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John Hampden Biography

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HAMPDEN, JOHN (1594-1643). An English statesman. He was born in 1594, the eldest son of William Hampden, of Great Hampden, Buckinghamshire, and Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Henry Cromwell, of Hinchingbrooke, Huntingdonshire, aunt of Oliver Cromwell. In 1610 he was entered a gentleman commoner at Magdalen College, Oxford, and in 1613 was admitted to the Inner Temple, where he made considerable progress in the study of law. On Jan. 30, 1621, he first entered the House of Commons as a member for Grampound. He attached himself to the party of St. John, Selden, Coke, Pym, and those who opposed the arbitrary encroachments of the crown; but at first took no very forward part in public business and spoke but seldom. In the first three parliaments of Charles I he sat for Wendover. In 1627, for refusing to pay his proportion of the general loan which the King attempted to raise on his own authority, Hampden was imprisoned in Hampshire for nearly a year. His uncle, Sir Edmund Hampden, with whom he is sometimes confused, was one of the five knights who sued for liberty on a writ of habeas corpus in the famous Five Knights case. The prisoners were all set free when Charles found it necessary to summon his third Parliament. Hampden's industry in Parliament now rendered him one of its leading and most useful members; he was on most of its committees; but after the dissolution of the Parliament of 1628-29 he retired to his estate and devoted himself to study, and country sports and occupations. In 1634 Charles had recourse to the impost of ship money, claiming that it was not a tax, but a commutation for the military service, which every one owed. At first limited to London and the maritime towns, and levied only in time of war, it was in 1635 extended to inland counties in time of peace, when Hampden resolutely refused to pay it, and his example was followed by nearly the whole county of Buckingham. In 1637 he was prosecuted before the Court of Exchequer for nonpayment, when a bare majority of the judges gave a verdict against him while the moral victory was clearly with Hampden. In the Short Parliament of 1640 Hampden took a prominent part in the great contest between the crown and the House of Commons. To the Long Parliament he was returned for both Wendover and the County of Buckingbam, and made his election for the latter. For his resistance to the King's proceedings, he was one of the five members whom Charles, on Jan. 4, 1642, rashly attempted in person to seize in the House of Commons. On the breaking out of the Civil War he raised and became colonel of a regiment in the Parliamentary army under the Earl of Essex. He was also a member of the Committee of Public Safety. He was an excellent soldier, and constantly urged Essex to a more energetic conduct of the campaign. Some of his reputed victories over the Royalists, however, as at Aylesbury and Reading, are unhistorical. Prince Rupert having attacked a Parliamentary force at Chinnor, near Thame, Hampden joined a small body of cavalry that was rallied in haste to oppose him, and in the fight that ensued at Chalgrove Field received in the first charge a wound of which he died six days later, on June 24, 1643.