Page 36 - Hampdens Monument Unveiled

some dragoons being in their front, the fight began with
several fierce charges. And now Col. Neale and General Percy
coming up, with the Prince's left wing, on their flank, Gunter
was slain and his party gave way. Yet, every moment, they
expected the main body, with Lord Essex, to appear. Meanwhile,
Hampden with the two troops of Sheffield and Cross, having come
round the right of the cavaliers, from the enclosures by
Warpsgrove House, advanced to rally and support the beaten
horse. Every effort was to be made to keep Rupert hotly engaged
till the reinforcements should arrive from Thame. Hampden put
himself at the head of the attack; but, in the first charge, he
received his death wound. He was struck in the shoulder with
two carabine balls, which, breaking the bone, entered his body,
and his arm hung powerless and shattered by his side. Sheffield
was severely wounded, and fell into the hands of the enemy.
Overwhelmed by numbers, their best officers killed or taken,
the great leader of their hopes and of their cause thus dying
among them, and the day absolutely lost, the Parliamentarians
no longer kept their ground. Essex came up too late: and
Rupert, though unable to pursue, made good his retreat across
the river to Oxford.

Thus ended the fight of that fatal morning when Hampden shed
his blood; closing the great work of his toilsome life with a
brilliant reputation and an honourable death; crowned, not as
some happier men, with renown of victory, but with a testimony,
not less glorious, of fidelity to the sinking fortunes of a
conflict which his genius might have more prosperously guided,
and to a better issue.
'Disce. . virtutem ex hoc, verumque laborem,
'Fortunam ex alias' ----

John Hampden mortally wounded Essex’s Army defeated

His head bending down, and his hands resting on his horse's
neck, he was seen riding off the field before the action was
done, --- 'a thing, says Lord Clarendon, 'he never used to do,
and from which it was concluded he was 'hurt'. It is a
tradition, that he was seen first moving in the direction of
his father-in-law's (Simeon's) house at Pyrton. There he had in
youth married the first wife of his love, and thither he would
have gone to die. But Rupert's cavalry were covering the plain
between. Turning his horse, therefore, he rode back across the
grounds of Hasely in his way to Thame. At the brook, which
divides the parishes, he paused a while; but it being
impossible for him, in his wounded state to remount, if he had
alighted to turn his horse over, he suddenly summoned his
strength, clapped spurs, and cleared the leap. In great pain,
and almost fainting, he reached Thame, and was conducted to the
house of one Ezekiel Browne, where, his wounds being dressed,
the surgeons would, for a while, have given him hopes of life.
But he felt that his hurt was mortal, and, indulging no weak
expectations of recovery, occupied the few days that remained