John Hampden was the head and representative of an ancient and opulent family, which had received the lands of Hampden in Buckinghamshire from Edward the Confessor, and boasted to have transmitted its wealth, honours, and influence, unimpaired and increasing, in direct male succession, down to this the most illustrious of the house. The date of his birth is 1594; the place of it is generally believed to have been London. Under four years of age, he came, by the death of his father, into possession of the family estates, which, besides the ancient seat and extensive domain in Buckinghamshire, comprehended large possessions in Essex, Oxfordshire, and Berkshire. Our knowledge of his early life may be summed in a few facts and dates. He was brought up at the free-school of Thame, in Oxfordshire; entered as a commoner at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1609; and was admitted student of the Inner Temple in 1613, where he made considerable progress in the knowledge of common law. His classical attainments also seem to have been respectable, since he was associated, oddly enough, with Laud, then Master of St. John’s, in writing the Oxford gratulatory poems on the marriage of the Elector Palatine and the Princess Elizabeth; from which sprung Prince Rupert, who led the Royalist troops when Hampden received his death-wound. In 1619, he married his first wife Elizabeth Symeon. Inheriting a noble property, he devoted himself, without suffering his literary habits to fall into desuetude, principally to the business and amusements of a country life, having, says Lord Clarendon, “on a sudden retired from a life of great pleasure and licence, to extraordinary sobriety and strictness, and yet retained his usual cheerfulness and affability.” His first entrance into public life was in January, 1620–1, when he took his seat in the Parliament then convened, for Grampound, at that time a borough of wealth and importance: a prevalent error, that he sat for the first time in the first Parliament summoned by Charles I. in 1625, is corrected by Lord Nugent, who in his Memorials of Hampden has shown that he sat in the Parliaments of 1621 and 1624; that he was active and diligent in his attendance, and intimately connected himself with Selden, Pym, St. John, and other leaders of the popular party; and that, though he seldom spoke, his capacity for business was known and respected, as appears from the employments in committees and conferences, imposed on him by the House.