Page 45 - Hampdens Monument Unveiled

the House of Commons, .usurped the Speaker's chair, and
demanded that five members should be surrendered into his
hands, on a charge of treason, the first of whom was John
Hampden. He retired, it is true, baffled by the steadiness and
courage of the Speaker and the House. But the Parliament was no
longer safe from violence. The Parliament insisted on the
militia as a guard. The King refused. The King issued a
commission of array. He sent the Queen into Holland to transmit
arms and ammunition. He formed magazines and garrisons
throughout the country. The King was a party in arms, and
Prince Rupert was ravaging all the towns and lands supposed to
be well affected to the Parliament.

Civil War

Thus war was already began. And now, I ask, when, in
execution of the ordinance of Parliament which followed, John
Hampden assembled in this field the levies of the associated
counties of Buckingham and Oxford, on which side were found the
party who stood in defence of the free monarchy and ancient
liberties of England? So much, then, in vindication of the
phraze we have use of all the evils that can afflict a land -of
all the scourges with which Providence hath visited mankind,
civil war is the greatest, except slavery. When the sword of
civil war is unsheathed, one of its greatest miseries is, that
it is seldom a war between individuals all maintaining
doctrines, against doctrines indisputably wrong. Good men,
great men, men who might, in better times, have together stood
the faithful guardians of their country's welfare, are seen
armed against each other. Sometimes but a shade of difference
divides them, but that shade is fatal to the hopes of their
country : and often the slighter the difference that parts them
the more stern is the conflict, because each is intimately
convinced of the justice and purity of the impulse. So it was
with Hampden and with Falkland, side by side in Parliament they
long had stood for public liberty -side by side they had
protested against lawless prerogative; but when the issue was
wagered on an appeal to arms -when the King of England prepared
himself for the field, and the very elements of the
constitution were in confusion, Falkland sided with the crown -
Falkland of all those on that part, the man who had the most
firmly opposed the excesses which had brought on that issue.
When the King's word had been repeatedly broken, and no
treaties, however solemn, entered into with those he termed
rebels, could bind him to good faith -when the sword was drawn
to complete the triumph of the sceptre over the doomed and
prostrate rights of the people -with the people Hampden sided.
Hampden, of all those on that part, the man whose views were
bounded by the steadiest moderation of purpose, and whose loss
Sir Philip Warwick said the King himself felt deprived him of
the last hope, in case of defeat, of restoring a right
understanding between himself and the two houses. Even when the