HUNGERFORD, Sir Edward (1596-1648), of Corsham, Wilts.

The Hungerfords were a well-established family which in the later sixteenth century experienced a decline from its earlier prominent position in the western counties. As the only son of representatives of two of its branches, our MP was chosen at an early age as the heir who would reunite its estates and restore its name and status. At least from the time of his father’s second marriage in 1605, he was brought up in the household of his great-uncle Sir Edward Hungerford†, who on his death in 1607 left the boy the bulk of his lands once he came of age, and a generous annuity in the meantime. The life interest of Sir Edward’s widow, Cecily Tufton (d.1653), and her remarriage to Francis Manners, 6th earl of Rutland, complicated for a time the young Edward’s enjoyment of his inheritance, but in other respects he was precocious.28HP Commons 1604-1629. Having graduated BA from Oxford in June 1611, aged only 15, he was admitted to the Middle Temple in May 1613.29Al. Ox.; MT Admiss. i. 100. In October 1615 he received a pass to go abroad to further his education; the length and destinations of his tour are unknown, but ‘my old fellow traveller William Bold’ – presumably a companion on the trip – was remembered in his will.30HMC 15th Rep. X, 165; PROB11/205/498. By this time Hungerford already had experience in Parliament, having been elected in 1614 for the north Wiltshire seat of Wootton Bassett, on the interest of the family of his elder half-brother, Sir John St John†. On this occasion youth may explain his apparent inactivity, although he made little impact on his subsequent appearances in the Commons in the 1620s, with the exception of 1624, when he represented his county.31HP Commons 1604-1629.

Godly patriarch

Meanwhile, however, Hungerford was gaining in wealth and experience of public office, and forging ties which were to be important in his later, more notable, parliamentary career. His marriage to Margaret Halliday, shortly after 26 February 1620, brought material, social and spiritual benefits.32London Mar. Lics. 85; Wilts. RO, 490/1467; Add. 33412, ff. 78-9. One of the two daughters and coheirs of William Halliday, a Mercer who had been sheriff of London in 1617-18 and who in 1621 became governor of the East India Company, Margaret was not only well-dowered but also well-connected among the London and Essex godly.33Aldermen of London, i. 131; ii. 54. The wedding took place at Wanstead, Essex, the home parish of Margaret’s brother-in-law, Sir Henry Mildmay*, with whom Hungerford was to be closely associated, and the latter evidently valued greatly the religious commitment of the circles in which he now moved. In his will he initially requested burial in St Lawrence Jewry, ‘within the vault where the bodies of my dear and pious father-in-law and mother-in-law do rest’; the latter, Susanna Halliday, was on the testimony of an exacting commentator ‘one that assuredly feared God’.34PROB11/205/492; Autobiog. of Mary, Countess of Warwick ed. T. Crofton Croker (Percy Soc. 1848), 15. Susanna’s second marriage, sometime between the death of William in February 1624 and January 1626, to Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, patron of puritans and of colonial ventures, extended the potential connections of her sons-in-law.35CP. Although Hungerford, with Susanna’s uncle Sir Henry Rowe of Shacklewell, Middlesex, bought an action in chancery in 1634 against the earl and countess, alleging that part of his wife and her sister’s substantial inheritance had been diverted, the real grievance seems to have been directed at the widow of one of the trustees of Susanna’s marriage settlement, and it is doubtful that relations between Hungerford and Warwick were permanently prejudiced.36C2/ChasI/H41/50; C2/ChasI/W75/7.

In 1620 Hungerford had been living in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, (probably at his house near Charing Cross mentioned in a 1624 indenture and still in his possession in 1647) but before 1624 he had fixed his main residence at Corsham, Wiltshire, where Halliday had built a house and endowed almshouses.37Add. 34566, ff. 21-32; Collinson, Som. 356. It was from Corsham that in December 1623 he acted with Sir John St John as a trustee for their sister Katharine and brother-in-law Sir Giles Mompesson of Little Bathampton.38Add. 34566, f. 129. That year Hungerford became a justice of the peace.39C231/4, f. 158. His entry into the front rank of county society was sealed the following year when his father, Sir Anthony, resigned to him his deputy lieutenantship, while his social status was enhanced when he became a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Charles I.40C231/4, f. 162; Shaw, Knights of Eng. i. 162. Thereafter he was regularly confirmed on the commission of the peace; from 1630 he was also routinely named to commissions of oyer and terminer.41C231/4; C231/5, p. 529; C181/4, ff. 51, 78v, 111v, 116v, 141v, 169, 185, 193v; C181/5, ff. 5, 21v, 32v, 47, 61v, 73v, 94, 105, 125, 139v, 158v, 170, 191, 202v, 220v. As sheriff of Wiltshire in 1631-2 he was active in promoting measures for poor relief in a sustained period of economic depression, while there are signs of his active engagement at other times in local affairs.42Add. 34566, f. 20; CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 334, 375 386, 434; 1634-5, p. 413; Wilts. RO, G23/1/38, ff. 65-6.

In 1633 Hungerford was in receipt of rents totalling £755 12s 6d from over 20 manors in Wiltshire, two manors in Gloucestershire, and land in Cirencester and London; he also owned church patronage worth £425 a year.43Wilts. RO, 490/1530. It is clear that he held further land and leases in Wiltshire, Somerset, and (at least for a time) Berkshire, and that he was actively improving and extending his assets.44Add. 34566, ff. 21-32, 133; Add. 21913, ff. 15-37; C2/ChasI/H78/25; Coventry Docquets, 690. His tenants included William Seymour, 2nd earl of Hertford, Henry Ley†, 2nd earl of Marlborough, Sir John Horton and Sir Edward Bayntun*. In his will of June 1627, Sir Anthony Hungerford had confided primarily to his eldest son, to whom God had given ‘a competent measure of earthly blessings’ and from whom good stewardship was thus expected, the care of his youngest sons, Henry* and Giles†, who were to ‘be bred and instructed in the fear and service of God according to the religion of this day established in the Church of England, which I constantly believe to be the same that Christ and his Apostles planted in the primitive church and in holy scripture’.45PROB11/152/277. Duly assuming the responsibilities of the puritan patriarch, Sir Edward not only took his half-brothers into his household, but also acted as a trustee or benefactor to his sisters and half-sisters.46PROB11/205/492. In addition to Katharine Mompesson, recipients of financial and other support at various times included Jane (St John) Lady Pleydell, Barbara (St John) Lady Villiers, Jane (Hungerford) and Robert Strange of Somerford, Sarah and Francis Goddard, Cicely and Alexander Thistlethwayte*.47PROB11/205/492; Wilts. RO, 490/1485; Coventry Docquets, 637. In 1634 Hungerford and his brother St John petitioned for the benefits of the reversion of the office of custos brevium of common pleas to go to the children of their sister Lucy, wife of the late Sir Allen Apsley, including Lucy, who married John Hutchinson*.48CSP Dom. 1634-5, pp. 97-8.

Hungerford’s patronage extended beyond his family. During the year of his shrievalty he erected a memorial in Corsham to John and Thomas Hulbert, clothiers, celebrating not just their ‘constant faithful respect to him in particular and especially for the praiseworthy service’ Thomas had done him that year, but also the general virtues of these tradesmen. The verse he sponsored reveals both the special respect he had for the godly who, in his eyes, fulfilled their calling to perfection, and the likely attitudes he later brought to bear on negotiations undertaken with City grandees for Parliament.

Thomas was endowed with such rare parts,
He no ways needed to be taught the Arts;
And though he kept him to his trade in cloth,
Yet was he divine, and a Courtier both…
A loving Neighbour, and a Master Mild,
Who never did the needy poor condemn,
And God enriched him by the hands of them.49MIs Wilts. 1822, 25-6.

Hungerford’s presentations to livings are hard to trace, and the careers of incumbents in his parishes difficult to follow through from the 1630s to the 1660s, but it can be said that he followed his pious father’s testamentary wishes in giving Corsham to his younger brothers’ tutor Simon Croker when it finally became vacant 12 years later; that William Charnbury, admitted to Stanton St Quinton the same year, was sequestered for delinquency but not scandal; that Timothy Richards of Rowde and Roger Maton of Winterbourne Stoke signed the Presbyterian Concurrent Testimony of the Ministers of Wilts. in 1648; and that William Thompson of Corsham was a reluctant conformist in 1662.50The Subscription Bk. of Bishops Townson and Davenant ed. B. Williams (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xxxii), 89; Al. Ox.; Walker Revised, 371; Calamy Revised, 483, 557-8. In July 1638 Hungerford obtained a ruling in the court of star chamber that leaseholder Sir Giles Estcourt, an old protagonist, should fulfil his promise to augment the salary of the curate of Maddington; ten years later he himself settled £40 a year towards the maintenance of ‘an able, pious and orthodox teaching minister’ in the parish.51CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 205; PROB11/205/492.

His success in 1638 notwithstanding, by 1640 Hungerford was deeply hostile to Archbishop William Laud’s rule of the church. One factor in this was his experience surrounding the publication of a second edition of his father’s The advise of a sonne professing the religion established in the present Church of England to his dear Mother a Roman Catholike, first issued in 1616. According to Hungerford’s later deposition at Laud’s trial, when in 1635 he took a copy of the book to the archbishop’s chaplain William Bray for licensing, the latter demanded the removal of ‘harsh phrases’ against Catholics, on the ground that the campaign to win their hearts was a fair way to being won. Disliking the proposed ‘mangling’ of his father’s prose, Hungerford applied to Laud himself for a more sympathetic ruling, but to no avail.52W. Prynne, Canterburies Doome (1646), 252-4, 524-5. Eventually he circumvented the licensing process and had the reconversion narrative published at Oxford in 1639, unexpurgated and with the author’s updated preface of 1627 and additional autobiographical ‘Memorial’ to his children. By contemporary standards the language is measured, and the convictions expressed firmly within the Protestant mainstream. Hungerford seems to have considered that both his religion and his family honour were at stake.53A. Hungerford, The Advise of a Sonne (1639); L.M Roberts, ‘Sir Anthony Hungerford’s “Memorial”’, EHR xvi. 292-307.

Reformer and opposition activist 1640-2

Having paid the Forced Loan and the subsidies of the 1620s, Hungerford was one of a notable number of Wiltshire landowners – among them his half-brother St John – who refused the loan for the bishops’ wars.54E179/199/382; E179/199/399; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 915. In the spring elections of 1640 he was one of many opponents of royal policies returned to county seats; on this occasion he sat for Chippenham, where he owned several shops and had 24 freehold tenants, including Sir Edward Bayntun, who obtained the other borough seat.55Wilts. RO, 490/1530. In Parliament Hungerford was part of a sizeable Wiltshire contingent named on 16 April to the committee for privileges; his brother-in-law Mildmay was also nominated.56CJ ii. 4a.

Hungerford and Bayntun were returned again for Chippenham in the autumn elections. Although Hungerford does not appear on the rash of important committees established in the first few days of the Parliament, he was soon busy. Over the next year and a half he worked frequently with the leaders of the House, was a key player on certain religious, political and constitutional issues and in negotiations with the City of London over money, and was employed on significant occasions to liaise with the Lords. On 9 November he was delegated, in notable company, to review the plight of Alexander Leighton, anti-episcopal controversialist and victim of spectacular punishment from the ecclesiastical establishment.57CJ ii. 24a. In the next few weeks he was called on, doubtless as an experienced MP, to investigate disputed elections (14 Nov., 30 Nov., 1 Dec.).58CJ ii. 29a, 39b, 40b. On 21 November he was among those who offered security for the loan, while in December his wider usefulness was acknowledged when he was added to the committee to prepare the bill for a grant of £100,000 (4 Dec.) and, perhaps more importantly, to the committee which had been constituted on 27 November to investigate ‘illegal taxes’ and the case of Dr Roger Mainwaring, promoted by the king in the 1630s in defiance of previous parliamentary censure (8 Dec.).59Procs. LP i. 231, 235; CJ ii. 45a, 47b. By 11 December Hungerford had not only silently appeared on the Ship Money committee, but was also chairing it. According to Simonds D’Ewes*, who evidently approved his management, he took care to fix its meetings and clarify its terms of reference.60Procs. LP i. 636; D’Ewes (N), i. 141, 165, 238. Hungerford made an interim report to the Commons on 7 January, and was still involved in unravelling the record of the tax’s collection the following June and December.61CJ ii. 65a, 181b, 357b.

In the debate on the new ecclesiastical Canons on 16 December, D’Ewes reported, Hungerford moved that ‘divers of them were against the king’s prerogative, against the laws [and] against the liberty and propriety [property] of our goods’ and that ‘the new wicked oath’ with its infamous ‘etcetera’ clause be disallowed. As with Ship Money, he suspected the hand of ‘a principal solicitor’ behind the policies.62Procs. LP i. 622, 625; Northcote Note Bk. 71. He was duly included the same day on the committee to prepare votes on the Canons and to investigate the role of Laud and others in promoting them.63CJ ii. 52a. Complementary committee nominations followed: to consider the scarcity of preaching ministers and the removal of the scandalous (19 Dec.); the execution of laws against priests and Jesuits (26 Jan. 1641); the consequences of the demolition of the church of St Gregory’s by St Paul’s (11 Feb.); proceedings against particular bishops (23 Feb.); the removal of clergy from the commission of the peace (1 Mar.); the exclusion of clergy from all secular office (1 Apr.); the act for a freer passage of the Gospel (12 Apr.); and the act for punishing participants in the recent Convocation of Canterbury and York (27 Apr.).64CJ ii. 54b, 73b, 82b, 91b, 95a, 115a, 119a, 129a. Hungerford was a keen supporter of the London petition against episcopacy.65Procs. LP ii. 391.

In the meantime, while Hungerford’s family connections account for his nomination on 17 December 1640 to the committee investigating the alleged violation by the visitor of the statutes of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (a Mildmay foundation), their mercantile aspect may explain his involvement in business concerning colonisation in Virginia (18 Dec., with Mildmay and their wives’ kinsman Sir Thomas Rowe*), customs and patents (21 Dec.), and the export of wool (3 Feb. 1641, with fellow Wiltshire members John Ashe* and Sir Neville Poole*) – a matter of pressing concern in his native county, experiencing prolonged economic depression.66CJ ii. 52a, 54a, 55a, 77b. It probably underlay his appointment on 23 February, in company with the likes of Sir Arthur Ingram* and Sir John Culpepper*, as a commissioner to treat with merchants for essential supply; he had already served on the committee investigating ready funding for the army (11 Jan.).67CJ ii. 91b, 66a. By this time Hungerford had become party to the most combustible political discussion in the House, being nominated to committees considering breaches of privilege committed by the crown in previous Parliaments (18 Dec. 1640), the jurisdiction of the councils of the north and the Marches (23 Dec.), the introduction of annual Parliaments (30 Dec.), the role of Catholics in the expedition against the Scots (28 Jan. 1641), and the prosecution of Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford (5 Feb.).68CJ ii. 53b, 57a, 74b, 79b. In early March he duly showed his commitment by offering a loan of £1,000.69Procs. LP ii. 628, 654.

Following the departure of Sir Francis Seymour to the Lords on being created Baron Seymour of Trowbridge, on 25 February 1641 Hungerford was acknowledged as the pre-eminent Wiltshire MP and placed on the committee of 24 to draw up the Remonstrance.70CJ ii. 92b. Thereafter, in addition to commitments to the subsidy and naval supply committee (18 Mar.) and continuing involvement in issues surrounding elections (30 Mar.) and the trial of Strafford (20 Mar., 25 Mar.), he was a reporter on and messenger to the Lords in connection with conferences on affairs in the North (12 Mar. and 23 Mar.).71CJ ii. 103a, 107a, 109a, 111b, 112b, 114a. In the division on 9 April over whether to prolong the cessation of arms with Scotland, Hungerford acted with Denzil Holles*, a familiar and sympathetic colleague from committees on religion, as a majority teller for the yeas (the clerk of the Commons mistakenly recorded them as tellers for the noes). Hungerford subsequently carried this vote to the Lords.72CJ ii. 118a, 118b; Procs. LP iii. 481; P. Crawford, Denzil Holles 1598-1680 (1979), 43-52.

Having taken the Protestation on 3 May, the following day Hungerford was one of four members ordered to identify and pursue those MPs who had failed to do so.73CJ ii. 133a. When on the 6th John Pym* revealed the existence of the ‘army plot’, he was named with fellow Wiltshire activist Sir John Evelyn* to the committee for the peace and safety of the kingdom, and with Pym, William Strode, Sir Walter Erle and Sir John Culpeper to the conference with the Lords to investigate the whereabouts of suspects in the affair who had absconded.74CJ ii. 136b. The conclusion that he was near the centre of opposition activities is strengthened by his membership over the spring and summer both of important Commons committees – notably those relating to the provision of money (28 July), impeachment of bishops (30 July), the London artificers’ petition against the employment of papists (16 Aug.), and the navy (25. Aug.) – and of joint conferences with the Lords.75CJ ii. 228a, 230b, 258a, 271b. He participated (with Mildmay, Evelyn of Wiltshire and Sir Benjamin Rudyerd*) in select meetings (12 July) and was called upon as a messenger, drafter and reporter in deliberations on security (8 and 11 May), state affairs (8 May, 12 July, 14 July), the disbanding of the armies in the north (10 Aug.) and the disarming of recusants (17 Aug.).76CJ ii. 207a, 139b, 143b, 210a, 250a, 261a. On 23 July he renewed his pledge of £2,000 (or perhaps £1,000) for the public service.77CJ ii. 222a; Procs. LP vi. 65, 70.

Between the end of August and 20 December Hungerford makes only two appearances in the Commons Journal, both on 2 November, when he was named to conferences with the Lords on money and security.78CJ ii. 302a. However, it seems likely that he was active in the meantime, whether during the autumn adjournment or afterwards, on the close committee on security, a glimpse into whose proceedings is supplied on 24 December, when together with Pym, Holles and four others, Hungerford was authorised to examine Thomas Dillon, 4th Viscount Dillon, and Colonel Theobald Taaffe, suspected of complicity in the Irish rebellion.79CJ ii. 357a; D’Ewes (C), 16n. His role as messenger and committeeman in parliamentary discussion on 27 December of the court’s intentions, and his membership of the party waiting on the king on 29 December points in the same direction.80CJ ii. 358a, 358b, 360b; D’Ewes (C), 354.

At the end of the year Hungerford resumed his former level of activity, and his proximity to those driving business in the Commons. On 3 January 1642, the day before the king’s abortive attempt to arrest the Five Members, Speaker William Lenthall* appointed him one of the tellers in support of the motion that Sir William Middleton should be sent for as a delinquent, being in breach of privilege for serving Lenthall with sub poena.81PJ i. 1; CJ ii. 366a. He continued to chase papists (20 Dec.) and prosecute the episcopate (22 Feb.), and again negotiated with Mildmay and Sir Thomas Barrington* for City loans (24 Dec., 17 Jan. 1642); his doubtess not unrelated concern for the Merchant Adventurers, ‘who have a cloud hanging over them’, led to the revival of the committee to consider their case (7 Feb.).82CJ ii. 349b, 357a, 384b, 448a; PJ i. 92, 294. Named to committees for Ireland on 5 and 24 January 1642, at this critical juncture he continued to be closely involved in security matters.83CJ ii. 369, 372, 379b, 394a. Appointed to the committees of safety to sit at Grocers’ Hall (17 Jan.), to present to the king on 26 January the petition to put the kingdom’s defence into faithful hands, to witness the opening on 14 February of the potentially incriminating letter from George Digby*, Lord Digby, to the king’s secretary, Sir Edward Nicholas, he was among MPs who met with the Lords to ponder the king’s successive answers to propositions from the Scots and from Parliament (27 Jan., 28 Feb., 17 Mar.).84CJ ii. 385a, 394a, 400a, 431a, 461a, 484a. Although he was involved in the justification of Parliament’s Militia Ordinance both to the king (1 Mar.) and a wider public (14 Mar.), on 21 March, significantly on a motion from Pym opposed by others, he was given leave to go into the country, ‘where he said he would be able to do us much service … for settling of the militia’.85CJ ii. 490a; Harl. 163, f. 394.

By late May 1642 Hungerford was back in Westminster. On the 24th Pym moved that he should be the one to desire the Lords to join in an order to be sent to Hull.86PJ ii. 367-8. He took an important part in preparations for the threatened conflict, negotiating hard for City support as before (20 May; 4, 17 and 18 June) and preparing the response to the king’s moves at York (24 May; 3, 6 and 21 June) and to intelligence from Ireland (5 July).87CJ ii. 580b, 586a, 602b, 605a, 609b, 629b, 632b, 635b, 652b. A victim of the king’s summer purge of commissions of the peace, his opposition to the crown was now widely publicised.88C231/5, p. 529; A worthy speech spoken at the Guild-Hall by the Earle of Holland, with the resolution of… Sir Edward Hungerford and Sir Thomas Barrington declared in their severall speeches (1642). Ordered on 11 July to go home with Evelyn to execute the Militia Ordinance in Wiltshire and expedite the raising of money there, he was to be absent from the House, although periodically visible in its Journal, for the next 12 months.89CJ ii. 664b.

Parliamentarian commander

Hungerford duly raised regiments of horse and foot, joining forces with Sir Francis Popham*, Alexander Popham*, Sir John Horner*, John Ashe* and others at Chewton Mendip, Somerset, at the beginning of August. After an initially ignominious encounter at Shepton Mallet, the parliamentarians proved sufficiently menacing to induce the royalists under William Seymour, 1st marquess of Hertford, to withdraw from Wells.90Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, iii. 17; Joyfull newes from Wells (1642, E.111.4); J. Vicars, Jehovah-jireh God in the Mount (1644), 131–2; Bellum civile, 11n; T. May, The History of the Parliament of England (1647), 76. Through the autumn, however, the latter gathered strength in the region. Hungerford, exempted like Evelyn and other local leaders from the king’s general pardon issued from Oxford in early November, busied himself with establishing garrisons in Wiltshire and Somerset and dealing with papists caught serving with the enemy.91Vicars, Jehovah-jireh, 209; CJ ii. 790b; Harl. 163, f. 412; Add. 18777, ff. 17v, 51v. On 26 November he and others wrote from Bath to Speaker Lenthall to warn of an intended attack by royalists on Bristol and to seek authorisation for the city’s rulers to accept assistance from Parliament’s forces in Somerset and Gloucestershire.92LJ v. 465b; HMC 5th Rep. 58. The writers also underlined the threat of ‘plundering cavaliers’ in Wiltshire, but fear and destruction were perpetrated on both sides: in response to an indignant letter of 24 December from Francis Cottington, 1st Baron Cottington, to Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, Parliament’s lord lieutenant, Hungerford was ordered to desist from threatening Cottington’s home at Fonthill (29 Dec.).93LJ v. 517b; HMC 5th Rep. 62.

By this time the war effort in the area was seriously threatened by a quarrel between Hungerford and Sir Edward Bayntun, a fellow parliamentarian stalwart but also a man with a history of provocative behaviour. On 27 December the Commons referred their reported differences to other Wiltshire MPs for consideration, but shortly afterwards the situation deteriorated sharply.94CJ ii. 903b. For motives disputed by contemporaries, early in the new year 1643 Bayntun, who had been granted a commission as commander in chief in the county, abandoned his garrisons at Malmesbury and Devizes, disbanding the soldiers. In response to a plea for help from parliamentarian loyalists in the towns, Hungerford left Cirencester, where he had been awaiting an attack from Prince Rupert, and brought troops to Malmesbury, only to be taken prisoner on 6 January by Bayntun’s lieutenant, Edward Eyres or Eyre. Either by his own efforts and those of local sympathisers, or with the help of horse sent from Cirencester (accounts differ), Hungerford soon escaped, and managed to bring both Eyres and Bayntun back as prisoners to Gloucestershire in time to see off the royalists.95The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 3 (10-17 Jan. 1643), 22 (E.85.15); Speciall Passages no. 23 (10-17 Jan. 1643), 191-2 (E.85.10); Mercurius Aulicus no. 2 (14 Jan. 1643), 17 (E.86.22); Add. 18777, f. 126. In response to Hungerford’s letter of 10 January seeking instructions, the Commons ordered that the prisoners be brought in custody to London, referring the matter to the Committee of Safety and seeking the advice of Evelyn (who had apparently delivered the letter) and Sir Neville Poole (who had spoken against Bayntun in debate).96CJ ii. 928a; Harl. 164, f. 276. Bayntun’s attempt to justify himself, printed on 22 January as A Letter to the Earle of Pembroke, was unsurprisingly unsuccessful. On 31 January the Commons recommended Hungerford to the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, as Bayntun’s replacement, and on 3 February an ordinance placed in his hands the powers of rating for payments to support three regiments for Wiltshire, disarming the disaffected and establishing garrisons as he saw fit.97CJ ii. 950a, 951a; A. and O.; Add. 18777, f. 139. The dissension between Hungerford and Bayntun continued, however, fuelled by events in Wiltshire, and occasioned violent confrontations within Parliament’s buildings. It drew in Bayntun’s son Edward Bayntun*, Giles Hungerford (his brother’s steward and secretary), and two of Hungerford’s subordinate officers, Colonel Fettiplace and Captain Withypoole; all were at various times between February and July enjoined not to issue or accept challenges to fight; Hungerford’s servant was detained in September.98CJ ii. 981b; iii. 107a, 185a, 242b.

In the meantime, Hungerford’s military record had been poor. His authority was reaffirmed as he headed the list of Wiltshire commissioners for the weekly assessment in the ordinance of 24 February (a pre-eminence repeated in May), and ranked only behind Holles in the ordinance of 27 March naming the sequestrators of delinquents’ estates, but he wasted strategic advantages.99A. and O. Driven at last from Cirencester by Rupert’s superior forces, he warned Parliament on 4 February that other towns were at risk and sought reinforcements.100Add. 18777, f. 144. But he seems then to have dissipated his energies and resources criss-crossing Wiltshire and Somerset. He left Devizes with his new subordinate Edmund Ludlowe II* for a temporary but inevitably destructive occupation of Salisbury and a fruitless search there for the royalist sheriff Sir George Vaughan.101Ludlow, Mems. i. 49; Mercurius Aulicus no. 7 (12-18 Feb. 1643), sig. N[1]v (E.246.39). Returning north, he concluded that, in the face of advancing royalists and deserting soldiers, he could no longer hold Devizes, and left for Bristol, taking with him much of the locally available ammunition. Devizes duly fell, as did Malmesbury, turned over to the royalists by its discouraged governor, and Edward Bayntun the younger – who also expressed an animus against John Pym – was quick to say that this would not have happened had his father still been in command.102Mercurius Aulicus no. 8 (19-25 Feb. 1643, E.246.41); Harl. 164, f. 306. Malmesbury was retaken by Sir William Waller* and Sir Arthur Hesilrige* about 23 March, and entrusted to Hungerford as they marched westwards, but before mid-April the latter had again quitted his post as indefensible, perhaps rendered doubly nervous by recent threats to his own house.103Harl. 164, f. 343v; Vicars, Jehovah-jireh, 292-3; 298-9.

A published vindication of Hungerford’s conduct, dated from Bath on 28 April, argued plausibly that there was division and disloyalty among his officers, and perhaps less plausibly that he had thought it reasonable to leave another in charge while he went alone to Bath for supplies and reinforcements.104Sir Edward Hungerfords Vindication for the Surrendring of Malmsbury (1643, E.100.30). Whatever the truth of the matter, he was already preparing to return to Wiltshire with Captain William Strode of Street. On the 30th he ordered the seizure of horses, arms, money and plate from Sir John Thynne at Longleat, and on 7 June gained the surrender of Lady Blanche Arundell and the occupants of Wardour Castle after a week’s determined battery. The lady promptly claimed that the terms had been broken in the ensuing plunder and destruction. Meanwhile, Hungerford left Edmund Ludlowe in charge of the castle and chased the earl of Marlborough out of Cottington’s house at Founthill, accomplishing in the process what he had failed to do months before.105Longleat House, Thynne Pprs. LXXVII.8; HMC 5th Rep. 89; LJ vi. 85; Ludlow, Mems. i. 48-9; Hoare, Hist. Wilts. iv Dunworth, 157. But this was a brief triumph. He was probably with Sir William Waller at the defeat at Lansdowne, near Bath, on 12 June, and certainly fled with him from the field in the rout of parliamentarians at Roundway Down, near Devizes, on 15 July. The fact that he receives little mention in contemporary accounts of the engagements in the area suggests that his role was slight.106Clarendon, Hist. iii. 82-6; Godwin, Civil War in Hants (1888), 57-8. None the less, in the proclamation issued by the king from Oxford and communicated by the Lords to the Commons on 27 June, Hungerford headed the list of 13 MPs explicitly excluded from pardon.107Harl. 164, f. 278.

Retreat from Militancy

Scattered evidence relating to Hungerford’s regiments suggests a certain neglect, both in dispensing pay and managing subordinates, which provides some foundation for Bayntun’s criticism.108S. Peachey and A. Turton, The Fall of the West: v. The Military Units, Dorset, Wilts. and Som. (1994). Aside from possible incompetence, dismay at the trajectory of the war may already have sapped Hungerford’s enthusiasm. On 18 August he was included on a committee for recruiting and mobilising the earl of Essex’s army, but the next day he was given three or four days’ leave of absence.109CJ iii. 210a, 211b. Appearing next in the Journal on 13 September, when he was back in the familiar role of carrying messages to the Lords, he then resumed more regular service in the House.110CJ iii. 239a, 242b. With Sir Neville Poole, Alexander Popham and others, on 30 September he subscribed the Covenant.111CJ iii. 259a. Twice that autumn he was delegated, with Mildmay, to meet the French ambassador; he was also a teller with his brother-in-law in favour of increasing the power of the directors of the Merchant Adventurers (7 Oct.), and successfully nudged him into returning to the Commons after an absence (11 Nov.).112CJ iii. 264b, 265b, 308a, 318a. Hungerford was still entrusted with sensitive matters, being delegated to deal with the delinquent Sir Henry Berkeley, included on the committee to examine Lord Murray about potentially defamatory words against Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, and engaged in investigating revelations about the admiralty.113CJ iii. 266a, 269b, 300b, 310b. His experience was called upon to advise on the militia in London and the south east.114CJ iii. 309b.

Hungerford was moderately active in the Commons throughout 1644, and indications of an allegiance to the ‘peace party’ slowly emerge. Apparently a stalwart religious Presbyterian, he was included on the committees to tender the Covenant to Sir Edward Dering (7 Feb.) and (with Rudyerd, Poole and fellow Wiltshire MP Robert Jenner*) to prepare the ordinance removing superstitious practice in worship (27 Apr.).115CJ iii. 390b, 470b Once again he was among those deputed to deal with ambassadors, this time from the United Provinces (6 July).116CJ iii. 552b. His greatest area of activity during this period seems to have remained in military matters – maimed soldiers (10 Jan.), raising money for garrisons (11 Apr.), dealing with the militia committee (16 Sept.) – alongside liaising between central and local administrations.117CJ iii. 363a, 457a, 629a. He was added to the committee for the northern counties (13 Sept.), and was drawn in to Leicestershire business (27 May).118CJ iii. 507b, 626b. With other Wiltshire MPs he was closely concerned with maintaining the local militia and garrisons, and in drafting related orders.119CJ iii. 532b, 547b; A. and O. But the perspective he brought to this – and probably to other business, such as the politically-charged committee to consider receipts and disbursements of money by the state, to which he was added on 24 August – was a conservative one.120CJ iii. 606a. Added on 29 March to the committee for the Isle of Wight, on 20 April he was a teller with ‘peace party’ leader Sir William Lewis (against Bayntun junior, among others) for the majority who concluded that Colonel Thomas Carne, deputy on the island for its moderate governor, the earl of Pembroke, had not ‘discountenanced the well-affected party’.121CJ iii. 440b, 466a.

The feud with the Bayntuns unresolved and now compounded by factional divisions, on 1 July 1644 Hungerford was placed after the earl of Pembroke and Denzil Holles* (another peace party leader) on the formalised Wiltshire county committee.122A. and O.; CJ iii. 394b, 517b. His effectiveness there at this juncture is difficult to gauge since he was clearly absent from the county a good deal. Dispatched there with Sir Neville Poole on 9 October to assist with the implementation of parliamentary directives, nine days later he was either still there or had returned to be named to prepare a letter instructing Ludlowe to join Waller’s army.123CJ iii. 656b, 668b. His role at Westminster, and his alignment with the political Presbyterians, is briefly somewhat clearer over the winter. He was apparently present in the House on 14 November, when he was placed on the peace-party inspired committee to enquire into those receiving offices from Parliament and with Lewis, Sir Philip Stapilton* and other Presbyterians he was added on 7 December to the committee investigating the report by Hollis of Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester’s counter-accusations against Oliver Cromwell* after the latter’s indictment of his military competence.124CJ iii. 695b, 717b. On 9 December Hungerford was chosen to relay to the Lords the message that the Commons had agreed to a safe conduct for James Stuart, 1st duke of Lennox, and Thomas Wriothesley, 4th earl of Southampton, the king’s negotiators in the peace negotiations.125CJ iii. 719a. Ten days later, as the Commons discussed the Self-Denying Ordinance, he was nominated to the committee considering appropriate payments to MPs and peers.126CJ iii. 729a. While he made only four appearances in the Journal from January to April 1645, he evidently remained involved in related matters, bringing a sensitive message from the Lords (16 Jan.) and sitting on committees on the proposed New Model army (17 Feb.) and the Self-Denying Ordinance (24 Mar.).127CJ iv. 22b, 51a, 88a, 112a. He was slightly more visible in the late spring and early summer, in connection with assessments and communications between the Commons and the City of London, and there is some evidence of his activity on the Committee of the West (11 Jan., 11 July).128CJ iv. 135a, 146a, 161a, 168a; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 245; Add. B22084, f. 25.

After he had obtained leave of absence on 6 August 1645 to go into the country for the recovery of his health, Hungerford was absent from the Journal until 19 March 1646, but his signature on a letter from the Committee of the West reveals that he was in London at least in November, arranging for supplies from a London merchant.129CJ iv. 232b; Add. B22084, f. 7. It is plausible that, in the context of the activities of the clubmen in his native area, he spent at some time at home making sure of his scattered properties. The March appearance was an isolated one on a delinquency matter in which the Commons rejected a proposition that Sir Edward Bayntun should receive a slice of the confiscated estate.130CJ iv. 480b. More clearly sustained was a period of activity from May to September in which he: signed Committee of the West letters, including one in favour of Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire occupying property in Salisbury cathedral close once held by the dean, Matthew Nicholas; was appointed a commissioner to regulate admission to the sacrament (3 June) – an indication that his Presbyterian views were unchanged; and was named to committees to address Richard Overton’s Remonstrance of many thousand citizens (11 July), borrow money again from the City (5 Sept.), and sort out disputes over the establishment of London’s eleventh classis (4 Aug.).131Add. B22084, ff. 8v, 9, 11; CJ iv. 563a, 616a, 632a, 663a; A. and O.

After a further absence in the country from 18 September 1646, Hungerford’s record continued to be intermittent.132CJ iv. 672a. He was present on the Committee of the West with his half-brother Henry on 17 November to authorise the payment of arrears to the governor of Devizes and on 30 November, in the wake of the abolition of the episcopate, was named a commissioner for the sale of episcopal lands.133Add. B22084, f. 13v.; A. and O. A further committee signature on 31 December confirms that he was available to address the matters of delinquents and complaints to which he was delegated by the Commons that month.134Add. B22084, f. 17; CJ v. 8b, 35a. Between March and May 1647 he put in regular appearances on the Committee of the West, while in divisions on 15 April over the suspension of George Devereux* on the grounds of sequestration he was a teller with Holles for the noes, and on 15 June he promoted the posing of the question that the king be delivered to Parliament’s agents.135CJ v. 143b, 211a.

Yet another leave of absence from 29 June 1647 looks to have been motivated by more than simply ill-health, although the drawing up in July of new indentures to settle his estates suggests that that was one factor.136CJ v. 228a; Add. 34566, ff. 21-32. He was still absent on 9 October, as were his half-brother Henry, Mildmay, John Hutchinson, and most of his neighbours.137CJ v. 329a-330b. He continued to appear on lists of assessment commissioners (and was to do so after his death) but his next obvious activity in Parliament was not until December 1647 and January 1648.138A. and O. On 7, 21 and 31 December he was nominated to consider the representation from the army, to remedy the social effects of military service and to increase the power of the Westminster militia.139CJ v. 376b, 396a, 413a. He swam against the prevailing tide in acting as a teller against ordering Thomas Rainborowe* to take up his charge at sea (24 Dec.) and, crucially, against the Vote of No Addresses to the king on 3 January.140CJ v. 403b, 415b. The next day he was placed on the committee of public grievances – a nomination repeated on 11 January, perhaps in the hope that he would remain a moderate voice at Westminster – but this was his last.141CJ v. 417a, 427a.

On 24 February Hungerford was granted leave to go abroad, on the basis of medical advice to travel, but there is no evidence that he did so.142CJ v. 472b. In July he secured the agreement of the committee of both Houses that he need not garrison Farleigh Castle, which had at last come into his possession.143CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 150, 15, 159. Ill when he made his will on 1 August, he proclaimed at length his assurance of salvation, provided portions for several nieces and annuities for his servants, gave generously to his sisters and many friends, remembered the poor of eight parishes, and liberally recompensed his trustees, John Hutchinson, Thomas Carne, Alexander Thistlethwayte, John Foyle and Giles Hungerford. He was at pains to commend orphaned young relatives to their special care, and requested that his widow would continue her motherly concern for his youngest brothers, in spite of their age and acknowledged responsibilities; both received annuities. Of his heir, their elder brother Anthony Hungerford, and his family, there was no mention.144PROB11/205/492; Add. 33412, f. 78v. Hungerford died on 23 October and was buried, in accordance with his wish expressed in a codicil of 1 October, in the vault at Farleigh Castle.145Collinson, Som. 358-9, 361.

His widow, Dame Margaret, whose substantial jointure had been augmented following the death three years earlier of her mother, the countess of Warwick, lived comfortably.146PROB11/195/217; PROB11/342/40. However, as executrix she found herself liable, with Sir Neville Poole, for various debts her husband had incurred in the course of his command in Wiltshire.147CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 421, 440-1, 456; 1653-4, pp. 400, 410-11; 1654, p. 27. Anthony Hungerford’s delinquency complicated somewhat the smooth handover of the estates.148Add. 33412, f. 77v; Wilts. RO, 490/1533. As it happened, Dame Margaret outlived him, but it was the extravagance of Anthony’s son Edward Hungerford* rather than the effects of civil war which, by the early eighteenth century, reduced the inheritance to almost nothing. Until then the family continued to be represented in Parliament.149HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715.