THE SHIPMONEY TRIAL.

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SHIPMONEY.

On the very day while Oliver Cromwell was writing this Letter at St. Ives, two obscure individuals, Peter Aldridge and Thomas Lane, Assessors of Shipmoney,' over in Buckinghamshire, had assembled a Parish Meeting in the Church of Great Kimble, to assess and rate the Shipmoney of the said. Parish: there, in the cold weather, at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, '11 January, 1635,' the Parish did attend, 'John Hampden, Esquire,' at the head of them, and by a Return still extant, refused to pay the same or any portion thereof,— witness the above 'Assessors,' witness also two 'Parish Constables' whom we remit from such unexpected celebrity. John Hampden's share for this Parish is thirty-one shillings and sixpence for another Parish it is twenty shillings; on which latter sum, not on the former, John Hampden was tried. Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. i., p. 132.

THE SHIPMONEY TRIAL.

In the end of that same year [1637] there had risen all over England huge rumours concerning the Shipmoney Trial at London. On the 6th of November, 1637, this important Process of Mr. Hampden's began. Learned Mr. St. John, a dark tough man, of the toughness of leather, spake with irrefragable law-eloquence, law-logic, for three days running, on Mr. Hampden's side; and learned Mr. Holborn for three other days;-preserved yet by Rushworth in acres of typography, unreadable now to all mortals. For other learned gentlemen, tough as leather, spoke on the opposite side; and learned judges animadverted; at endless length, amid the expectancy of men. With brief pauses, the Trial lasted for three weeks and three days. Mr. Hampden became the most famous man in England, by accident partly. The sentence was not delivered.

till April, 1638; and then it went against Mr. Hampden: judgment in Exchequer ran to this effect, Consideratum est per eosdem Barones quod prædictus Johannes Hampden de iisdem viginti solidis oneretur,'-He must pay the Twenty shillings, et inde satisfaciat. No hope in Law-Courts, then; Petition of Right and Tallagio non concedendo have become an old song. Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. i., p. 137.

BATTLE OF NASEBY.

The old Hamlet of Naseby stands yet, on its old hill-top, very much as it did in Saxon days, on the Northwestern border of Northamptonshire, some seven or eight miles from MarketHarborough in Leicestershire, nearly on a line, and nearly midway, between that Town and Daventry. A peaceable old Hamlet, of some eight-hundred souls; clay cottages for labourers, but neatly thatched and swept; smith's shop, saddler's shop, beer-shop, all in order; forming a kind of square, which leads off Southwards into two long streets: the old Church, with its graves, stands in the centre, the truncated spire finishing itself with a strange old Ball, held up by rods; a 'hollow copper Ball, which came from Boulogne in Henry the Eighth's time,'-—which has, like Hudibras's breeches, 'been at the Siege of Bullen.' The ground is upland, moorland, though now growing corn; was not enclosed till the last generation, and is still somewhat bare of wood. It stands nearly in the heart of England: gentle Dulness, taking a turn at etymology, sometimes derives it from Navel; 'Navesby, quasi Navelsby, from being,' &c.: Avon Well, the distinct source of Shakspeare's Avon, is on the Western slope of the high grounds; Nen and Welland, streams leading towards Cromwell's Fen-country, begin to gather themselves from boggy places on the Eastern side. The grounds, as we say, lie high; and are still, in their new subdivisions, known by the name of 'Hills,' 'Rutput Hill,' 'Mill Hill,' 'Dust Hill,' and the

BATTLE OF NASEBY.

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like, precisely as in Rushworth's time: but they are not properly hills at all; they are broad blunt clayey masses, swelling towards and from each other, like indolent waves of a sea, sometimes of miles in extent.

It was on this high moor-ground, in the centre of England, that King Charles, on the 14th of June, 1645, fought his last Battle; dashed fiercely against the New-Model Army, which he had despised till then; and saw himself shivered utterly to ruin thereby. Prince Rupert, on the King's right wing, charged up the hill, and carried all before him;' but LieutenantGeneral Cromwell charged down hill on the other wing, likewise carrying all before him, and did not gallop off the field to plunder. He, Cromwell, ordered thither by the Parliament, had arrived from the Association two days before, 'amid shouts from the whole Army:' he had the ordering of the Horse this morning. Prince Rupert, on returning from his plunder: finds the King's Infantry a ruin; prepares to charge again with the rallied Cavalry; but the Cavalry, too, when it came to the point, broke all asunder,' never to reassemble more. The chase went through Harborough, where the King had already been that morning, when in an evil hour he turned back, to revenge some 'surprise of an outpost at Naseby the night before,' and give the Roundheads battle.

Ample details of this Battle, and of the movements prior and posterior to it, are to be found in Sprigge, or copied with some abridgment into Rushworth; who has also copied a strange old Plan of the Battle; half-plan, half-picture, which the SaleCatalogues are very chary of, in the case of Sprigge. By assiduous attention, aided by this Plan, as the old names yet stick to their localities, the narrative can still be, and has lately been, pretty accurately verified, and the Figure of the old Battle dimly brought back again. The reader shall imagine it, for the present. On the crown of Naseby Height stands a modern Battle-monument; but, by an unlucky oversight, it is above a mile to the east of where the Battle really was. There are, likewise, two modern Books about Naseby and its Battle, both of them without value.

The Parliamentary Army stood ranged on the height still partly called Mill Hill,' as, in Rushworth's time, a mile and half from Naseby; the King's Army, on a parallel Hill,' its back to Harborough, with the wide table of upland now named Broad Moor between them, where indeed the main brunt of the action still clearly enough shows itself to have been. There are hollow spots, of a rank vegetation, scattered over that Broad Moor, which are understood to have once been burial mounds, some of which, one to my knowledge, have been, with more or less of sacrilege, verified as such. A friend of mine has in his cabinet two ancient grinder-teeth, dug lately from that ground, and waits for an opportunity to rebury them there.—Sound, effectual grinders, one of them very large; which ate their breakfast on the fourteenth morning of June two hundred years ago, and, except to be clenched once in grim battle, had never work to do more in this world! A stack of dead bodies, perhaps about a hundred, had been buried in this Trench, piled, as in a wall, a man's length thick: the skeletons lay in courses, the heads of one course to the heels of the next; one figure, by the strange position of the bones, gave us the hideous notion of its having been thrown in before death. We did not proceed far;-perhaps some half-dozen skeletons. The bones were treated with all piety, watched rigorously over Sunday, till they could be covered in again.' Sweet friends, for Jesus' sake forbear!

At this Battle, Mr. John Rushworth our Historical Rushworth, had, unexpectedly, for some instants, sight of a very famous person. Mr. John is Secretary to Fairfax, and they have placed him to-day among the Baggage-wagons, near Naseby Hamlet, above a mile from the fighting, where he waits in an anxious manner. It is known how Prince Rupert broke our left wing while Cromwell was breaking their left. gentleman of public employment, in the late service near Naseby,' writes next day, 'Harborough, 15th June, 2 in the morning,' a rough graphic Letter in the Newspapers, wherein is this sentence :

'A

* * * "A party of theirs that broke through the left wing of horse, came quite behind the rear to our Train, the

BRIDGET CROMWELL'S WEDDING.

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Leader of them being a person somewhat in habit like the General, in a red montero, as the General had. He came as a friend; our commander of the guard of the Train went with his hat in his hand, and asked him, How the day went? thinking it had been the General: the Cavalier, who we since heard was Rupert, asked him and the rest, If they would have quarter? They cried No; gave fire, and instantly beat them off. It was a happy deliverance," without doubt.

There were taken here a good few ladies of quality in carriages, and above a hundred Irish ladies not of quality, tattery camp-followers, with long skean-knives about a foot in length,' which they well knew how to use, upon whom, I fear, the Ordinance against Papists pressed hard this day. The King's Carriage was also taken, with a Cabinet and many Royal Autographs in it, which, when printed, made a sad impression against his Majesty,-gave, in fact, a most melancholy view of the veracity of his Majesty. "On the word of a King," all was lost!

Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. i., p. 278.

BRIDGET CROMWELL'S WEDDING.

And now, dated on the Monday before, at Holton, a country Parish in those parts, there is this still legible in the old Church Register, intimately interesting to some friends of ours! "HENRY IRETON, Commissary-General to Sir Thomas Fairfax, and BRIDGET, Daughter to Oliver Cromwell, LieutenantGeneral of the Horse, to the said Sir Thomas Fairfax, were married, by Mr. Dell, in the Lady Whorwood her house in Holton, June 15th, 1646.-ALBAN EALES, Rector."

Ireton, we are to remark, was one of Fairfax's Commissioners on the Treaty for surrendering Oxford, and busy under the walls there at present. Holton is some five miles east of the City; Holton House, we guess, by various indications, to have been Fairfax's own quarter. Dell, already and afterwards well known, was the General's Chaplain at this date. Of 'the Lady