HUNGERFORD, Anthony (1608-57), of Black Bourton, Oxon.

Hungerford was a younger son of a family which was prominent in public life in both Wiltshire and Oxfordshire, and which had owned Farleigh Castle in Somerset since 1369.16F.F. Milward-Oliver, Memoirs of the Hungerford, Milward and Oliver Families (1930), 31. One ancestor, Robert de Hungerford†, had been elected to Parliament as early as 1325, while another, Sir Thomas Hungerford†, served as Speaker in 1377, and the family sent numerous Members to Westminster in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.17R. Colt-Hoare, Hungerfordiana (1823), 121; Add. 33417, f. 9; HP Commons 1509-58. Hungerford’s father, who sat in four parliaments between 1593 and 1604, left our MP land which included Hungerford rectory as well as Black Bourton in Oxfordshire, although the bulk of the estate went to his half-brother, Sir Edward*, one of Wiltshire’s most powerful parliamentarians during the 1640s.18HP Commons 1558-1603; Add. 33417, f. 76; VCH Wilts. xiv. 123, 155, 162, 188, 192, 207; Colt-Hoare, Hungerfordiana, 29-31; Milward-Oliver, Memoirs, 23-8.

Hungerford attained his majority only after his father’s death, and thereafter his acquisition of public office was slow, as he concentrated on the management of his estate.19Add. Ch. 40104, 40107; Coventry Docquets, 583. Named a sewers commissioner in 1634, it was not until 1639 that he was added to the Oxfordshire commission of the peace.20C181/4, f. 179v; C231/5, pp. 343, 528; Coventry Docquets, 76. Nevertheless, his family’s influence ensured that he secured a seat in both the Short and Long Parliaments, as MP for Malmesbury. He made no recorded impression upon proceedings during the former, and little more upon the latter. On 9 March 1641 he testified to the Commons as witness to a violent altercation between John Wylde* and Sir Henry Herbert*.21Procs. LP iv. His sole appearance in the Journal that year was when he took the Protestation in May 1641, although a serious commitment to that is suggested by his being named in August to a commission to disarm Wiltshire recusants.22CJ ii. 138b; LJ iv. 385b. However, given this rather slight record, it was probably Hungerford’s social status and connections which resulted in his twice being named in April 1642 to delegations attempting to dissuade the king from his intended journey to Ireland.23CJ ii. 530a, 537a; PJ ii. 178, 202, 206, 214, 217; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 560a.

An assumption that Hungerford would join his elder half-brother in supporting Parliament in the developing conflict presumably lay behind his omission on 10 June from the commission of the peace.24C231/5, p. 528. That month he offered to supply two horses to the cause.25PJ iii. 476; CJ ii. 756a. On 10 September he was appointed by Parliament as a deputy lieutenant of Oxfordshire.26LJ v. 346b. However, his father-in-law, who had been named to the commission of array, proved an active royalist, and as war approached Hungerford was reluctant to support either side.27Northants. RO, FH133; Docquets of Letters Patent, 97-8. He later claimed to have retired to his house at the time of the battle at Edgehill, and to have remained there for more than a year.28SP23/175, p. 465.

Neutrality was scarcely possible for anyone living in Oxfordshire. Summoned to attend the Parliament in the royalist capital, Hungerford faced physical intimidation, such that, ‘upon the threats of a French captain he was induced to go to Oxford’. One of his household servants explained that a party of horse from the queen’s regiment visited Black Bourton, and told Hungerford that ‘if he went not to the assembly at Oxford, he would be plundered’. Hungerford later claimed to have arrived in Oxford three weeks after the sitting began, to have ‘stayed not above half an hour or quarter of an hour in a day’, and to have signed no official paperwork.29SP23/175, p. 465. He was neither among the signatories to the letter from that Parliament to Westminster on 27 January 1644, nor among those expelled from Westminster because of it, and although he failed to attend at a call of the House on 5 February, he was given until 1 March to return to his seat.30Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 575; CJ iii. 390a. Furthermore, Hungerford was relatively late in receiving his royal pardon, on 30 March.31C231/3, p. 102.

Hungerford later claimed that he returned home from Oxford after a week, and spent only one additional week in the city before leaving for good three weeks before (an early) Easter.32SP23/175, p. 465. In evidence presented in his defence later in the year it was claimed that

being in Oxford that day when the assembly there voted both kingdoms traitors, and having intimation beforehand that such a vote would pass, [he] did purposely in dislike of it absent himself from the said assembly that day and speedily repaired to his dwelling house about nine miles distant from Oxford.33SP23/175, pp. 451, 477.

A servant, meanwhile, deposed that Hungerford ‘always declared his dislike to join with that assembly … and desired to embrace an opportunity of rendering himself to the Parliament’. As such, he deliberately ‘laboured a convoy from the earl of Essex to bring him in, and upon the 8th of June 1644 a party of horse was sent from the said earl accordingly and brought him in prisoner’.34SP23/175, pp. 451, 475, 477. Such statements obviously need to be treated with care, but Hungerford was able to secure a testimonial from another Wiltshire MP, Edward Poole*, that he had been forced to go to Oxford. Furthermore, his version of events was also verified by William Constantine*, another member of the Oxford Parliament, who had subsequently been imprisoned by Parliament. He affirmed that, during his time at Oxford, Hungerford

did always show his dislike against the proceedings there, and believeth that he did not join in that vote that voted the Parliament traitors and knows that when it was debated there, whither that the Parliament at Westminster was a free parliament or no, and being put to the question, and it being controverted whether the yeas or noes carried it, Mr Hungerford declared himself against it, and that he gave his no in it.35SP23/175, p. 451.

Hungerford was brought before the Commons on 11 June, when he insisted that any evidence that he had signed ‘the letters of the junto’ must have been ‘counterfeited’, but he was disabled from sitting in the House and sent to the Tower.36CJ iii. 526a; Add. 31116, p. 287; Perfect Diurnall no. 46 (10-17 June 1644), 365 (E.252.44). An investigation into his case and his offence was ordered in late October 1644, shortly before he subscribed the Solemn League and Covenant and negative oath.37CJ iii. 674a; CCC 867; SP23/175, p. 451. As this investigation slowly progressed, amid evidence emerged to support the claim that he was forced to join the king at Oxford, Hungerford was released on bail in late February 1645, and may not have been required to return to the Tower.38CJ iv. 61a, 89b, 126b; Add. 31116, p. 414.

Hungerford finally petitioned to be allowed to compound for his delinquency in November 1645, repeating his plea of innocency, and the denial that he had borne arms or held office under the king.39CCC 867; SP23/175, p. 473. His estate was valued at £616 a year, and his fine, at one tenth, was set at £2,532, although it was claimed in July 1647 that he had neither paid any of this nor been sequestered, because of ‘undue favour’ – perhaps because by this time not only his half-brother Sir Edward but also his younger brother Henry* was a prominent MP.40SP23/175, pp. 451,459, 463, 466, 467, 479; CCC 867; CJ iv. 565a, 727a. Hungerford was threatened with both arrest and sequestration, and in the negotiations which followed his fine was eventually reduced to £1,500.41CCC 867; LJ ix. 43; x. 535a; HMC 6th Rep. 161a; HMC 7th Rep. 56b. After he compounded upon further lands in late 1650, his estate was finally discharged from sequestration.42CCC 867; SP23/175, pp. 452, 456, 457. Hungerford also became embroiled, however, in a protracted dispute with the commissioners for the advance of money, over his failure to pay his assessment of £800, imposed in February 1646. This too led to threats of sequestration, which were only lifted in July 1649.43CCAM 679.

Nevertheless, Hungerford had effectively been forgiven by Parliament long before his financial troubles were settled, and he was appointed to the militia commission in December 1648. He played no further part in public life, however, and having succeeded to the family estates upon the death of his half-brother, Sir Edward, Hungerford lived quietly during the 1650s.44Wilts. RO, 490/1552; 490/1533. He is not to be confused with one of his younger sons, who travelled to the continent in 1653, and became involved in royalist plotting under the pseudonym ‘Mr Farley’, although he certainly had connections across the political spectrum, as also exemplified in the marriages that year of two of his daughters to Henry Cary*, 4th viscount Falkland, and William Wyndham*.45Black Bourton par. reg.; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 446; 1655-6, pp. 79, 123, 133, 166. He also needs to be distinguished from a cousin, who served in the parliamentarian armies in England and Ireland, and who received a protectoral pension until his death in June 1657.46Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. 598, 643-4; Add. 33412, ff. 151v-2; CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 610-11; HMC 8th Rep. 592; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 528, 540; 1649-50, pp. 66, 99, 127, 131, 136, 149, 190, 197, 230, 233, 235, 573, 584; 1651-2, pp. 194, 230, 610; 1654, p. 53; 1658-9, p. 119; CCAM 771, 777-8, 839, 840; TSP iv. 594. Hungerford died in August at Farley Castle, and was buried on 15 September, under a gravestone which claimed that ‘he lived in love, and loved to die, he died to love eternally’.47Black Bourton par. reg.; Colt-Hoare, Hungerfordiana, 67. His estate was sufficiently valuable to enable portions of £3,000 to be provided for each of his three unmarried daughters.48PROB11/273/36. His son, Edward*, represented Chippenham in 1659, and sat in every succeeding Parliament until 1702, occasionally alongside Hungerford’s younger brothers, Giles† and Henry*.49HP Commons 1660-1690.