John, the celebrated leader of the Long Parliament, was descended from an ancient and honourable family of Buckinghamshire. His father was the proprietor of the large family estates, and died while his son was an infant. His mother was the daughter of Sir Henry Cromwell of Hinchingbrooke, and the aunt of the great Oliver, who was thus John Hampden's cousin-german. After passing through the courses of the grammar-school of Thame and Magdalene College, Oxford, he began the study of the law at the Inner Temple. In 1619 he married and began to reside permanently on his estates, leading the same sort of life as was led by most English squires of the day. When the king found it necessary to summon a parliament, Hampden was returned first by the borough of Grampound, then thrice consecutively by Wendover, and finally entered the Long Parliament as one of the members for the county of Bucks. His history from this time till he fell mortally wounded in the skirmish with Prince Rupert upon Chalgrove Field, June 18, 1643, is the history of England. (See GREAT BRITAIN.) As Hampden comes before posterity as a party-man and the leader of a party, it is extremely difficult to form an estimate of his character such as will reconcile the various accounts of him that we possess. His partizans excite our pity when they set him up as the greatest man of his age, and as a man in whom were centred and surpassed the high and valuable qualities of Cromwell, Vane, Manchester, Hale, and Sidney. Equally absurd is the conduct of those who deny that he possessed great sagacity, great powers of debate, great courage in war, and great ability as an administrator and man of practice. He was not a man of genius, as Cromwell was; but he had great talents, and a mental constitution as refined as powerful. His personnel seems to have been a highly interesting one. He was the only leading man among the Parliamentarians in whom the Royalist wits could find nothing to assail. There is no act of his life in which he can be charged with anything like meanness or want of soul. His patriotism was at once a principle and a sentiment, and his noble self-devotion and heroic end prove that it was as strongly approved by his judgment as accordant with his sympathies. After hearing that his wounds were fatal, he quietly continued the despatch of some important public business; which done he calmly awaited his end. His last prayer was a prayer, not for himself only, but for his country which even in the agonies of death occupied his thoughts:—"Lord Jesus, receive my soul. O Lord, save my country. O Lord, be merciful to ———." His death was that of a Christian as well as a hero. (See Carlyle's Cromwell; Nugent's Memorials of Hampden; Hume, Hist. Engl.; Clarendon, Hist. Rebel.; Macaulay, Hist. Engl.; and Essay on Hampden reprinted from Edinburgh Review.)