliberating under

the protection of the militia of London. Could the command of the whole

armed force of the realm have been, under these circumstances, safely

confided to the King? Would it not have been frenzy in the Parliament

to raise and pay an army of fifteen or twenty thousand men for the Irish

war, and to give to Charles the absolute control of this army, and the

power of selecting, promoting, and dismissing officers at his pleasure?

Was it not probable that this army might become, what it is the

nature of armies to become, what so many armies formed under much

more favourable circumstances have become, what the army of the Roman

republic became, what the army of the French republic became, an

instrument of despotism? Was it not probable that the soldiers might

forget that they were also citizens, and might be ready to serve their

general against their country? Was it not certain that, on the very

first day on which Charles could venture to revoke his concessions, and

to punish his opponents, he would establish an arbitrary government, and

exact a bloody revenge?

Our own times furnish a parallel case. Suppose that a revolution

should take place in Spain, that the Constitution of Cadiz should be

reestablished, that the Cortes should meet again, that the Spanish

Prynnes and Burtons, who are now wandering in rags round Leicester

Square, should be restored to their country. Ferdinand the Seventh

would, in that case, of course repeat all the oaths and promises which

he made in 1820, and broke in 1823. But would it not be madness in the

Cortes, even if they were to leave him the name of King, to leave him

more than the name? Would not all Europe scoff at them, if they were

to permit him to assemble a large army for an expedition to America, to

model that army at his pleasure, to put it under the command of

officers chosen by himself? Should we not say that every member of

the Constitutional party who might concur in such a measure would most

richly deserve the fate which he would probably meet, the fate of

Riego and of the Empecinado? We are not disposed to pay compliments to

Ferdinand; nor do we conceive that we pay him any compliment, when we

say that, of all sovereigns in history, he seems to us most to resemble,

in some very important points, King Charles the First. Like Charles,

he is pious after a certain fashion; like Charles, he has made large

concessions to his people after a certain fashion. It is well for him

that he has had to deal with men who bore very little resemblance to the

English Puritans.

The Commons would have the power of the sword; the King would not part

with it; and nothing remained but to try the chances of war. Charles

still had a strong party in the country. His august office, his

dignified manners, his solemn protestations that he would for the

time to come respect the liberties of his subjects, pity for fallen

greatness, fear of violent innovation, secured to him many adherents. He

had with him the Church, the Universities, a majority of the nobles and

of the old landed gentry. The austerity of the Puritan manners drove

most of the gay and dissolute youth of that age to the royal standard.

Many good, brave, and moderate men, who disliked his former conduct,

and who entertained doubts touching his present sincerity, espoused his

cause unwillingly and with many painful misgivings, because, though they

dreaded his tyranny much, they dreaded democratic violence more.

On the other side was the great body of the middle orders of England,

the merchants, the shopkeepers, the yeomanry, headed by a very large and

formidable minority of the peerage and of the landed gentry. The Earl of

Essex, a man of respectable abilities, and of some military experience,

was appointed to the command of the parliamentary army.

Hampden spared neither his fortune nor his person in the cause.

He subscribed two thousand pounds to the public service. He took a

colonel’s commission in the army, and went into Buckinghamshire to

raise a regiment of infantry. His neighbours eagerly enlisted under

his command. His men were known by their green uniform, and by their

standard, which bore on one side the watchword of the Parliament,

“God with us,” and on the other the device of Hampden, “Vestigia nulla

retrorsum.” This motto well described the line of conduct which he

pursued. No member of his party had been so temperate, while there

remained a hope that legal and peaceable measures might save the

country. No member of his party showed so much energy and vigour when it

became necessary to appeal to arms. He made himself thoroughly master

of his military duty, and “performed it,” to use the words of Clarendon,

“upon all occasions most punctually.” The regiment which he had raised

and trained was considered as one of the best in the service of the

Parliament. He exposed his person in every action with an intrepidity

which made him conspicuous even among thousands of brave men. “He was,”

says Clarendon, “of a personal courage equal to his best parts; so that

he was an enemy not to be wished wherever he might have been made a

friend, and as much to be apprehended where he was so, as any man could

deserve to be.” Though his military career was short, and his military

situation subordinate, he fully proved that he possessed the talents of

a great general, as well as those of a great statesman.

We shall not attempt to give a history of the war. Lord Nugent’s account

of the military operations is very animating and striking. Our abstract

would be dull, and probably unintelligible. There was, in fact, for some

time no great and connected system of operations on either side. The war

of the two parties was like the war of Arimanes and Oromasdes, neither

of whom, according to the Eastern theologians, has any exclusive domain,

who are equally omnipresent, who equally pervade all space, who carry on

their eternal strife within every particle of matter. There was a petty

war in almost every county. A town furnished troops to the Parliament

while the manor-house of the neighbouring peer was garrisoned for the

King. The combatants were rarely disposed to march far from their

own homes. It was reserved for Fairfax and Cromwell to terminate this

desultory warfare, by moving one overwhelming force successively against

all the scattered fragments of the royal party.

It is a remarkable circumstance that the officers who had studied

tactics in what were considered as the best schools, under Vere in the

Netherlands, and under Gustavus Adolphus in Germany, displayed far less

skill than those commanders who had been bred to peaceful employments,

and who never saw even a skirmish till the civil war broke out. An

unlearned person might hence be inclined to suspect that the military

art is no very profound mystery, that its principles are the principles

of plain good sense, and that a quick eye, a cool head, and a stout

heart, will do more to make a general than all the diagrams of Jomini.

This, however, is certain, that Hampden showed himself a far better

officer than Essex, and Cromwell than Leslie.

The military errors of Essex were probably in some degree produced by

political timidity. He was honestly, but not warmly, attached to the

cause of the Parliament; and next to a great defeat he dreaded a great

victory. Hampden, on the other hand, was for vigorous and decisive

measures. When he drew the sword, as Clarendon has well said, he threw

away the scabbard. He had shown that he knew better than any public man

of his time how to value and how to practise moderation. But he knew

that the essence of war is violence, and that moderation in war is

imbecility. On several occasions, particularly during the operations in

the neighbourhood of Brentford, he remonstrated earnestly with Essex.

Wherever he commanded separately, the boldness and rapidity of his

movements presented a striking contrast to the sluggishness of his

superior.

In the Parliament he possessed boundless influence. His employments

towards the close of 1642 have been described by Denham in some lines

which, though intended to be sarcastic, convey in truth the highest

eulogy. Hampden is described in this satire as perpetually passing

and repassing between the military station at Windsor and the House of

Commons at Westminster, as overawing the general, and as giving law to

that Parliament which knew no other law. It was at this time that he

organized that celebrated association of counties to which his party was

principally indebted for its victory over the King.

In the early part of 1643, the shires lying in the neighbourhood

of London, which were devoted to the cause of the Parliament, were

incessantly annoyed by Rupert and his cavalry. Essex had extended his

lines so far that almost every point was vulnerable. The young prince,

who, though not a great general, was an active and enterprising

partisan, frequently surprised posts, burned villages, swept away

cattle, and was again at Oxford before a force sufficient to encounter

him could be assembled.

The languid proceedings of Essex were loudly condemned by the troops.

All the ardent and daring spirits in the parliamentary party were eager

to have Hampden at their head. Had his life been prolonged, there

is every reason to believe that the supreme command would have been

intrusted to him. But it was decreed that, at this conjuncture, England

should lose the only man who united perfect disinterestedness to eminent

talents, the only man who, being capable of gaining the victory for her,

was incapable of abusing that victory when gained.

In the evening of the seventeenth of June, Rupert darted out of Oxford

with his cavalry on a predatory expedition. At three in the morning

of the following day, he attacked and dispersed a few parliamentary

soldiers who lay at Postcombe. He then flew to Chinnor, burned the

village, killed or took all the troops who were quartered there, and

prepared to hurry back with his booty and his prisoners to Oxford.

Hampden had, on the preceding day, strongly represented to Essex

the danger to which this part of the line was exposed. As soon as he

received intelligence of Rupert’s incursion, he sent off a horseman with

a message to the General. The cavaliers, he said, could return only by

Chiselhampton Bridge. A force ought to be instantly despatched in that

direction for the purpose of intercepting them. In the meantime, he

resolved to set out with all the cavalry that he could muster, for

the purpose of impeding the march of the enemy till Essex could take

measures for cutting off their retreat. A considerable body of horse and

dragoons volunteered to follow him. He was not their commander. He did

not even belong to their branch of the service. But “he was,” says Lord

Clarendon, “second to none but the General himself in the observance

and application of all men.” On the field of Chalgrove he came up with

Rupert. A fierce skirmish ensued. In the first charge Hampden was struck

in the shoulder by two bullets, which broke the bone, and lodged in

his body. The troops of the Parliament lost heart and gave way. Rupert,

after pursuing them for a short time, hastened to cross the bridge, and

made his retreat unmolested to Oxford.

Hampden, with his head drooping, and his hands leaning on his horse’s

neck, moved feebly out of the battle. The mansion which had been

inhabited by his father-in-law, and from which in his youth he had

carried home his bride Elizabeth, was in sight. There still remains an

affecting tradition that he looked for a moment towards that beloved

house, and made an effort to go thither to die. But the enemy lay in

that direction. He turned his horse towards Thame, where he arrived

almost fainting with agony. The surgeons dressed his wounds. But there

was no hope. The pain which he suffered was most excruciating. But he

endured it with admirable firmness and resignation. His first care

was for his country. He wrote from his bed several letters to London

concerning public affairs, and sent a last pressing message to the

head-quarters, recommending that the dispersed forces should be

concentrated. When his public duties were performed, he calmly prepared

himself to die. He was attended by a clergyman of the Church of England,

with whom he had lived in habits of intimacy, and by the chaplain of

the Buckinghamshire Greencoats, Dr. Spurton, whom Baxter describes as a

famous and excellent divine.

A short time before Hampden’s death the sacrament was administered to

him. He declared that though he disliked the government of the Church of

England, he yet agreed with that Church as to all essential matters of

doctrine. His intellect remained unclouded. When all was nearly over, he

lay murmuring faint prayers for himself, and for the cause in which,

he died. “Lord Jesus,” he exclaimed in the moment of the last agony,

“receive my soul. O Lord, save my country. O Lord, be merciful to--.” In

that broken ejaculation passed away his noble and fearless spirit.

He was buried in the parish church of Hampden. His soldiers, bareheaded,

with reversed arms and muffled drums and colours, escorted his body to

the grave, singing, as they marched, that lofty and melancholy psalm in

which the fragility of human life is contrasted with the immutability of

Him to whom a thousand years are as yesterday when it is past, and as a

watch in the night.

The news of Hampden’s death produced as great a consternation in his

party, according to Clarendon, as if their whole army had been cut off.

The journals of the time amply prove that the Parliament and all its

friends were filled with grief and dismay. Lord Nugent has quoted a

remarkable passage from the next Weekly Intelligencer. “The loss of

Colonel Hampden goeth near the heart of every man that loves the good

of his king and country, and makes some conceive little content to be

at the army now that he is gone. The memory of this deceased colonel is

such, that in no age to come but it will more and more be had in honour

and esteem; a man so religious, and of that prudence, judgment, temper,

valour, and integrity, that he hath left few his like behind.”

He had indeed left none his like behind him. There still remained,

indeed, in his party, many acute intellects, many eloquent tongues,

many brave and honest hearts. There still remained a rugged and clownish

soldier, half fanatic, half buffoon, whose talents, discerned as yet

only by one penetrating eye, were equal to all the highest duties of

the soldier and the prince. But in Hampden, and in Hampden alone, were

united all the qualities which, at such a crisis, were necessary to

save the state, the valour and energy of Cromwell, the discernment and

eloquence of Vane, the humanity and moderation of Manchester, the stern

integrity of Hale, the ardent public spirit of Sydney. Others might

possess the qualities which were necessary to save the popular party in

the crisis of danger; he alone had both the power and the inclination to

restrain its excesses in the hour of triumph. Others could conquer; he

alone could reconcile. A heart as bold as his brought up the cuirassiers

who turned the tide of battle on Marston Moor. As skilful an eye as his

watched the Scotch army descending from the heights over Dunbar. But

it was when to the sullen tyranny of Laud and Charles had succeeded

the fierce conflict of sects and factions, ambitious of ascendency and

burning for revenge, it was when the vices and ignorance which the old

tyranny had generated threatened the new freedom with destruction, that

England missed the sobriety, the self-command, the perfect soundness of

judgment, the perfect rectitude of intention, to which the history of

revolutions furnishes no parallel, or furnishes a parallel in Washington

alone.