Walter Hungerford, 1st Baron Hungerford
Walter Hungerford, 1st Baron Hungerford was an English knight and landowner, from 1400 to 1414 a Member of the House of Commons, of which he became Speaker, then was an Admiral and peer.
He won renown in the Hundred Years' War, fighting in many engagements, including the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. He was an English envoy at the Council of Constance in 1415. In 1417 he was made admiral of the fleet. On the death of Henry V he was an executor of Henry's will and a member of Protector Gloucester's council. He attended the conference at Arras in 1435, and was a Member of the House of Lords sitting as Baron Hungerford from January 1436 until his death in 1449. From 1426 to 1432, he served as Lord High Treasurer. Hungerford's tenure as Treasurer occurred during the Great Bullion Famine and the beginning of the Great Slump in England.
Origins
He was the only surviving son and heir of Sir Thomas Hungerford of Farleigh Castle in Wiltshire, the first person to be recorded in the rolls of the Parliament of England as holding the office of Speaker of the House of Commons. His mother was his father's second wife, Joan Hussey, daughter and heiress of Sir Edmund Hussey of Holbrook.Career
His father had been strongly attached to the Lancastrian cause at the close of the reign of King Richard II, having been steward in the household of John of Gaunt. On the accession of King Henry IV in 1399, Walter was knighted and was granted an annuity of £40 out of the lands of Margaret, Duchess of Norfolk. He served as Member of Parliament for Wiltshire in October 1400, in 1404, 1407, 1413, and in January 1413–14, and served as Member of Parliament for Somerset in 1409. He served as Speaker of the House of Commons from 29 January 1413/14, the last parliament in which he served as an MP.He was appointed Sheriff of Wiltshire for 1405, during which term he pronounced his own selection as MP for Wiltshire, and as Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset for 1414.
Hungerford won renown as a warrior. In 1401 he was with the English army in France, and is said to have defeated the French king in a duel outside Calais. He distinguished himself in battle and tournament, and received substantial rewards. In consideration of his services he was granted in 1403 one hundred marks per annum, payable by the town and castle of Marlborough in Wiltshire, and was appointed Sheriff of Wiltshire. On 22 July 1414 he was nominated ambassador to treat for a league with Sigismund, King of the Romans, and as the English envoy attended the Council of Constance in 1414–15.
In the autumn of 1415, with twenty men-at-arms and sixty horse archers, Hungerford accompanied King Henry V to France. He can probably be identified correctly as the officer who on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt expressed regret that the English had not ten thousand archers, which drew a famous rebuke from the king. In Shakespeare's Henry V, however, this officer is the Earl of Westmoreland. He fought bravely at the Battle of Agincourt, but the legend that he took Charles, Duke of Orléans prisoner is not substantiated. He was employed in May 1416 in diplomatic negotiations with ambassadors of Theodoric, Archbishop of Cologne and in November 1417 with envoys from France.
In 1417 he was made Admiral of the Fleet under John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, and in 1418 was with King Henry V at the Siege of Rouen. In November 1418 he was designated Steward of the King's Household, and was granted the barony of Hommet in Normandy. He took part in the peace negotiations of 1419 and on 3 May 1421 was installed as a Knight of the Garter.
Hungerford was an executor of the will of King Henry V, and in 1422 became a member of the council of the Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the Lord Protector. In 1424 he was made Steward of the Household of the infant King Henry VI, and on 7 January 1425/6 was summoned by writ to Parliament as Baron Hungerford. The summons was continued to him until his death. Hungerford became Treasurer of England in succession to Bishop Stafford, when Bishop Beaufort's resignation of the Great Seal in March 1426-7 placed Gloucester in supreme power. He acted as Carver at Henry VI's coronation in Paris in December 1430, but on the change of ministry which followed Henry VI's return from France in February 1431–2, he ceased to be Treasurer. He attended the conference at Arras in 1435.
Marriages and progeny
Hungerford married twice:- Firstly to Catherine Peverell, daughter of Sir Thomas Peverell, MP, of Parke and Hamatethy, Cornwall by his wife Margaret Courtenay one of the two daughters and eventual sole heiresses of Sir Thomas Courtenay of Wootton Courtenay in Somerset and of Woodhuish, Devon, by whom he had three sons and at least one daughter:
- * Walter Hungerford, eldest son and heir apparent, who was made a prisoner of war in France in 1425, was ransomed by his father for three thousand marks, was in the retinue of John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford in France in 1435, and predeceased his father without issue.
- * Robert Hungerford, 2nd Baron Hungerford, eldest surviving son and heir.
- * Edmund Hungerford, who was knighted by Henry VI after the Battle of Verneuil on Whit-Sunday 1426, and married Margaret Burnell, daughter and co-heiress of Edward Burnell, by whom he had two sons:
- ** Thomas Hungerford, ancestor of the Hungerfords of Down Ampney in Gloucestershire, of the Hungerfords of Windrush, Oxfordshire and of the Hungerfords of Black Bourton, Oxfordshire.
- ** Edward Hungerford, ancestor of the Hungerfords of Cadenham, Wiltshire., showing the arms of the See of Exeter impaling Courtenay of Powderham, incorporating heraldic badges of dolphins of Courtenay of Powderham and in the spandrels, Hungerford sickles and Peverell garbs. Detail from the Courtenay Mantelpiece, Bishop's Palace, Exeter
- * Elizabeth Hungerford, who married Sir Philip Courtenay of Powderham, Devon. On her marriage she took to her husband as her marriage portion the manor of Molland in North Devon, which she gave to her second son Sir Philip Courtenay of Molland, who founded a junior branch of the Courtenay family there. A fragment of an ancient chest tomb in Molland Church displays heraldic motifs of two interlaced Hungerford sickles and a dolphin of Courtenay of Powderham. Her third son was Peter Courtenay Bishop of Exeter and Bishop of Winchester, whose splendid surviving mantlepiece in the Bishop's Palace, Exeter displays much heraldry including Hungerford sickles and Peverell garbs.
- Secondly he married Eleanor Berkeley, daughter of Sir John Berkeley of Beverstone Castle, Gloucestershire,. Eleanor Berkeley was a widow successively of John FitzAlan, 13th Earl of Arundel and of Sir Richard Poynings ). Walter Hungerford and Eleanor de Berkeley were without progeny.
Death and burial
Benefactions
By his marriages and royal grants Hungerford added largely to the family estates. He built chantries at Heytesbury and Chippenham, and made bequests to Salisbury Cathedral and to Bath Cathedral. In 1428 he presented valuable estates to the Royal Chapel in the Palace of Westminster. He founded an almshouse in 1442 at Heytesbury for twelve poor men and one woman, with a schoolmaster's residence; after being re-endowed by Margaret de Botreaux, widow of his son Robert, and then rebuilt in 1769 after a fire, the charity continues today as the Hospital of St John.In his will he left to his daughter-in-law, Margaret de Botreaux, his "best legend of the Lives of the Saints" and to John, Viscount Beaumont he bequeathed a cup formerly used by John of Gaunt.
In 1407 Hungerford donated the advowson of the church at his manor of Rushall in Wiltshire to the canons of Longleat Priory, who were struggling to support themselves financially.