HAMPDEN, John (1595-1643), of Great Hampden, Bucks.

By 1640 John Hampden was one of the most famous men in England. Until 1637 he had been a well-connected country gentleman, one of the largest and richest landowners in Buckinghamshire and a veteran MP who had served with modest distinction in five Parliaments.26HP Commons 1604-1629. The Ship Money case changed everything.

Hampden had spent the early 1630s living quietly at Great Hampden. As long as he remained on the Buckinghamshire commission of the peace, he was an active local magistrate and officeholder.27CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 418; 1631-3, pp. 44, 308; 1634-5, p. 447; 1636-7, p. 143; Bucks. RO, D/X/1007/55/1. In 1634 his role as a deputy lieutenant almost resulted in his being prosecuted in the ecclesiastical courts, as he was accused of mustering his men in the churchyard at Beaconsfield. That he was also accused of attending church services outside his own parish is an early indication that he was not entirely happy with the state of the Church of England.28Summers, ‘Documents’, 103-4. He had already presented one of the church livings in his gift, said to be worth £120, to the feoffees for impropriations.29SP16/530, f. 174v.

Meanwhile, he maintained close links with many of the king’s leading critics. According to Anthony Wood, he regularly visited the great ‘puritanical houses’, such as those of his son-in-law, Richard Knightley*, or William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele.30Ath. Ox. iii. 59-60. Moreover, in 1632 he was a member of the syndicate created by the 2nd earl of Warwick (Sir Robert Rich†) to promote a new colony on the Connecticut River.31The Trumbull Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc. 5th ser. ix), 381. He did not invest in the Providence Island Company, but in 1638 the Company turned to him to act as arbitrator in their dispute with the former governor of the island, Philip Bell.32Kupperman, Providence Island, 79. Claims would later be made that Hampden, along with Sir Matthew Boynton*, Sir William Constable*, Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and Oliver Cromwell*, planned to emigrate to New England in the spring of 1637. Such stories about Cromwell were in circulation as early as the 1660s and may not have been entirely fanciful.33A. Barclay, Electing Cromwell (2011), 23, 30, 67. But the variants involving Hampden and the others did not appear until the early eighteenth century and so look like mere embellishments of the earlier gossip only about Cromwell.34J.W. Dean, ‘The reported embarkation of Cromwell’, New Eng. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. xx. 113-21.

In 1637 Hampden was assessed at Great Hampden to pay £8 4s in Ship Money, but it was his non-payment of £1 at Stoke Mandeville which provided the pretext for one of the most celebrated court cases of the seventeenth century.35Ship Money Pprs. ed. C.G. Bonsey and J.G. Jenkins (Bucks. Rec. Soc. xiii), 65. The counsel he selected to lead for the defence was Oliver St John*, who the following year married his cousin Elizabeth Cromwell of Upwood. Robert Holborne* assisted. He also took legal advice from Bulstrode Whitelocke*.36Whitelocke, Diary, 110. Arguments were heard before all the judges sitting as the court of exchequer chamber from 6 November to 18 December 1637. Hampden himself played no direct part in the proceedings. The opinions of the judges were divided, with seven finding for the crown and five finding (to varying degrees) for Hampden. The final verdict delivered on 12 June 1638 therefore found Hampden guilty of non-payment.37State Trials, iii. 846-1254.

This was the making of him. There were plenty of other individuals who could claim that they had stood up to Charles I. What made Hampden different was that he was a superb parliamentary tactician who would exploit his enhanced reputation to become one of the dominant figures in the next two Parliaments. Moral authority and low cunning would prove to be a formidable combination. To the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, writing at the time of the Ship Money case, Hampden was ‘the very genius of those people who set themselves against the government’.38The works of…William Laud ed. J.H. Parker (1847-60), vii. 398. The archbishop was right to be worried.

A Chance for Reform, 1640?

Hampden sat in both the Short and the Long Parliaments as MP for Buckinghamshire. His conduct in those Parliaments impressed his enemies as much as his friends. Edward Hyde*, who penned several long passages in his History as backhanded tributes to Hampden’s skill as a parliamentary tactician, marvelled at how he was able to use his amiability and apparent modesty to charm the Commons, slyly planting doubts which others could then develop and take the credit for.39Clarendon, Hist. i. 245-6, vii. 62-3. Philip Warwick* was another royalist who, at least in hindsight, did not underestimate him.

He was of a concise and significant language, and the mildest, yet subtlest speaker of any man in the House; and had a dexterity when a question was going to be put, which agreed not with his sense, to draw it over to it by adding some equivocal or sly word, which would enervate the meaning of it as first put.40Warwick, Mems. Charles I, 265.

Abraham Cowley intended it as a criticism when he wrote about Hampden being ‘cursed by too good a wit’.41A. Cowley, A Poem on the late Civil War (1679), 23.

Hampden’s fame, his parliamentary experience and his prominence as an ally of John Pym* ensured that he played a leading role in the Commons during the Short Parliament. From the outset he was named to the most important committees, such as those for privileges, to examine the records of the House and on the dissolution of the previous Parliament.42CJ ii. 4a, 4b, 6b; Aston’s Diary, 21, 147. His view on what strategy the Commons should adopt was set out in the debate in committee on their grievances on 18 April; he pointed out that, with so many issues about which to complain, there was a danger that they would get bogged down trying to cover everything and that it would be better to concentrate on asserting their freedom of debate.43Aston’s Diary, 13.

As one would expect, he clearly took a close interest in the debates on Ship Money. However, given that the discussion largely focused on the judgment in the 1637 case, he seems to have felt that it would be improper for him to comment directly on the subject. What he did do was to use his influence to block distracting discussion of other issues.44Aston’s Diary, 48, 55, 58, 60. His intervention in the debate on 30 April was intended to move the discussion on to the question of freedom of speech and he advised that, in terms of specific debate on Ship Money, they should concentrate on the general issue of its illegality. When it was suggested that he be sent to requisition the court records on the case, he responded that, as an interested party, it would be inappropriate for him to do so; Holborne and St John were sent instead.45Aston’s Diary, 103, 108-9; CJ ii. 17a. In the debate on grievances four days later he stressed that they had other complaints at least as important as Ship Money and so was dismissive of the idea that supply should be considered first.46Procs. Short Parl. 209; Aston’s Diary, 133, 138.

Reluctant to comment directly on Ship Money and eager to build a wide-ranging case against royal policy, Hampden was thus more active in the debates on other issues. When he argued on 23 April that grievances ought to take priority over supply, he cited their religious concerns as the type of grievances which were as equally urgent as the money grants the king wanted.47Aston’s Diary, 43. Prominent among those concerns was the commission to Convocation. He had already been named to the committees to consider it and on 24 April he would question the validity of the similar commission issued in 1604 which the king’s supporters were citing as a precedent.48CJ ii. 8a, 9b; Procs. Short Parl. 175. He also objected to the wording of the new set of ecclesiastical Canons approved by Convocation and later reminded the Commons that they had received numerous petitions on the subject, just in case they were reluctant to act on the matter.49Aston’s Diary, 55, 93. He nevertheless intervened to defend Laud’s secretary, William Dell*, when Dell was accused of misrepresenting comments made by Pym. There was some suggestion that Hampden did so because, whatever their differing religious views, he was a personal friend of Dell.50Aston’s Diary, 32; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 39.

There was one issue Hampden refused to raise. On 28 April the bishop of Lincoln, John Williams, who was being held as a prisoner in the Tower, wrote to him as a friend to ask a personal favour. Williams had not received a writ of summons to this Parliament and wanted Hampden to complain about this in the Commons. The unstated motive was that this would provide an excuse for the Commons to debate Williams’s continuing imprisonment. Hampden wrote back the next day to say that he could not do so. His concern was that this would be a distraction from other, more important matters and would only further damage relations between the two Houses at a time when they were already arguing over their respective privileges.51Lipscombe, Buckingham, ii. 237n. This confirms Hampden’s clear sense of priorities.

As it was, any discussions on particular grievances were already overshadowed by the bigger issue as to whether supply should be granted first. For the king’s critics, including Hampden, this encapsulated the fundamental issue before them – should they accept the king’s agenda or withhold supply as leverage to insist on their alternative agenda? Hampden had no doubt that they should be as uncooperative as possible. This meant insisting that grievances took priority. On 23 April, after he had moved that it be appointed, he sat on the committee to prepare heads for the conference with the Lords on their grievances. The following day he was among those MPs appointed to manage the conference and he later reported back from it.52Aston’s Diary, 44; CJ ii. 10a, 12a, 12b; Procs. Short Parl. 203. Viewing the Lords’ recommendation that supply be voted in lieu of Ship Money as interference in the Commons’ prerogative on supply, and thus a clear breach of privilege, he helped draft MPs’ assertion of their rights.53Aston’s Diary, 75; CJ ii. 14a. That message was then sent up to the Lords on his motion.54Aston’s Diary, 79.

As the sparring match between the two Houses came to a head in early May, Hampden was among those who led the Commons in standing their ground. When the Lords requested a conference on 1 May to discuss the previous complaints about breaches of privilege, Hampden suggested blocking them by claiming that they were too busy.55Aston’s Diary, 115. This did not prevent him being appointed as one of the joint reporters when the conference went ahead anyway.56CJ ii. 18a. The following day he indicated his opposition to any weakening of MPs’ stance by maintaining that they should stick to the conference heads they had already agreed. He then obstructed the proposal by the solicitor-general, Sir Edward Herbert*, that they give a general indication of their willingness to vote supply, instead proposing that they declare whether or not they would proceed to a final settlement of the supply question. Herbert’s move was designed to show the extent of support for a compromise deal, whereas Hampden was calculating that the prospect of an immediate decision would frighten the waverers. Hampden’s tactics worked in that the Commons decided to ignore both motions.57Aston’s Diary, 127. He was more direct about his opposition to the deal on offer from the king in the climactic debate on 4 May. He continued to stress that their grievances were at least as important as the king’s need for supply, proposed that they should draw up a declaration in defence of the subjects’ property and he reminded his fellow MPs that they should try to go back to the country with clear consciences. He also argued that they should not agree to vote any supply in lieu of Ship Money until they had agreed that the Ship Money levy had been illegal.58Aston’s Diary, 133, 138, 140, 141. As Richard Pepys* then pointed out, this might have been no more than a delaying tactic intended to wreck the compromise deal.59Aston’s Diary, 142. What Hampden saw as a staunch defence of the liberties of the subject could equally be seen by the court as gratuitous obstruction. To the king, it was Hampden and his friends who made it necessary for him to dissolve the Parliament.

‘The most popular man in the House’, 1640-1

Just how far the king personally blamed Hampden soon became clear. On 6 May, the day after the dissolution, Hampden was arrested, along with the earl of Warwick, Viscount Saye and Sele, Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, Sir Walter Erle* and Pym. Papers seized from Hampden’s house included the letters from Bishop Williams.60CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 152-3; CJ ii. 53b; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 340-1; Winthrop Pprs. iv. 243; A Complaint to the House of Commons (Oxford, 1642), 12 (E.244.31). That October he and his friend Arthur Goodwin* were again elected as knights of the shire for Buckinghamshire, although there is some evidence that this was not without opposition.61Procs. LP i. 511. His election at Wendover the next day may have been intended as insurance against a dispute over the county poll. That dispute never erupted. On 8 December, over a month after the Parliament had assembled, he was able to announce that he would sit for Buckinghamshire.62CJ ii. 21a, 47a; Procs. LP i. 21, 511, 518; Northcote, Diary, 40.

Hampden would be as important a figure in the early years of the Long Parliament as he had been in the previous one. Hyde thought him ‘the most popular man in the House’.63Clarendon, Hist. i. 179. At times he and Pym acted as a formidable team. They started more or less where they had left off. On 7 November, in what was probably his first intervention of the new Parliament, Hampden presented a petition from Alexander Jennings, who had been imprisoned for the non-payment of Ship Money, and he then supported Pym when he raised the cases of John Bastwick and Henry Burton.64Procs. LP i. 31-2, 41. Hampden clearly sympathised with Bastwick and Burton.65CJ ii. 44b, 52b. The king’s critics also continued to derive political mileage from Hampden’s own case. The Commons delivered their final verdict on the subject with their landmark resolution of 7 December that the judgment against him had been ‘against the laws of the realm, the right of property, and the liberty of the subjects, and contrary to former resolutions in Parliament, and to the Petition of Right’.66CJ ii. 46b; Procs. LP i. 486-97, 499-501. He had probably sat on the committee which had recommended the Commons to do so.67CJ ii. 38a. The Lords formally nullified the 1638 ruling on 27 February 1641.68LJ iv. 156a, 173a, 173b.

Religious reform was very much a priority for Hampden. This was not just a question of his own pious inclinations. He and Pym deliberately set out to use it as a weapon against the king. This was by far the easiest way to stir MPs’ passions and many needed little encouragement to renew their debates about the king’s ecclesiastical policies. Pym and Hampden made the threat from those policies a central theme of their case against the king. Many MPs were already more suspicious about Charles’s intentions towards the Church of England than about any other aspect of his policies. What Pym, aided by Hampden, was able to do was to link those suspicions with the controversies over other policy decisions to present a plausible picture of royal tyranny. They developed a grand unified theory of the popish conspiracy they claimed was at the heart of Charles’s government. For Hampden at least, the only sensible response to that threat was a fundamental reform of the structures of the English church.

On 8 February 1641 Hampden spoke in favour of the committal of the London root and branch petition.69Procs. LP ii. 391, 392. This, of itself, need not have meant that he supported its call for the abolition of episcopacy, although it was a good indication that he wanted some sort of major reform along those lines. He was also cautious on 27 February when the commissioners from the Scottish Parliament submitted a paper on the same subject.70Two Diaries of Long Parl. 12-13. The full extent of what he had in mind only emerged over the months that followed.71Clarendon, Hist. i. 309. As a first step, he wanted to see the major Laudian bishops, like William Piers of Bath and Wells, Matthew Wren of Ely and Richard Mountague of Norwich, held to account by Parliament.72CJ ii. 50a, 54b-55a, 91a; Procs. LP i. 669, 670, 672. Laud himself was, of course, the most obvious target. On 26 February 1641 Hampden and John Maynard* accompanied Pym when he delivered the impeachment articles against Laud to the Lords.73CJ ii. 92a, 94a, 168b; Procs. LP ii. 532, 535. When Pym fell ill the following June, he handed over his papers on Laud to Hampden so that he could take over as the lead prosecutor against the archbishop.74Procs. LP iv. 738, 741, 743; Bodl. Rawl. D.1099, f. 41v; Harl. 478, f. 24. That month Hampden sat on the committee to prepare the proposed impeachment of all the bishops.75CJ ii. 230b For good measure, he also wanted the clergy, and the bishops in particular, excluded from secular offices.76CJ ii. 115a, 159a, 165a, 167b; Procs. LP iv. 612, 614. Speaking in support of the proposal that the bishops be excluded from the House of Lords, he expressed reservations about the wording of the motion, which stated that their presence was ‘inconvenient’, on the grounds that it overestimated the constitutional significance of what was being proposed.77Two Diaries of Long Parl. 18. That constitutional significance was very much greater than Hampden was pretending, but it made sense to reassure any doubters by playing down its importance. He continued to protest against the Canons agreed by Convocation the previous year.78CJ ii. 52a, 129a; iv. 655. Any number of other complaints were also supported by him to add to the bishops’ discomfort.79CJ ii. 36a, 84b, 101a, 181b, 206b; LJ iv. 280b, 308b; Procs. LP iv. 504, 513, v. 240; Bodl. Rawl. D.1099, f. 130.

Viscount Falkland (Lucius Cary*) would later allege that Hampden had persuaded him to support the ‘root and branch’ reform under false pretences, assuring him that no further action would be taken against the church.80Clarendon, Hist. i. 312, 444n, iii. 182. If so, Falkland had every right to feel betrayed. Comments made by Hampden in the debates of 27 May and 4 June 1641 made it clear that his ultimate aim was nothing less than the abolition of episcopacy.81Bodl. Rawl. D.1099, f. 18v; Procs. LP iv. 726-7. Sir Simonds D’Ewes* understandably believed it when he heard that Hampden, Pym and Stephen Marshall had put Sir Robert Harley* up to introducing the bill to achieve that objective.82Harl. 163, f. 306v. Related to the attack on the bishops were the moves to confiscate the landed estates of the cathedral chapters. Hampden helped find time for this to be debated by the Commons, although the plan proved too controversial and had to be abandoned for the time being.83Procs. LP iii. 53, 55. In July 1641 he got the pamphlet, The Order and Form of Church Government, referred to the committee for printing.84Procs. LP vi. 69; CJ ii. 221a-b. His aim was probably a Presbyterian church along Scottish lines.

The other main plank in the case for a conspiracy by the king and his advisers to promote royal tyranny were the accusations brought against the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†). Although not among the committee of six appointed on 11 November 1640 to prepare the charges against Strafford, Hampden and Sir Walter Erle were added to it the following day.85CJ ii. 27a; Procs. LP i. 119. Hampden, it is true, asked to be excused the duty of requesting a conference with the Lords on the subject on 30 November. However, this almost certainly due to the other commitments on his time rather than any reluctance to support Pym’s pursuit of the earl.86CJ ii. 39b; Procs. LP i. 374. Over the subsequent months Hampden was fully involved in the tortuous procedural manoeuvres between the two Houses over the proposed impeachment and then over the proposed attainder.87CJ ii. 76a, 86b, 88b, 93a, 98a, 109a, 117b, 119a-b,122a; LJ iv. 148b, 214b; Procs. LP ii. 322, 831; iii. 55, 497, 501, 513, 515, 582, 584, 587; Two Diaries of Long Parl. 16; Harl. 478, f. 13. For reasons which remain unclear but which did not go unnoticed, he slipped out of the House to avoid voting in the crucial division on the third reading of the attainder bill on 21 April 1641.88Add. 31954, f. 181v. Five days earlier he had pointed out that debating the bill did not commit them to attainting the earl, so it is possible that he had doubts about the principle of the bill.89Verney, Notes, 50. However, those who were pressing hardest for a conviction seem not to have viewed his failure to vote as a betrayal, as the following day he was, as usual, included on the committee preparing for the latest conference with the Lords about the attainder.90CJ ii. 126a.

When the king attempted in the spring of 1641 to woo his critics in Parliament with offers of court offices, he seems not have approached Hampden. There were, at this stage, no rumours of possible appointments being dangling before him. If anything, the king may have hoped to separate some of his critics, like Bedford, Saye and Pym, with whom he might have been willing to work, from others, like Hampden and Nathaniel Fiennes I*, with whom he was not. Such a policy became less realistic after the death of Bedford, although the speculation did continue. Only then did Hampden begin to figure in this gossip. Separate rumours in July 1641 suggested that he was about to become either secretary of state or chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster.91CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 53, 63. Neither was correct. Philip Warwick would later claim that the job Hampden really wanted was that of governor to the prince of Wales. His thinking was that long-term changes were more likely to be achieved if one moulded the young Prince Charles rather than trying to reform his father.92Warwick, Mems. Charles I, 267. It therefore cannot be ruled out that, under certain circumstances, Hampden might have been prepared to accept a court office. His goal was not opposition for the sake of opposition; after all, the most effective way of ensuring that the king’s advisers followed the right policies would be for him and his friends to become those advisers.

Since the beginning of this Parliament Hampden had appreciated the need to disband both the English and the Scottish armies. His argument in November 1640 that Parliament ought to agree on what form any grant of money should take before deciding how much to vote was not an attempt to block all supply.93Procs. LP i. 132, 139-40. Once the Commons had agreed that they wanted to vote £100,000, he was included on the committee to prepare the necessary supply bill and then offered £1,000 from his own pocket as security to help underwrite a loan of £100,000 from the City of London.94CJ ii. 31b, 34a; Procs. LP i. 160, 190, 196, 229, 232, 235, 238. In January 1641 he probably supported the request to the lord mayor of London for a further loan of £60,000.95CJ ii. 68b. At the same time, he was keen to conclude a treaty with the Scots to help effect this demilitarization process.96CJ ii. 65a; Procs. LP ii. 139, 140. When Parliament wanted a third loan in March 1641 for this purpose, Hampden was included in the delegation to the City which carried out the negotiations.97CJ ii. 94b, 113a; Procs. LP ii. 586. He was also pressing for the Irish army to be disbanded.98CJ ii. 91b, 93b; Procs. LP ii. 562.

There was a good reason why Hampden and Pym wanted the armies dispersed as soon as possible. The longer the arrears remained unpaid, the more the armies became a potential source of discontent, and the person best placed to exploit that discontent was the king. The uncovering of the army plot in early May 1641 confirmed the danger. A plot that had failed was the perfect opportunity for Pym and Hampden. It was to be investigated with the maximum publicity. Their first response was the Protestation, which Hampden took as soon as it was drawn up on 3 May in response to this breaking news.99CJ ii. 132b, 133a; Harl. 477, f. 28v. Over the next six weeks he helped keep the Commons fully informed about the latest revelations. Many of his reports concerned Henry Percy*, the investigation of whose role as a ringleader may have been his particular responsibility.100CJ ii. 134a, 135a, 139a, 140a, 147a-148a, 169b-170a, 174b, 175b; LJ iv. 267b; Procs. LP iv. 217, 247, 252, 273, 393, 395, 397, 399-402; v. 12, 15-16, 18, 31, 32, 117, 108, 111, 112, 115, 116, 132, 171; vi. 84; Harl. 477, ff. 70v, 72; Harl. 478, ff. 27v, 28, 55, 56, 61; Harl. 163, ff. 294, 307, 313v; Harl. 5047, ff. 11v, 17v, 49, 68v, 70v; Bodl. Rawl. D.1099, f. 58. The other way in which Pym and Hampden responded to the army plot was to redouble their efforts to pay off the armies. Throughout June and July this was probably what Hampden viewed as his most urgent priority, with its additional advantage that he thereby remained on good terms with the Scots.101CJ ii. 165a, 170a, 172b, 182b, 187a, 188b, 193b, 196a, 228a, 229a-b, 240a, 243a; Two Diaries of Long Parl. 46; Procs. LP iv. 466, 628, 721; v. 283, 353, 364; Harl. 164, ff. 1v, 3v, 4v. The behaviour of Lord George Digby* had meanwhile provided other opportunities to inflame opinion in the Commons. It may have been during one of those debates that Hampden impressed William Drake* by his oratorical skill in using generous praise of Digby’s character to throw attendant criticisms into relief.102HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. *38v. Hampden also spoke in support of the wish by Digby’s cousin, Sir Kenelm Digby, to go abroad.103Procs. LP v. 298, CJ ii. 183b. In the wake of the plot, he preferred to see any court Catholics as far away as possible.104Procs. LP v. 330.

Scotland and Ireland, late 1641

The departure of the king for Scotland on 11 August 1641 worried Pym and Hampden.105Procs. LP vi. 118, 126, 171; CJ ii. 227a, 230a, 243a. They did not trust Charles acting behind their backs over 300 miles away. Parliament therefore appointed a team of five peers and MPs, including Hampden, to join the king in Edinburgh.106CJ ii. 256b, 262b, 264a, 265b; LJ iv. 370b-371a, 372b; Procs. LP vi. 418, 420; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 93. Hampden was an obvious choice; he already had strong links with many of the leading figures in Scotland, he was sympathetic to their views on church government and his inclusion added weight to the commission. Several of the measures passed by the Commons in the days preceding the king’s departure in order to reassure the Scots, including the bill for brotherly assistance and the bill to appoint the commissioners, had received his active support.107CJ ii. 243a, 245a, 248b, 249a, 252b; LJ iv. 355b, 360a; Procs. LP vi. 268, 314, 358; Harl. 479, ff. 139v, 140. He and Goodwin had also lent £1,000 of their own money to the fund to pay off the Scottish army.108CJ ii. 222a, 236b. Hampden and the other commissioners had set out by 22 August and reached Edinburgh by 1 September.109CJ ii. 269a; Harl. 164, f. 86. Although very little is known about the commissioners’ activities in Scotland, Hampden and Nathaniel Fiennes were regarded as being the dominant figures among them.110Clarendon, Hist. i. 371, 393. Their worst fears about the king’s intentions seemed to be confirmed by the plot – dubbed the ‘Incident’ – to arrest James Hamilton, 3rd marquess of Hamilton, and the earls of Argyll (Archibald Campbell*) and Lanark (William Hamilton). News of this was sent by the commissioners to London on 14 October.111D’Ewes (C), 8-9. Within a fortnight it had been decided that Hampden and Sir William Armyne* ought to return to England, even though the king was to remain on in Scotland for several more weeks.112D’Ewes (C), 66; CJ ii. 301b; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 155. The thinking may have been that they were needed in London to brief their friends and colleagues in person on this latest development. On returning to Westminster on 11 November, Hampden was able to present the latest letter from Fiennes and Sir Philip Stapilton* who had been left behind with the king in Edinburgh.113D’Ewes (C), 118-19.

Hampden returned to London to find the capital inflamed by the news of the Irish rebellion. It can be assumed that he had heard the news on the way south. He was in no doubt that swift action was needed. He would have headed the delegation sent to obtain another loan of £50,000 from the City of London on 12 November had he not been detained by other matters.114CJ ii. 313a; D’Ewes (C), 127-8, 129. Fears that the uprising would spread to England were strengthened by the claims of Thomas Beale that he had been attacked at Moorfields supposedly by Catholic plotters. Pym and Hampden made sure that Parliament was kept fully informed about this story.115CJ ii. 316b; D’Ewes (C), 144, 148; LJ iv. 439a-440a. Hampden also encouraged their interest in the case of Adam Courtney, a Catholic who had been arrested in Buckinghamshire.116D’Ewes (C), 201-2. He then got them to find time to consider the bill to secure recusants and negotiated with the Lords for its passage.117CJ ii. 318b, 321a, 327b, 330b, 331a; D’Ewes (C), 248, 289. The prospect that troops would have to be sent to Ireland made it all the more important that the arrears already owed to the army be paid and it was Hampden who once again raised that issue in Parliament.118CJ ii. 352a; D’Ewes (C), 330. His support for the impeachment of Daniel O’Neill† was similarly calculated.119Add. 64807, f. 12.

One consequence of the Irish rebellion was that the Scottish Parliament was now all the keener to reinforce relations with its English counterpart. Both Parliaments saw advantages in using a Scottish army to put down the rebels in Ireland. It was now the turn of the Scots to send commissioners to England. The king’s return would in any case remove the pretext for the presence of the remaining English commissioners in Edinburgh and it was Hampden who secured the Commons’ agreement to the message to be sent to the Scottish Parliament on the commissioners’ departure.120CJ ii. 315a; D’Ewes (C), 138-9, 140. On 3 December he was unsurprisingly included on the commission to negotiate with the commissioners from the Scottish Parliament on their arrival in London.121CJ ii. 331a; LJ iv. 461a, 464a-b. As he was heavily involved in the parliamentary preparations for those negotiations, it is more than likely that he took a leading role.122CJ ii. 336a, 341a, 343a, 348a, 353a, 354a; D’Ewes (C), 220, 311, 337.

Events in Ireland had also helped convince Parliament to adopt the Grand Remonstrance. Its text had been completed while Hampden was absent in Edinburgh, but he had sat on the committee which had started work on it before his departure and he now supported its adoption.123CJ ii. 234a, 253a. It was the definitive expression of the conspiracy theory which he and Pym had been promoting in Parliament for the past year. The consequences of the king’s response would be no less far-reaching.

Arming against the king, 1642

Whatever the wisdom of Charles’s decision to proceed against the Five Members, there can be no doubt that he was correct to think that Hampden was one of his leading opponents in the Commons. It would have been astonishing had Charles not included him among those whom he now accused of treason. The charges against them were presented to the Lords on 3 January 1642.124LJ iv. 500b-501a, 503a. The next day, Hampden, Pym, Hesilrige, Denzil Holles* and William Strode I*, defiantly took their seats in the House, only to withdraw when they were warned that the king was on his way in person.125CJ ii. 368a, 373b-374b; PJ i. 7-11; Harl. 6424, f. 99v. A pamphlet subsequently appeared containing what purported to be a speech delivered by Hampden on that occasion defending himself and his friends against the king’s accusation.126J. Hampden, A Discreet and Learned Speech, spoken in the Parliament, on Wednesday, the 4 of January, 1641 (1642). This is known to have been a fabrication, not least because another MP, Sir Edward Dering*, denied that it had ever been given.127Procs. in Kent 1640, ed. Larking, p. xliii. Hampden and the other four made a triumphant return to the Commons on 10 January. He was then able to inform the House that thousands of Buckinghamshire men were marching on the capital carrying a petition expressing support for them.128PJ i. 29, 31, 35. That petition, the first of a wave of new petitions to Parliament from the provinces, was presented the following day. John Denham†, who called this ‘the first sedition’, was one person who suspected that Hampden had organised it.129The Poetical Works of Sir John Denham ed. T.H. Banks (New Haven, 1928), 124. Not everyone in Buckinghamshire was as supportive as the petitioners and Hampden did his best to calm the jittery mood there. When rumours reached Westminster that a rival group had armed themselves and was assembling at Reading, he raised this in the Commons and then wrote to the sheriff to reassure him that there was no need for the county to take precautions as the matter was already being dealt with.130PJ i. 90, 95-6; Stowe 188, f. 1; Add. 64807, f. 30v.

Edward Hyde was probably not alone in detecting in Hampden a greater sense of urgency after this point. Any reason Hampden may have had to believe that Charles could be trusted had gone. It was now more a matter of bringing the king to his senses. In Hyde’s evocative phrase, ‘when he [Hampden] first drew his sword he threw away the scabbard’.131Clarendon, Hist. iii. 63. Hampden supported the proposal that the peers who had recently been created by the king should be prevented from taking their seats in the Lords with the comment that ‘the commonwealth is now sick and this will be one remedy’.132PJ i. 109. The current attorney-general, Sir Edward Herbert (Edward Herbert I*), who had brought the indictment against the Five Members, was another obvious target. Hampden joined Pym and Strode in calling for his impeachment.133PJ i. 82. He also played a full part in the exchange of letters between the king and Parliament on the rights and wrongs of the attempted arrests.134CJ ii. 384a, 388a. The request to the king that he place the Tower of London and other forts under the control of persons approved by Parliament was both a signal to Charles of their growing distrust and a pretext to take control of these strategic locations. Hampden moved the motion which set this request in motion and then carried it up to the Lords.135CJ ii. 372a, 377b, 409a, 410a; LJ iv. 560b; PJ i. 118-19, 258.

Faced with the worsening relations between the king and the English Parliament, the Scots preferred to side with Parliament. This alliance, and the need to retain Scottish involvement in Ireland, dominated Hampden’s activities in Parliament throughout the first half of 1642. Encouraged by him and others, the Scottish commissioners sent a message of support to Parliament on 17 January.136CJ ii. 383a-b, 386a. On Hampden’s suggestion, Parliament reciprocated by agreeing to pay for the commissioners’ lodgings.137PJ i. 91, 97. More substantially, he made sure that the money for the Scottish army in Ireland was paid as matter of priority.138CJ ii. 393b, 401a, 410b, 422b; PJ i. 169, 211, 260. That he should initially have been proposed for appointment as one of the commissioners for Irish affairs and then had to ask that someone else (Sir John Meyrick*) be appointed instead is especially revealing; it not only confirms that he was one of those pushing hardest for the suppression of the Irish rebellion but also shows how central he was in the dealings with the Scottish commissioners, for it was the need to devote his energies to Anglo-Scottish affairs that he gave as his reason for declining the Irish position.139PJ i. 371, 468, 469; CJ ii. 456a. Dealings with the Scots were indeed taking up much of his time.140CJ ii. 392b, 399a, 400a, 402a, 453a, 470b; PJ i. 209, 233, 495-6; LJ iv. 633a.

Even so, Scottish and Irish issues were inextricably connected, not least because good relations with the Scots now depended on the English Parliament being seen to support them in Ireland. Hampden therefore did everything he could to help organise supplies to their base at Carrickfergus.141PJ i. 267, 439, 459; CJ ii. 412a, 451b, 458a. He also handled the negotiations which resulted in the agreement that Alexander Leslie, 1st earl of Leven, was to command the Scottish army in Ireland.142PJ i. 374, 397. When the Commons wanted information from the Scottish commissioners on the rates of pay for their soldiers, Hampden provided it.143CJ ii. 452a; PJ i. 451, 457. It must have given him particular pleasure when, on 25 February 1642, he was able to announce that the Scottish commissioners wished to invest in the Irish Adventure.144CJ ii. 456a; PJ i. 469. Hampden had personally subscribed £1,000 to the Adventure and he seems to have encouraged some of his friends to do so as well.145Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 183; CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, pp. 46, 48, 124, 125, 159, 182, 219, 345, 349; Stowe 188, ff. 7-9; CJ ii. 519a; PJ ii. 148. He also paid £20 in Buckinghamshire towards the county’s contributions for Ireland.146Bucks. Contributions for Ireland, 73. The declaration of brotherly affection between England and Scotland approved by the Commons on 8 April was probably largely his handiwork.147CJ ii. 513b; PJ ii. 125. The following month, when the Scottish commissioners wanted their payment of £110,000, they got Hampden to remind the Commons and it was he who presented Parliament with the letter from the Scottish privy council advising them to resolve their differences with the king.148PJ ii. 270, 296, 299; CJ ii. 579b; LJ v. 73b. He was always willing to badger his colleagues for more troops, money or arms for the Scottish army in Ireland.149PJ ii. 312, 419, 449-50.

It is just possible that the suggestion he floated in the Commons on 22 January that a synod of clergymen should be summoned was intended to reassure the Scots. That said, Hampden might well have thought it was a good idea anyway. Even although this is recognisably the germ of the idea that would become the Westminster Assembly of Divines, on this occasion the suggestion got nowhere.150PJ i. 139. On other religious issues, Hampden was more in tune with his colleagues. He supported the bills to disable clergymen from exercising temporal jurisdictions, for suppressing innovations in religion and for the better maintenance of the ministry.151CJ ii. 419b, 437b, 496b. In February 1642 he was one of the parishioners of St Margaret’s Westminster who, acting on advice from the House of Commons, approved the appointment of Stephen Marshall as their parish lecturer.152A Cat. of Westminster Recs. ed. J.E. Smith (1900), 66n.

In April 1642 it was noted that Hampden was often absent from the Commons.153HMC Cowper, ii. 314. The events at Hull would change that. On 23 April Sir John Hotham* refused to allow the king to enter the town. Hampden played a central part in the flurry of activity which followed, both in the Commons and behind the scenes.154CJ ii. 540b, 542b, 545b, 548a, 550b, 560b, 570b, 577a, 578a, 582b, 611b; LJ v. 28b, 86a, 114b; PJ ii. 214, 226, 242, 251, 313, 338, 379. He and his colleagues backed Hotham. It was an ominous sign that they were already thinking in terms of the military implications of allowing the king access to such a strategic port. The need now was for Parliament to justify its stance against the king. In late May Hampden sat on the committee which prepared the Nineteen Propositions.155CJ ii. 594a, 596a. He later assisted in the drafting of Parliament’s response to the king’s answer to the Propositions and of the reply to the king’s proclamation condemning the Militia Ordinance.156CJ ii. 637a, 638b.

The creation of the Committee of Safety on 4 July was a major step towards war, as it was a recognition by Parliament that a compact body was required to coordinate their responses to the increasingly fraught pace of events. Hampden was one of the ten MPs named to it.157CJ ii. 651b. Early the following year Denham would satirise Hampden’s membership of the Committee in his poem, A Speech against Peace at the Close Committee, portraying him as a Machiavellian figure manipulatively pursuing a policy of war contrary to the interests of the kingdom.158Denham, Poetical Works, 122-7. If Hampden’s actual motives were less dishonourable, the assumption that he was one of the Committee’s more important members may well have been accurate. No sooner had the Committee been created than it had to deal with Hotham’s decision to deny the king entry at Hull a second time. A week later (18 July) Hampden briefed the Commons on behalf of the Committee of Safety on the latest news from the town and proposed that £10,000 be forwarded to the delegation of MPs who had been sent there.159PJ iii. 227-8, 229-30, 232, 272; CJ ii. 678b. The intended message to the king was that they meant business. He also backed the assorted military preparations taking place elsewhere.160PJ iii. 157, 159, 235, 237; CJ ii. 676a.

For Hampden, this drift towards civil war increased still further the importance of Parliament’s links with the Scots. He was now determined to underpin those links with a formal treaty. Throughout June and July amid the deepening crisis he laboured in Parliament to finalise the text of the proposed agreement.161CJ ii. 601a, 603a, 608b-609a, 622a, 625b, 636a, 639b, 650b; LJ v. 176b; PJ iii. 5, 7, 8, 30, 69-70, 127, 234. That he was able to secure the payment of the next instalment of £34,000 due to the Scots, together with other military assistance, helped sweeten the deal.162PJ iii. 83, 223; CJ ii. 676b-677a. It was only appropriate, given that no one had worked harder on its drafting, that it should have been Hampden who carried the amended treaty up to the Lords on 19 July.163CJ ii. 681b; LJ v. 220a.

Meanwhile, in Buckinghamshire the implementation of the Militia Ordinance had revealed the first divisions within the county community. The lord lieutenant, William, 5th Baron Paget, chose to obey the king’s summons to York rather than Parliament’s request that he implement the ordinance. On 14 June Hampden obtained an order from Parliament empowering the Buckinghamshire deputy lieutenants to act in Paget’s absence.164PJ iii. 74, 76; CJ ii. 623a, 625a, 625b; LJ v. 135b-136a. Hampden himself had already offered to provide Parliament with £200 in plate and three horses.165PJ iii. 467. He then encouraged others to do the same, joining with some of his colleagues in writing to the inhabitants of Buckinghamshire to ask them to contribute money, plate, horses and weapons.166CJ ii. 654b; Stowe 188, f. 10. Eventually he would personally lend a total of £300 in plate to Parliament.167SP28/151: answer of Great Hampden, 12 Mar. 1647. He also obtained permission to begin spending some of this money.168CJ ii. 755b; LJ v. 193a-b, 348a-b. Meanwhile, Sir William Brereton* wrote to Hampden and Goodwin reporting on the steps he had taken to implement the Militia Ordinance at Manchester.169LJ v. 174b.

Fighting the King, 1642-3

It was one thing to provide financial assistance, but what Parliament also needed was men willing to fight for it. Hampden now took the ultimate step and volunteered his services to the army being assembled by Parliament. He was arguably the most high-profile MP to do so. Appointed as a colonel, he proceeded to raise his own regiment of foot.170SP28/1a, ff. 161, 172; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 366; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 249. These were the men whom his friend and cousin, Oliver Cromwell*, would later recall as ‘old decayed serving men and tapsters’.171Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 471. Philip Warwick seems to have been more impressed by Hampden’s abilities as a recruiting agent, claiming that ‘he had greater interests to raise the men than aptitude to range or fight them’.172Warwick, Mems. Charles I, 265. Hampden’s trusted servant, John Baldwin*, acted as his provost marshal, while William Spurstowe, the rector of Great Hampden and one of the five ‘Smectymnuus’ authors, served as regimental chaplain.173SP28/5, f. 96; SP28/1a, f. 213. Hampden’s captains included Richard Ingoldsby*. Over the following year he formed an effective military partnership with Arthur Goodwin, his friend, fellow army officer and the other MP for Buckinghamshire. In what would later be seen as an omen of his subsequent fate, the regiment was initially mustered at Chalgrove Field.174Mercurius Aulicus no. 25 (18-24 June 1643), 330 (E.59.8); no. 49 (3-9 Dec. 1643), 703 (E.79.1); Clarendon, Hist. iii. 61; Warwick, Mems. Charles I, 261; Wood, Ath. Ox. iii. 61; Cowley, Poem on the late Civil War, 22; W. Dugdale, A Short View of the Late Troubles in England (Oxford, 1681), 186.

On 13 August Hampden greeted the company of London volunteers when they arrived to reinforce Aylesbury.175H. Ellis, ‘Lttrs. from a subaltern officer in the earl of Essex’s army’, Archaeologia, xxxv. 314; HMC Cowper, ii. 320. The following week his regiment was part of the force headed by Lord Brooke which set out for Warwickshire.176His Majesties Proceedings in Northants. Gloucs. Wilts. And Warws. (1642), 5 (E.113.4). On the way there Hampden and Goodwin captured the 1st earl of Berkshire (Sir Thomas Howard†) and Sir John Curzon* at Watlington.177Exceeding Good News from Oxford-shire (1642), 2 (E.114.3). They had reached Coventry by 23 August.178LJ v. 321a-b. He and Goodwin then doubled back to Southam to protect Daventry from an attack by the 2nd earl of Northampton (Spencer Compton†).179A True Relation of the Skirmish in Southam Field (1642, E.114.25); A true Relation of the manner of taking of the Earl of Northampton (1642), 2-3 (E.115.14). Hampden saw action again three weeks later when he took part in the campaign which brought Worcester temporarily under parliamentarian control.180Exceeding Joyfull Newes from the Lord Sey (1642), 4-5 (E.118.32); CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 392.

The parliamentarian forces were mustered by the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, at Northampton on 14 September. Hampden cannot yet have joined them there as he had returned to Westminster and the next day was appointed as joint manager for the conference with the Lords on Irish affairs.181CJ ii. 764a, 768a. Rather less certain is whether he was still at Westminster on 10 October when he was named as one of the commissioners to conduct trade negotiations with the Scots.182CJ ii. 802b; Add. 18777, f. 25v. It was certainly in his absence that his name was considered by the Commons on 21 October for appointment as one of the commissioners for the conservation of peace between England and Scotland.183Add. 18777, f. 37v; CJ ii. 818a. That he was then absent is known because he now saw action again. At about this time he and Goodwin relieved Coventry when it was threatened by Prince Rupert.184Exceeding Joyfull Newes from Coventry (1642), sig. A2 (E.123.13). A full-scale battle was only a matter of time. Located towards the rear of the column of troops shadowing the king’s army, Hampden and his men had only reached Stratford-upon-Avon by the evening of 22 October and so the following day did not reach the vicinity of Edgehill until the first major battle of the civil war was already under way. As they approached the battlefield from the north east, they intercepted Rupert’s cavalry forces which had smashed their way through the parliamentarian right-wing. Some thought that it was this interception that saved the parliamentarian forces from defeat.185HMC 5th Rep. 160; Add. 18777, f. 43v. In the battle’s aftermath, Hampden was one of those who was most keen to pursue the enemy.

On 1 November, by which point the king had already reached Oxford, Hampden wrote from Northampton to the Buckinghamshire deputy lieutenants warning them to prepare their defences.186Nugent, Hampden, ii. 318-20. In the event the king continued south to Reading. Nine days later Hampden was back at Westminster, helping to decide how more cavalry units could be raised and meeting with the Lords to discuss the peace overture to be sent to the king at Colnbrook.187CJ ii. 841a, 841b; Add. 18777, ff. 53v, 70. This hardly counted as leaving the front as the enemy was now barely more than 15 miles from Westminster. Two days later, on 12 November, Hampden was able to provide cover for Denzil Holles’s retreat under fire during Rupert’s successful attack on Brentford.188Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 60. On that occasion he dismounted and fought alongside his pike men.189Whitelocke, Diary, 140. Sir John Meyrick would subsequently be criticised for having given him insufficient assistance.190Add. 18777, f. 57v. The following day Hampden and his men joined with the rest of the parliamentarian army in blocking the London road at Turnham Green, thereby deterring the king from attempting an attack on the capital.

Military affairs kept Hampden busy over the winter despite the lull in the fighting, the king’s withdrawal to Oxford having left Buckinghamshire as the front line. In late November he was at Great Hampden, raising provisions in the area for the troops stationed in the county.191Mems. of Prince Rupert, ii. 72; CJ ii. 869a. By early December he had joined the forces under Essex at Windsor.192Harl. 164, f. 243v. His military role was no doubt one reason why later that month he was asked by the Commons to congratulate Essex on the capture of Winchester.193CJ ii. 892b. A false report at about the same time claimed he had seized Reading.194A True Relation of the Proceedings of the Earle of Essex [1642], 3-7 (E.129.12). Instead he had advanced into Oxfordshire, securing Stokenchurch to allow Goodwin to push on towards Abingdon. Several weeks later he and Goodwin, together with Richard Grenville*, attempted to seize the key royalist outpost at Brill, also on the Buckinghamshire-Oxfordshire border. The attack on 27 January 1643 was repulsed, however.195Mercurius Aulicus no. 5 (29 Jan.-4 Feb. 1643), 55-6 (E.246.16); Clarendon, Hist. ii. 495.

Despite all this, Hampden had nevertheless managed to resume an active role at Westminster. According to D’Ewes, Hampden was one of the army officers who travelled from Windsor on 22 December 1642 to oppose the proposed peace treaty.196Harl. 164, f. 270v. Other evidence confirms that he was unhappy with the attempts to negotiate with the king. If there was to be a deal, he wanted it to be as tough as possible. His role as a teller in the division on 6 January 1643 suggests that he wanted an act of oblivion to protect those who fought the king, he wanted the militia to be removed from royal control for at least one year and he supported those in London who were equally unwilling to support any negotiations.197CJ ii. 917a, 918b, 921b, 925a. In the five divisions on the king’s most recent reply which took place between 8 and 18 February Hampden consistently acted as teller for those most dubious about dealing with him.198CJ ii. 959a, 960b, 961a-b, 963a, 969b, 970b; Harl. 164, f. 302v. Although, as in the debate on 11 February, when he insisted that their main concern was to agree a disbandment, there were some to whom it seemed that he was more concerned with obstructing any chance for peace.199Add. 18777, f. 152. When on 17 February he seconded the motion that Parliament first consider the proposals for disbanding the army and restoring fortifications, D’Ewes interpreted this as no more than a delaying tactic. Then, when it became clear that the supporters of a treaty welcomed this, Hampden, ‘like a subtle fox’, changed course and tried to avoid a vote on the issue, with the result that the motion was almost defeated as the treaty’s supporters were suddenly suspicious of his motives.200Harl. 164, ff. 301v-302; CJ ii. 969b; Add. 18777, f. 158. D’Ewes also suspected Hampden, Pym and Francis Rous* of seeking another loan from London in order to poison the peace negotiations.201Harl. 164, f. 303; CJ ii. 971a. All this confirmed D’Ewes in his view that Hampden was the ‘chief captain and ringleader’ of the ‘fiery spirits’ who ‘hazarded the whole kingdom to save themselves’.202Harl. 164, ff. 277v, 296v.

With the approach of spring in 1643 Hampden seems to have become less of a presence in Parliament. His responsibilities in the field were now his main preoccupation. He wanted to see Parliament’s forces take the offensive, believing that the best strategy would be a direct attack on Oxford.203Clarendon, Hist. iii. 25; Harl. 164, f. 318v. It was noticed that he was absent during the debate in the Commons on 18 March on the instructions to be given to the commissioners who were to meet with the king at Oxford. D’Ewes assumed that Hampden and his allies had realised that there was nothing they could do to stop these negotiations taking place.204Harl. 164, f. 334. But Hampden had good reasons to remain at the front. Two days later he was present at Aylesbury when Prince Rupert was driven back from the outskirts of the town.205CJ iii. 10a; Two Lttrs. of great Consequence (1643), 6-8 (E.94.2). Yet, even in Hampden’s absence, D’Ewes was still eager to detect his malign influence. When on 11 March the Commons debated Essex’s objections to the recent propositions from the king, D’Ewes took it for granted that they would have been drafted for him by Hampden, while the news that London would be more willing to lend money if Parliament agreed to a covenant or association was seen by D’Ewes as a scheme by Pym and ‘his cunning companion’, Hampden.206Harl. 164, ff. 322, 324.

A rumour circulating in London in early April even claimed that Essex was about to step down as lord general to make way for Hampden ‘as one more active, and so by consequence more capable of the style of Excellency’.207Mercurius Aulicus no. 15 (9-15 Apr. 1643), 185 (E.99.22); Wood, Ath. Ox. iii. 60. Hampden was certainly still vitally important. The immediate military task for him was to help defend Buckinghamshire and Berkshire from royalist attacks. This was still the front line. He was with the parliamentarian army when Reading fell to it on 27 April and he was then one of the officer-MPs who wrote to Parliament with the good news.208An Exact Relation of the delivering up of Reading (1643) (E.100.11). This would have been especially welcome to him, as Coley House, his wife’s dower estate from her previous marriage, was on the outskirts of the town.209Symonds, Diary, 4-5; VCH Berks. iii. 364. He was back at Westminster by 12 May when he was appointed joint manager for the conference with the Lords on the letter to be sent to the Scots.210CJ iii. 82a. Four days later Sir John Witteronge* and Thomas Tyrrell* sent him and Goodwin a letter from Aylesbury warning of the approaching royalist army. Either Hampden or Goodwin made sure that this was read in Parliament on 18 May and it was subsequently published.211CJ iii. 91a; LJ vi. 52b-53a; The Copy of a Lttr. from Alisbury (1643), sig. A2-A3 (E.102.15). A visit by him to London in early June provided an opportunity to deliver various intercepted letters to Speaker William Lenthall.212Harl. 164, f. 395. Hampden was now under no illusion about the difficulties they were facing. On 9 June 1643 he wrote to his cousin Sir Thomas Barrington*, stressing how urgent it was that money be raised to finance the current campaign.213Eg. 2643, f. 7. It is a measure of his continuing importance as one of the key figures on the parliamentarian side that the plot of Edmund Waller* included plans for his arrest and that the king’s general pardon of June 1643 excluded him by name.214LJ vi. 110b; Harl. 164, f. 397; Stuart Royal Proclamations ed. J.F. Larkin and P.L. Hughes (Oxford, 1973-83), ii. 917.

Chalgrove Field and Its Aftermath

Rupert’s response to Essex’s slow push towards Oxford that summer was to launch a raid into Buckinghamshire. Returning from a successful attack on Chinnor on 18 June, he found his path blocked at Chalgrove Field by Hampden and his regiment. Although outnumbered, Hampden decided to stand his ground.215Mems. of Prince Rupert, ii. 203. During the ensuing fighting he was fatally wounded. The exact nature of that wound has since been the subject of some controversy. At the time it was widely reported that he had been hit by a bullet in the shoulder.216A true Relation of a Gret Fight [1643], sig. [A4] (E.55.11); HMC 7th Rep. 552; Harl. 164, ff. 233, 241; Harl. 165, f. 396; Lipscombe, Buckingham, ii. 250; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 55n, 59-60n; Warwick, Mems. Charles I, 262. This was later contradicted by the tradition that his son-in-law Sir Robert Pye II* had told of how Hampden’s hand had been shattered when a pistol which had been given to him by Pye exploded.217HMC 13th Rep. IV, 403-4. This version seemed to be confirmed in 1828 when the 2nd Baron Nugent (George Nugent-Grenville†) exhumed what he believed was Hampden’s body. It was said that the body’s right hand had been amputated and, although it was judged that the left shoulder had been dislocated, there was no evidence of damage to the shoulder bones. However, other accounts of the exhumation reveal that the published account had almost certainly been embellished to fit Nugent’s preconceptions.218‘Disinterment of Hampden’, Gent. Mag. xcviii. pt. ii. 125-7; R. Gibbs, ‘The cause of the death of Hampden’, Recs. of Bucks. iii. 102-5; D. Lester and G. Blackshaw, The Controversy of John Hampden’s Death (Oxford, 2000). As Nugent himself later decided, the body exhumed in 1828 was probably not Hampden at all and the contemporary reports must carry greater weight than the later Pye account. To confuse the matter further, a fake eyewitness account of the fatal incident, supposedly written by Edward Clough, was fabricated in the nineteenth century.219Gent. Mag. lxxxv. pt. i. 395-6; C.H. Firth, ‘The last days of John Hampden’, The Academy (2 Nov. 1889), 288; (9 Nov. 1889), 304-5.

Whatever the cause, death was not instantaneous. The badly injured Hampden was carried from the battlefield to Thame. The place where he spent his final days is traditionally identified as the Greyhound Inn. Initial reports underestimated the seriousness of the injuries. He was said to be ‘very cheerful and hearty’ with a wound ‘more likely to be a badge of honour than any danger of life’.220A true Relation of a Gret Fight, sig. [A4]. According to Philip Warwick, Charles I wanted to send one of his surgeons to treat him, but none was available at the time. The king had seen this as a possible opportunity to show Parliament that the divisions between them were not as great as they seemed.221Warwick, Mems. Charles I, 266. For six days Hampden lingered on in agony. He finally died on 24 June. The news had reached London by 26 June.222HMC Cowper, ii. 335; HMC 7th Rep. 552, 553; Winthrop Pprs. iv. 396; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 53. Thomas Tyrrell took over the command of his regiment.223SP28/8, f. 239; SP28/19, f. 232; SP28/10, ff. 191-192, 270; BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database.

Hampden’s death was a serious blow to Parliament. There were few more tireless champions for a parliamentarian victory, whether at Westminster or in the field. Scottish commissioner Robert Baillie thought that the parliamentarians had lost ‘their stoutest captain’, while Gieronimo Agostini, the secretary to the Venetian ambassador, thought his death was of particular importance because he had been ‘one of the 17 leading rebels and considered wiser than any of the others’.224Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. ii. 79; CSP Ven. 1642-3, p. 295. When this was followed by the illness and death of Pym, a realignment among the leadership of the pro-Scots faction in the Commons became inevitable. St John would emerge more prominent than ever. The Solemn League and Covenant, agreed three months after Hampden’s death, with its support for an extension of Scottish-style Presbyterianism predicated on Anglo-Scottish cooperation, was the logical culmination of Hampden’s strategy. There was another sense in which Hampden continued to exert an influence from beyond the grave, for he was immediately transformed into a martyr for the cause. The shock and grief felt by many contemporaries was offset by the feeling that he had died an honourable death. The inevitable volumes of commemorative verses followed later that year.225J. Leicester, An elegiacall epitaph upon the deplored death of … Col. J. Hampden [1643]; Elegies on the Death of … Colonell John Hampden (1643, E.71.4). In him, Parliament had a convenient hero to rival the great royalist martyrs, Sir Bevill Grenvile* and Falkland.

Hampden was buried in the church at Great Hampden on 25 June.226Ebblewhite, Par. Reg. of Gt. Hampden, 77. When he had prepared his will seven years earlier he had included detailed instructions about the gravestone he wanted and in 1639 he had commissioned Nicholas Stone to erect a monument there to the memory of his first wife.227PROB11/200/541; L.M. Head, ‘John Hampden and Nicholas Stone, sculptor’, Recs. of Bucks. xx. 525-7. Perhaps because the memorial to his late wife had already been erected, the executors failed to install the gravestone he had wanted. It would not be until 1743 that a monument to Hampden himself would be placed in the church.228Ebblewhite, Par. Reg. of Gt. Hampden, 160; Pevsner, Bucks. 346. Lack of money may also have been a factor in 1643. Hampden died heavily in debt. By the time he had drawn up his 1636 will, he already owed £14,000 to his creditors and had had to place his estates into the hands of trustees. The cost of the Ship Money case and his military expenses can only have made things worse. Those trustees – his mother, Sir Gilbert Gerard*, Richard Knightley*, Edmund Waller*, his younger brother Richard Hampden, and his former father-in-law, Edmund Symeon – were now left the task of finding that money.229PROB11/200/541. Parliament was sympathetic. While a bill to assist the executors of Hampden and Pym got nowhere, the Commons did order in December 1645 that Hampden’s estates were to be exempted from wardship.230CJ iv. 189b, 377b. On 18 January 1647 £5,000 was voted to the executors (his mother and his father-in-law) to compensate for his Ship Money expenses, although as late as 1650 some of that money had still not been paid.231CJ v. 56a, 356a, 390b, vi. 191a, 376a; A. and O. ii. 100. Hampden’s eldest son, John, had predeceased him, possibly while serving with the parliamentarian army.232Lipscombe, Buckingham, ii. 259. The two remaining sons, Richard* and William*, were both still minors and were maliciously described as ‘a cripple’ and ‘a lunatic’.233Mercurius Aulicus (9-15 Apr. 1643), 192. It was therefore Richard who ultimately inherited the family estates.

Hampden was not forgotten. So long as the civil war was seen in epic terms, he was remembered as one of its undoubted heroes. His role in the Ship Money case was the emblematic example of resistance to the personal rule of Charles I and it was easy to believe that he had died fighting for those same principles. It helped his posthumous reputation that his early death had prevented him playing any part in the events of the later 1640s. Later generations could remember him as having represented what, in retrospect, seemed the least controversial aspects of the Long Parliament’s achievements. His reputation reached its peak in the nineteenth century. A club created in 1812 to press for the reform of the franchise was named in his honour.234B. Worden, Roundhead Reputations (2001), 231. The biography of him published by Lord Nugent in 1831, at the height of the Reform Bill crisis, ranked as one of the more important examples of that century’s fashion for biographies of the leading figures of the 1640s. It is unsurprising that he was included in the pantheon of great MPs whose statues lined St Stephen’s Hall in the new Palace of Westminster. A memorial was set up on Chalgrove Field in 1843 on the two hundredth anniversary of his death, while the Ship Money case was commemorated by other monuments erected at Great Hampden and Stoke Mandeville.235Ebblewhite, Par. Reg. of Gt. Hampden, p. xi; Pevsner, Bucks. 348-9. Finally, in 1912, a statue of him was erected at Aylesbury. Since then his fame has faded somewhat. The constitutional struggles of the reign of Charles I are no longer part of the public memory in the way that they had been during the nineteenth century and the changing assessment of Cromwell has tended to eclipse his contemporaries. But Hampden has not been entirely forgotten. A poll conducted in 2002 by the Bucks Free Press voted him ‘Buckinghamshire’s Greatest Person’.236The Patriot: Newsletter of the John Hampden Society, xxxiv.