John Hampden

“ But beneath the outer grace of Hampden's demeanour lay a soul of steel. Buried as he seemed in the affections of his home, the great patriot waited patiently for the hour of freedom that he knew must come. Around him gathered the men that were to stand by his side in the future struggle. He had been the bosom friend of Eliot till the victim of the king's resentment lay dead in the Tower. He was now the bosom-friend of Pym. ”

“ The tyrannies of Laud in England, and of Wentworth in Ireland, were now fast driving the more independent and religious people to New England. The trial of John Hampden had now taken place in London, and Wentworth, in the insolence of his success in Ireland, had written to Laud, recommending that the great patriot should be whipped like Prynne and Lilburne. "Sir. Hampden," he wrote, "is a great brother (meaning puritan) , and the very genius of that nation of people leads them always to oppose, both civilly and ecclesiastically, all that ever authority ordains for them. ”

“ On a beautiful spring morning, about twenty years ago, we started, from some deep rich meadows in the Vale of Aylesbury, to visit the hereditary home of John Hampden. We did not hope to gather any information which had not been laid long since before the reading world, or to be able to point out an uncanvassed probability connected with this great man; but we were anxious to ascertain if his family mansion yet contained a chamber which might have known his presence. ”

“ An ingrained perverseness which prevented his son from ever willingly following the advice or example of his parents, had preserved John Hampden in the Anglican faith, but he had portraits of Laud and Strafford over his mantelpiece, and embossed in golden letters on a purple ground the magical word “THOROUGH.” His library chiefly consisted of the “Tracts for the Times,” and a colossal edition of the Fathers gorgeously bound. He was a very clever fellow, this young Thornberry, a natural orator, and was leader of the High Church party in the Oxford Union. ”

“ Hampden played a very insignificant part in parliament. A brief speech against the sale of Tangiers is the only utterance recorded by Grey (Grey, Debates, vii. 100) . The speeches which seem to be attributed to him in 'An Exact Collection of the Debates of the House of Commons held at Westminster in October 1680,' 1689, and in the parliamentary histories of Chandler and Cobbett should be assigned to his father, Richard Hampden (cf. ib.) John Hampden left England for the sake of his health in October 1680, and remained in France till September 1682. ”

“ I asked an English friend to do this for me, and fancy his sending me a book dated on the outside 1847!!!! Did I ever tell you a pretty story of him, when he was in England after Strasburg and before Boulogne, and which I know to be true? He spent a twelvemonth at Leamington, living in the quietest manner. One of the principal persons there is Mr. Hampden, a descendant of John Hampden, and the elder brother of the Bishop. Mr. Hampden, himself a very liberal and accomplished man, made a point of showing every attention in his power to the Prince, and they soon became very intimate. ”

“ In August, 1634, his beloved first wife died; and “the reader who would learn how tender, and yet wise, John Hampden was—affectionate without weakness, and pious without affectation, may turn aside to the sequestered church of Great Hampden, and read the exquisite memorial which describes his wife’s virtues and his own bereavement.” [3]
Many good portraits, that must be marked as unknown, adorn the chambers and passages of this rambling old mansion. They represent fair and dignified women: men evidently prosperous and important in their generation. ”

“ The parish register also had attractions for us; we would inspect the disputed entry of the patriot’s burial, and learn who were the clergy that officiated at Hampden during the time of its greatest squire. The wall of their churchyard adjoins his garden,—they were certainly his nearest neighbours; if they possessed congenial minds, his friends and companions also. We knew already busy William Spurstow, the chaplain to the Green-Coats; but there must have been another rector during the forty-six years John Hampden owned these estates. ”

“ It was proved that the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth had borne similar testimony to Halifax's good nature. One hostile witness indeed was produced, John Hampden, whose mean supplications and enormous bribes had saved his neck from the halter. He was now a powerful and prosperous man: he was a leader of the dominant party in the House of Commons; and yet he was one of the most unhappy beings on the face of the earth. ”

“ Halifax had already resigned the Speakership of the House of Lords, and they sought to bring William to deprive him of the Privy Seal. In these proceedings of the Commons, John Hampden, the grandson of the great patriot, and John Howe, were the most violent. Hampden went the length of saying that William ought to dismiss every man who had gone over to him from the late king, and ought not to employ any one who entertained Republican principles. This declaration, from a man who had himself been a full-length Republican and the friend of Sidney, threw the House into a roar of laughter ”

“ John Hampden succeeded in his infancy to the family estates, for his father died in 1597, when his heir was little more than three years old, and his will directs that his wife, Elizabeth, shall continue to enjoy the use of such apartments as she may choose in Hampden House. She had a long lease of those chambers, in a dwelling often visited by trouble and death; for we learn from the parish register, that she departed this life February 21st, 1664, having lived a widow sixty-seven years, and attained the great age of ninety. ”

“ The present Earl of Buckinghamshire is the representative of John Hampden, through his daughter Mary. His able and accomplished son, Lord Hobart, inherits the literary tastes of his eminent ancestor, “who improved his fine parts by converse with great men and good authors.” ”

“ To Hampden the spot was a memorable one; it was there, if we trust a Royalist legend, that "he first mustered and drew up men in arms to rebel against the king." But he had little time for memories such as these. His resolve was to hold Rupert by charge after charge till Essex could come up; and the arrival of these troops of horse with some dragoons enabled him to attack. The attack was roughly beaten off, and the assailants thrown into confusion, but Hampden rallied the broken troops and again led them on. Again they were routed, and Rupert drew off across the river without further contest. ”

“ John Hampden (1594-1643) was a celebrated English statesman and patriot. When Charles I attempted to impose a tax upon his subjects without the authority of Parliament, Hampden refused to pay. The King’s government brought suit against him, and although the case [341] was decided against Hampden, later the House of Lords ordered the judgment of the court to be canceled.
Discussion. 1. Why does the poet think England should be proud of America? 2. Name some of the rights won by those of “English blood” before this. 3. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those Puritans had a grim humour. One of the condemned man’s executioners, before turning him off, turned his face, bound with a handkerchief, to the sign, with the words: “Nay, sir, you must speak one word with the King before you go. You are blindfold, and he cannot see, and by and by you shall both come down together.” And then he was hoisted up.
There is another historic house at Thame, for it was into the yard of the “Greyhound” in that town that John Hampden came, lying mortally wounded upon the neck of his horse, from the skirmish of Chalgrove Field, on June 18th, 1643. ”

“ But Sir John Hampden did not require any assurance upon the point. He knew by the evidence of just such another medallion which lay in his own possession that upon one side, around the engraved name of the holder, ran the inscription, "Every man according as he purposeth in his heart;" ”

“ From the basket car a man watched every movement of the countryside through his field-glasses, and conversed from time to time through a telephone with the kite section down below. A second wire ran from the field telephone to a room of the offices where Salt was engaged with half a dozen of the chiefs of the Council of the League. Sir John Hampden was not present. He was remaining in London to afford the Government every facility for negotiating a settlement whenever they might desire it. ”

“ Hampden's condemnation was absolutely certain, and therefore, by the advice of his friends, 'because it could be prejudicial to no man, there being none alive of those called the Council of Six but the Lord Howard,' he resolved to plead guilty and throw himself on the mercy of the king. Sir John Bramston, who himself thought that Hampden had taken the wisest course, observes : 'The whigs are extreme angry at him . ”

“ 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) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ He had, however, in parliament borne a decided share in the determined opposition to the king's proceedings, along with Selden, Elliot, Pyra, St. John, Croke, and others. After the defection of Wentworth, Noye, Finch, and others, Hampden became still more prominent in his public support of the patriotic opposition. Amid the fierce bigotry of those dauntless but intolerant men, he was almost the only one who had arrived at the true idea of Christianity, that it was a tolerant and forbearing religion, allowing to others the destruction. ”

“ Bunsen, Christianity and Mankind, vol. iii. p. 231; Müller and Donaldson, History of Greek Literature, vol. iii. p. 353; Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire from Arcadius to Irene, vol. ii. p. 177. [Back to Main Text]
Footnote 317: Such views have their advocates even now. There still lives, I believe, in England, a certain John Hampden, who with dauntless breast maintains that the earth is a circular plane with centre at the north pole and a circumference of nearly 30,000 miles where poor misguided astronomers suppose the south pole to be. ”

“ December 22nd.—On Sunday to the Temple Church; 110 divine music and a very good preacher—a Mr. Hawes. Monday night I dined with Milman and went to the Westminster Play; pretty well done. The Hampden controversy flares away. Hampden himself has written a long, querulous, ill-composed letter to Lord John Russell, which he had better have let alone; if he did write, he should have written a shorter, more pithy and more dignified letter. Every day makes the fault of having appointed him more apparent. ”

“ I was born to better things, Mr. Hampden. My father had an influential position under Government; but he died in poverty, and I was apprenticed by an uncle ... pray forgive me. These matters cannot interest you. Privations press heavily upon a man at my time of life. Dentistry [339] seems to fail me; and yet, when I look around, I find no other calling which I am qualified to espouse.”
He sighed, and pulled out a pocket-handkerchief, with which he wiped his mouth.
Holdsworth was silent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That gentleman pleads that this Remonstrance is a vote of want of confidence in the King, such as none of us would willingly pass. Mr. Hampden replies that it is no such vote. I say to you that it is such a vote, and that I would pass it 31 with all my heart. Sir, this country, the spirit of man in this country, has suffered grievances too great to be borne. By whom are they laid upon us? I say it is by the King. Is a man's estate secure to himself? Does not the King pass upon it levies for his own designs? You know that it is so. Is there not ship money? ”