HAMPDEN, Richard (1631-95), of Great Hampden, Bucks.

Richard Hampden’s inheritance was a challenging one. His father had been the most celebrated casualty of the civil war on the parliamentarian side, while the elder brother whose demise had elevated Richard to the role of heir had probably also died while serving in the parliamentarian army. Much of Richard’s political career would be spent defending what he saw as the cause for which they had died. In more mundane terms, his father had left him an estate crippled with debt.19PROB11/200/541. The money voted by Parliament to his father’s executors was never intended as a complete solution to those outstanding financial difficulties. Quite how those executors managed to pay off the creditors is unclear, but what is apparent is that Richard in due course inherited the core estates in Buckinghamshire.20VCH Bucks. ii. 289. His marriage to a daughter of Lord Paget may have helped. In 1642 John Hampden had ignored his own financial difficulty in order to make a substantial investment in the Irish Adventure and in the 1650s that investment came fruition. The lands in Ireland which Richard obtained as a shareholder seem to have been passed on to some of his father’s creditors.21CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, pp. 124, 159, 219, 345; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 397, 453.

The Hampdens had for generations been one of the major families in Buckinghamshire and John Hampden’s fame had, if anything, enhanced their local standing still further. It is therefore unsurprising that Richard Hampden should emerge as a county figure in Buckinghamshire almost as soon as he came of age. He was appointed to the commission of the peace in the autumn of 1653 at about the time of his twenty-second birthday and later, in November of that year, to the assessment commission.22An Act for an Assessment (1653). His continuing presence on these commissions over the years that followed suggest a readiness on his part to serve as a local magistrate first under the republic and later under the protectorate, perhaps at least partly because he was one of Oliver Cromwell’s* first cousins once removed.

His election to the 1656 Parliament showed that the Hampdens’ election influence in Buckingham remained as powerful as ever.23Whitelocke, Diary, 447. From the start, he was a reasonably active MP, being named to a wide range of different committees.24CJ vii. 426a, 427a, 430a, 434a, 435b, 483a, 485a, 488a, 490b, 496b, 504a, 505b, 509a, 515b. In the case of the committee on the bill concerning four of the Cambridge colleges, he and Griffith Bodurda* were added to it on 10 December at the request of his second cousin and MP for Cambridge University, Richard Cromwell*.25Burton’s Diary, ii. 95; CJ vii. 466b. The only occasion on which he is known to spoken in debate during this Parliament was on 29 April 1657 when MPs were considering whether the bill to protect the confiscated estates in Scotland and Ireland should specifically safeguard the claims of Edward Dendy*. Hampden backed the move by his cousin and brother-in-law John Trevor* to have this referred to a committee.26Burton’s Diary, ii. 67. He and Trevor also acted together as tellers supporting the bill in the division on Lord Abergavenny’s estate bill (10 Mar.).27CJ vii. 501a. It may be significant that at this stage of his career there is more evidence for his acting as a teller than as a debater. It perhaps took him time to develop his confidence as a public speaker. As a teller on 29 April 1657 he also helped block the moves to prevent couples aged under 21 marrying without parental consent.28CJ vii. 527a. Interestingly, Hampden had been aged only 20 when he had married. He was probably the person who proposed that Thomas Manton, the Presbyterian rector of St Paul’s Covent Garden, should preside at the day of humiliation on 27 February.29CJ vii. 497a.

In the winter of 1656-7 Hampden became increasingly involved in politics, usually siding with the Presbyterian or ‘country’ party against military rule. On 25 December he acted as teller with Sir William Roberts* against reading John Disbrowe’s* bill to confirm the decimation tax that supported the major generals.30CJ vii. 475a; Burton’s Diary, i. 243. On 10 February 1657 he was one of the tellers for those who wanted to reopen the debate on the wording of the clause in the bill to raise money for the Spanish war, asserting that taxes could only be levied with the consent of Parliament.31CJ vii. 489a. Hampden acted as teller in a number of divisions over the precise wording of the new civilian constitution, the Humble Petition and Advice. When, on 10 March, the House divided over whether to specify in article four that MPs ought to be ‘of known integrity’, he, together with John Claypoole*, counted those who unsuccessfully opposed the amendment, possibly because they felt that the government might abuse the power of exclusion thus created. (The tellers for the other side included his brother-in-law, Sir John Hobart*.)32CJ vii. 500b. Another division in which he acted as teller was that on 13 March by which it was agreed that the seventh article should grant the lord protector £1,000,000 for annual military expenditure and £300,000 for annual civil expenditure. Hampden was siding with those who supported those figures.33CJ vii. 502b. He also sat on the committees which redrafted the fifth article on the powers of the Other House.34CJ vii. 499a, 502a. As a teller on 24 March, he tried to oppose a temporary adjournment to the debate on part of the first article, which probably was related to the controversy over Cromwell’s title.35CJ vii. 511a. He was said to have supported kingship in the vote the following day.36Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 22 (E.935.5). That he was included in two of the delegations sent to see Cromwell may not have been that significant, for he had, as we have seen, been active in the drafting of the Humble Petition and, in any case, his status as one of Cromwell’s relatives made him an obvious choice.37CJ vii. 514a, 521b. But Francis Russell* was surely right to link Hampden’s support of reform to his personal ambition, commenting that after Cromwell’s final rejection of the crown ‘little Hampden’ was ‘very angry’ that his ‘strong dreams’ of a peerage had apparently evaporated.38Henry Cromwell Corresp. 273.

If Russell’s account is correct, Hampden spoke too soon. Before Parliament reassembled in January 1658, Hampden had been summoned by the council of state to sit in the Other House.39HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 504. The decision to include him among the new peers may have been last-minute, as his name was not on the list of the peers sent by John Thurloe* to William Lockhart* on 10 December.40TSP vi. 668. This confirms the contemporary suggestion that Hampden’s was the last name to be added. That same source guessed that he had been recommended by his fellow Buckinghamshire MP, Richard Ingoldsby*.41A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 2nd pagination, 20. Although not yet a major political figure and still relatively young, Hampden was no doubt selected in memory of his father and in recognition of his kinship with the lord protector. His involvement in the drafting of those parts of the Humble Petition that related to the Other House may also have confirmed that he had been in favour of its creation. He took his seat in the Other House on the first day of the new session (20 Jan.).42HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 507. Over the next fortnight he attended its debates on nine of the 13 days on which it was sitting.43HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 507-23. During that time he was named to two committees, those to receive petitions and to consider the bill to protect the sabbath from profanation.44HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 509, 516.

For Hampden, Cromwell’s death was probably as much a personal bereavement as a political one. He took his place among the male members of the family in the funeral procession on 23 November 1658.45Burton’s Diary, ii. 527. Meanwhile, following the decision to call a new Parliament, George Monck* had submitted a number of recommendations to the new lord protector as possible peers for the Other House. Those suggestions included the idea that Hampden should again be summoned.46TSP vii. 387. The council of state agreed. This time Hampden missed the first week of the Parliament, turning up and taking the oaths only on 8 February 1659. Even thereafter he was an infrequent attender, being more often absent than present, missing 26 of the 51 remaining days of the session.47HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 534-67. This probably did not indicate disaffection towards the protectorate, as he seems to have supported the bill rejecting any claim by Charles Stuart to the throne, with the committee to consider it being his only committee appointment in this Parliament.48HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 536.

Hampden’s service as a member of the Other House appeared to mark him as a loyal supporter of the Cromwells. This may have been why on 14 July 1659 the Rump decided against appointing him as one of the Buckinghamshire militia commissioners. They did so without even putting it to a vote.49CJ vii. 717b. However, Hampden was included on the new commissions for Buckinghamshire and for the neighbouring county of Oxfordshire the following March, by which time the reassembled Rump had been augmented by the readmission of the secluded Members.50A. and O.

Whatever his own personal attitude towards the return of Charles II, the family electoral grip over the Wendover constituency ensured that Hampden sat either for that seat or as a knight of the shire in every Parliament until ill heath prevented him standing in the 1695 election. He remained a staunch religious Presbyterian and his friend, the most prominent of the Presbyterian preachers, Richard Baxter, was a regular visitor to his house at Great Hampden.51CSP Dom. 1664-5, pp. 143, 144; Cal. Baxter Corresp. ii. 47, 73, 83. In 1663 a government informer linked Hampden to his father’s former secretary, John Baldwin*, although whether they were engaged in any seditious plotting, as that source wanted to believe, is impossible to say.52CSP Ire. 1663-5, p. 79. Having taken a particularly active role in the investigation of the Popish Plot, Hampden emerged in the Exclusion Parliaments as one of the leading whigs.53HP Commons 1660-1690. He accepted government office as a court whig under William III and crowned his career with a period as chancellor of the exchequer. He seems never to have fully recovered from the stroke that forced his retirement in 1694. His son, John†, committed suicide two years later, leaving a grandson, Richard†, to continue the family’s tradition of parliamentary service into the reign of George II.54HP Commons 1690-1715. The male line of this branch of the family died out in 1754 on the death of that Richard’s younger brother, John, and the estates then passed to their second cousin, Robert Trevor, who changed his name to Hampden and was later created Viscount Hampden.