[1] An earlier viscountcy was bestowed in 1776 on Robert
Hampden-Trevor, 4th Baron Trevor (1706-1783), a great-grandson of the
daughter of John Hampden, the patriot; it became extinct in 1824 by
the death of the 3rd viscount.
HAMPDEN, JOHN (c. 1595-1643), English statesman, the eldest son of
William Hampden, of Great Hampden in Buckinghamshire, a descendant of a
very ancient family of that place, said to have been established there
before the Conquest, and of Elizabeth, second daughter of Sir Henry
Cromwell, and aunt of Oliver, the future protector, was born about the
year 1595. By his father's death, when he was but a child, he became the
owner of a good estate and a ward of the crown. He was educated at the
grammar school at Thame, and on the 30th of March 1610 became a commoner
of Magdalen College at Oxford. In 1613 he was admitted a student of the
Inner Temple. He first sat in parliament for the borough of Grampound in
1621, representing later Wendover in the first three parliaments of
Charles I., Buckinghamshire in the Short Parliament of 1640, and
Wendover again in the Long Parliament. In the early days of his
parliamentary career he was content to be overshadowed by Eliot, as in
its later days he was content to be overshadowed by Pym and to be
commanded by Essex. Yet it is Hampden, and not Eliot or Pym, who lives
in the popular imagination as the central figure of the English
revolution in its earlier stages. It is Hampden whose statue rather than
that of Eliot or Pym has been selected to take its place in St Stephen's
Hall as the noblest type of the parliamentary opposition, as Falkland's
has been selected as the noblest type of parliamentary royalism.
Something of Hampden's fame no doubt is owing to the position which he
took up as the opponent of ship-money. But it is hardly possible that
even resistance to ship-money would have so distinguished him but for
the mingled massiveness and modesty of his character, his dislike of all
pretences in himself or others, his brave contempt of danger, and his
charitable readiness to shield others as far as possible from the evil
consequences of their actions. Nor was he wanting in that skill which
enabled him to influence men towards the ends at which he aimed, and
which was spoken of as subtlety by those who disliked his ends.
During these first parliaments Hampden did not, so far as we know, open
his lips in public debate, but he was increasingly employed in committee
work, for which he seems to have had a special aptitude. In 1626 he took
an active part in the preparation of the charges against Buckingham. In
January 1627 he was bound over to answer at the council board for his
refusal to pay the forced loan. Later in the year he was committed to
the gatehouse, and then sent into confinement in Hampshire, from which
he was liberated just before the meeting of the third parliament of the
reign, in which he once more rendered useful but unobtrusive assistance
to his leaders.
When the breach came in 1629 Hampden is found in epistolary
correspondence with the imprisoned Eliot, discussing with him the
prospects of the Massachusetts colony,[1] or rendering hospitality and
giving counsel to the patriot's sons now that they were deprived of a
father's personal care. It was not till 1637, however, that his
resistance to the payment of ship-money gained for his name the lustre
which it has never since lost. (See SHIP-MONEY.) Seven out of the twelve
judges sided against him, but the connexion between the rights of
property and the parliamentary system was firmly established in the
popular mind. The tax had been justified, says Clarendon, who expresses
his admiration at Hampden's "rare temper and modesty" at this crisis,
"upon such grounds and reasons as every stander-by was able to swear was
not law" (_Hist._ i. 150, vii. 82).
In the Short Parliament of 1640 Hampden stood forth amongst the leaders.
He guided the House in the debate on the 4th of May in its opposition to
the grant of twelve subsidies in return for the surrender of ship-money.
Parliament was dissolved the next day, and on the 6th an unsuccessful
search was made among the papers of Hampden and of other chiefs of the
party to discover incriminating correspondence with the Scots. During
the eventful months which followed, when Strafford was striving in vain
to force England, in spite of its visible reluctance, to support the
king in his Scottish war, rumour has much to tell of Hampden's activity
in rousing opposition. It is likely enough that the rumour is in the
main true, but we are not possessed of any satisfactory evidence on the
subject.
In the Long Parliament, though Hampden was by no means a frequent
speaker, it is possible to trace his course with sufficient
distinctness. His power consisted in his personal influence, and as a
debater rather than as an orator. "He was not a man of many words," says
Clarendon, "and rarely began the discourse or made the first entrance
upon any business that was assumed, but a very weighty speaker, and
after he had heard a full debate and observed how the House was likely
to be inclined, took up the argument and shortly and clearly and
craftily so stated it that he commonly conducted it to the conclusion he
desired; and if he found he could not do that, he never was without the
dexterity to divert the debate to another time, and to prevent the
determining anything in the negative which might prove inconvenient in
the future" (_Hist._ iii. 31). Unwearied in attendance upon committees,
he was in all things ready to second Pym, whom he plainly regarded as
his leader. Hampden was one of the eight managers of Stratford's
prosecution. Like Pym, he was in favour of the more legal and regular
procedure by impeachment rather than by attainder, which at the later
stage was supported by the majority of the Commons; and through his
influence a compromise was effected by which, while an attainder was
subsequently adopted, Strafford's counsel were heard as in the case of
an impeachment, and thus a serious breach between the two Houses, which
threatened to cause the breakdown of the whole proceedings, was averted.
There was another point on which there was no agreement. A large
minority wished to retain Episcopacy, and to keep the common Prayer Book
unaltered, whilst the majority were at least willing to consider the
question of abolishing the one and modifying the other. On this subject
the parties which ultimately divided the House and the country itself
were fully formed as early as the 8th of February 1641. It is enough to
say that (v. under PYM) Hampden fully shared in the counsels of the
opponents of Episcopacy. It is not that he was a theoretical
Presbyterian, but the bishops had been in his days so fully engaged in
the imposition of obnoxious ceremonies that it was difficult, if not
impossible, to dissociate them from the cause in which they were
embarked. Closely connected with Hampden's distrust of the bishops was
his distrust of monarchy as it then existed. The dispute about the
church therefore soon attained the form of an attack upon monarchy, and,
when the majority of the House of Lords arrayed itself on the side of
Episcopacy and the Prayer Book, of an attack upon the House of Lords as
well.
No serious importance therefore can be attached to the offers of
advancement made from time to time to Hampden and his friends. Charles
would gladly have given them office if they had been ready to desert
their principles. Every day Hampden's conviction grew stronger that
Charles would never abandon the position which he had taken up. In
August 1640 Hampden was one of the four commissioners who attended
Charles in Scotland, and the king's conduct there, connected with such
events as the "Incident," must have proved to a man far less sagacious
than Hampden that the time for compromise had gone by. He was therefore
a warm supporter of the Grand Remonstrance, and was marked out as one of
the five impeached members whose attempted arrest brought at last the
opposing parties into open collision (see also PYM, STRODE, HOLLES and
LENTHALL). In the angry scene which arose on the proposal to print the
Grand Remonstrance, it was Hampden's personal intervention which
prevented an actual conflict, and it was after the impeachment had been
attempted that Hampden laid down the two conditions under which
resistance to the king became the duty of a good subject. Those
conditions were an attack upon religion and an attack upon the
fundamental laws. There can be no doubt that Hampden fully believed that
both those conditions were fulfilled at the opening of 1642.
When the Civil War began, Hampden was appointed a member of the
committee for safety, levied a regiment of Buckinghamshire men for the
parliamentary cause, and in his capacity of deputy-lieutenant carried
out the parliamentary militia ordinance in the county. In the earlier
operations of the war he bore himself gallantly and well. He took no
actual part in the battle of Edgehill. His troops in the rear, however,
arrested Rupert's charge at Kineton, and he urged Essex to renew the
attack here, and also after the disaster at Brentford. In 1643 he was
present at the siege and capture of Reading. But it is not on his skill
as a regimental officer that Hampden's fame rests. In war as in peace
his distinction lay in his power of disentangling the essential part
from the non-essential. In the previous constitutional struggle he had
seen that the one thing necessary was to establish the supremacy of the
House of Commons. In the military struggle which followed he saw, as
Cromwell saw afterwards, that the one thing necessary was to beat the
enemy. He protested at once against Essex's hesitations and compromises.
In the formation of the confederacy of the six associated counties,
which was to supply a basis for Cromwell's operations, he took an active
part. His influence was felt alike in parliament and in the field. But
he was not in supreme command, and he had none of that impatience which
often leads able men to fail in the execution of orders of which they
disapprove. His precious life was a sacrifice to his unselfish devotion
to the call of discipline and duty. On the 18th of June 1643, when he
was holding out on Chalgrove Field against the superior numbers of
Rupert till reinforcements arrived, he received two carbine balls in the
shoulder. Leaving the field he reached Thame, survived six days, and
died on the 24th.
Hampden married (1) in 1619 Elizabeth, daughter of Edmund Symeon of
Pyrton, Oxfordshire, and (2) Letitia, daughter of Sir Francis Knollys
and widow of Sir Thomas Vachell. By his first wife he had nine children,
one of whom, Richard (1631-1695) was chancellor of the exchequer in
William III.'s reign; from two of his daughters are descended the
families of Trevor-Hampden and Hobart-Hampden, the descent in the male
line becoming apparently extinct in 1754 in the person of John Hampden.
JOHN HAMPDEN the younger (c. 1656-1696), the second son of Richard
Hampden, returned to England after residing for about two years in
France, and joined himself to Lord William Russell and Algernon Sidney
and the party opposed to the arbitrary government of Charles II. With
Russell and Sidney he was arrested in 1683 for alleged complicity in the
Rye House Plot, but more fortunate than his colleagues his life was
spared, although as he was unable to pay the fine of L40,000 which was
imposed upon him he remained in prison. Then in 1685, after the failure
of Monmouth's rising, Hampden was again brought to trial, and on a
charge of high treason was condemned to death. But the sentence was not
carried out, and having paid L6000 he was set at liberty. In the
Convention parliament of 1689 he represented Wendover, but in the
subsequent parliaments he failed to secure a seat. He died by his own
hand on the 12th of December 1696. Hampden wrote numerous pamphlets, and
Bishop Burnet described him as "one of the learnedest gentlemen I ever
knew."
See S. R. Gardiner's _Hist. of England_ and _of the Great Civil War_;
the article on Hampden in the _Dict. of Nat. Biography_, by C. H.
Firth, with authorities there collected; Clarendon's _Hist. of the
Rebellion_; Sir Philip Warwick's _Mems._ p. 239; Wood's _Ath. Oxon._
iii. 59; Lord Nugent's _Memorials of John Hampden_ (1831); Macaulay's
_Essay on Hampden_ (1831). The printed pamphlet announcing his capture
of Reading in December 1642 is shown by Mr Firth to be spurious, and
the account in _Mercurius Aulicus_, January 27 and 29, 1643, of
Hampden commanding an attack at Brill, to be also false, while the
published speech supposed to be spoken by Hampden on the 4th of
January 1642, and reproduced by Forster in the _Arrest of the Five
Members_ (1660), has been proved by Gardiner to be a forgery (_Hist.
of England_, x. 135). Mr Firth has also shown in _The Academy_ for
1889, November 2 and 9, that "the belief that we possess the words of
Hampden's last prayer must be abandoned."