File:Sir Walter Hungerford, monument.jpg18th c. drawing of ledger stone from lost monument of Sir Walter Hungerford in the north nave of Salisbury Cathedral. Only the recesses remain to show the shapes of the looted monumental brasses, many having Hungerford sickles, his heraldic badge.File:Seal WalterHungerford 1stBaronHungerford KG Died1449.pngPost 1418[1] seal of Walter Hungerford, 1st Baron Hungerford. Latin inscription: SIGILLU(M WALTERI DE HUN)GERFORD DOM(INI) DE HEYTESBURY + DE HOMET ("Seal of Walter de Hungerford, lord of Heytesbury and of Homet"). His arms of Hungerford are shown on a shield couchée, centre, supported by two Hungerford sickles. His crest is the Peverell garb between two Hungerford sickles. The banner at dexter shows Party per pale indented gules and vert, a chevron or (de Heytesbury)[2] and at sinisterBarry of six ermine and gules (Hussey, his mother's family).File:WalterHungerford 1stBaronHungerford GarterStallPlate WindsorCastle.jpgLe Sire de H(u)ng(er)forde, Waulter. Garter stall plate, Windsor Castle, of Walter Hungerford, 1st Baron Hungerford. The helm is covered by mantling barry of ermine and gules, the arms of Hussey. The crest is: Within a crest coronet azure a Peverell garb or between two Hungerford sickles argent.
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,[5] and as the English envoy attended the Council of Constance in 1414–15.[6]
In the autumn of 1415, with twenty men-at-arms and sixty horse archers, Hungerford accompanied King Henry V to France.[7] He can probably be identified 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.[8] 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[9] and in November 1417 with envoys from France.[10]
Hungerford was an executor of the will of King Henry V, and in 1422 became a member of the council of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the Lord Protector. In 1424 he was made Steward of the Household of the infant King Henry VI. Within his household was one Owen Tudur, a welshman who would later secretly marry Henry V's widow Catherine of Valos [13] and so found the Tudor dynasty. On 7 January 1425/6, he 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,[14] 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.[15]
Firstly to Catherine (or Eleanor) Peverell, daughter of Sir Thomas Peverell, MP, of Parke and Hamatethy, CornwallTemplate:Sfn (a cadet branch of Peverell of Sampford Peverell in Devon[17]) by his wife Margaret Courtenay (1355–1422Script error: No such module "Unsubst".) one of the two daughters and eventual sole heiresses of Sir Thomas Courtenay (died 1356)[18] of Wootton Courtenay in Somerset and of Woodhuish, Devon,Template:Sfn by whom he had three sons and at least one daughter:
Edmund Hungerford, who was knighted by Henry VI after the Battle of Verneuil on Whit-Sunday 1426,[19] and married Margaret Burnell, daughter and co-heiress of Edward Burnell, by whom he had two sons:
Elizabeth Hungerford (died 14 December 1476), who married Sir Philip Courtenay (1404–1463) of Powderham, Devon.Template:Sfn 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 (died 1488), who founded a junior branch of the Courtenay family there.Template:Sfn 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 (c.1432–1492), Bishop of Exeter and Bishop of Winchester, whose splendid surviving mantelpiece in the Bishop's Palace, Exeter displays much heraldry including Hungerford sickles and Peverell garbs.[20]
Hungerford died on 9 August 1449 and was buried beside his first wife in Salisbury Cathedral, where two beautiful mortuary chapels erected by the Hungerford family stood until removed and destroyed by the restorations of James Wyatt in 1790. William Hamilton Rogers (1877) wrote as follows concerning the monument:Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
"He was buried with his wife in the Hungerford Chapel in the nave, a beautiful structure composed chiefly of iron and which has since been removed to the choir. Their tombs, joined together and despoiled of their brass effigies, remain in the nave. The matrices exhibit the proportions of a knight on the one and of a lady on the other, both stones were powdered over with sickles and a ledger line outside all. The whole has now disappeared, except the stones in which the brasses were set. Forty shields of arms, according to Hutchins (who minutely describes these chapels previous to their removal) were set round outside exhibiting the various alliances of the family. Among these were Hungerford impaling Strange and Mohun, Peverell, Courtenay, St John, Mules, etc".Template:Efn
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.[22] He founded an almshouse in 1442[23] 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.[24][25]
In his will he left to his daughter-in-law, Margaret de Botreaux (wife of Sir Robert Hungerford, 2nd Baron), his "best legend of the Lives of the Saints" and to John, Viscount Beaumont he bequeathed a cup formerly used by John of Gaunt.[26]
↑Date of birth "1315 or before" (Script error: No such module "Footnotes". cites Script error: No such module "Footnotes".; death date "1356" (Script error: No such module "Footnotes". cites Script error: No such module "Footnotes".; and & Script error: No such module "Footnotes".
↑Script error: No such module "Footnotes". cites: Metcalfe, Book of Knights, p.1
↑A Delineation of the Courtenay Mantelpiece in the Episcopal Palace at Exeter by Roscoe Gibbs with a Biographical Notice of The Right Reverend Peter Courtenay, DD,... To which is added A Description of the Courtenay Mantelpiece compiled by Maria Halliday, privately published at the Office of the Torquay Directory, 1884, p.10
Monstrelet's Chroniques, ed. Doiiet d'Arcq (Soc. de 1'Hist. de France), 1862, ii. 404, iv. 93, vi. 314;
Manning's Lives of the Speakers.
Further reading
Goddard, Edward Hungerford (editor 1869). The Wiltshire archæological and natural history magazine, Volumes 11–12, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, H. Bull. p. 154
Burke, Bernard (1866). A genealogical history of the dormant, abeyant, forfeited, and extinct peerages of the British empire, Harrison p. 291
