It was time to think of retreat, for Hampden was already in pursuit. He had slept at Watlington; but the tidings of the foray in the village hard by roused him from slumber, and he at once despatched a trooper to Essex to bid the Earl send foot and horse and cut off the Prince from Chiselhampton bridge. Essex objected and delayed till Hampden's patience broke down. The thought of his own village blazing in that Sunday dawn, his own friends and tenants stretched dead in the village streets, carried him beyond all thought of prudence. A troop of horse volunteered to follow him; and few as they were, he pushed at once with them for the bridge. The morning was now far gone; and Rupert had reached Chalgrove Field, a broad space without enclosures, where he had left his foot drawn up amidst the standing corn to secure his retreat. To Hampden the spot was a memorable one; it was there, if we trust a Royalist legend, that "he first mustered and drew up men in arms to rebel against the king." But he had little time for memories such as these. His resolve was to hold Rupert by charge after charge till Essex could come up; and the arrival of these troops of horse with some dragoons enabled him to attack. The attack was roughly beaten off, and the assailants thrown into confusion, but Hampden rallied the broken troops and again led them on. Again they were routed, and Rupert drew off across the river without further contest. It was indeed only the courage of Hampden that had fired his little troop to face the Cavaliers; and he could fire them no more. In the last charge a shot struck him in the shoulder and disabled his sword-arm. His head bending down, his hands resting on his horse's neck, he rode off the field before the action was done, "a thing he never used to do." The story of the country-side told how the wounded man rode first towards Pyrton. It was the village where he had wedded the wife he loved so well, and beyond it among the beech-trees of the Chilterns lay his own house of Hampden. But it was not there that he was to die. A party of Royalists drove him back from Pyrton, and turning northwards he paused for a moment at a little brook that crossed his path, then gathering strength leaped it, and rode almost fainting to Thame. At first the surgeons gave hopes of his recovery, but hope was soon over. For six days he lay in growing agony, sending counsel after counsel to the Parliament, till on the twenty-fourth of June the end drew near. "O Lord, save my country," so ended Hampden's prayers; "O Lord, be merciful to----!" here his speech failed him, and he fell back lifeless on his bed. With arms reversed and muffled flags, his own men bore him through the lanes and woods he knew so well to the little church that still stands unchanged beside his home. On the floor of its chancel the brasses of his father and his grandfather mark their graves. A step nearer to the altar, unmarked by brass or epitaph, lies the grave in which, with bitter tears and cries, his greencoats laid the body of the leader whom they loved. "Never were heard such piteous cries at the death of one man as at Master Hampden's." With him indeed all seemed lost. But bitter as were their tears, a noble faith lifted these Puritans out of despair. As they bore him to his grave they sang, in the words of the ninetieth psalm, how fleeting in the sight of the Divine Eternity is the life of man. But as they turned away the yet nobler words of the forty-third psalm broke from their lips, as they prayed that the God who had smitten them would send out anew His light and His truth, that they might lead them and bring them to His holy hill. "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou so disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall yet praise him, which is the help of my countenance, and my God!"