ought into
practical shape a league which was destined to be the mainstay of the
Parliamentary force. Nowhere was the Puritan feeling so strong as in the
counties about London, in his own Buckinghamshire, in Hertfordshire,
Bedfordshire, and the more easterly counties of Huntingdon, Cambridge,
and Northampton. Hampden's influence as well as that of his cousin,
Oliver Cromwell, who was already active in the war, was bent to bind
these shires together in an association for the aid of the Parliament,
with a common force, a common fund for its support, and Lord Manchester
for its head. The association was at last brought about; and Hampden
turned his energies to reinforcing the army of Essex.

[Sidenote: Rupert's raid.]

The army was strengthened; but no efforts could spur its leader into
activity. Essex had learned his trade in the Thirty Years War; and like
most professional soldiers he undervalued the worth of untrained levies.
As a great noble, too, he shrank from active hostilities against the
king. He believed that in the long run the want of money and of men
would force Charles to lay down his arms, and to come to a peaceful
understanding with the Parliament. To such a fair adjustment of the
claims of both a victory of the Parliament would, he thought, be as
fatal as a victory of the king. Against this policy of inaction Hampden
struggled in vain. It was to no purpose that he urged Essex to follow
Charles after Edgehill, or to attack him after his repulse before
Brentford. It was equally to no purpose that he urged at the opening of
1643 an attack upon Oxford. Essex drew nearer to the town indeed; but
at the news of the queen's junction with her husband, and of the
successes of the Cornishmen, he fell back to his old cantonment about
Thame. Hampden's knowledge of the country warned him of danger from the
loose disposition of the army, and he urged Essex to call in the distant
outposts and strengthen his line; but his warnings were unheeded. So
carelessly were the troops scattered about that Rupert resolved to beat
up their quarters; and leaving Oxford in the afternoon of Saturday, the
17th of June, he seized the bridge over the Thame at Chiselhampton, and
leaving a force of foot to secure his retreat, threw himself boldly with
his horsemen into the midst of the Parliamentary army. Essex with the
bulk of his men lay quietly sleeping a few miles to the northward at
Thame as Rupert struck in the darkness through the lea