Christopher Hampton (1552–1625) was an Englishman who became the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh from 1613.
He is called John in the printed Patent Rolls, and was born at Calais in 1552 of English parents. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduate B.A. 1572, M.A. 1575, B.D. 1582 and D.D. 1598. He became a Fellow of Trinity in 1574, and was vicar of Chesterton, Cambridgeshire from 1585 to 1589.[1]
On the death of Brutus Babington, bishop of Derry, he was nominated to the see by king's letter dated 21 December 1611, and was elected. He was not in fact consecrated to the see of Derry, but to that of Armagh, vacant by the death of Henry Ussher, by king's letter dated 16 April, and by patent of 7 May 1613, and was consecrated the next day in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. A few days later, on the opening of parliament by the lord deputy, Arthur Chichester, 1st Baron Chichester, Lord Deputy of Ireland, Hampton the new primate preached in the cathedral before the peers. He was appointed king's almoner (being the first to hold that office), and a member of the Irish privy council.
In 1622 James Ussher, then bishop of Meath, preached a sermon before the Lord Deputy to which exceptions were taken by the recusants. Hampton sent him a letter of mild rebuke, but indicating that the sermon had been in some respects indiscreet. Hampton built a palace at Drogheda, then the principal place of residence of the archbishops, and restored the cathedral church of St. Patrick, Armagh, which had been reduced to ruins by Shane O'Neill. He recast the great bell, and repaired the old episcopal residence at Armagh, to which he added new buildings. Against claims advanced by Thomas Jones and Lancelot Bulkeley, archbishops of Dublin, he maintained the rights of his see to precedence, both in parliament and in convocation. He died unmarried at Drogheda on 3 January 1625, and was buried in the parish church of St. Peter there.
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