GREAT HAMPDEN, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: John Hampden, leader of the opposition to King Charles’ eleven-year campaign to impose despotic rule on England, and who the monarch attempted to arrest in January on charges of treason, is raising a regiment of foot in his native Buckinghamshire.

Hampden, whose resistance to the King's “Ship-Money” raid on private property mesmerized the kingdom and inspired widespread refusal to pay the doubtfully legal tax, is rallying the shire-men even as Charles, from his headquarters in York, calls those who claim allegiance to the crown – with special solicitude, it’s said, for those who yet submit, a century after Henry VIII declared England’s independence, to the spiritual tyranny of Rome.

“King Charles has sought the complete and utter alteration of the laws and religion of England,” Hampden said. “He has meant to overwhelm and extinguish the liberty, peace, and prosperity of this kingdom. Resistance is not merely a right. It is a duty.”