day in the chancel of Great Hampden church, by a party of amateurs totally ignorant of anatomy and of the appearance presented by bodies which have been long dead. There was not even a medical student, or a village apothecary, among the group assembled round the vault. Yet this was a case where surgical evidence was indispensable to place the facts which might have been elicited beyond dispute, and to draw correct deductions from sights which the grave revealed.
The strangely interesting, but most unprofessional report of this ghastly transaction, which was published in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for August, 1828, made the proceedings of John Hampden’s admirers public. The Earl of Buckinghamshire was highly offended at the manner in which the disinterment of his ancestor had been conducted; and the archdeacon of the county threatened with dire ecclesiastical punishments the rector who had consented to the exhumation and assisted at it. “This disturbance of the dead” was generally disapproved; and without doubt the subject became painful to the principal parties concerned.
Under these circumstances, since nothing had been satisfactorily proved, it is not surprising that Lord Nugent omitted all notice of the exhumation in his “Memorials.”[1] He informed Mr. Murray, some years later—on what ground we know not—that he had many reasons for believing that the “skeleton” which he saw in Hampden Church was not that of the patriot. Mr. Denman, on the contrary, always entertained afterwards the strong belief that he had gazed “on what had been Hampden; he was sure that he had seen the very identical body of the great patriot.” [2] And so we found was Mr. Robertson, whose story fully corroborates the impressions of the Chief Justice; though it differs, on one or two points, from the anonymous narrative published in the “Gentleman’s Magazine.” The writer of that article, whoever he was, assures us that “no regular features were apparent,” and yet he proceeds to describe a state of things which practically contradicts such an assertion, and perfectly agrees with the account of our informant, conveyed in two letters, dated respectively August, 1859, and September, 1862. “The face, breast, and fleshy part of the arms were perfectly entire,” writes Mr. Robertson, “with the exception of the grisly portion of the nose, which had given way, owing, perhaps, to the pressure of the cerecloths; and the right hand of the corpse was not wrapped in a separate cloth, but had dropped off from the wrist, and all the little bones of the fingers were lying in the cerecloth, with no flesh attached to them, and, up to the elbow, the bone of the arm was perfectly bare. I have often thought it very possible that John Hampden died from the bursting of his own pistol, since the right hand was found to be in such a state. He appeared to be a strong-built man, of about five feet eight or nine inches, with a fine mouth of teeth, and a beautiful head of hair, tied in a cue, and brought over his head, and fastened with a piece of black ribbon. The hair came off altogether, in the form of a wig: I forget if I supplied you with a portion of it, but I gave Mr. Disraeli some. As soon as the lead coffin was cut open by the plumber, Lord Nugent stepped down into the grave, to examine the body. I made the observation, ‘My lord, is there no surgeon present?’ as there were several gentlemen there whom I did not know. They all seemed confounded, and acknowledged that one ought to have been there. Mr. Brooks, the then clergyman of Hampden, asked me to despatch a messenger to his house: where he expected Mr. Norris, of Prince’s Risborough, would be; this I did, but Mr. Norris was gone. The coffin was lifted out of the grave and placed upon the bier; they then cut the body about as they thought proper, and left it so, for Mr. Norris’s inspection. He and his son, Mr. William Norris, came the following day, about two o’clock, p.m. In the course of the afternoon the coffin and its contents were returned to the grave, but in what manner I could not say, as I was not present. . . . . . . The first time I went upstairs, after the exhumation, a portrait, which hung on the best staircase, appeared to be looking at me, and I immediately recognised the face and figure of the man I had seen in the grave in Hampden Church. The sight I shall never forget so long as I live. On the arrival of my late employer, Lord Buckinghamshire, from France, I told him the impression on my mind, that the portrait on the staircase must be that of the patriot Hampden. He immediately gave me orders to have it taken down and examined; and on removing a piece of old canvas, which had been put on, I suppose, to protect the painting from damp, to the great joy of his lordship, and the satisfaction of myself, we found the patriot’s name written on the canvas of the painting in a very legible hand. The inscription mentioned that the picture had been presented by one of the Bedford Russels to Hampden.”
The following is the inscription to which our informant alluded, from memory. It is now to be seen on the back of the picture, so curiously identified:
John Hampden, 1640. A present to Sir William Russel, and afterwards given to John Lord Russel.
After this discovery had been made, it was remembered that an old letter[3] existed among the family archives, which must have reference to this picture, though its identity had been lost long since, among the crowd of nameless portraits that people the walls of Hampden House. The writer was Dr. William Henry, Dean of Killaloe, Ireland, who, dating from Kildare Street, Dublin, October 19, 1762, addressed to the Hon. Robert Trevor Hampden, afterwards Viscount Hampden, a full account of this painting, which he had “bought, on the 16th of June, 1743, at the sale of Mr. Copping, late Dean of Clogher,” to whom it had been left, with other property, by an aged lady nearly related to the ducal families of Cavendish and Russell.
While the painting was in Dean Henry’s possession it had been recognised “as an original of the great John Hampden,” by Dr. Reynell, Bishop