"Truthfully no one knows for certain how the conjoined names of John Hampden and Algernon Sydney came to be attached to this college and its village. For certain, both in 18th century England and in the North American colonies these two protesting patriots' names had come to be attached to disaffected colonial political groups. College historian John Brinkley suggested that the college name was perhaps given to Samuel Stanhope Smith by his patriot father-in-law, the Declaration signer, John Witherspoon, in the spring of 1776, but while this is a very logical guess, it is unsubstantiated in provable fact. We do know, however, that John Witherspoon was an ardent admirer of both men. Hampden had been mortally wounded on Chalgrove Field (near his home) just outside Oxford, England, on 14 June 1643, and he died nearly a week later on 18 June 1643. The political apologist Algernon Sydney had been beheaded at the Tower of London on 7 December 1683. By the time of the American Revolution there were some anti-royalist patriotic groups that were convening in several of the colonies under the name of being "Hampden-Sydney Societies.""
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William E. Thompson, Her Walls Before Thee Stand: The 235-Year History of the Presbyterian Congregation at Hampden-Sydney, Virginia (2010), revised 2011 printing, p. 45
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hampden-Sydney_College
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