HAMPDEN, JOHN (c. 1595-1643), English statesman, the eldest son of William Hampden, of Great Hampden in Buck inghamshire, where the family is said to have been established before the Conquest, and of Elizabeth, second daughter of Sir Henry Cromwell, and aunt of Oliver, the future protector, was educated at the grammar school at Thame and at Magdalen col lege, Oxford. In 1613 he was admitted a student of the Inner Temple. 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.
In 1626 Hampden took an active part in the preparation of the charges against Buckingham. In January 1627 he was bound over to answer at the council board for his refusal to pay the forced loan. Later in the year he was committed to the gatehouse, and then sent into confinement in Hampshire, from which he was lib erated just before the meeting of the third parliament of the reign, in which he once more rendered useful but unobtrusive assistance to his leaders. It was not till 1637, however, that his resistance to the payment of ship-money gained for his name the lustre which it has never since lost. (See SHIP-MONEY.) Seven out of the 12 judges sided against him, but the connection be tween the rights of property and the parliamentary system was firmly established in the popular mind. 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 rea sons as every stander-by was able to swear was not law" (Hist. i.
15o, vii. 82).
In the Short Parliament of 1640 Hampden led the opposition (May 4) to the grant of 12 subsidies in return for the surrender of ship-money. Parliament was dissolved the next day, and on the 6th an unsuccessful search was made among the papers of Hamp den and of other chiefs of the party to discover incriminating correspondence with the Scots. In the Long Parliament, though Hampden was by no means a frequent speaker, it is possible to trace his course with sufficient distinctness. His power con sisted in his personal influence, and as a debater rather than as an orator. Unwearied in attendance upon committees, he was always at hand to second Pym, whom he plainly regarded as his leader. Hampden was one of the eight managers of Strafford's prosecu tion. Like Pym, he was in favour of the more legal and regular procedure by impeachment rather than by attainder; and his influ ence secured a compromise under which Strafford's counsel were heard as in the case of an impeachment, and thus a serious breach between the two Houses was averted.
Hampden was among the opponents of episcopacy. It is not that he was a theoretical Presbyterian, but he distrusted the bishops as he distrusted the monarchy. 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. In August 1640 Hampden was one of the four commis sioners who attended Charles in Scotland. He was a warm sup porter 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). In the angry scene which arose on the proposal to print the Grand Remonstrance, it was Hamp den's personal intervention which prevented an actual conflict, and it was after the impeachment had been attempted that Hamp den laid down the two conditions under which resistance to the king became the duty of a good subject. 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. He took no actual part in the battle of Edgehill. His troops in the rear, however, arrested Rupert's charge at Kineton, and he urged Essex to renew the attack here, and also of ter the disaster at Brentf ord. In 1643 he was present at the siege and cap ture of Reading. But it is not on his skill as a regimental officer that Hampden's fame rests. In war as in peace his distinction lay in his power of disentangling the essential part from the non essential. In the 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. He protested at once against Essex's hesitations and compromises. 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. His influence was felt alike in parliament and in the field. But he was not in supreme command, and he had none of that impatience which often leads able men to fail in the execution of orders of which they disapprove. His life was sacrificed to his devotion to the call of discipline and duty. On June 18, 1643, when he was holding out on Chalgrove Field against the superior numbers of Rupert till reinforcements arrived, he received two carbine balls in the shoulder. Leaving the field he reached Thame, survived six days, and died on the 24th. He was buried in the church of Great Hampden.
Hampden married (I) in 1619 Elizabeth, daughter of Edmund Symeon of Pyrton, Oxfordshire, and (2) Letitia, daughter of Sir Francis Knollys and widow of Sir Thomas Vachell. By his first wife he had nine children, one of whom, Richard 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 his grandson John Hampden.
See S. R. Gardiner's Hist. of England and of the Great Civil War; the article on Hampden in the Dict. of Nat. Biography, by C. H. Firth, with authorities there collected ; Clarendon's Hist. of the Rebellion; Sir Philip Warwick's Mems., p. 239 ; Wood's Ath. Oxon., iii. 59 ; Lord Nugent's Memorials of John Hampden (1831) ; Macaulay's Essay on Hampden (1831) . The printed pamphlet announcing his capture of Reading in Dec. 1642 is shown by Firth to be spurious, and the account in Mercurius Aulicus, January 27 and 29, 1643, of Hampden commanding an attack at Brill, to be also false, while the published speech supposed to be spoken by Hampden on Jan. 4, 1642, and repro duced by Forster in the Arrest of the Five Members (166o), has been proved by Gardiner to be a forgery (Hist. of England, x. 135). Firth has also shown, in The Academy for 1889, Nov. 2 and 9, that "the belief that we possess the words of Hampden's last prayer must be abandoned."