Next to John Pym comes John Hampden--the illustrious member for Buckinghamshire, universally known for his resistance of ship-money, and for his brief but brilliant military career. His religious character and the part he took in ecclesiastical affairs have, however, been much overlooked; yet, in early life, as the friend of Sir John Eliot, he had followed that single-minded and unflinching patriot in his noble resistance of ecclesiastical as well as regal despotism, and was one of the leaders of the advanced party which sought to promote reforms in Church and State. In 1629 he was engaged in preparing bills for enlarging the liberty of hearing the Word of God, and for preventing corruption in the collation to benefices, headships, fellowships, and scholarships in Colleges, besides other measures of less importance in a similar direction. "He was," says Clarendon, "not a man of many words, and rarely began the discourse, or made the first entrance upon any business that was assumed; but a very weighty speaker, and after he had heard a full debate, and observed how the House was like to be inclined, took up the argument, and shortly, and clearly, and craftily, so stated it, that he commonly conducted it to the conclusion he desired; and if he found he could not do that, he never was without the dexterity to divert the debate to another time, and to prevent the determining anything in the negative which might prove inconvenient in the future."[80] All this, when stript of its manifest unfairness, means neither more nor less than that this persistent enemy of ship-money must have been also a skilful parliamentary tactician, possessing a rare insight into men and motives. His modesty and moderation are acknowledged even by this prejudiced historian; and the rapid progress of his opinions on ecclesiastical affairs made him what the same authority truly calls, "a root-and-branch man"--a fact which, though doubted by one of his biographers, is correctly maintained by another.[81] His high intellectual forehead, his delicately chiselled features, his eyes so calmly looking you through, his lips of compressed firmness, with a kind of melancholy presentiment imprinted on his whole face--betoken a man born to a great but sad destiny; and we do not wonder at the confidence he inspired, whether he appealed to the patriotism of his tenantry and neighbours in the old family mansion down in Buckinghamshire, at the back of the Chiltern hills, or stood up to address the grave assembly in St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster.[82] Perhaps it is right here to mention a man of a very different stamp, who sat near these illustrious statesmen and acted with them. Henry Marten, member for Berks--and, after his father's death, renowned through the county for his hospitable entertainments in the vale of "White Horse"--was as gay and humorous, and as fond of fun as the other two were serious and dignified. Nor can it be denied that he seems to