The death of Hampden was bewailed even more than that of Brooke. "The memory of this deceased Colonel," said the _Weekly Intelligencer_, "is such that in no age to come but it will more and more be had in honour and esteem; a man so religious, and of that prudence, judgment, temper, valour, and integrity, that he hath left few his like behind him." The old newspaper was right in its prediction of Hampden's growing fame.
Other calamities overtook the Parliament cause. From the spring of the year, success had followed the King's banners. Royalists occupied Devon and Dorset; and the Earl of Wilmot had beaten Waller at Lansdowne and at Devizes. Summer saw the defeat of Lord Fairfax in Yorkshire. But Charles' victories at that period culminated in the taking of Bradford, after the battle of Atherton Moor, and in the capture of Bristol just before the siege of Gloucester.
Bradford and Gloucester were Puritan towns, beleaguered by what they looked upon as prelatical armies; and the incidents connected with the siege of each serve at once to bring out some curious features in the memorable strife, and to shew the declining condition of the Parliament, at the time when the Westminster Assembly held its first sittings. Bradford had suffered assault so early as December, 1642. The Royalists, who were encamped at Bowling Hill, had selected Sunday morning, as the Puritans were attending church, to plant their guns against the steeple; but a snowfall, the bursting of a cannon, and other misadventures on the part of the besiegers, for a time saved the besieged. The following midsummer, the church, which was still the prize in dispute, endured "many a shake," whilst the people hung up wool-packs by the side of the building, only to see, however, almost immediately afterwards, the ropes cut down by the shots of the enemy.[353]
On Lord's-day morning, the Royalists beat drums for a parley, and spent all the day in removing their guns "into the mouth of the town," the inhabitants being so reduced that they had little ammunition, and for their matches were compelled to use "untwisted cords dipped in oil." About sunset the parley ended, when a shot killed three men who were sitting on a bench; and during all night the valley shone with the flash of artillery. When resistance became useless, the vanquished thought that the Earl of Newcastle, who commanded the King's troops, would shew them no mercy; but he gave them quarter, on the ground, as was superstitiously rumoured, that an apparition on a Sunday night had pulled the clothes from off his bed several times, crying in tones of lamentation, "Pity poor Bradford." "A young Puritan gentleman," reported as having attempted to break through the enemy's lines, became famous in after days as David Clarkson, the Nonconformist divine.[354]