Page 57 - Hampdens Monument Unveiled

crowded 'with company continued to arrive until nearly 2
o'clock, at which hour the ceremony of completion was announced
to take place.

The memorial has not the slightest pretension to
architectural beauty. It is a plain pillar of brickwork faced
with stone, 18 feet high, tapering towards the summit and
surmounted with a small cap of stonework. It is mounted on a
pedestal about 10 feet square, and surrounded by a neat iron
railing the whole being erected on a mound of turf, slightly
raised above the surrounding fields, and enclosed by a fosse or
ditch containing water. The point of land on which it stands is
the junction of the four crossroads to the village of
Chalgrove, Oxford, Hasely, and Watlington, It is supposed to be
erected near the spot where Hampden fell, and a group of trees
at a few hundred paces distant are pointed out as the ambush
from which the patriot was wounded by the musket ball of a
skirmisher attached to the Royal army. On the northern side of
the pillar is the following inscription :-

HERE
IN THIS FIELD OF CHALGROVE

JOHN HAMPDEN
AFTER AN ABLE AND STRENUOUS
BUT UNSUCCESSFUL RESISTANCE

IN PARLIAMENT
AND BEFORE THE JUDGES OF THE LAND
TO THE MEASURES OF AN ARBITRARY COURT

FIRST TOOK ARMS
ASSEMBLING THE LEVIES OF THE ASSOCIATED COUNTIES

OF BUCKINGHAM AND OXFORD
IN 1642

WITHIN A FEW PACES OF THIS SPOT
HE RECEIVED THE WOUND OF WHICH HE DIED

WHILE FIGHTING IN DEFENCE
OF THE FREE MONARCHY

AND ANCIENT LIBERTIES OF ENGLAND
JUNE 18, 1643

IN THE TWO HUNDREDTH YEAR
FROM THAT DAY

THIS STONE WAS RAISED
IN REVERENCE TO HIS MEMORY

On the west side are the arms of the Hampden family; and on the
south, in somewhat questionable taste it must be admitted, the
names of the principal subscribers to the memorial, among whom
the following are the most conspicuous: - Bedford, Breadalbane,
Hampden, Sudely, F. Burdett, J. Hampden, J. Lee, Fortesque,
Brougham, Buckinghamshire, Leigh, Otway-Cave, R. Hampden, D.D.,