The bitter speeches against Essex came to no result. Complaints were made, but there was a disinclination to separate from him. The ill-will of the leaders, however, was manifested by the destitution in which the army was left, through the insufficiency of the resources and the irregularity of its pay. A royalist plot, upon the point of bursting forth in the city, was discovered: two of the conspirators only, Challoner and Tompkins, rich citizens of London, suffered the extreme penalty. Edmund Waller, a member of the House of Commons and already a famous poet, repurchased his life with cowardly revelations. Many important men were compromised, and while Parliament perceived that conspiracy was going on at its doors against its safety, successive disasters overtook its arms and placed its cause in peril. {104} A great loss--that of Hampden--was the signal for these reverses. A trifling encounter of cavalry had taken place on the 18th of June, in the plain of Chalgrave, a few leagues from Oxford. Prince Rupert defeated the Parliamentarians. Hampden was there. "I saw him," said a prisoner, "go away, contrary to his custom, from the field of battle before the end of the action. His head was bent low, his hands rested upon the neck of his horse; without doubt he is wounded." The people of Oxford were agitated, almost fearing to rejoice. The king sent one of his physicians, a country neighbor of Hampden, to know whether he did not want assistance. A thought of conciliation towards this powerful adversary had crossed the mind of Charles. Doctor Giles found Hampden dying: a bullet had shattered his shoulder. He was told, however, who had sent to enquire after him, and with what intention. A violent agitation seized the wounded man. He wished to speak, but death had already frozen his tongue; he expired a few instants afterwards. When he was no longer to be feared, the people rejoiced in Oxford; while in London, and in nearly all the kingdom, the grief was as violent as it was profound. "Never had man inspired so much confidence in a people. Whoever belonged to the national party, no matter in what degree or for what motives, counted upon Hampden for the success of his wishes. The more moderate believed in his wisdom, the more passionate in his patriotic devotion, the more honest in his uprightness, the more intriguing in his skill. Prudent and reserved, while ready to brave all perils, he who had never yet been wanting suddenly disappointed all hopes. A marvellous good fortune, which forever placed his name in the high position assigned to it by the expectation of his contemporaries, and perhaps saved his virtue as well as his glory, from the rocks whereon revolutions impel and shatter their noblest favorites!" [Image] Death of Hampden. {105}