John Hampden - English Civil War

English Civil War

When the English Civil War began, Hampden was appointed a member of the committee for safety, levied a regiment of Buckinghamshire men for the parliamentary cause, and in his capacity of deputy-lieutenant carried out the parliamentary Militia Ordinance in the county. In the earlier operations of the war he bore himself gallantly and well. He took no actual part in the Battle of Edgehill (23 October 1642). His troops in the rear, however, arrested Prince Rupert of the Rhine's charge at Kineton, and he urged Essex to renew the attack here, and also after the disaster at Brentford. In the spring of 1643, Hampden's regiment took part in the siege of Reading, which surrendered on 27 April. Although Essex intended to advance on the King's headquarters at Oxford, he remained at Thame because of widespread sickness in the army, a shortage of cavalry and to await a paymaster with funds to pay his troops.

But it is not on his skill as a regimental officer that Hampden's fame rests. In war as in peace his distinction lay in his power of disentangling the essential part from the non-essential. In the previous constitutional struggle he had seen that the one thing necessary was to establish the supremacy of the House of Commons. In the military struggle which followed he saw, as Cromwell saw afterwards, that the one thing necessary was to beat the enemy. He protested at once against Essex's hesitations and compromises. In the formation of the confederacy of the six associated counties, which was to supply a basis for Cromwell's operations, he took an active part. His influence was felt alike in parliament and in the field. But he was not in supreme command, and he had none of that impatience which often leads able men to fail in the execution of orders of which they disapprove.