[Apologie of Colonel Bampfield, 1685; Autobiography of Lady Anne Halkett, published by the Camden Society, 1870; Clarendon's History of the Rebellion; Thurloe State Papers, containing many of his letters in full; State Papers of the Domestic Series, and the Clarendon State Papers in the Bodleian Library.]
BAMPFIELD, THOMAS (fl. 1658), speaker of the House of Commons, was son of John Bampfield, of Poltimore in Devon, and brother of Sir John, the first baronet. He was recorder of Exeter, and represented that city in Oliver Cromwell's parliaments of 1654 and 1656. In Richard Cromwell's parliament of 1658 he was again returned for Exeter, and on 18 May, 'Mr. Chute the speaker being so infirm that he could not attend the serving of the house, and Sir Lislebone Long, who was chosen to execute the office for him, being actually dead, the house was obliged to go to another election, when Mr. T. Bampfield was unanimously chosen to succeed him, and Mr. Chute dying soon after, the other continued speaker to the end of the parliament' (Parl. Hist. iii. col. 1542). His tenure of office was brought to a close by the dissolution of 22 April 1659.
In the convention parliament of 1660, Bampfield, having been returned both for Exeter and Tiverton, chose to sit for his old constituency. He took an active part in the proceedings of this parliament. He opposed the impeachment of Drake for publishing a pamphlet entitled 'The Long Parliament revived.' On 12 Sept. he moved 'that the king should be desired to marry, and that it should be to a protestant.' After an interesting debate the motion dropped. Bampfield did not sit in the parliament of the following year. He was uncle of Sir Coplestone Bampfield [q. v.].
[Manning's Lives of the Speakers of the House of Commons, p. 338; Parliamentary History, iii. iv.; Whitelocke's Memorials, iv. 341, 342, Oxford ed.]
BAMPFYLDE, COPLESTONE WARRE (d. 1791), landscape painter, was the only son of John Bampfylde, M.P. for Devonshire. He resided at Hestercombe in Somersetshire, and exhibited his works at the Society of Artists, the Free Society of Artists, and the Royal Academy between the years 1763 and 1783. Two views of Stour Head in Wiltshire have been engraved after him by Vivares, and 'The Storm' by Benazech. He etched a few landscapes, and made some humorous designs for the illustration of Christopher Anstey's 'Election Ball' which were etched by William Hassel, and published at Bath in 1776 in an 'Epistola Poetica Familiaris' addressed by Anstey to Bampfylde. He was for some time colonel of the Somersetshire militia, and died at Hestercombe on 29 Aug. 1791.
[Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (ed. Graves), 1885.]
BAMPFYLDE, JOHN CODRINGTON (1764–1796), poet, was second son of Sir Richard Warwick Bampfylde, of Poltimore, Devonshire. He was born on 27 Aug. 1764, educated at Cambridge, and published in 1778 'Sixteen Sonnets.' William Jackson, a well-known musician of Exeter, told Southey that Bampfylde lived as a youth in a farmhouse at Chudleigh, whence he used to walk over to show Jackson his poetical compositions. He went to London and fell into dissipation. He proposed to Miss Palmer, niece of Sir Joshua Reynolds, afterwards Marchioness Thomond, to whom the sonnets are dedicated. His mother, Lady Bampfylde, sat to Sir Joshua in April 1777; and one of her sons, probably John, in January 1779. Sir Joshua, however, disapproved the match, and closed his door to Bampfylde, who thereupon broke Sir Joshua's windows and was sent to Newgate. Jackson coming to town soon after found that his mother had got him out of prison, but that he was living in the utmost squalor in a disreputable house. Jackson induced his family to help him, but he soon had to be confined in a private madhouse, whence he emerged many years later, only to die of consumption about 1796.
Bampfylde's poems consist of the sonnets above mentioned, with two short poems added by Southey and one by Park. Southey called them 'some of the most original in our language.' They give, at any rate, fresh natural descriptions.
[Southey's Specimens of Later English Poets (1807), iii. 434; Brydges' Censura Lit. (1816), vii. 309; Letter from Southey in Brydges' Autobiography (1834), ii. 257; Works in Park's British Poets (1808), vol. xli.; British Poets (Chiswick, 1822), lxxiii. 183–96; Routledge's British Poets (1863) (with Thomson, Beattie, and West); Selections in Dyce's Specimens of English Sonnets (1833), 140–50; D. M. Main's Treasury of English Sonnets (1880), pp. 393–4.]
BAMPTON, JOHN (fl. 1340), a theologian of the fourteenth century, was born at Bampton, in Devonshire. He seems to have entered the order of the Carmelites, and to have become a member of this brotherhood at Cambridge, where the Carmelites had had their own schools since about the year 1292 (Leland, Coll. i. 442). Bale, quoting from Leland, states that he paid special
