John Hampden
1594–1643
Ship Money resister; mortally wounded at Chalgrove Field.
Biography
Of Magdalen Oxford and the Inner Temple, then a long parliamentary career as MP for Buckinghamshire — the cousin (and close ally) of Oliver Cromwell. Hampden's refusal to pay the twenty shillings of Ship Money assessed on his Buckinghamshire estate in 1635 produced the great constitutional case of the personal-rule decade: the judgement was for the king (1638) but only narrowly, and the case became the touchstone of parliamentary resistance to royal prerogative taxation. He was one of the Five Members Charles I tried to arrest in January 1642. He was named a lay assessor at the Assembly's opening but had no chance to attend: he was mortally wounded by Prince Rupert's troops at Chalgrove Field on 18 June 1643 (he was hit in the shoulder, the ball ranging into his chest) and died at Thame on 24 June — a week before the Assembly first sat. His name remained on the rolls in absentia.
Lay Assessor — House of Commons
Parliament seated lay assessors alongside the divines to represent its interest and keep it informed of the Assembly's progress. The ordinance of 1643 named thirty members of the House of Commons as assessors; they could take part in debate but were not among the voting divines, and their attendance was often occasional as the war and parliamentary business pressed on them.