Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 28.djvu/263

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Hungerford
257
Hungerford

Northampton (10 July 1460), Hungerford and his friends surrendered the Tower to the Yorkists on the condition that he and Lord Scales should depart free (William of Worcester [772-3], where the year is wrongly given as 1459). After taking part in the battle of Towton (29 March 1461)—a further defeat for the Lancastrians—Hungerford fled with Henry VI to York, and thence into Scotland. He visited France in the summer to obtain help for Henry and Margaret, and was arrested by the French authorities in August 1461. Writing to Margaret at the time from Dieppe, he begged her not to lose heart (Paston Letters, ii. 45-6, 93). He was attainted in Edward IV's first parliament in November 1461. He afterwards met with some success in his efforts to rally the Lancastrians in the north of England, but was taken prisoner at Hexham on 15 May 1464, and was executed at Newcastle. He was buried in Salisbury Cathedral. On 5 Aug. 1460 many of his lands were granted to Richard, duke of Gloucester (afterwards Richard III). Other portions of his property were given to Lord Wenlock, who was directed by Edward IV to make provision for Hungerford's wife and young children. Eleanor, lady Hungerford, survived her husband, and subsequently married Sir Oliver de Manningham. She was buried at Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire.

Sir Thomas Hungerford (d. 1469), the eldest son, lived chiefly at Rowden, near Chippenham. After giving some support to Edward IV and the Yorkists he joined in Warwick's conspiracy to restore Henry VI in 1469, was attainted, and was executed at Salisbury. He was buried in the chapel of Farleigh Castle. He married Anne Percy, daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, who married two husbands after his death—Sir Lawrence Raynesford and Sir Hugh Vaughan —and, dying on 5 July 1522, was buried in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster. Hungerford left by her an only child, Mary, who became the ward of William, lord Hastings [q.v.], and in 1480 married Sir Edward (afterwards Lord) Hastings, her guardian's son. The attainders on her father and grandfather were reversed in her favour in 1485, and her husband was summoned to parliament as Lord Hungerford. George Hastings, first earl of Huntingdon [q.v.], was her son.

Sir Walter Hungerford (d. 1516), youngest son of Robert and Eleanor, was M.P. for Wiltshire in 1477, and, as a partisan in earlier days of the house of Lancaster, obtained a general pardon from Richard III on his accession in 1483. He was, nevertheless, arrested by Richard on the landing of the Earl of Richmond in 1485, but escaped from custody, and joined Richmond's army. At the battle of Bosworth he slew, in hand-to-hand combat, Sir Robert Brackenbury, lieutenant of the Tower, under whose command he had previously served, and was knighted by Henry VII on the battlefield. Farleigh Castle and some other of the forfeited family estates, though not the family honours, were restored to him, and he was made a member of the privy council. In February 1487 he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Rome, and executed a will before his departure (Materials for the Reign of Henry VII, Rolls Ser. ii. 122-4). In 1497 he assisted in quelling Perkin Warbeck's rising. In 1503 he went in the retinue of Henry VII's queen to attend the marriage of the Princess Margaret with the king of Scotland. After the accession of Henry VIII he continued a member of the privy council, and, dying in 1516, was buried at Farleigh. His wife was Jane, daughter of Sir William Bulstrode, and his only son Edward was father of Walter, lord Hungerford (1503-1540) [q. v.]

[Dugdale's Baronage; Hoare's Hungerfordiana; Letters, &c., of Henry VIII; Materials for the Reign of Henry VII (Rolls Ser.); Paston Letters, passim, ed. Gairdner; Hoare's Mod. Wiltshire, Heytesbury Hundred; Collinson's Somerset, iii. 355.]

S. L.

HUNGERFORD, Sir THOMAS (d. 1398), speaker of the House of Commons, was son of Walter de Hungerford of Heytesbury, Wiltshire, by Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir Adam Fitz-John of Cherill in the same county. The Hungerfords were seated in Wiltshire in the twelfth century, and Thomas's father sat for the county in the parliaments of 1331-2, 1333-4, and 1336. An uncle, Robert, sat for Wiltshire in the parliament of 1316, was a commissioner to inquire into the possessions of the Despensers after their attainder in 1328, and gave much land to the hospital at Calne in memory of his first wife, Joan, to the church of Hungerford, Wiltshire, and to other religious foundations. He was buried in 1355 in Hungerford Church, where an elaborate monument long existed above his grave. An inscription to his memory is still extant in the church. His second wife was Geva, widow of Adam de Stokke, but he left no issue (cf. Gough, Sepulchral Monuments, i. 107, plate xxxviii; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. viii. 464, ix. 49, 165, 293).

Thomas was himself returned for Wiltshire in April 1357, and was re-elected for the same constituency in 1360, 1362, January 1376-7, to the two parliaments of 1380, in 1383, 1384, 1386, January 1389-90, and in