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 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 the 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 Green-coats, Dr. Spurton, whom Baxter describes as a famous and excellent divine. A short time before his death the sacrament was administered to him. declared that, though he disliked the government of the Church of England, he yet agreed with that church in 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 for which he died. "Lord Jesus," he exclaimed, in the moment of his 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 in whose sight a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is passed, and as a watch in the night. He 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 the 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.. SOUTHEY.] SEVERE RULE OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 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 But in Hampden, and in Hampden highest duties of the soldier and the prince. 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 A heart as bold as his brought up the could conquer; he alone could reconcile. As skilful an eye But it cuirassiers who turned the tide of battle on Marston Moor. as his watched the Scotch army descending from the heights over Dunbar. 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. SEVERE RULE OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND SUFFERINGS OF THE CLERGY. SOUTHEY. By one of their laws the theatres were suppressed, and the players to be fined for the first offence, whipped for the second. By another, maypoles were to be taken Some zealots down as a heathenish vanity, abused to superstition and wickedness. having voluntarily agreed to fast one day in the week for the purpose of contributing the value of the meal to what they called the good cause, an ordinance was passed that all within the bills of mortality should pay upon every Thursday, for three months, the value of an ordinary meal for themselves and families, and in -case of non-payment distress was to be made for double the amount; the intent of this being that the burden might not rest alone upon the willing party. The monthly fast, happening to fall on Christmas-day, was ordered to be observed with the more solemn humiliation; because, said these hypocrites, it may call to remembrance our sins and the sins of our forefathers, who have turned this feast, pretending the memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights. Many of those venerable structures which were the glory of the land, had been -destroyed at the Reformation by the sacrilegious rapacity of those statesmen and favourites to whom they had been iniquitously granted. The remainder were now threatened with the same fate by the coarse and brutal spirit of triumphant puritanism. Lord Brooke (who had succeeded to the titles and estates, not to the feelings and opinions of one of the profoundest thinkers whom this or any other -country has produced) said he hoped to see the day when not one stone of St. Paul's should be left upon another. A sentiment of vulgar malice towards Laud may have instigated the ruling faction when they demolished with axes and hammers the -carved work of that noble structure, and converted the body of the church into a stable for their troopers' horses. But in other places where they had no such odious motive, they committed the like, and even worse indecencies and outrages, merely to show their hatred of the church. It was such acts of sacrilege which brought a scandal and an odium upon the reformed religion in France and the Low countries, and stopped its progress there; which neither the kings of France or Spain could have done if horror and indignation had not been excited against it by this brutal and villainous fanaticism. In some churches they baptised horses or swine in profane mockery of baptism; in others they broke open the tombs, and scattered about the bones of the dead, or, if the bodies were entire, they defaced and dismembered them. At Sudley they made a slaughter-house of the chancel, cut up the carcases upon the communion table, and threw the garbage into the vault of the Chandoses, insulting thus the remains of some of the most heroic men, who, in their day, defended and did honour to their country. At Westminster the soldiers sat smoking and drinking at the altar, and lived in the Abbey, committing every kind of indecency there, which the parliament saw and permitted. No cathedral escaped without some injury; painted windows were broken, statues pulled down or mutilated; carvings demolished; organs sold piecemeal for the value of the materials, to set up in taverns. At Lambeth Parker's monument was thrown down that Scott, to whom the palace had been allotted for his portion of the spoils, might convert the chapel into a hall; the archbishop's body was taken, not out of his grave alone, but out of his coffin; the lead in which it was inclosed was sold, and the remains were buried in a dunghill. A device was soon found for ejecting the loyal clergy, all, indeed, who were not prepared to go all lengths with the root-and-branch men. The better to secure the assistance of the Scotch against the king, the two houses passed an act that the covenant should be taken, whereby all who subscribed it bound themselves to endeavour the extirpation of episcopal church government. All persons above the age of eighteen were required to take it; and such ministers as refused were reported to parliament as malignants, and proceeded against accordingly. No fewer than seven thousand clergymen were upon this ground ejected from their livings, so faithful were the great body of the clergy in the worst of times. The extent of private misery and ruin which this occasioned aggravated in no slight degree the calamities of civil war. It was not till some years had elapsed that a fifth part of the income was ordered to be paid to the wives and children of the sequestered ministers. The order had no retrospective effect; in most cases it was disregarded, for the principles by which the intrusive incumbents obtained their preferment very generally hardened their hearts, and the claimants were wholly at their mercy; and, even had it been scrupulously paid, few were the cases wherein such a provision could have preserved the injured parties from utter want. The treatment, indeed, of the loyal clergy, was to the last degree inhuman. Neither eminent talents, nor distinguished learning, nor exemplary virtues, could atone for the crime of fidelity to their order and their king. Chillingworth fell into the hands of sir William Waller as a prisoner. He was of feeble constitution, and ill at the time; but, instead of showing that reverence to his person which he would have obtained from any noble enemy, the Puritan clergy, who attended Waller's army, used him with such barbarity that he died within a few days; nor did their inhumanity cease even with his death, for Cheynel, one of the most outrageous preachers of the party, pronounced a speech of infamous abuse over his grave, and threw into it, to rot, as he said, with its author, that book for which the name of Chillingworth ought to have been dear, not to the Church of England only, but to the whole Protestant world. In his case a peculiar degree of rancour may have been displayed because Laud was his godfather and patron, and had reclaimed him from the Romish religion, into which he had been led astray; recovering thus for the Protestant cause one of its ablest and most distinguished champions. But even the doctrinal Puritans, who, opposing the Church on too many points, had thereby contributed to the success of those whom nothing short of its destruction would satisfy, were involved, without discrimination and without pity, in its ruin. They came under the common appellation of malignants, and perceived when too late that they had been in no slight degree instrumental to their own undoing. Prideaux, the bishop of Exeter,* who was reduced to such distress, that in his will he could bequeath his children nothing but "pious poverty, God's blessing and a father's prayers," used in his latter days to say, that though he and Laud could never understand one another till it was too late, he now reverenced no man more, for that the prelate had wisely foreseen what lay hid to many others. Such of the loyal clergy as were only plundered and turned out to find subsistence for their wives and families as they could, or to starve, were fortunate when compared with many of their brethren. Some were actually murdered; others perished in consequence of brutal usage, or of confinement in close, unwholesome prisons, or on shipboard, where they were crowded together under hatches day and night, without even straw to lie on. An intention was avowed of selling them as slaves to the plantations, or to the Turks and Algerines; and, though this was not carried into effect, it seems to have been more than a threat for the purpose of extorting large ransoms from those who could raise money, because, after the battle of Worcester, many of the prisoners were actually shipped to Barbadoes, and sold there. THE DEATH OF ARCHBISHOP LAUD. WALLACE. * * * Blood was flowing meanwhile upon the scaffold, as well as in the field. Sir Alexander Carew, of Cornwall, was condemned and executed for an attempt to procure the admission of the king's troops by secret treachery into Plymouth. There is another death on the scaffold which cannot be mentioned without execration-that of Archbishop Laud. Laud had now lain near three years in prison under a charge of treason. He was past seventy years old, and the painful infirmities of disease were added to those of age. His trial was precipitated by his refusal to collate to a living against the express command of the king. The Lords, who claimed the right of naming to the benefice, called upon the Commons to proceed with his trial, as a punishment for his disobedience, and the latter immediately appointed a committee to manage the impeachment. The getting up of the prosecution was confided to Prynne. It was like placing the archbishop under the claws and fangs of a tiger. Prynne had injuries the most deep and deadly to avenge, and the reproach lies upon those who admitted or selected him. He began by ransacking and conveying away the archbishop's papers, even his means of defence. Laud was accused, in various articles, of endeavouring to subvert the privileges of parliament, and the laws and religion of the realm. The substantive acts charged against him are those which It was this prelate, who being asked by one of his friends how he did, replied, "Never better in my life, only I have too great a stomach; for I have eaten that little plate the sequestrators left me; I have eaten a great library of excellent books; I have eaten a great deal of linen; much of my brass, some of my pewter, and now I am come to eat iron; and what will come next I know not!" have been mentioned in the preceding pages. His written diary was carried away by Prynne; his expressions in conversation were also brought against him, and the horrible doctrine of accumulative treason was urged in his case with the barbarity of lawyers and the bigotry of presbyterians of that day by Wild and Maynard. He defended himself with courage, capacity, moderation, and humbleness. His speech on the scaffold, his bearing, his death, form one of the noblest pictures which have come down of that combination of humble piety and elevation of soul, of that true Christian spirit, in short, of which there are unhappily so few examples. Sir John Coleworthy, a presbyterian, disturbed his last moments on the scaffold by catechising him in a spirit of malignant bigotry. It is said that a ray of the sun falling on his face showed his cheek florid and his eye serenely bright, as he was about to lay his head on the block. His death may be ascribed to the persecuting spirit of the presbyterians, including the particular hatred of the Scotch covenanters. The independents were not by this time a party, and they are clear of the stain on the parliamentary cause. Laud was attainted by ordinance, the proceeding by impeachment having been abandoned in his case, as in Strafford's. The archbishop was guilty of cruel persecution; he made an odious use of the Star Chamber, and its chief minister, the public executioner; but Laud only mutilated whilst his presbyterian adversaries decapitated. He carried his notions of church power to an intolerable height; but he was sincere; there was more of religious zeal than spiritual ambition in his proceedings. The most grievous matters of charge against him would now redound to his credit. He laboured to invest the public worship with decent pomp, and he extended the limits of Christian salvation. This was called idolatry and Arminianism. Laud was despotic rather than intolerant. His great misfortune was, that his talents were wholly unequal to his situation and his views. He was declared guilty by a small majority of a thin house on the 4th of December, and executed on the 10th of the following January. SONNET. Prejudged by foes determined not to spare, (Like a poor bird entangled in a snare, Whose heart still flutters, though his wings forbear To stir in useless struggle) hath relied On hope that conscious innocence supplied, And in his prison breathes celestial air. Why tarries then thy chariot? Wherefore stay, O Death! the ensanguined yet triumphant wheels, Which thou prepar'st full often to convey WORDSWORTH. |