The excitement had not been confined to London.  When intelligence of the danger to which Hampden was exposed reached Buckinghamshire, it excited the alarm and indignation of the people.  Four thousand freeholders of that county, each of them wearing in his hat a copy of the protestation in favour of the Privileges of Parliament, rode up to London to defend the person of their beloved representative.  They came in a body to assure Parliament of their full resolution to defend its privileges.  Their petition was couched in the strongest terms.  “In respect,” said they, “of that latter attempt upon the honourable House of Commons, we are now come to offer our service to that end, and resolved, in their just defence, to live and die.”

A great struggle was clearly at hand.  Hampden had returned to Westminster much changed.  His influence had hitherto been exerted rather to restrain than to animate the zeal of his party.  But the treachery, the contempt of law, the thirst for blood, which the King had now shown, left no hope of a peaceable adjustment.  It was clear that Charles must be either a puppet or a tyrant, that no obligation of law or of honour could bind him, and that the only way to make him harmless was to make him powerless.

The attack which the King had made on the five members was not merely irregular in manner.  Even if the charges had been preferred legally, if the Grand Jury of Middlesex had found a true bill, if the accused persons had been arrested under a proper warrant and at a proper time and place, there would still have been in the proceeding enough of perfidy and injustice to vindicate the strongest measures which the Opposition could take.  To impeach Pym and Hampden was to impeach the House of Commons.  It was notoriously on account of what they had done as members of that House that they were selected as objects of vengeance; and in what they had done as members of that House the majority had concurred.  Most of the charges brought against them were common between them and the Parliament.  They were accused, indeed, and it may be with reason, of encouraging the Scotch army to invade England.  In doing this, they had committed what was, in strictness of law, a high offence, the same offence which Devonshire and Shrewsbury committed in 1688.  But the King had promised pardon and oblivion to those who had been the principals in the Scotch insurrection.  Did it then consist with his honour to punish the accessaries?  He had bestowed marks of his favour on the leading Covenanters.  He had given the great seal of Scotland to one chief of the rebels, a marquisate to another, an earldom to Leslie, who had brought the Presbyterian army across the Tweed.  On what principle was Hampden to be attainted for advising what Leslie was ennobled for doing?  In a court of law, of course, no Englishman could plead an amnesty granted to the Scots.  But, though not an illegal, it was surely an inconsistent and a most unkingly course, after pardoning and promoting the heads of the rebellion in one kingdom, to hang, draw, and quarter their accomplices in another.