Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/276

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Hampden
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Hampden


and of a personal courage equal to his best parts.... In a word, what was said of Cinna might well be applied to him, he had a head to contrive and a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute any mischief. His death, therefore, seemed to be a great deliverance to the nation' (Rebellion, vii. 84; this character of Hampden was written by Clarendon in 1647; a second, written later, in 1669, is inserted in book iii. § 31). Sir Philip Warwick also gives a character of Hampden with a curious note on his personal appearance (Memoirs, p. 239). A portrait of Hampden is in the possession of his descendant, the Earl of Buckinghamshire, at Hampden House, Buckinghamshire (Lipscomb, ii. 279). One belonging to Renn Dickson Hampden, bishop of Hereford, was in the collection of national portraits exhibited in 1866 (Catalogue, No. 613). The best known, however, is that at Port Eliot, belonging to the Earl of St. Germains, and engraved in Nugent's 'Memorials of Hampden,' although Lipscomb asserts that it is in reality a portrait of John Hampden the younger (ii. 280). There is a bust of Hampden in the National Portrait Gallery. Engraved portraits are to be found in Peck's 'Life of Milton' and Houbraken's 'Heads of Illustrious Persons.' The curious relic known as 'Hampden's jewel,' now in the Bodleian Library, is engraved in Webb's 'Civil War in Herefordshire,' 1879, i. 143.

Hampden was twice married, first, 24 June 1619, to Elizabeth, daughter of Edmund Symeon of Pyrton, Oxfordshire (d. August 1634); secondly, to Letitia (d. 1666), daughter of Sir Francis Knollys and widow of Sir Thomas Vachell, knt., of Cowley or Coley House, Reading (Diary of Richard Symonds, p. 4). By his first wife he had nine children: (1) John, a captain in his father's regiment in 1642, died about the beginning of the civil war (Mercurius Aulicus, 15 April 1643); (2) Richard [q. v.]; (3) William (1633-1675); (4) Elizabeth (b. 1622), married Richard Knightley, esq., of Fawsley, Northamptonshire, and died early in 1643 (Warwick, Memoirs, p. 242; Mercurius Aulicus, 15 April 1643); (5) Anne (b. 1625), married Sir Robert Pye; (6) Ruth (b. 1628), married Sir John Trevor, from whom the Trevor-Hampden family descended (Collins, Peerage, vi. 297); (7) Mary (b. 1630), married, first, Colonel Robert Hammond [q. v.], secondly Sir John Hobart, bart., of Blickling, Norfolk, from whom the Hobart-Hampden family descends (Foster, Peerage, 'Buckinghamshire, Earl of'); (8, 9) two daughters who died unmarried (for the history of the Hampden family, see Lipscomb, Buckinghamshire, vol. ii. passim; Noble, House of Cromwell, ii. 60, ed. 1787; and Ebbewhite, Parish Registers of Great Hampden, Buckinghamshire, 1888).

[Lives of Hampden are given in Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 59, and in Biographia Britannica. The first detailed biography was Lord Nugent's Memorials of John Hampden, published in 1831, valuable also as containing some of Hampden's private letters. It occasioned Macaulay's Essay on Hampden (Edinburgh Review, December 1831), and gave rise to a lively controversy. Southey criticised it with severity in the Quarterly Review, vol. xlvii. Lord Nugent defended himself in A Letter to John Murray, Esq., touching an article in the Quarterly Review, 1832. Southey retorted in A Letter to John Murray, Esq., touching Lord Nugent, by the author of the article, 1833. and Isaac D'Israeli intervened in a pamphlet entitled Eliot, Hampden, and Pym, 1832. In 1837 a life of Hampden by John Forster was published in the series of biographies of Eminent British Statesmen in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia, and in his life of Sir John Eliot (1865) Forster printed additional letters of Hampden's from the manuscripts at Port Eliot. Sanford's Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion contain many details concerning Hampden, drawn from the Diary of Sir Symonds D'Ewes. Additional information from various sources is embodied in Gardiner's History of England, 10 vols., and History of the Great Civil War, 1886, vol. i.; a life of Hampden was contributed by Mr. Gardiner to the 9th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.]

C. H. F.

HAMPDEN, JOHN, the younger (1656?–1696), politician, second son of Richard Hampden [q. v.] of Great Hampden, Buckinghamshire, was born about 1656. In 1670 he was sent to travel in France under the tutorship of Francis Tallents, a presbyterian minister who had been ejected from his living at Shrewsbury in 1662 (Calamy, Nonconformists' Memorial, ed. Palmer, iii. 155). They remained abroad about two and a half years. Both in February and in August 1679 Hampden was elected M.P. for Buckinghamshire (Return of Members of Parliament, i. 534, 540). The second election was marked by great popular excitement, and is the subject of several contemporary pamphlets ('A Letter from a Freeholder of Bucks to a Friend in London,' 'An Answer to a Letter from a Freeholder,' &c., 'A true Account of what passed at the Election of Knights of the Shire for the County of Bucks,' 1679). 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,'