HUNGERFORD, Henry (1611-73), of Lincoln’s Inn, Mdx., and later of Standen, Wilts.

Hungerford spent his youth in the pious household of his half-brother Sir Edward Hungerford*, to whose care he and his younger brother Giles had been confided by their dying father. They were tutored, as they had been before their father’s death, by Simon Croker, BA, later rector of Corsham. Both Henry and Giles remained close to Sir Edward and his wife, Dame Margaret; although Giles came to fulfill an especially trusted role as Sir Edward’s secretary and steward, Henry’s career appears at least in some sense to have unfolded in the shadow of his notable relative.12PROB11/152/277; PROB11/205/492. Both followed Sir Edward to Queen’s College, Oxford, rather than matriculating at Broadgates Hall like their eldest full brother, Anthony.13Al. Ox. Like Sir Edward, Henry graduated and then entered an inn of court a couple of years later. Perhaps he was originally intended for a clerical career: Giles, who did not graduate, preceded him to the inns. Admitted to Lincoln’s Inn (unlike Sir Edward and Giles) on 30 April 1635, Henry was called to the bar in June 1642.14LI Admiss. i. 266; LI Black Bks. ii. 363. For the next few years he presumably concentrated on building up his legal practice: no evidence has come to light that he fought in his half-brother’s regiments.

Hungerford was placed on the county committee for Wiltshire in July 1644 alongside Sir Edward.15A. and O. At the postponed election in July 1646 Great Bedwyn, the latter probably had little difficulty in exerting his interest to get his brother returned as the senior MP: Henry was a son of a previous holder and was born locally; the influence of the Seymour family had been removed; and Sir Edward’s friend Alexander Thistlethwayte* was sheriff. Once in Parliament Henry’s contribution to proceedings was apparently delayed and limited, but it was ultimately by no means insignificant. He did not appear in the Commons’ Journal until 1 February 1647, when he took the National League and Covenant, but he signed letters from the Committee of the West* from as early as 17 November 1646; he was to remain an occasional, rather than a core, member of that committee.16CJ v. 69a; Add. 22084, ff. 13v, 14, 21, 26, 39v, 44. Like his brother, he attended its meetings on 23 March and 4 May 1647, but he gained his first official Commons committee nomination only on 2 August, during the Presbyterian ‘coup’.17CJ v. 265a. Inasmuch as the leading Independents were absent and the task was to investigate the disturbances of 26 July, when a mob had forced MPs to reconsider A Solemn Engagement in the hope of returning the London militia to Presbyterian hands and the king to London, this was a clear sign of where his allegiance was presumed to lie and of his (or his absent brother’s) standing. The next day Henry was added with John Herbert*, James Herbert*, Edward Ashe* and others to the Presbyterian-dominated ‘committee of safety’ designed to consolidate the coup.18CJ v. 266a. The fact that his next appearance in the Journal, on 18 August, was on the committee to consider the ordinance devised by the Lords to nullify all orders and votes made at its height, indicates at least that he had courage to stand his ground, but possibly also that he had not endorsed all aspects of what had transpired, although he was not the only non-Independent so named.19CJ v. 278a.

Hungerford had worked with Presbyterian leader Denzil Holles on the Wiltshire county committee, and may have been closer to him than was the more timorous – or ailing – Sir Edward; it is possible that he was simply fighting a rearguard action, above all behind the scenes. That he was broadly a Presbyterian in his religious views, is hinted at by the fact that the next of his rare committee nominations was on 15 September to review tithes, while the following June he was delegated to consider the ordinance for the abolition of deans and chapters, and for the sale of their possessions.20CJ v. 302a, 602a. That Hungerford must have been continuously present at Westminster over the autumn and enjoyed the trust and confidence of some is indicated by two of his three further committee nominations in 1647: to investigate absent Members (9 Oct.); and to collect and catalogue parliamentary papers for ease of use (2 Nov.).21CJ v. 329a, 348a. He was also appointed to the apparently non-partisan committee for the ordinance for the punishment of the soap monopolist, Sir Henry Compton (14 Dec.).22CJ v. 383a.

There is then no record of Hungerford’s presence in Parliament until 8 March 1648), when he was again named to an influential committee, that for sorting and ordering petitions for presentation to the House.23CJ v. 486a. Given his previous scanty record, it is possible that he was present for the 3 January Vote of No Addresses to the king, which he might be supposed to have opposed, and equally possible that for a period he then forsook the chamber, but nothing can be said for certain. On the other hand, between March to October 1648, while his half-brother was apparently ill at home in Wiltshire or Somerset, and while the prospect of successful peace negotiations with the king revived, Hungerford seems to have been relatively busy in the House; he was also present on the Committee of the West on 28 April.24Add. 22084, f. 44. Although he was involved in the appointment of the orator of the University of Oxford (17 June) – a possible sign of continuing links with its chancellor, the earl of Pembroke – and the religious ordinance mentioned above, his main concerns were, significantly, military and strategic.25CJ v. 603b. On 20 March he was one of the lawyers specifically named to prepare the ordinance for settling the jurisdiction of the court of admiralty, while as tension mounted at sea and on land, on 20 April he was put on the committee to punish defaulters on the Kent musters.26CJ v. 505b, 538a. In the debate on the all-important question of the London militia, the control of which was both a factional issue and critical to the fate of Parliament in a city full of royalist supporters, on 16 May Hungerford was a teller with the sharp-tongued Presbyterian Clement Walker* against the projected appointment of Philip Skippon* as its major-general; they gained a majority, but it had no effect on the eventual outcome.27CJ v. 561b. Ten days later he was placed on the committee which met the common council of London to discuss the security of both city and Parliament, and on 13 June he was named to work on the ordinance for settling the militia of the whole kingdom.28CJ v. 574a, 597b. Nominated on 27 June to the joint committee to consider the terms of the treaty with the king, he was almost certainly a voice for peace, but not perhaps at any price.29CJ v. 614a. With Sir John Evelyn* of Wiltshire and Charles Rich* he was added on 30 June to the committee dealing with the suppression of the rising in Essex, while (likewise with Evelyn) on 5 July he was among those deputed to confer with the common council over the latter’s petition that the king be brought to London in person to discuss peace, and over the security issues that raised.30CJ v. 618a, 624a.

By this stage Hungerford must have been a conspicuous figure both to fellow MPs and to city leaders. His profile can only have risen further as he was added to the committee to consider petitions from disbanded army officers (10 July) and appointed on 20 July to that to investigate the instigators of the invasion of England by the Scottish army under James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton.31CJ v. 640b. That he was active in the matter appears to be confirmed by his nomination on 29 August, following Hamilton’s capitulation and imprisonment, to a committee probing the origins of the duke’s soldiers and the arrangements for ensuring that, as prisoners, they were not unduly burdensome to particular localities.32CJ v. 692a. On 8 September he was added to the revived committee dealing with the compensation claims of former commissary-general for Sussex Henry Peck*, and on 9 October, as discussions on the treaty of Newport continued, he was named to address the ordinance for raising £5,000 from delinquents to pay for cavalry to guard Parliament.33CJ vi. 10a, 47a. As the peace negotiations appeared to founder, he was, with Sir Walter Erle*, Sir Gilbert Gerard* and John Swynfen*, a reporter of the conference with the Lords called by the latter to ward off the Independent-inspired motion for an adjournment of Parliament which would have reduced the time available for reaching a settlement.34CJ vi. 54b; LJ x. 547a.

In June 1647 and February 1648 Hungerford had been placed among Wiltshire assessment commissioners, and on 25 November 1648, with James Herbert and Sir Neville Poole*, he was deputed to write to the county committee to promote the paying in of money for the local militia.35CJ vi. 88a. He was named again as an assessment commissioner on 2 December, but 25 November was his final appearance in the Commons Journal before he fell victim to the Purge of Members on 6 December, rendered unacceptable to the army for his pursuit of a political accommodation.36A. and O.; A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication (1649), 28 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5).

The death of his half-brother in late October had deprived him of a powerful patron in his native county, albeit it one likely, had he lived, to have suffered the same fate in Parliament, but it seems from later evidence that by this time Hungerford had his own friends in London and elsewhere. Sir Edward left him a £40 annuity, but it was presumably also with his earnings at the bar that he managed to acquire some property in Wiltshire, although it is unclear when he bought or inherited his land at Standen.37PROB11/205/492; C6/20/80; C6/42107; C6/7/117. Unlike his brother Giles, he was not among Sir Edward’s trustees, but he was associated with the latter’s widow and with Giles in a 1649 lawsuit over the Hungerford manor of Rowde; left in prosperous circumstances, Dame Margaret, who had been enjoined by her husband to continue her ‘motherly concern’ for her brothers-in-law, would have been a useful connection.38C6/104/2; PROB11/205/492.

Hungerford held no office in Wiltshire between the purge and the later 1650s, but he must have remained sufficiently prominent to retain the confidence of those antipathetic to the regime. In 1656 he was elected with the more recent, but more eminent, dissident Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* and with his own brother-in-law Alexander Thistlethwayte* to a county seat, only to be excluded, like Cooper, by the government.39CJ vii. 425a. Thistlethwayte was among several MPs who withdrew from the House for a period in protest.40VCH Wilts. v. 152. However, in June 1657, as the first session of the second Protectorate Parliament ended, Hungerford was once more appointed an assessment commissioner for Wiltshire, and when the second session opened in January 1658 he took advantage of the Act of Adjournment to return with his excluded colleagues to the House. In the ensuing debate on the status and nomenclature of the newly-reinstated Upper House, which dominated proceedings, he spoke at least twice, on 30 January and 3 February, arguing that members should not ‘wade into the merit of a government wherein you are settled; but keep to the question in hand’.41Burton’s Diary, ii. 396, 441; VCH Wilts. v. 153. Probably the protectorate was, for him, less unacceptable than the republic which had preceded it.

In the elections for the third Protectorate Parliament Hungerford was returned for his original seat of Great Bedwyn while his nephew Edward*, who as heir both to his father Anthony* and to Sir Edward was at this date a very wealthy and potentially influential young man, sat for Chippenham. Royalist intelligence noted Edward as a moderately active friend in the House, but it is likely that the experienced Henry was the more prominent in proceedings.42CCSP iv. 166-7, 177. Both were nominated on 28 January 1659 to the unwieldy committee of elections and privileges, while Henry alone was placed on the security committee of 18 April, designed to counter the threat from the army, and he was probably the Mr Hungerford named on 13 April to the committee to prepare a declaration on the excise.43CJ vii. 594b, 639a, 641b.

Following the army officers’ declaration of 6 May 1659 recalling the Rump, Hungerford was, according to William Prynne*, one of a small group of those purged in 1648 who accompanied him the next day to the lobby door at Westminster in an attempt to gain admittance in the confusion as MPs reassembled. Denied entry, some of the group, which included Arthur Annesley*, Evelyn of Wiltshire, Richard Knightley* and half a dozen others, repaired to Lincoln’s Inn. Since Hungerford was (like Prynne) a member there it is likely that he was still among them, and thus partly responsible for the catalogue of names of former Long Parliament MPs which they then compiled from memory. By prior arrangement Prynne, Annesley and Hungerford made a second attempt on the 9th, but gained only temporary access to a thinly-attended House to press their case for a return to the status quo before 6 December 1648.44W. Prynne, A true and perfect narrative (1659), 4, 8-9, 34-5, Loyalty banished: or England in mourning (1659). Prynne could do no more than publish the catalogue.45W. Prynne, The Curtaine Drawne [1659]. He listed Hungerford, who seems to have earned some gratitude from the regime for services during the summer, among those ‘faithful secluded Members’ who were none the less ‘again forcibly shut out’ when the same tactic was tried again on 27 December 1659.46W. Prynne, A brief narrative [1659]; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 583. Exactly two months later, and six days after the arrival of George Monck’s* army in London finally precipitated their recall to the House, Hungerford was among several lawyers placed on the committee to dissolve the Parliament and prepare the ground for a new one.47CJ vii. 855a. On 3 March, in an act of reconstruction and in mixed company which included Prynne and Knightley on the one hand, and a parvenu Wiltshire Rumper like John Dove* on the other, he was named to the committee to revive the jurisdiction of the counties palatine of Lancaster and Cheshire.48CJ vii. 860b.

March 1660 also saw Hungerford restored to the Wiltshire militia committee and placed for the first time on the commission of the peace.49A. and O.; Commonplace Bk. of Sir Edward Bayntun, 16, 33; HP Commons 1660-1690. He remained on the bench for the rest of his life and continued as an assessment commissioner, but the Convention was his last appearance in Parliament; this time it was with both his nephew Edward and his brother Giles. Elected for Marlborough, near the home he made at Standen with his widowed half-sister Sarah Goddard, Henry served on a sizeable number of committees (including those addressing the indemnity bill and the abolition of the court of wards and liveries), delivered nine speeches (including one supporting modified episcopacy), showed a disinclination to compensate the sufferings of royalists, and consistently opposed the Seymour interest.50HP Commons 1660-1690. Over the next few years he and his sister were in regular contact with Bulstrode Whitelocke*.51Whitelocke, Diary, 686, 703, 721, 784, 825. On 22 May 1673, declaring himself ‘in reasonable good health of body’, he made his will, but the same evening, according to Whitelocke, died suddenly from a brief illness that had begun with a cold. He left bequests to the Goddards, the daughters of his brothers Giles and John, Mr Parke the minister of Hungerford, and the poor of Hungerford, Great Bedwyn and Black Bourton, and made Giles and Sarah his executors. He was buried on 27 May, at Hungerford as he had wished, having left £150 for a monument. This celebrated his piety and his public service, while Whitelocke recorded that ‘he was a prudent man for the world, and of good parts, and a civil neighbour’.52PROB11/342/215; Whitelocke, Diary, 810.