DUNCH, Edmund (1603-1678), of Little Wittenham, Berks.

Dunch’s father, Sir William, died in 1611, but his paternal grandfather and namesake, Edmund Dunch† senior, survived until November 1623, when Dunch himself was less than four months short of his twenty-first birthday. Edmund senior, anticipating that his heir would still be a minor when he drew up his will in January 1622, instructed his executors, Dunch’s uncle Samuel* and his cousin John Hampden*, to purchase the wardship if necessary. PROB 11/142, f. 497. However, although Dunch did become a royal ward there is no evidence that his wardship was ever sold, possibly because it was inevitably brief (Dunch being nearly of age on his grand-father’s death). Nevertheless, a note in the records of the Court of Wards indicates that Samuel paid £100 for Dunch’s marriage in June 1625. This may indicate that Dunch entered into a contract for marriage during his minority, although apparently he was not actually married until 1630.WARD 9/506, ff. 17v-18.

Dunch was returned for Berkshire for the first time in 1624, despite still being a ward. Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 543. He played an appropriately modest role in the House, making no recorded speeches, but being named to committees to consider a private land bill (9 Mar.), a bill for making the Thames navigable to Oxford (20 Mar.), and one for drainage of certain Kentish marshland (10 April). CJ, i. 680a, 744a, 762a. Re-elected in 1625, he was named to only one committee, for a naturalization bill (11 Aug.), but was nonetheless returned a third time in 1626. Procs. 1625, p. 457. On the last occasion he left no trace on the parliamentary records. Two years later he was returned for Wallingford, four miles from his home at Little Wittenham, and again he left no mark in the House.

In 1629 Dunch was among those nominated as sheriff of Berkshire; but it was his uncle Samuel who was pricked. Harl. 7000, f. 271v. He escaped compounding for knighthood because he had not held his estate for three years before the coronation. Keeler, 161. By 1635 he had married the daughter and heir of Sir Anthony Hungerford, the son of Sir John*, almost certainly a wealthy match, although the claim that she inherited £60,000 on the subsequent death of her father is almost certainly an exaggeration. Cal. of Docquets of Ld. Kpr. Coventry ed. J. Broadway, R. Cust and S.K. Roberts (L. and I. Soc. spec. ser. xxxiv-vii), 676; M. Noble, Mems. of Protectorate-House of Cromwell (1784), ii. 198.

Re-elected for Wallingford both in the spring and autumn of 1640, Dunch sided with Parliament in the Civil War, despite his post in the privy chamber, for which he was indicted of high treason by the royalists. Docquets of Letters Patent 1642-6 ed. W.H. Black, 270. He received one of the two hereditary peerages created by his cousin Oliver Cromwell* with the title of Baron Burnell, to which his wife, described by Bulstrode Whitelocke* as ‘high conceited’, was a coheir. Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke ed. R. Spalding, 267. He survived the Restoration, although his peerage was not recognized after the fall of the Protectorate, and was still ‘well in body’ when he made his will on 1 Mar. 1675. He was buried at Little Wittenham on 4 Aug. 1678. His son, Hungerford, had been elected at Wallingford at the general election of 1660, but chose to serve for Cricklade. PROB 11/358, f. 34.