quarters, made the green woods and the white hills that summer day resound to the beautiful prayer and the cheerful song, so appropriate to their present circumstances: "Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation. O, deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man! For thou art the God of my strength, why dost thou cast me off? Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let me bring them unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles. Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy: yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God, my God. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance and my God."[352] [Sidenote: _John Hampden._] The death of Hampden was bewailed even more than that of Brooke. "The memory of this deceased Colonel," said the _Weekly Intelligencer_, "is such that in no age to come but it will more and more be had in honour and esteem; a man so religious, and of that prudence, judgment, temper, valour, and integrity, that he hath left few his like behind him." The old newspaper was right in its prediction of Hampden's growing fame. Other calamities overtook the Parliament cause. From the spring of the year, success had followed the King's banners. Royalists occupied Devon and Dorset; and the Earl of Wilmot had beaten Waller at Lansdowne and at Devizes. Summer saw the defeat of Lord Fairfax in Yorkshire. But Charles' victories at that period culminated in the taking of Bradford, after the battle of Atherton Moor, and in the capture of Bristol just before the siege of Gloucester. Bradford and Gloucester were Puritan towns, beleaguered by what they looked upon as prelatical armies; and the incidents connected with the siege of each serve at once to bring out some curious features in the memorable strife, and to shew the declining condition of the Parliament, at the time when the Westminster Assembly held its first sittings. Bradford had suffered assault so early as December, 1642. The Royalists, who were encamped at Bowling Hill, had selected Sunday morning, as the Puritans were attending church, to plant their guns against the steeple; but a snowfall, the bursting of a cannon, and other misadventures on the part of the besiegers, for a time saved the besieged. The following midsummer, the church, which was still the prize in dispute, endured "many a shake," whilst the people hung up wool-packs by the side of the building, only to see, however, almost immediately afterwards, the ropes cut down by the shots of the enemy.[353]