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mons, acting through their mouthpiece Pym, sent up to the Lords an impeachment of high treason against her. Restless Rupert somewhat atoned for the inactivity of his uncle, for he was always darting out of Oxford to slay, burn, pillage, and retreat. In one of these fiery raids he fell, at gray dawn of a midsummer morning (June 18), on the hamlet of Postcombe, having crossed the Cherwell at Chiselhampton Bridge. A slight skirmish drove back a troop of Roundhead horse. Turning then to Chinnor, he slew and took prisoners a couple of hundred more. Almost with the risen sun there appeared on the side of a neighbouring hill a body of Parliamentary dragoons riding to the attack. It was John Hampden, statesman and soldier, come to his last field. He had warned Essex that the lines were weak at this very place; and hearing of Rupert's move, he had sent an urgent message asking Essex to occupy the bridge at Chiselhampton, over which the plunderer had come. Chalgrove Field* waved with a great sea of slightly coloured grain when Rupert marshalled his two thousand horsemen there. Hampden, who meant only to keep the foe in play until Essex had seized the bridge, poured in a volley and then dashed in a fierce charge upon Rupert's right wing. As he rode forward, two carbine balls struck his shoulder, broke the bone, and lodged in his body. His head drooped on the mane, and, to the wonderment of all, he went slowly from the field. The house where he had won his bride rose above the trees not far away. But the foe lay between, and he turned towards Thame, riding with infinite pain over ground every inch of which he knew by heart. Leaping with difficulty a little stream, he made his way to the house of Ezekiel Browne at Thame, where six days later he died with the patriotic prayer breaking from his lips (June 24). To his grave in Hampden Church his green-coats

June 18, 1643

Chalgrove Field is not far from Watlington in Oxfordshire, which lies about fifteen miles south-east of Oxford.

bore their colonel in a little while, stirring the gentle summer air with the solemn music of the Ninetieth Psalm. And there, stricken in the very prime of his power, they left the greatest Englishman of his time. It seemed to the National party, when the terrible news of Chalgrove came, as if the sun of their enterprise had suddenly dropped from the sky.

Their defeat on Atherton Moor* in the north, where Newcastle routed Fairfax on the 30th of June, added to their dismay—perhaps induced them to cast into the Tower the Hothams, father and son, on a charge of treasonably offering to surrender Hull to the king. That sea-port was held by Fairfax, who had retired thither after his reverse at Atherton Moor; but nearly all the rest of Yorkshire was in the hands of the Royalists. Newcastle besieged Hull for six weeks. He was, however, driven back by Fairfax, and the siege was raised (October 11). On the same day, Cromwell and Sir Thomas Fairfax defeated the Royalists at Winceby, and drove them out of Lincolnshire.

In the west, the Parliament men met with nothing but disaster. The king's general, Wilmot, defeated Sir William Waller at Devizes § (July 13). Bristol surrendered to Rupert after a three days' siege (July 27). In dread of the worst, the Londoners set vigorously to work at the defence of their city, which was soon encircled by an intrenchment twelve miles in length. Instead of moving on London, the king, helped by succours from his wife, laid siege to Gloucester during the month of August. The spirit of the people rose to a level with the crisis. The London train-bands volunteered their services; and "elephantine" Essex, flinging off his sluggishness, moved

* Atherton Moor, or Adwalton, is marked by a hamlet in the West Riding of Yorkshire, four miles south-east by south of Bradford.

They were beheaded on January 1 and 2, 1645.

Winceby, a small upland hamlet in the Wolds of Lincolnshire, about five miles west of Horncastle.

§ Devizes, a market-town in Wiltshire, twenty-two miles from Salisbury. The battle was fought near Roundaway Hill.

steadily westward, and on the 5th of September lit a beacon-fire on Presbury Hill, which shone through the rainy gloom of the night with tidings of relief to the beleaguered garrison Sept. 6. of Gloucester. Burning his camp, the king retreated, thus baffled in his last great chance.

On his homeward way to cover London, Essex was followed closely by the king, who attacked him at Newbury* (September 20th). The pikes of the London train-bands formed an impenetrable hedge of steel, on which the gallant cavalry of the king dashed without avail. A bullet here brought down Lord Falkland, now secretary of state to the king--once a dear friend of Hampden. The historian Clarendon tells us how heavily the cloud of the Civil War brooded over the once cheerful spirit of Falkland, and with what deep and bitter sighs he was wont to cry out for " Peace! peace!"

Five days after this battle, there was a great ceremony in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, where the assembly of Puritan divines and the Scottish commissioners met to sign The Solemn League and Covenant. That document, which was the

National Covenant renamed and slightly liberalized by Sept. 25. the management of young Harry Vane, Commissioner at Edinburgh, bound the revolted Scots and the revolted English together in their great struggle with a king who had wronged them both. The Scottish army sent into England in January, in fulfilment of this treaty, turned the scale in favour of the Parliament.

King Pym, the great orator and wielder of men, was now to follow Hampden to the grave. At Derby House on the 8th of September a painful internal sickness struck him down, and his remains were laid, with the honours due to a great English statesman, beneath the roof of Westminster.

Newbury, a market-town in Berkshire on the Kennet, seventeen miles west southwest of Reading.

CHAPTER XIII.

OLIVER CROMWELL.

Early life-Member for Cambridge-Marston Moor-Self-denying Ordinance- Naseby-The Scottish camp-Rendezvous-The proposals— Explosive elements-Preston fight-Pride's Purge-The High Court of Justice--The scaffold.

LIVER CROMWELL was born at Huntingdon in 1599,

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his father being Robert Cromwell of the Hinchinbrook family, and his mother Elizabeth Steward, daughter of a wealthy Ely farmer. Having received his early education in the grammar-school of his native town, he went to Cambridge at the age of seventeen. In 1620, he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Bourchier, a civic magistrate with a small estate in Essex.

When he entered Parliament as member for the borough of Huntingdon in 1628, he met there a number of men-Wentworth, Selden, Hampden, Pym, Hollis-who were bent on wringing from their infatuated king a new charter of liberties. Oliver took part in the movement against Buckingham, and displayed his close-grained Puritanism by an attack on the Bishop of Winchester for "preaching flat Popery." The dissolution of 1629 sent him to Huntingdon, whence, two years later, he moved to a grazing-farm at St. Ives, five miles down the Ouse-a spongy piece of land, soaking with the black moisture of the neighbouring Fens. Five years of beef-rearing and butter-making, checkered with the lights and shadows of domestic life, and sometimes overspread with the gloom of

melancholy, but instinct throughout with a steadfast religious fervour, bring us on to 1636, when the death of his mother's brother, who left him some property, changed the scene of his life to Ely. Thence this "Lord of the Fens," as he was popularly called in recognition of the regal manhood in him, went in 1640 to the Short Parliament as member for Cambridge town, and went in the following winter to his seat for the same place in the ever-memorable Long Parliament.

He was then forty-one years of age: a man of good stature; with swollen and reddish face, a voice sharp and untunable, and eloquence full of fervour. As to dress, his plain cloth suit bore evident marks of country scissors; his linen was plain, and not very clean; his hat without a hat-band, and his sword stuck close by his side. So much for the externals of the man; but there was empire in the steadfast eye, and under the raspings of the ill-tuned voice. Already men had felt its grasp, and had sat wrapped in silence as they listened to the plain, blunt farmer.

While Pym and Hampden lived, Oliver associated himself with them in all the great events noticed in the preceding chapter. He heard St. Margaret's chiming "two" on the morning when the Grand Remonstrance passed, and rejoiced in victory as he went home to bed. When the war began, he lent £300 to the Parliament, raised a volunteer corps at Cambridge, seized the magazine there, and prevented the university plate (worth £20,000) from leaving its place. Learning in the school of obedience how to command, Captain Cromwell fought at Edgehill, and, under Lord Grey of Wark, did good service in holding the associated counties-Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Herts-against the king and his dashing nephew. He was in peril of his life at Winceby Fight; and, as governor of Ely, he held that city bravely for the ParliaWith the first hour that he drilled his Cambridge men his greatest work began. A grand weapon was to be forged

ment.

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