Page 33 - Hampdens Monument Unveiled

zeal was unremitting : while Essex slumbered at his post, and
while that sullen recklessness of its own fate which soon shows
through an army distrustful of its chief was spread from end to
end of the Parliament's long line, the King's troopers were
ever alert, and generally successful in their enterprizes, and
therefore always hopeful, and always formidable. Not a week,
scarcely a night, passed, but they were heard laying waste some
defenceless district -worse than defenceless, because occupied
by the wearied and the disheartened, inviting attack, and never
prepared to repel it. The country round suited well the
activity of the young Prince and his cavalry. The gorges of the
hills, lined with deep tracts of beech woods, shrouded his
stealthy march through the night, upon the flank or rear of his
sleeping enemy ; and at day-break would he pour forth his
squadrons sparkling like a torrent on the plains which lay
before him open for the manoeuvre or the charge. Often would a
village many a mile from the King's country suddenly wake to a
dreadful irruption of horsemen who came thundering in from the
side opposite to that of his distant lines; the track of the
night march marked from afar by the blaze of burning houses and
the tumults of posts surprized, and the morning retreat by the
dusts of columns returning to Oxford and leaving behind them a
region of desolation and panic.

Chalgrove

In these expeditions the renegade Urrie was eminently
qualified to bear his part. His knowledge of the country, and
of the points occupied, as well as his address and experience
in that sort of service, specially recommended him to the
Prince and his council of war. It was only the opinion which
all men had of the baseness of his motives, and the hazard
which there always be in employing such agents where a second
treachery might produce the utmost mischief, that could make
the cavaliers distrustful of their new partizan. But these
considerations added to Urrie's eagerness for early action. Nor
was it many days before he found the occasion he wished for. He
planned the expedition which ended in the memorable fight of
Chalgrove; an enterprize not very important in its promise, nor
in its success, otherwise than that the skirmish to which it
led was fatal to Hampden, at the time when his powers were in
their fullest vigour, when his military abilities were ripening
by experience of war, and when prospects were daily opening to
him for exercising them on a larger scale of larger
responsibility.

Islip Attack

A detachment of Essex's troops had, two days before, made a
feeble show of attack upon one of the King's outposts at Islip.
These small disconnected enterprizes were always dangerous for
them to undertake; the King's troops acting from a centre, and
being able to bring a powerful body, from within or near the