The causes of the dissolution of the Short Parliament, and the history of the second Scottish war which compelled Charles I. to summon the Long Parliament, hardly form a part of our subject: it is to be observed however that during the summer and autumn, Hampden, with other leading persons of the popular party, was engaged in active correspondence with the leaders of the Scottish insurrection, in whose success, as tending to the further embarrassment of the king, they placed their best hope of obtaining security for the maintenance of the liberties and privileges of the English people. Of the first great act of that Parliament, the impeachment of Strafford, he was a zealous supporter, and a member of the committee of twelve appointed to arrange the evidence, and to conduct that memorable trial. After the Commons, for reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained, thought fit to change the method of proceeding by introducing a bill of attainder, the name of Hampden appears in none of the records: and it is probable that he abstained from taking any part in the business. It is important to keep this in mind, because the censure, which has justly been cast upon the proceedings of the House of Commons against Lord Strafford, applies solely to the attainder, not to the impeachment. To the question, why, if Hampden disapproved of the attainder, he did not as resolutely oppose it as he had supported the impeachment, the following hypothetical answer is supplied by Lord Nugent. “In a case doubtful to him only as matter of precedent; but clear to him in respect of the guilt of the accused person; in a case in which the accused person, in his estimation, deserved death, and in which all law, except that of the sceptre and the sword, was at an end if he had escaped it; when all the ordinary protection of law to the subject throughout the country was suspended, and suspended mainly by the counsels of Strafford himself, Hampden was not prepared to heroically immolate the liberties of England in order to save the life of him who would have destroyed them. Hampden probably considered the bill which took away Strafford’s life (and indeed it must in fairness be so considered) as a revolutionary act undertaken for the defence of the Commonwealth.”