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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 honor.
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 ascendancy 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 favor 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
honorable
House of Commons, we are now come to offer our service to that end, and
resolved, in their just defense, 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 honor 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 honor to punish the accessories? He had bestowed marks of his
favor 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 favorable 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
neighbors 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 vigor 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 neighboring
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 practice
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 neighborhood 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 neighborhood 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 entrusted 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 dispatched 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 colors, 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
honor and esteem; a man so religious, and of that prudence, judgment, temper,
valor, 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 valor 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
ascendancy 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.
Critical and Historical Essays, Volume I
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