Why Hampden?

In 1995 Hampden Township observed its sesquicentenary, causing one to wonder why it is called Hampden. While there is no documentary proof, it can with some confidence be concluded that it bears the name of a little known, almost forgotten hero of the English Civil War. Cumberland County's standard histories-Wing, Beers, Donehoo, and Godcharles-dutifully note the formation of the township in January, 1845, but none inquires into the name it bears. The county's prothonotary records the actions in civil court creating the township, but such transcripts offer no reason for the name.¹

Now, among American place-names, "Hampton" vies with "Hampden," and a word must be said of It before attempting a study of the Hampden in Hampden Township. As at Hampton, Virginia, founded in 1610, or Hampton, New Hampshire, chartered by Massachusetts Bay in 1637, "Hampton" here tends to reflect an era and a place professing allegiance to the British crown; it refers in the colonial period, to Hampton Court, royal seat of England from Henry VIII to George II. An exception locally is Hampton, Adams County. This village, with its enormously wide public square, was founded in 1814 by an ambitious medical doctor from Connecticut, John B. Arnold. He named it probably in honor of General Wade Hampton, Southern politician and nemesis during the War of 1812 of Secretary of War John Armstrong.² "Hampden," as in Hampden-Sydney, Virginia, where Presbyterians founded a college in 1776, is the name of a barrister and landed gentleman of seventeenth-century England whose Buckinghamshire ancestors were named for the location of their estate: "Hampden" comes from the Old English words for a watered meadow in a valley. "Hampton" derives from the Old English for an enclosed homestead.³

But the man John Hampden is famous for his courage and his love of liberty.⁴ Born in 1594, he was a first cousin to Oliver Cromwell and was educated at Oxford and the Inner Temple, London. At age 27 Hampden entered the House of Commons and soon sided with Sir John Eliot and John Pym, who were with Cromwell vocal opponents of the personal rule of King Charles I.

 In 1627 the king maced members of Parliament for a loan; Hampden refused and was imprisoned for a year. His civil disobedience won admirers, and in 1631 the Earl of Warwick, as president of the Council for New England, granted Hampden rights to a vast tract in Connecticut. Meanwhile, King Charles cited a custom long in abeyance that the king could tax all the counties of England to support the royal navy. Even under the threat of the Spanish Armada, the crown had taxed formerly only the maritime counties.

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