English parliamentarian and patriot, born in London, UK. He studied at Oxford, became a lawyer, and in 1621 an MP. His opposition to Charles I's financial measures led to his imprisonment (16278), and in 1634 he became famous for refusing to pay Charles's imposed levy for outfitting the navy (ship money). A member of both the Short and the Long Parliaments, he was one of the five members whose attempted seizure by Charles (1642) precipitated the Civil War. He fought for the Parliamentary army at Edgehill and Reading, but was killed at Thame.
John Hampden (circa 1595—1643) was an English politician, the eldest son of William Hampden, of Hampden House, Great Hampden in Buckinghamshire, a descendant of a very ancient family of that county, said to have been established there before the Norman conquest, and of Elizabeth, second daughter of Sir Henry Cromwell, and aunt of Oliver Cromwell.
By his father's death, when he was still a child, he became the owner of a large estate and a ward of the crown. He first sat in parliament for the borough of Grampound, Cornwall in 1621, later representing 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 John Eliot, as in its later days he was content to be overshadowed by John Pym and to be commanded by Essex.
Yet for many it is Hampden, and not Eliot or Pym, who is seen as the central figure at the start of the English Revolution. It is Hampden whose statue rather than that of Eliot or Pym that was selected by the Victorians as a symbol to take its place at the entrance to the Central Lobby in Palace of Westminster as the noblest type of the parliamentary opposition, sword at his side, ready to defend Parliament's rights and privileges by any means necessary.
Something of Hampden's fame no doubt is owing to the position which he took up as the opponent of ship money.
During these first parliaments Hampden did not, so far as we know, speak in public debate, but he was increasingly employed in committee work, for which he seems to have had a special aptitude.
When the breach came in 1629 Hampden was found corresponding with the imprisoned Eliot, discussing with him the prospects of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Hampden was one of the persons to whom the Earl of Warwick granted land in Connecticut, but for the anecdote which relates his attempted emigration with Cromwell there is no foundation. 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 standerby was able to swear was not law" (Hist.
In the Short Parliament of 1640 Hampden stood forth amongst the leaders. 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.
In the Long Parliament, though Hampden was by no means a frequent speaker, it is possible to trace his course with sufficient distinctness. "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;
Hampden was one of the eight managers of Strafford's prosecution. 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. It is enough to say that Hampden fully shared in the counsels of the opponents of episcopacy. 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. Every day Hampden's conviction grew stronger that Charles would never surrender a 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 (the others being Pym, Arthur Haselrig, Denzil Holles and William Strode) whose attempted arrest brought at last the opposing parties into open collision. 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.
There can be no doubt that Hampden fully believed that both those conditions were fulfilled at the opening of 1642.
When the English 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.
But it is not on his skill as a regimental officer that Hampden's fame rests. 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.
On June 18, 1643, when he was holding out on Chalgrove Field against the superior numbers of Rupert till reinforcements arrived, he was mortally wounded in the shoulder, (some sources claim by two carbine balls, others by shrapnel from his own pistol exploding).
Hampden married:
(1) in 1619 Elizabeth, daughter of Edmund Symeon of Pyrton, Oxfordshire, and (2) in 1640 Lettice (or Letitia), daughter of Sir Francis Knollys "the Young", widow of Sir Thomas Vachell of Coley Park, Reading.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.
He now has two schools in Buckinghamshire named after him.
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