Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/268

  [Burton's Dauid's Euidence, 1592, pp. 125 sq.; Collier's Eccles. Hist. (Barham) 1840, vi. 608 sq.; Wallace's Antitrin. Biography, 1850, ii. 364 sq., and references there given; Spears' 'Historical Sketch' in Record of Unitarian Worthies (1877), p. 8.]  HAMPDEN,. [See .]  HAMPDEN, JOHN (1594–1643). statesman, was the eldest son of William Hampden (d. 1597) of Great Hampden, Buckinghamshire,' and of Elizabeth (d. 1664), daughter of Sir Henry Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, Huntingdonshire. If Wood's inferences from the matriculation register of Oxford are to be trusted, he was born in London in 1594 (Athenæ, ed. Bliss, iii. 59). Hampden was educated at Thame grammar school under Richard Bourchier (, History of the Church of Thame, p. 483). He matriculated from Magdalen College, Oxford, on 30 March 1610, and is described in the matriculation register as of London and aged fifteen (, Reg. of the Univ. of Oxford, ii. 309). In 1613 he contributed a copy of verses to the collection entitled 'Lusus Palatini,' published in honour of the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth. In November of the same year he became a member of the Inner Temple (, Members of the Inner Temple, p. 203). Of the amount of knowledge acquired by Hampden at these places of education Sir Philip Warwick speaks very highly: 'He had a great knowledge both in scholarship and in the law. He was very well read in history, and I remember the first time that ever I saw that of Davila of the civil wars in France it was lent me under the title of Mr. Hampden's "Vade-mecum;" and I believe that no copy was liker an original than that rebellion was like ours' (, Memoirs, p. 240).

On 24 June 1619 Hampden married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Symeon of Pyrton, Oxfordshire, and probably left London and took up his residence at Great Hampden (, ii. 288). Of an ample fortune and an old family, he might have obtained a post at court or a peerage without great difficulty. 'If ever my son will seek for honour,' wrote his mother in 1620, 'tell him to come to court now, for here is multitudes of Lords a making. I am ambitious of my son's honour, which I wish were now conferred upon him that he might not come after so many new creations' (, Life of Hampden, i. 36). From the commencement of the reign of Charles I, however, Hampden associated himself with the opposition to the court both in and out of parliament. He seems to have offered some resistance to the privy-seal loan levied in 1625, though he eventually paid 10l. out of 13l. 6s. 8d., at which he was assessed (Verney Papers, pp. 120, 126, 283). A second forced loan he refused altogether, was summoned to appear before the council on 29 Jan. 1626-1627, and was for nearly a year confined in Hampshire (, i. 428, 473; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1627-9, p. 31). John Hampden is sometimes confused with his relative, Sir Edmund Hampden, one of the five knights imprisoned for opposing the loan, who tested the legality of their imprisonment by suing for a habeas corpus in the court of king's bench (November 1627;, i. 458). Sir Edmund Hampden died in consequence of his imprisonment, and, according to an obituary notice of John Hampden in the 'Weekly Accompt' for 3-10 July 1643, John Hampden also suffered severely. 'He endured for a long time together close imprisonment in the Gatehouse about the loan money, which endangered his life, and was a very great means so to impair his health that he never after did look like the same man he was before.' It is possible, however, that he is here also confused with Sir Edmund Hampden. A popular story, quoted by all John Hampden's biographers, represents him as answering the demand for the loan by saying 'that he would be content to lend as well as others, but feared to draw upon himself that curse in Magna Charta which should be read twice a year against those who infringe it' (, Life of Hampden, p. 312;, i. 107). This story appears to have been first told in 'Mercurius Aulicus' for 7 April 1644, and the answer is there attributed not to Hampden only, but to Pym, Saye, and others.

Though less prominent inside parliament, Hampden was also active there on the side of the opposition. In the parliament of 1621 he represented the borough of Grampound; in the first three parliaments of Charles I he sat as member for Wendover, which owed the restoration of its right to send members largely to Hampden's efforts (, i. 93; Official Return of Members of Parliament, 1878, pp. 450, 462, 468, 474). From an early date he seems to have enjoyed the confidence of Sir John Eliot, for whose use he drew up in 1626 a paper of considerations on Buckingham's impeachment, which is still preserved at Port Eliot (, Life of Eliot, i. 490). Of the assiduity with which Hampden studied parliamentary law and parliamentary precedents additional proof is afforded by a manuscript volume of parliamentary cases compiled from his notes, and now in the possession of Mrs. Russell of Chequers Court, Buckinghamshire (, Hampden, i. 121). Opposition to the court outside parliament and assiduous 