Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 99/397

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ARMY HISTORICAL RESEARCH

Sheffield at Chalgrove. The 200 men of the latter three troops, Dundas’ dragoon troop, and the 100 men of Buller and Sanders were the only formed, cohesive units participating in the action, and perhaps those of Buller and Sanders should not be so considered because they had been hastily put together. The question, therefore, is who were the remaining 700-800 Parliamentarians? Clarendon’s original account suggests four infantry ensigns – the officers, not the colours they carried – were taken although no Parliamentarian Foot were engaged at Postcombe, Chinnor, South Weston, Aston Rowant or Chalgrove. It is logical, therefore, to conclude that the force engaged at Chalgrove was very much a hastily-assembled one and those who set out immediately from Thame on hearing the news of Rupert’s raid on Chinnor were the men readily at hand. Hampden certainly appears to have simply attached himself to Crosse, and his small group also included two senior officers, namely Luke and Dalbier. Similarly, Sanders was an infantry officer. As the account in A True Relation put it, Hampden was ‘amongst those Colonels and Commanders that were at an instant willing to hazard their lives upon this design’. 30 Of the men who were said by the Parliament Scout to have been ‘murdered’, George Austin commanded a troop of Horse in an unspecified regiment, while Fleming may be either Joseph Fleming, commanding a troop of Horse in another unspecified regiment, or conceivably an ensign named Fleming (Christian name unknown) in Lord Mandeville’s regiment of Foot. 31 Captain Stroope is presumably meant to be Adrian Scroope (Scrope), the later regicide, who commanded a troop of harquebusiers in Essex’s Horse but, in reality, far from being murdered, Scrope was not at Chalgrove at all having been captured in March 1643 and he was exchanged in July. Given that there were surplus officers without regiments because of the decline in Essex’s strength, and also that other officers were collecting pay due to their regiments, a larger proportion of officers than usual was probably in the force that sallied out against the Royalists when the alarm was raised at Thame. The Royalists were unsure initially whether Hampden was alive or dead. Rather than the accepted version of Hampden’s coffin being followed to Great Hampden Church, about 15 miles south-east of Thame, with his regiment’s drums muffled, its muskets reversed, and pikes flying a black ribbon with the villagers weeping, Hampden was almost certainly buried in secret. The Rector of Great Hampden, John Yates, in 1663 in writing Hampden Magna inadvertently gave a clue that Hampden was buried in an unmarked grave at the entrance to the chancel by recording that ‘at the Entrance into the Chancel hang a Surcoat of Arms belonging to the Hampdens with Mantel, Helmet & Crest bet: 4 Penons….Under these Penons hangs a Shield thereon the Arms of Hampden’. 32

30 BL, E 55 (11). 31 https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/cromwell-army-officers 32 https://johnhampdensregiment.org.uk/hampdenmagna/index.html#p=20