danger, called a Parliament. This was the Long Parliament. The first proposition was to raise money for the Scots. We gave them a brotherly assistance of £300,000. They showed themselves brethren and honest men, and peaceably returned. Then money was pressed for our own army. The House, considering how former Parliaments had been dealt with, was unwilling to raise money till the act was passed not to dissolve the Parliament but by their own consent. It passed freely by king, Lords, and Commons. This was wonderful-the very hand of God that brought it to pass; for no man could then foresee the good that act produced. The king then practised with the Scots, then with his army, to assist him against this Parliament, and to make them sure to his particular interest. Sir John Conyers discovered it, to his everlasting fame. Mr. Pym acquainted the House. Divers officers of the army-Lord Goring, Ashburaham, Pollard, and others-were examined here. They all absented. The House desired of the king that they might be brought to justice; but the king sent them away beyond sea. The king demanded five members, by his attorney-general. He then came personally to the House, with five hundred men at his heels, and sat in your chair. It pleased God to hide those members. I shall never forget the kindness of that great lady, the Lady Carlile, that gave timely notice. Yet some of them were in the House after the notice came. It was questioned if, for the safety of the House, they should be gone; but the debate was shortened, and it was thought fit for them, in discretion, to withdraw. Mr. Hampden and myself being then in the House, withdrew. Away we went. The king immediately came in, and was in the House before we got to the water. The queen, on the king's return, raged and gave him an unhandsome name, "poltroon," for that he did not take athers out; and certain if he had, they would have been killed at the door. Next day the king went to the city. They owned the members. Thereupon he left the Parliament, and went from step to step, till he came to York, and set up his standard at Nottingham, and declared the militia was in him. From the diary of Thomas Burton, Esq. E. A Declaration and Vindication of John Pym, Esq. It is not unknown to the world (especially to the inhabItants in and about London) with what desperate and famewounding aspersions my reputation, and the integrity of my intentions to God, my king, and my country, hath been invaded by the malice and fury of malignants, and ill-affected persons to the good of the Commonwealth; some charging me to have been the promoter and patronizer of all the innovations which have been obtruded upon the ecclesiastical government of the Church of England; others, of more spiteful and exorbitant spirits, alledging that I have been the man who have begot and fostered all the so-lamented distractions which are now rife in this kingdom. And though such calumnies are ever more harmful to the authors than to those whom they strive to wound with them, when they arrive only to the censure of judicious persons, who can distinguish forms, and see the difference betwixt truth and falsehood; yet, because the scandals inflicted upon my innocence have been obvious to people of all conditions, many of which may entertain a belief of those reproachful reports, though in my own soul I am far above such ignominies, and so was once resolved to have waved them as unworthy my notice, yet at last, for the assertion of my integrity, I concluded to declare myself in this matter, that all the world, but such as will not be convinced either by reason or truth, may bear testimony of my innocency. To pass by, therefore, the Earl of Strafford's business, in which some have been so impudent as to charge me of too much partiality and malice, I shall declare myself fully concerning the rest of their aspersions, namely, that I have promoted and fomented the differences now abounding in the English Church. How unlikely this is, and improbable, shall, to every indifferent man, be quickly rendered perspicuous; for that I am, and ever was, and so will die, a faithful son of the Protestant religion, without having the least relation in my behef to those gross errors of Anabaptism, Brownism, and the bike, every man that hath any acquaintance with my conversation can bear me righteous witness; these being but aspersions cast upon me by some of the discontented clergy, and their factors and abettors, because they might perhaps conceive that I had been a main instrument in extenuating the haughty power and ambitious pride of the bishops and prelates. As I only delivered my opinion as a member of the House of Commons, that attempt or action of mine had been justifiable both to God and a good conscience, and had no way concluded me guilty of a revolt from the orthodox doctrine of the Church of England because I sought a refor mation of some gross abuses crept into the government by the cunning and perverseness of the bishops and their substitutes; for was it not high time to seek to regulate their power, when, instead of looking to the cure of men's souls (which is their genuine office), they inflicted punishment on men's bodies, banishing them to remote and desolate places, after stigmatizing their faces, only for the testimony of a good conscience; when, not contented with those insufferable insolencies, they sought to bring in unheard-of canons into the Church-Arminian or Papistical ceremonies (whether you please to term them, there is not much difference)-imposing burdens upon men's consciences which they were not able to bear, and introducing the old abolished superstition of bowing to the altar? If it savoured either of Brownism or Anabaptism to endeavour to suppress the growth of those Romish errors, I appeal to any equal-minded Protestant either for my judge or witness. Nay, had the attempts of the bishops desisted here, tolerable they had been, and their power not so much questioned as since it hath; but when they saw the honourable the high court of Parliament had begun to look into their enormities and abuses, be holding how they wrested religion like a waxen nose to the furtherance of their ambitious purposes, then Troy was taken in-then they began to despair of holding any longer their usurped authority! and therefore, as much as in them lay, both by public declarations and private councils, they laboured to foment the civil differences between his majesty and his Parliament, abetting the proceedings of the malignants with large supplies of men and money, and stirring up the people to tumults by their seditious sermons. Surely, then, no man can account me an ill son of the Commonwealth if I delivered my opinion and passed my vote freely for their abolishment; which may, by the same equity, be put in practice by this Parliament, as the dissolution of monasteries, and their lazy inhabitants, the monks and fryars, were in Henry the Eighth's time; for, without disputc, these carried as much reputation in the kingdom then, as bishops have done in it since; and yet a Parliament then had power to put them down. Why, then, should not a Parliament have power to do the like to these, every way guilty of as many offences against the state as the former? For my own part, I attest God Almighty, the knower of all hearts, that neither envy, nor any private grudge, to all or any of the bishops, hath made me averse to their functions, but merely my zeal to religion and God's cause, which I perceived to be trampled under foot by the too extended authority of the prelates, who, according to the purity of their institution, should have been men of upright hearts and humble minds, shearing their flocks, and not flaying them. And whereas some will alledge it is no good argument to dissolve the function of bishops, because some bishops are vitious; to that I answer, since the vice of these bishops was derivative from the authority of their function, it is very fitting the function, which is the cause thereof, be corrected, and its authority divested of its borrowed feathers; otherwise it is impossible but the same power which made these present bishops (should the episcopal and prelatical dignity continue in its ancient height and vigour) so proud and arrogant would infuse the same vices into their suc cessors. But this is but a molehill to that mountain of scandalous reports that have been inflicted on my integrity to his majesty some boldly averring me for the author of the present distractions between his majesty and his Parliament, when I take God and all that know my proceedings to be my vouchers that I neither directly nor indirectly ever had a thought tending to the least disobedience or disloyalty to his majesty, whom I acknowledge my lawful king and sovereign, and would expend my blood as soon in his service as any subject he hath. "Tis true, when I perceived my life aimed at, and heard myself proscribed a traitor merely for my intireness of heart to the service of my country; when I was informed that I, with some other honourable and worthy members of the Parliament, were, against the priviledges thereof, demanded, even in the Parliament House, by his majesty, attended by a multitude of men-atarms and malignants, who, I verily believe, had, for some ill ends of their own, persuaded his majesty to that excess of rigour against us; when, for my own part (my conscience is to me a thousand witnesses in that behalf), I never harboured a thought which tendered to any disservice to his. majesty, nor ever had any intention prejudicial to the state; when, I say, notwithstanding my own innocence, I saw myself in such apparent danger, no man will think me blameworthy in that I took a care of my own safety, and fled for refuge to the protection of the Parliament, which, making my case their own, not only purged me and the rest of the guilt of high treason, but also secured our lives from the storm that was ready to burst out upon us. And if this hath been the occasion that hath withdrawn his majesty from the Parliament, surely the fault can no way be imputed to me, or any proceeding of mine, which never went further, either since his majesty's departure, nor be fore then, so far as they were warranted by the known laws of the land, and authorized by the indisputable and undeni- | able power of the Parliament. So long as I am secure in my own conscience that this is truth, I account myself above all their calumnies and falsehoods, which shall return upon themselves, and not wound my reputation in good and impartial men's opinions. But in that devilish conspiracy of Catiline against the state and senate of Rome, none among the senators was so obnoxious to the envy of the conspirators, or liable to their traducements, as that orator and patriot of his country, Cicero, because by his council and zeal to the Commonwealth their plot for the ruine thereof was discovered and prevented. Though I will not be so arrogant to parallel myself with that worthy, yet my case (if we may compare lesser things with great) hath to his a very near resemblance; the cause that I am so much maligned and reproached by ill-affected persons being because I have been forward in advancing the affairs of the kingdom, and have been taken notice of for that forwardness, they, out of their malice, converting that to a vice which, without boast be it spoken, I esteem as my principal vertue-my care to the public util-ed, and in its growth did so oppresse the gall and stop its ity. And since it is for that cause that I suffer these scandals, I shall endure them with patience, hoping that God in his great mercy will at last reconcile his majesty to his high court of Parliament, and then I doubt not but to give his royal self (though he be much incensed against me) a sufficient account of my integrity. In the interim, I hope the world will believe that I am not the first innocent man that hath been injured, and so will suspend their further censures of me. F. A Narrative of the Disease and Death of that noble Gentleman, John Pym, Esquire, late a Member of the honourable House of Commons, attested under the Hands of his Physicians, Chyrurgions, and Apothecary. FORASMUCH as there are divers uncertaine reportes and false suggestions spred abroad touching the disease and death of that noble gentleman, John Pym, Esquire, late a member of the honourable House of Commons, it is thought fit (for the undeceiving of some, and prevention of misconstruction and suspitions in others) to manifest to those who desire information the true cause of his lingring disease and death, as it was discovered (while hee lived) by his physitians, and manifested to the view both of them and many others, that were present at the dissection of his body after his death; for the skin of his body, it was without so much as any roughness, scarr, or scab, neither was there any breach either of the scarfe or true skin, much lesse any phihiriasis or lousie disease, as was reported; and as for that suggestion of his being poysoned, there appeared to the Attested by the physitians that attended him in his sick JOHN HAMPDEN.-1594-1643. Ax outline of the life of Hampden is all that will now be required for the purposes of this work. So little, after the most extensive researches, is known of the man, that all may, unfortunately, be very briefly told his history is written in the great public actions he forwarded through life, and in the assertion and defence of which he died; and these have already been minutely recorded, in the foregoing memoir of the dearest and most intimate of his friends, and the most eminent of his great fellow-labourers. Such are the only, though the sufficient records that permanently attest the wonderful influence of his character; for of all the speeches he delivered in the House of Commons, only one remains, and even its authenticity is more than doubtful. John Hampden was born in London* in 1594, ten years after the birth of Pym. His family may be traced in an unbroken line from the Saxon times. It received from Edward the Confessor the grant of the estate and residence in Buckinghamshire, from which the name is derived, and which in Doomsday Book are entered as in the possession of Baldwyn de Hampden. Escaping from the rapacity of the Norman princes, and strengthened by rich and powerful alliances, it continued in direct male succession, and increased in influence and wealth. Noble says, in his "Memoirs of the Protectoral House of Cromwell," with which, as well as with the old ancestors of Lord Say and Sele, the family of the Hampdens were allied, that few were so opulent in the fourteenth century as this family, but that one of them was then obliged to forfeit to the crown the three valuable manors of Tring, Wing, and Ivengo, for a blow given to the Black Prince in a dispute at tennis; and that by this only he escaped without losing his hand. A rude couplet, still remembered in that part of the kingdom, sustains the tradition: "Tring, Wing, and Ivengo did go Stoke Mandeville, Kimble, Prestwood, Dunton, Hoggestone, and Hartwell, and had lands in many other parishes. They appear to have been distinguished in chivalry; they were often intrusted with civil authority, and represented their native county in several Parliaments. We find, in the Rolls of Parliament, that some lands were escheated from the family on account of their adherence to the party of Henry VI., and that they were excepted from the general act of restitution in the 1st Edward IV. Edmund Hampden was one of the esquires of the body, and privy counsellor to Henry VII. ; and in the succeeding reign we find "Sir John Hampden of the Hill" appointed, with others, to attend upon the English queen at the interview of the sovereigns in the Field of Cloth of Gold. It is to his daughter, Sibel Hampden, who was nurse to the Prince of Wales, afterward Edward VI., and ancestress to William Penn, of Pennsylvania, that the monument is raised in Hampton Church, Middlesex, which records so many virtues and so much wisdom.* During the reign of Elizabeth, Griffith Hampden, having served as high sheriff of the county of Buckingham, represented it in the Parliament of 1585. By him the queen was received with great magnificence at his mansion at Hampden, which he had in part rebuilt and much enlarged. An extensive avenue was cut for her passage through the woods to the house; and a part of that opening, Lord Nugent says, is still to be seen on the brow of the Chilterns from many miles around, and retains the name of "The Queen's Gap," in commemoration of that visit. His eldest son, William, who succeeded him in 1591, was member, in 1593, for East Looe, then a considerable borough. He married Elizabeth, second daughter of Sir Henry Cromwell, of Hinchinbrooke in Huntingdonshire, and aunt to the Protector, and died in 1597, leaving two sons, John and Richard, the latter of whom, in after times, resided at Emmington in Oxfordshire. For striking the Black Prince a blow." This story, indeed, has not been suffered to The fact of London having been the birthpass without many doubts; but whether true place of the patriot has been disputed, but apor not, it has served no mean purpose in giving|parently without reason. He was reported to a name to one of the noblest works of roman-have been born at the manor-house, long in tie fiction in these latter times. Sir Walter Scott possessed himself of the tradition, as of every other, and the shape he received it in will be thought a corroboration of it, when compared with the versions of Noble and Lysons: "Tring, Wing, and Ivanhoe, And glad he could escape so!" Be the story true or false, however, no doubt the property of the Hampdens at this period was very extensive. They were not only rich and flourishing in their own county, but enjoyed considerable possessions in Essex, Berkshire, and Oxfordshire. In Buckinghamshire they were lords of Great and Little Hampden, This rests on the authority of Wood, who ascertained it indisputably by reference to the matriculation books at Oxford. t Vol. ii., p. 62. НЕ the possession of his family, at Hoggestone, in Twoo queenes that sceptre bore, gave creadyt to the dame, Query-Do these lingering sutes in any way allude to the royal quarrels of her ancestor? the admirable life of Hampden by Lord Nugent, whence it [For the authority of this page, the reader may consult is derived, p. 4-6, vol. i.-C.] † Anthony Wood. |