Amid these exciting scenes, so critical and important in the annals of British freedom, John Hampden made his first appearance upon the stage of public life. He was a member of this memorable Parliament, and though at that time a young man of twentyseven years only, he was admitted to an intimate share in the councils of the veteran statesmen, who then conducted the great parliamentary contest for the liberties of the nation. No man could have been better suited to the crisis in which he was destined to act so momentous a part, or have possessed higher qualifications for the advanced post of danger and responsibility which he was soon to occupy. Of an ancient and most influential family, holding large landed estates in Buckinghamshire, he received the advantages of a finished education in the University of Oxford, and afterwards pursued the study of the law at the Inner Temple, though he never followed it as a profession. Marrying at the age of twenty-five, he retired to his paternal estate in Buckingham, where he engaged with spirit and zeal in the independent pursuits of a country-gentleman, never losing sight, however, of the liberal studies for which he had contracted an early taste, and which now, with domestic sympathies, formed the ornament and the charm of his retirement, while they trained him for a wider sphere of usefulness, when his country should demand his services.

A better type of the enlightened and independent Commons of England could not be seen than John Hampden now presented. With a mind enlarged and

4

liberalized by study and observation, he could not but partake of the free spirit which characterised the age; and having seen one of the most vital franchises of the people wantonly violated in the person of a Representative of his own county, he naturally entered upon public life with a jealousy of power quickened by a nearer view of its abuses. The operation of this feeling, however, never disturbed the balance of his well-poised character. He was calm, self-collected and prudent, at the same time that he was sagacious, resolute, persevering and courageous. His character has been drawn, with great minuteness of detail, by two of his most distinguished contemporaries, of the party opposed to him; and in following them, there can be but little danger of exhibiting too flattering a portrait. He is described by both of these authorities as a man of the highest order of wisdom and abilities, set off by an affability of manners and modesty of deportment which enabled him to win the hearts, while he convinced the understandings, of his hearers and associates. Lord Clarendon says, "he was, indeed, a very wise man and of great parts, and possessed with the most absolute spirit of popularity, that is, the most absolute faculties to govern the people, of any man I ever saw." Sir Philip Warwick, who like Clarendon, was a member of Parliament at the same time with Hampden, and like Clarendon also strongly opposed to Hampden's political principles and views, says of him, speaking more particularly in reference to the period of the Long Parliament, "He was certainly a person of the greatest abilities of of his party, and

any

had a great knowledge both in scholarship and the law."

Lord Clarendon has furnished the clue to the extraordinary "spirit of popularity" he ascribes to Hampden, in a trait of his character which deserves to be specially remembered. Besides that "flowing courtesy to all men" which he describes as the distinguishing and graceful attribute of his manners, he says, "He was a supreme governor over all his passions and affections, and had thereby a great power over other men's." He farther describes him as possessed "of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious; of parts not to be imposed upon by the most subtle or sharp; and of a personal courage equal to his best parts."

We are naturally curious to learn what were the qualities as a speaker of one who acquired such absolute influence and ascendancy in the parliamentary assemblies of his country-the great arena of intellectual digladiation and public debate. And here again we see him painted to the life by one or two vivid touches of the pencil from the same contemporary limners. "He was not a man of many words," says Clarendon, "but a very weighty speaker." Sir Philip Warwick writes, "He was of a concise and significant language, and the mildest yet subtillest speaker of any man in the House." The Bacons, the Cokes, the Seldens, the Hampdens of that age did not, more than the Franklins, the Washingtons, the Jeffersons, the Adamses of our own great Revolutionary æra, consider "vain repetitions" and "much speaking" the

essentials of parliamentary eloquence or political wisdom.*

We shall see all these rare and extraordinary qualities, which combined to form the character of Hampden, strikingly exemplified in the high career of patriotism and virtue he was about to run through twenty years of the most troubled and trying scenes of his country's history.

Another Parliament intervened, and the ignominious and arbitrary reign of James the First was closed by the death of that unhappy Prince. His character and conduct as a sovereign have been far too leniently dealt with by the larger number of the Historians of that period. The ridicule and contempt he incurred as a pedant and a buffoon seem to have redeemed him from the sterner condemnation due to him as a tyrant and a profligate. It was the lofty pretensions of monarchical power so pompously asserted by him, his frequent and offensive denial, as well as invasion, of the inherent privileges of the People and their Representatives, and the shameless profligacy and corruption of both principle and morals he encouraged in his court

*The celebrated Ben Johnson has described Lord Bacon's style of speaking in terms so graphic and striking and conveying such a picture of graceful and effective eloquence, that the introduction of the passage here will be readily excused. "There happened," says he, "in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of its own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. The fear of every man that heard him was that he should make an end."

and dependants, which opened the source of all those bitter waters that, for so long and dismal a period, overrun and desolated the country.

His son, who now succeeded him, inherited all the father's absurd and antiquated notions of the divine right and absolute authority of Kings. With a personal character of infinitely more respectability, he was imbued with the same fatal maxims of governmentinstilled into him by the assiduous indoctrination as well as example of his father-and what was, perhaps, a still greater misfortune, he inherited with the public principles and policy of his father, his father's odious favourite and minister, the vain, the light, the reckless, the imperious Buckingham. Circumstances like these were but little favourable to mutual confidence and cordiality between the new King and his Parliament. Charles was exceedingly dissatisfied with the scanty supplies granted him by the Parliament, which he called together immediately on his accession; and the Parliament, on the other hand, warned by the encroachments of the late reign, and seeing the same pernicious influence and doctrines predominant in the councils of the new King, determined to grant no farther supplies till they had obtained some substantial guarantee for the public liberty. In this state of mutual disgust and alienation, the King dissolved his first Parliament.

Another was assembled in the following year, and the King renewed, with increased urgency, his demand for larger supplies. The Commons, adopting a preliminary vote in favour of a more liberal supply, reserved the passing of that vote into a law till the