Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/Notes taken at Hampden concerning the greatest squire of that ilk

by Henrietta Tindal

NOTES TAKEN AT HAMPDEN CONCERNING
THE GREATEST SQUIRE OF THAT ILK.

 

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. We went to visit his grave, and the graves of his household; to tread the paths, and to look on the scenes over which his feet and eyes had wandered, some two centuries before; and we were determined to learn the history of that portrait of this popular leader which is preserved in his ancient home, and has been accepted as an original by his descendants, though Lord Nugent and Mr. Forster, in their excellent lives of the patriot, have adopted as frontispiece an engraving from the Port Eliot picture; and fortunate in his generation is the great man who resembles it, who wears a countenance which illustrates so magnificently both moral and intellectual power and beauty. 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. The larks sang cheerily to us, rising from their dewy resting-places among the young corn, as we rode over the fine turf growing beside the rough cross-country roads of Buckinghamshire, or wound along narrow ways, where the clerical driver of a pony-chaise we met had much ado to keep clear of a wagon.

As we approached our destination, the green shade of the indigenous beeches fell upon us, and every leaf on their flexile shoots seemed semi-transparent, so delicate was the verdure which clothed the surrounding woodlands that sunny spring day. The ground beneath was carpeted in many places with the pure white flowers of the fragrant wood-ruff, and the nodding bells of the wild blue hyacinth. On the sloping sides of the neighbouring hills, juniper and box abounded, and the minute blossom of the latter shrub filled the air with a most “delectable smell,” as the old botanists say. While the jays chattered above us, we speculated on the probable site of the excellent truffles which may be collected under these beeches, by the assistance of an intelligent pig, or a little dog trained for that purpose. It is possible that this interesting fungus was not so greatly appreciated when Queen Elizabeth visited, among the Buckinghamshire highlands, Francis, Earl of Bedford, at his house at Chenies, and Griffith Hampden, at Hampden. Many miles of green shade have faded since their days from the sides of the Chilterns; and as lovers of the picturesque, we looked sadly on the groves that remained, for we knew how rapidly they were vanishing before the plough.

The landscape around and beneath us, was peopled with historic associations belonging to the civil wars of the seventeenth century.

“Noll Cromwell” had ridden there,^[1] “in the might of his spirit, with his swords and bibles, and all his train of disciples.” Rupert and his cavaliers had plunged into the intricate woodlands; and Hampden and his green coats knew the passes well. The London red coats of Hollis, and the blue and purple uniforms of Lords Brook and Say, had appeared among these plains and groves; for the country was sorely rough-ridden then by foe and friend, the cattle were driven by turns for King and Parliament, and the smoke of burning homesteads and villages rose from the fertile fields. Many of the most important parliamentary leaders either belonged to Buckinghamshire, or had extensive family connections among its landed gentry; of this cousinhood were Oliver Cromwell, John Hampden, Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Richard Ingoldsby, Oliver St. John, General Ireton, Simon Mayne, the two Fleetwoods, James and Bulstrode Whitelock, and Sir Harbottle Grimstone.^[2]

Our eyes ranged over estates which had been owned by “true-hearted Nathaniels,” and less spiritually-minded country squires; who nevertheless raised whole regiments, or commanded the troops they had levied in the popular cause.

The home of the Hampdens has occupied its present site since the days of King John; he visited the master who owned the inheritance in his reign, and a north-west chamber is named after that unworthy Plantagenet. The guest of Griffith Hampden has left her traces in the venerable pile, for the state bed-room is yet called “Queen Elizabeth’s,” and some of its antique hangings may have sheltered the Virgin Majesty of England. The windows of this apartment open upon a lawn of exquisite turf, into which the foot sinks silently and deeply: with such her great minister, Francis Bacon, covered the garden of his imagination, which he painted after the desires of his own heart. A few grand old cedars stand about the porch, but it is doubtful if sunshine and rain had fed and ripened the seeds from which they sprung in the days of John Hampden; and the interior and exterior arrangements and aspect of this ancestral home have been so frequently changed, that a small room on the ground-floor, called the Brick Parlour, is almost the only part remaining which can be associated with our hero. There he may have explained to his mother the causes of the great quarrel between King Charles and his Parliament; for, like her father and brother, the daughter of Sir Henry Cromwell of Hinchinbrook, had a most loyal soul, inspired by all a courtier’s ambition. When there were “multitudes of lords a-making,” we know that she wished her great son to be one of them. 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. Her lengthened life comprehended more than twenty-eight years of Elizabeth’s reign. She had discussed as county news the whole history of the Gunpowder Treason, which was hatched at Gayhurst in Buckinghamshire; and, almost before the victim’s blood was dry, the hideous details of Sir Everard Digby’s execution must have reached her solitary chamber. From its windows, she might have listened to the chaunted psalm, and the dull sound of the muffled drums, as she watched the long procession of disheartened troops, who bore, with furled ensigns, through the ancient woods, to the chancel vault in his parish church, all that remained of the great son she had borne—truly a Master in Israel! The still days of her saddened life were creeping over the Chiltern hill-sides when King Charles was led to the scaffold through the long gallery at Whitehall. She witnessed the rise and fall of the Commonwealth, and wondrous tidings, in the shape of family news, must have reached her solitude, of the crowning dignities of her slovenly nephew Oliver. As a very old woman, she heard, on her lonely hill, that wild midnight tempest of the 2nd of September, 1658, which traversed England, while one of the mightiest among the erring souls of men fluttered from the snares of his mortality. The next January saw her only surviving child, Richard Hampden, Lord of Emmington, in Oxfordshire, laid in the family grave, and it must have seemed a matter of little moment to her, when, in the following May, her great-nephew, Richard Cromwell, resigned the Protectorate, and retired into private life. Four years afterwards, this aged woman joined her family of ghosts.

The career of John Hampden belongs to the history of England: during his last seven years “he became the argument of all tongues,” yet very few traces of his existence remain among us, and we can glean no incidents to illustrate his private life at his ancient seat, though that was the home of his boyhood, youth, and manhood; and there he spent the days of his most “jolly conversation,” and those dark ones, when troubles fell heavily on his family and friends, and “he retired to a more reserved and melancholy way of life,” preparing himself for the coming struggle.

We find him sending from thence, in 1631, to his dear friend, Sir John Eliot, then a prisoner in the Tower, books to solace his lonely hours, and a small buck out of his paddock. On the 3rd of October, in the same year, he announces to this correspondent a welcome birth, in these words:

“God, I thank Him, hath made me father of another Sonne.” 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. Among that nameless crowd are the masters and mistresses, sons and daughters, honoured guests and valued friends of Hampden House for the last 200 years; they all belonged, by kindred or alliance, to the old line and its branches, that came there in turn, to rule and occupy, and to die out. No chronicler was born among them to collect and record the fleeting interest and associations attached to these relics and portraits of the dead; so every clue by which they could now be identified is buried with the Hampdens and the Trevor-Hampdens in the church and graveyard beside their pleasant garden walks; they might have been strangers who “tarried” there “but a day;” “the thin air” closed behind them, and the earth received them into her bosom, and their names and individuality are forgotten!

John, the twenty-fourth hereditary lord of the manor of Great Hampden, the last Hampden in the unbroken line of male descent, died unmarried in 1754, after having bequeathed the estate from which his ancestors derived their name to his kinsman, the Honourable Robert Trevor, afterwards Baron Trevor and Viscount Hampden, grandson of Ruth, fourth daughter of the patriot. Within the space of one century, in 1824, the male line of the Trevors also failed; and as that which came through a woman might not go to a woman, this historic property passed to George Robert Hobart, fifth and late Earl of Buckinghamshire, representative of Mary, sixth daughter of the patriot; the Pyes, late of Farringdon, who descended from his eldest daughter, Anne, having been unaccountably overlooked in the settlement of the property made by the twenty-fourth lord. The Earl was absent when we visited the place, but his confidential servant, a Scotch gardener, named Robertson, was in charge of the house and its treasures;^[4] he showed us everything worth seeing, and told us all that was known about the relics which its various owners had left behind them.

We certainly fared better at Hampden than did Mr. Noble, the historian of the Cromwells,^[5] who found a housekeeper there, “all civility, indeed, but stupid beyond the usual stupidity of such domestics. I asked her, among many other questions, what person a bust (pointing to it) represented: with a low curtsey, she replied: ‘Really, sir, I do not recollect; but it is some old lady of the family,’” and then, with infinite disgust, as if pope or prelate had never been likened to an old woman in this wicked world before, the Rev. Mark Noble proceeds to tell us that the bust in question represented “the wise and worthy Dr. Trevor, Bishop of Durham, without his wig. He was called, for his comeliness, the Beauty of Holiness.”

We viewed the magnificent prospect from the windows of the gallery library at the top of the house: we lingered before the interesting portraits of Robert, first Earl of Lindsey, of Queen Henrietta Maria and Sir Kenelm Digby; some jolly Satyrs led us away into Arcadia; but the extremely characteristic countenance of Bishop Bonner brought us hastily back to the sad realities of the past. It was never our fortune to see such an arrogant plethoric portrait before or since; we wondered how it had fared with the painter, and if the notorious prelate accepted with Christian meekness this exasperating delineation of his personal appearance?

We inspected the well-known Cromwell Bible, with its entries of births, against which are bracketed the names of the sponsors at the baptism of the new-born; and then we turned to contemplate that portrait of the greatest Hampden, which is preserved in his ancient home. It represents a man of middle size and age, with a sallow complexion and delicate features, clad in armour, holding a roll of paper in his hand; his warm brown hair is long and wavy, descending over his shoulders; a faint colour tinges each cheek; the nose is decidedly nondescript; there is life and wit in the small, dark eyes; the brow is intelligent, though not fine or commanding; the mouth (by no means a handsome one) shows strength and character; it is full, yet compressed, resolute, and bespeaking self-control. The attitude and general expression of the face and figure, and the carriage of the head, indicate nervous energy and determination; but the calmly magnificent front, the grand outline, the signal beauty and openness of countenance, the noble form and bearing which distinguish the Port Eliot likeness, are not to be found here.

The few words which his contemporary, Sir Philip Warwick, incidentally dropped, gave us no warrant for expecting “form or comeliness” in the hero we were pursuing from the cradle to the grave.

Mr. Forster tells us, in a note to his “Life of Hampden,” that the latter exchanged portraits with his friend, Sir John Eliot, and that both these pictures are now in the possession of the Eliot family. The same author pronounces their likeness of Hampden the only original in existence; and though we had seen no documentary evidence on the subject, we felt a strong prepossession in favour of the frontispiece which he and Lord Nugent had borrowed from Lord St. Germans’ gallery; it realised our ideal of the popular leader; it looked as we thought John Hampden ought to have looked, and we inquired what ground our guide had for stating that this was the portrait of the patriot.

“I know that it is his likeness,” was the answer, very deliberately given, “for I saw him in his coffin, and I afterwards identified this picture in the presence of my master, the Earl of Buckinghamshire.”

Of course we fixed our astonished eyes upon the sedate Scotch gardener. Were we in the company of the Wandering Jew?

Our guide hastened to inform us that he had been present on the morning of the 21st day of July, 1828, when Lord Nugent exhumed a body which was supposed to be that of John Hampden, in order to ascertain whether he had died^[6] “from a shot received in his shoulder, or from the accidental bursting of his pistol in his hand.” The noble biographer had previously obtained the consent of the late Earl of Buckinghamshire, who was then abroad, and that of the rector of the parish, who was present at the disinterment: he was attended by Mr. Denman, the future Lord Chief Justice of England, and a small company of highly intelligent gentlemen, who venerated the memory of the dead; but it is ever to be regretted that no eminent surgeon attended the historic post-mortem examination made that Midsummer day in the chancel of Great Hampden church, by a party of amateurs totally ignorant of anatomy and of the appearance presented by bodies which have been long dead. There was not even a medical student, or a village apothecary, among the group assembled round the vault. Yet this was a case where surgical evidence was indispensable to place the facts which might have been elicited beyond dispute, and to draw correct deductions from sights which the grave revealed.

The strangely interesting, but most unprofessional report of this ghastly transaction, which was published in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for August, 1828, made the proceedings of John Hampden’s admirers public. The Earl of Buckinghamshire was highly offended at the manner in which the disinterment of his ancestor had been conducted; and the archdeacon of the county threatened with dire ecclesiastical punishments the rector who had consented to the exhumation and assisted at it. “This disturbance of the dead” was generally disapproved; and without doubt the subject became painful to the principal parties concerned.

Under these circumstances, since nothing had been satisfactorily proved, it is not surprising that Lord Nugent omitted all notice of the exhumation in his “Memorials.”^[7] He informed Mr. Murray, some years later—on what ground we know not—that he had many reasons for believing that the “skeleton” which he saw in Hampden Church was not that of the patriot. Mr. Denman, on the contrary, always entertained afterwards the strong belief that he had gazed “on what had been Hampden; he was sure that he had seen the very identical body of the great patriot.” ^[8] And so we found was Mr. Robertson, whose story fully corroborates the impressions of the Chief Justice; though it differs, on one or two points, from the anonymous narrative published in the “Gentleman’s Magazine.” The writer of that article, whoever he was, assures us that “no regular features were apparent,” and yet he proceeds to describe a state of things which practically contradicts such an assertion, and perfectly agrees with the account of our informant, conveyed in two letters, dated respectively August, 1859, and September, 1862. “The face, breast, and fleshy part of the arms were perfectly entire,” writes Mr. Robertson, “with the exception of the grisly portion of the nose, which had given way, owing, perhaps, to the pressure of the cerecloths; and the right hand of the corpse was not wrapped in a separate cloth, but had dropped off from the wrist, and all the little bones of the fingers were lying in the cerecloth, with no flesh attached to them, and, up to the elbow, the bone of the arm was perfectly bare. I have often thought it very possible that John Hampden died from the bursting of his own pistol, since the right hand was found to be in such a state. He appeared to be a strong-built man, of about five feet eight or nine inches, with a fine mouth of teeth, and a beautiful head of hair, tied in a cue, and brought over his head, and fastened with a piece of black ribbon. The hair came off altogether, in the form of a wig: I forget if I supplied you with a portion of it, but I gave Mr. Disraeli some. As soon as the lead coffin was cut open by the plumber, Lord Nugent stepped down into the grave, to examine the body. I made the observation, ‘My lord, is there no surgeon present?’ as there were several gentlemen there whom I did not know. They all seemed confounded, and acknowledged that one ought to have been there. Mr. Brooks, the then clergyman of Hampden, asked me to despatch a messenger to his house: where he expected Mr. Norris, of Prince’s Risborough, would be; this I did, but Mr. Norris was gone. The coffin was lifted out of the grave and placed upon the bier; they then cut the body about as they thought proper, and left it so, for Mr. Norris’s inspection. He and his son, Mr. William Norris, came the following day, about two o’clock, p.m. In the course of the afternoon the coffin and its contents were returned to the grave, but in what manner I could not say, as I was not present. . . . . . . The first time I went upstairs, after the exhumation, a portrait, which hung on the best staircase, appeared to be looking at me, and I immediately recognised the face and figure of the man I had seen in the grave in Hampden Church. The sight I shall never forget so long as I live. On the arrival of my late employer, Lord Buckinghamshire, from France, I told him the impression on my mind, that the portrait on the staircase must be that of the patriot Hampden. He immediately gave me orders to have it taken down and examined; and on removing a piece of old canvas, which had been put on, I suppose, to protect the painting from damp, to the great joy of his lordship, and the satisfaction of myself, we found the patriot’s name written on the canvas of the painting in a very legible hand. The inscription mentioned that the picture had been presented by one of the Bedford Russels to Hampden.”

The following is the inscription to which our informant alluded, from memory. It is now to be seen on the back of the picture, so curiously identified:

John Hampden, 1640. A present to Sir William Russel, and afterwards given to John Lord Russel.

After this discovery had been made, it was remembered that an old letter^[9] existed among the family archives, which must have reference to this picture, though its identity had been lost long since, among the crowd of nameless portraits that people the walls of Hampden House. The writer was Dr. William Henry, Dean of Killaloe, Ireland, who, dating from Kildare Street, Dublin, October 19, 1762, addressed to the Hon. Robert Trevor Hampden, afterwards Viscount Hampden, a full account of this painting, which he had “bought, on the 16th of June, 1743, at the sale of Mr. Copping, late Dean of Clogher,” to whom it had been left, with other property, by an aged lady nearly related to the ducal families of Cavendish and Russell.

While the painting was in Dean Henry’s possession it had been recognised “as an original of the great John Hampden,” by Dr. Reynell, Bishop of Derry, late tutor to William, third Duke of Devonshire, whose mother, we may remark, was Rachel, eldest daughter of Lord William Russell, who died on the scaffold, 1683.

Bishop Reynell seemed to know all about this portrait. “John Hampden had sat for it,” said his lordship, “before the beginning of the Civil Wars, and gave it to his friend Sir William Russel; from Sir William it came to Lord Russel; from Lord Russel this picture, with his house and furniture, near Ipswich, descended to the aged lady—his daughter or granddaughter,” who bequeathed them to her chaplain, Mr. Copping.

We must leave more learned genealogists to identify those members of the house of Russell,^[10] the Sir William and the Lord John who, between the years 1640 and 1743, successively received and transmitted this portrait. If Hampden’s contemporary, William, fifth Earl of Bedford, were intended, why was he styled Sir William? His great son, who was executed in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1683, was not four years old at the time of the patriot’s death, June, 1643: but this picture may have been presented to him, in after life, by his intimate friend John Hampden, usually called the younger, to distinguish him from his eminent grandfather—who was implicated with Lord William Russell in the Rye House Plot; but even then the knightly title seems not to be accounted for, since “Russel’s Sweet Saint”^[11] addresses her spouse as “Master William Russel”up to the death of his elder brother Francis, in 1678, when he became Lord Russell.

Most probably the memorandum discovered by the late Earl of Buckinghamshire and Mr. Robertson had been placed on the back of this picture long after the times of the donor and first receivers of the gift, by some person who accepted the tradition attached to the portrait, and was not perfectly well informed on its history.

In concluding our note on the identification of this likeness of John Hampden, we will remind our readers that Sir Henry Halford remarks, in his “Account of what appeared on the opening of the coffin of King Charles the First,” that “when the cerecloth and unctuous matter were removed, the features of the face, as far as they could be distinguished, bore a strong resemblance to the portraits of Charles the First.”

The estates of John Hampden, and his ancient residence, are still possessed by his descendants, through his sixth daughter, Mary, wife of Sir John Hobart, K.B. The late Earl of Buckinghamshire devised this property to his nephew, George Hampden Cameron, younger son of his sister, the Lady Vere Catherine Louisa Hobart and her husband, Donald Cameron, of Lochiel, chief of the clan Cameron, whose ancestors suffered attainder and forfeiture for their fidelity to the House of Stuart; the very sound of whose name brings into our minds the poetry and music of “Lochiel’s Warning” and “The March of the Cameron Men.”

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.”

Our present Under-Secretary of State for War, the Earl de Grey and Ripon, derives the patriot’s blood through his mother, the Lady Sarah Albinia Louisa Hobart, only child of Robert, fourth Earl of Buckinghamshire. So there is good fruit yet on this ancient family tree: it still bears sons of promise, and yields us men of mark.

A year or two ago we were able to carry out our original intention, and, through the courtesy of the late incumbent, to examine at leisure the curious registers of the parish of Great Hampden. The handwriting, name, and lengthened incumbency of one of its forgotten rectors fixed our attention: we resolved to learn something more about Egeon Askew; and, in so doing, we discovered that a mind had existed just without the doors of Hampden House, under the light of which John Hampden’s must have been developed; for, when the fatherless boy was about fourteen years of age, in 1608,^[12] Egeon Askew, M.A., was presented to the living of Great Hampden, and he died at this preferment in 1637, having been, as the registers prove, a very constant resident there, and for twenty-nine years the nearest neighbour of his great squire on that secluded hill. Brown Willis calls Egeon “a famous man,” and in the margin of his MS. he refers to Anthony Wood, who describes this Buckinghamshire rector as “learned indeed beyond his age, and as well read in the Fathers, commentators, and schoolmen as any man of his time in the University of Oxford.” He was a native of Lancashire, and became student of Oxford in 1593, being then about seventeen years of age; in 1598 he was chaplain of Queen’s College and A.B. Egeon became a noted preacher. His book on “Brotherly Reconcilement.” and “The Apologie of the use of Fathers, and secular learning in sermons,” contain many passages of forcible illustration and beautiful Christian thought; but these treasures lie embedded among wearisome hordes of obsolete learning and quaint wordy conceits in high fashion in the days of the first James.

To the Archbishop Elect of York, late Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, we are indebted for the first sight of this forgotten volume: it is preserved in the library of that college, as the work of one of her most literate sons. The author lived awhile at Greenwich, and then Wood lost sight of him, and so did John Evelyn, for they both lived in the world of letters; but there can be no doubt that Egeon Askew’s knowledge and eloquence were hidden in the beechwoods of Buckinghamshire, at the rectory of Great Hampden, where this squire and parson—scholars and thinkers both—could scarcely fail to be companions, and to hold sweet counsel together among their beautiful Chilterns.

What the author, who published his “Brotherly Reconcilement” in 1605, thought of political and religious differences in 1635, and of the proceedings of the Star Chamber and Parliaments, we know not, for he appears to have kept silence, retaining the preferment of the Hampdens, and remaining cloistered among their woody highlands, while the waves of that troublous world rolled on, and his great neighbour, who was buffeting among them, survived him exactly six years.

William Spurstow, a well-known nonconformist, succeeded the mild, ripe scholar, Egeon, in June, 1638. A curious note in the parish register informs us, that “he was one of those heroes who wrote against the Church and the Establishment. They were five in number: Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and the above William Spurstow. The initial letters of their names formed the cant word Smectymnus, celebrated by Hudibras.”

When Bishop Hall wrote in favour of Episcopacy, he was answered by this celebrated treatise. William Spurstow was a busy party man. As chaplain to the Buckinghamshire Green Coats, he attended the great Colonel of that Company on his deathbed: but he was also one of the Assembly of Divines appointed by an Ordinance of Parliament to advise upon a settlement of religion, 1st July, 1643, six days after Hampden’s funeral; and we beg the reader to take note of these dates. The exciting engagements of this ardent controvertist at that moment may account for his omitting to record in the parish register the burial of his patron, in an age when such clerical duties were so grossly neglected. The entry now standing is an evident interpolation, in the hand-writing of Robert Lenthall, the succeeding rector, who was inducted in the November of the same year. We copy this often-disputed clause:—“John Hampden, Esq., Lord of Hampden, 25 June, 1643.”

Mrs. Acton Tindal.

 

---

1. Marchmont Needham, quoted by Mr. Forster in his “Life of Oliver Cromwell.”
2. See 28th Genealogy in Sir Alexander Croke’s “History of the Croke Family.”
3. “Later Puritans,” by the Rev. J. B. Marsden.
4. Mr. J. Robertson is now living at Nocton Hall, near Lincoln, in the service of the Countess Dowager of Ripon, herself a descendant of John Hampden.
5. Quoted by Lipscomb.
6. Mr. Forster’s “Memoir of Lord Nugent.”
7. Mr. Forster’s “Memoir of Lord Nugent.”
8. Letter of Lord Denman to Lord Nugent.—Forster’s Memoir.
9. Quoted by Lipscomb, “Ex. Autograph. penes Geo. Rob. Com. Bucks,” and to be seen still at Hampden House.
10. See Wiffen’s “Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell,” 2 vols.
11. See “Letters of Rachel, Lady Russell, edited by Lord John Russell.
12. Wood’s “Athenæ” and Lipscomb’s “Buckinghamshire.”