Renn Dickson Hampden

Renn Dickson Hampden was born in 1793 to Renn Hampden, a prominent slave owner in Barbados, who gained at least £4,543 for his ownership of 210 enslaved individuals. R.D. Hampden himself would be awarded £1 and 8 shillings for his ownership of one enslaved individual. Hampden would serve both as the Regius Professor of Divinity and the Bishop of Hereford, however, both positions were met with opposition from those who critiqued Hampden for his 1834 work, Observations on Religious Dissent, whereby Hampden advocated for the matriculation of dissenters to the University of Oxford, on the grounds that Hampden believed theology was simply based on speculations of scripture separate to Christian truth, therefore non-Anglicans should not be barred from studying at the university. Eventually, by 1836, the ‘Hampden Controversy’, a ramification of his earlier writing, saw the exacerbation of tension between Anglicans and Catholic/Protestant dissenters. His brother-in-law, Edward Lovell, was, like his father, a prominent owner of enslaved individuals in Barbados, £2,392 for the ownership of the Woodland estate in Barbados, encapsulating 111 enslaved individuals.