"_June_ 26.--Mr. Hampden is dead! By a singular mark of the divine judgment (Mr. Hyde says), he was mortally wounded on Chalgrove Field, the very place where he began not many months since to proclaim the rebellious Ordinance Militia. It was in a skirmish with Prince Rupert. The same night the rumour spread among us that something beyond ordinary ailed him, for he was seen to ride off the field in the middle of the fight (a thing never before known in him), with his head low drooping, and his hands on his horse's neck. Less than a fortnight afterwards, he died in sore agonies, they say, but persevering in his delusion to the end, so that his heart was not troubled. "The king would have sent him a chirurgeon of his own, had it been of any use. "He was much on my Mother's heart, since she heard of his being wounded, for he was ever held to be a brave and blameless gentleman. She grieved sore that he uttered no one repentant word. "(Yet the last word we heard he spoke was not so ill a word to die with; 'O God, save my bleeding country!') "'But,' said she, 'there are Papists who die without ever seeing anything wrong in the mass, or in regarding the blessed Virgin as Queen of Heaven, who yet die calling on the blessed Saviour with such piteous entreaty as he surely faileth not to hear. And it may be trusted Mr. Hampden's heresy is no worse.' "To most around us it is simply the rebels' loss in him that is accounted of. And that they say is more than an army. For he was the man best beloved in all the land. Some of us, however, speak of the loss to England, and say that his and my Lord Falkland's were the only right hands through which this sundered realm might have met in fellowship again. "I see nothing glorious in the glories of this war, nothing triumphant in its triumphs, no gain in its spoils. "It makes my heart ache to see Prince Rupert and his Cavaliers return flushed with success and laden with plunder from raids all over the country. I cannot help seeing in my heart the poor farmers wandering about their despoiled granaries and stalls, and the goodwife bemoaning her empty dairy, and the children missing the cattle and poultry, which are not 'provision' only to them, but friends; and soon, alack poor foolish babes, to miss provision too and cry for it in vain. "These are our own English homes that are ravaged and wasted. What triumph is there in it for any of us? I would the hearts of these Palatine princes yearned a little more tenderly towards their mother's countrymen. "The only hope is that all these horrors will bring the end, the end, the 'Peace, peace,' for which my Lord Falkland groans. "But I know not; I think of Netherby and the Draytons; and I scarce deem English hearts are to be won back by terror and plunder. "_August_ 28, 1643.--Better hopes! Something like a glimpse of the end, at last. "Two memorable months.