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Hampden, at Great Hampden. After tea at the Chequers Inn the party visited the 
parish church, where the guide read a very interesting paper on the little-known 
details of the life of John Hampden, illustrating it by referring to the various 
brasses and monuments in the church. John Hampden was born in 1594, and 
three years later, by the death of his father, came into the great estates of the 
family, whose records date back to the Conquest. His mother was a daughter of 
Sir Thomas Cromwell, of Hinchinbrook, so John Hampden was cousin to Oliver 
Cromwell, and also to Edmund Waller, poet, who lies buried at Beaconsfield, some 
five miles from Great Hampden. At 19 Hampden became a student of the Inner 
Temple, and at 25 he married Elizabeth Symeon, of Pyrton, O.xon., by' whom he 
had nine children. After fifteen years of marriage his wife died and was buried in 
Hampden Church in 1634. In 1639 he married the daughter of Sir Thomas Vachell, 
of Reading, and went to live in Gray’s Inn Lane, near to his friend and Parlia- 
mentary leader, Pym. Hampden’s own Parliamentary career started in 1621 
and continued through six Parliaments until his death in 1643. He was not 
a great speaker, effected no striking reforms either social or political, yet the 
influence of his sterling honesty upon his contemporaries was so great that 
his name is written largely in the history of his period. In 1635 his 
opposition to the impost of ship money led to his trial before the Court of 
Exchequer, and although judgment was given in behalf of the Crown the 
feeling of the country was so strongly in his favour that the Long Parliament 
soon reversed the judgment. He lived on good terms with the local clergy, 
but was somewhat careless in practice, for in 1634 he was “presented'’ for 
two ecclesiastical offences : the one was holding a muster of the militia in 
P>eaconsfield Churchyard, the other was non-attendance at his own parish church. 
When the Civil War broke out Hampden raised a regiment in his native 
Buckinghamshire. This force, known as the Green Coats, he led at the relief of 
Coventry and the siege of Reading, and at their head he received his fatal wound 
at Chalgrove Field, while attacking Prince Rupert. His shoulder was shattered 
by a carbine bullet, and he was carried to Thame, where he lay in the house of 
Ezekiel Brown. The house is known to-day as the Black Horse Inn. Here, after 
six days agony, he died, and the next day, June 25, 1643, his body was taken to 
Great Hampden, escorted by all the troops that could be spared, and buried in 
the church. 
At the conclusion of the paper a hearty vote of thanks was passed to Mr. 
Watts for his pleasant and instructive guidance. 
Saturday, Jtnie 20. — On this afternoon over thirty members and friends met 
Dr. Henry Willson, J.P., at Weybridge, and at once proceeded to the Brook- 
lands Racing Track by the kind permission of Mr. Rodakowski, Clerk of the 
Course. Here the party was much interested in watching a car running at 
the rate of 78 miles an hour. The party next proceeded by pleasant field-paths 
and a quiet country lane to New Haw Experimental harm, where they were 
met by’ Mr. A. G. llumphries. Chairman of the Home grown Wheat Committee 
of the National Association of iMillers — a Committee formed in 1901 to ex- 
periment with a view to discovering new varieties of wheat which should 
combine the high yield of English wheat with the hard qualities of foreign and 
colonial varieties. Acting on Mendelian principles and with the expert advice 
of Professor R. II. Biffen, the first occupant of the Chair of Agricultural Botany 
at the University of Cambridge, the Committee has made good progress in its 
aims. Mr. Humphries gave a most fascinaiing address on certain aspects of the 
experimental work, and illustrated his points by referring to the surrounding 
spots where many different varieties of wheat were growing. Those members 
of the party who had even a slight acquaintance with the principles of Mendelism 
found it easy to follow Mr. Humphries’ arguments, while those who had pre- 
viously' had no such knowledge, went away with at least a fair idea of the 
scope and certainty that the application of Mendelian principles affords to all 
experimental cross-breeding. It is found that awnless florets, red tests, dense 
ears, hollow straw, and susceptibility to the attacks of rust are all dominant 
characters of allelomorphic pairs, the corresponding recessives being awned 
florets, white tests, loose ears, pithed straw, and immunity to rust. One 
interesting discovery has been made by Mr. Humphries in the course of 
