of Derry, late tutor to William, third Duke of Devonshire, whose mother, we may remark, was Rachel, eldest daughter of Lord William Russell, who died on the scaffold, 1683.
Bishop Reynell seemed to know all about this portrait. “John Hampden had sat for it,” said his lordship, “before the beginning of the Civil Wars, and gave it to his friend Sir William Russel; from Sir William it came to Lord Russel; from Lord Russel this picture, with his house and furniture, near Ipswich, descended to the aged lady—his daughter or granddaughter,” who bequeathed them to her chaplain, Mr. Copping.
We must leave more learned genealogists to identify those members of the house of Russell,[1] the Sir William and the Lord John who, between the years 1640 and 1743, successively received and transmitted this portrait. If Hampden’s contemporary, William, fifth Earl of Bedford, were intended, why was he styled Sir William? His great son, who was executed in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1683, was not four years old at the time of the patriot’s death, June, 1643: but this picture may have been presented to him, in after life, by his intimate friend John Hampden, usually called the younger, to distinguish him from his eminent grandfather—who was implicated with Lord William Russell in the Rye House Plot; but even then the knightly title seems not to be accounted for, since “Russel’s Sweet Saint”[2] addresses her spouse as “Master William Russel”up to the death of his elder brother Francis, in 1678, when he became Lord Russell.
Most probably the memorandum discovered by the late Earl of Buckinghamshire and Mr. Robertson had been placed on the back of this picture long after the times of the donor and first receivers of the gift, by some person who accepted the tradition attached to the portrait, and was not perfectly well informed on its history.
In concluding our note on the identification of this likeness of John Hampden, we will remind our readers that Sir Henry Halford remarks, in his “Account of what appeared on the opening of the coffin of King Charles the First,” that “when the cerecloth and unctuous matter were removed, the features of the face, as far as they could be distinguished, bore a strong resemblance to the portraits of Charles the First.”
The estates of John Hampden, and his ancient residence, are still possessed by his descendants, through his sixth daughter, Mary, wife of Sir John Hobart, K.B. The late Earl of Buckinghamshire devised this property to his nephew, George Hampden Cameron, younger son of his sister, the Lady Vere Catherine Louisa Hobart and her husband, Donald Cameron, of Lochiel, chief of the clan Cameron, whose ancestors suffered attainder and forfeiture for their fidelity to the House of Stuart; the very sound of whose name brings into our minds the poetry and music of “Lochiel’s Warning” and “The March of the Cameron Men.”
The present Earl of Buckinghamshire is the representative of John Hampden, through his daughter Mary. His able and accomplished son, Lord Hobart, inherits the literary tastes of his eminent ancestor, “who improved his fine parts by converse with great men and good authors.”
Our present Under-Secretary of State for War, the Earl de Grey and Ripon, derives the patriot’s blood through his mother, the Lady Sarah Albinia Louisa Hobart, only child of Robert, fourth Earl of Buckinghamshire. So there is good fruit yet on this ancient family tree: it still bears sons of promise, and yields us men of mark.
A year or two ago we were able to carry out our original intention, and, through the courtesy of the late incumbent, to examine at leisure the curious registers of the parish of Great Hampden. The handwriting, name, and lengthened incumbency of one of its forgotten rectors fixed our attention: we resolved to learn something more about Egeon Askew; and, in so doing, we discovered that a mind had existed just without the doors of Hampden House, under the light of which John Hampden’s must have been developed; for, when the fatherless boy was about fourteen years of age, in 1608,[3] Egeon Askew, M.A., was presented to the living of Great Hampden, and he died at this preferment in 1637, having been, as the registers prove, a very constant resident there, and for twenty-nine years the nearest neighbour of his great squire on that secluded hill. Brown Willis calls Egeon “a famous man,” and in the margin of his MS. he refers to Anthony Wood, who describes this Buckinghamshire rector as “learned indeed beyond his age, and as well read in the Fathers, commentators, and schoolmen as any man of his time in the University of Oxford.” He was a native of Lancashire, and became student of Oxford in 1593, being then about seventeen years of age; in 1598 he was chaplain of Queen’s College and A.B. Egeon became a noted preacher. His book on “Brotherly Reconcilement.” and “The Apologie of the use of Fathers, and secular learning in sermons,” contain many passages of forcible illustration and beautiful Christian thought; but these treasures lie embedded among wearisome hordes of obsolete learning and quaint wordy conceits in high fashion in the days of the first James.
To the Archbishop Elect of York, late Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, we are indebted for the first sight of this forgotten volume: it is preserved in the library of that college, as the work of one of her most literate sons. The author lived awhile at Greenwich, and then Wood lost sight of him, and so did John Evelyn, for they both lived in the world of letters; but there can be no doubt that Egeon Askew’s knowledge and eloquence were hidden in the beechwoods of Buckinghamshire, at the rectory of Great Hampden, where this squire and parson—scholars and thinkers both—could scarcely fail to be companions, and to hold sweet counsel together among their beautiful Chilterns.
What the author, who published his “Brotherly Reconcilement” in 1605, thought of political and religious differences in 1635, and of the proceedings of the Star Chamber and Parliaments,