“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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) . ”