| Notes |
- Walter Hungerford, 1st Baron Hungerford of Heytesbury - not to be confused with Walter Hungerford, 1st Baron Hungerford (1378-1449)
Sir Walter Hungerford (1503-1540) created Baron Hungerford of Heyetsbury in 1536, was the son and heir of Sir Edward Hungerford. His mother was Sir Edward's first wife, Jane. He was born in 1503 at Heytesbury in Wiltshire, England.
His father died in 1522 when Sir Walter was nineteen, and soon thereafter Sir Walter was made a 'squire of the body' to Henry VIII. In feudal times, the squire of the body was responsible for carrying his lord's arms and also assisted his lord in donning his armour. By Tudor times, the position was that of a close attendant to the King.
Sir Walter was married on three occasions. His first wife was Susan, daughter of Sir John Danvers of Dauntsey. They produced a son (Sir William Hungerford of Farleigh) and a daughter (Susan Hungerford).
Susan Danvers died in 1526 or 1527 and he subsequently married Alice, daughter of William, Lord Sandys in 1527 to whom he fathered a daughter, Mary Hungerford.
Sir Walter's third wife was Elizabeth, daughter of John, Lord Hussey whom he married in 1532. Elizabeth was a woman who allegedly endured remarkable abuse and brutality at the hands of her husband. in 1536, she was driven to appeal to Sir Thomas Cromwell for protection, claiming that she had been kept a prisoner at Sir Walter's estate at Farleigh for four years. Sir Walter also apparently attempted to divorce his wife, and she claimed that he even went so far as to attempt to poison her on a number of occasions. Cromwell ignored her plea, seeking to protect his friend.
Sir Walter and his third wife had two children, Sir Edward and Eleanor Hungerford.
In 1532, his father-in-law Sir John Hussey wrote to Thomas Cromwell recommending Sir Walter as Sheriff of Wiltshire, a position granted to him the following year.
Sir Walter proved to be valuable to Cromwell, who suggested to King Henry that he be rewarded. Accordingly, in 1536 Sir Walter was made Lord Hungerford of Heystesbury, with the right to sit in the House of Lords.
However, his favour at Court did not last long. He was arrested in 1540 along with his chaplain William Bird. Bird was accused of sympathising with the 'Pilgrimage of Grace', a large insurrection against King Henry in the north of England.
Sir Walter was charged with employing Bird in his house, knowing him to be a traitor. He was also charged with soliciting two others to use witchcraft in order to find the year of the King's death and the outcome of the northern uprising.
His patron, Cromwell also fell from power in this year, and it is likely that Sir Walter was arrested more as an ally of Cromwell than as a major participant in the uprising. With Cromwell's fall, Sir Walter's wife was free to pursue her vengeance and Sir Walter was also charged with "unnatural vice", becoming the first person executed under the Buggery Act of 1533.
Both Sir Walter and Thomas Cromwell were beheaded on Tower Hill, next to each other, on 28 July 1540.
- Walter was summonded to Parliament as Henry VIII as Lord Hungerford of Heytesbury.
His treatment of his wives was remarkable for its brutality, keeping them virtual prisoners. His third wife, who was treated worst of all, in an appeal for protection to Thomas Cromwell in 1536, asserted that he kept her incarcerated in one of the castle towers (now known as the Lady Tower) for three or four years, making fruitless attempts to divorce her. He also made several attempts to poison her. He persuaded John Lord Hussey, the father of his third wife, to write to Cromwell stating that his son-in-law wished an introduction to him. A little later Hussey informed Cromwell that Hungerford desired to be Sheriff of Wiltshire. This took place in 1533. During June 1535 Cromwell made a memorandum that Hungerford should be rewarded for his well-doing. In June 1536 he was summonded to Parliament as Lord Hungerford of Heytesbury. In 1540, together with his chaplain William Bird, who was suspected of sympathising with the pilgrim of grace of the north of England, he was attained by an Act of Parliament. Hungerford was charged with employing Bird in his house as chaplain knowing him to be a traitor, and with ordering another chaplain, Hugh Wood, and one Dr Maudlin to practice conjuring to determine the lenth of the King's life and his chances of victory over the northern rebels. He was finally convicted of committing unnatural offences and witchcraft and beheaded on Tower Hill together with his patron Cromwell on July 28th 1540.
One of his manors was East Court, Heytesbury, which at the time of his death he was repairing and enlarging. The commissioners stated that if it had been in a good state of repair it would have become one of the King's residences. It lay derelict for many years.
- The village of Heytesbury is in the Wylye Valley with the river running through the centre of the village, from west to east, south of the High Street. This parish is much bigger than its neighbours in the valley; whereas the surrounding parishes are on one side of the river, Heytesbury extends over both, stretching from Imber in the north to Berwick St. Leonard in the south. Its size is probably due to its importance as an ecclesiastical centre in Saxon times. The majority of the parish is downland, the village community being centred on the High Street. The soil here is light, the subsoil chalk and stone. In 1986 the Warminster Bypass opened, taking traffic away from the High Street to the north of the village. The name Heytesbury refers to a burh held by a Saxon woman.
Heytesbury parish is rich in archaeological features, having 111 entries on the Sites and Monuments Record in 2009. The usual pattern of development in Wiltshire is that Roman settlements are found on the high ground and the later medieval settlements are in the valley. There are Roman villages at Wadman’s Coppice in the far north of the parish and near Tytherington Hill in the south. Also in the north is Bowl’s Barrow, a long barrow measuring 150 feet long which was opened by William Cunnington in 1801. Aided by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Cunnington excavated twenty barrows and earthworks on the Downs around Heytesbury, producing a fine collection of coins, bones, skeletons, minerals and fossils.
The earliest settlement feature on the site of the village itself is an Iron Age ditch found at Park Street Gates. Further investigations yielded gullies, ditches, post-settings and pottery dating from the 12th to the 15th centuries. Parsonage Farm is on the site of the 12th century Prebend House, while Heytesbury House stands on the site of the medieval East Court. Heytesbury was a fairly insignificant market town and saw little expansion beyond its medieval core until the 19th century.
In 1086 the Manor was held by King William but a priest named Alfward held the church and an estate with perhaps ten families. The manor was granted by Henry II to Robert de Dunstanville of Castle Combe. In 1339 it was divided into three Courts, east, south and west, which were granted to three separate families, but by the 1390s all three were owned by the Hungerford family. The central points of these three manors today are Heytesbury Park for the East Court, Parsonage Farm for the West Court or Borough, while the South Court was somewhere between Heytesbury and Tytherington but there is no longer any trace of it.
Little is known about the early history of Tytherington. Sir Richard Colt Hoare, normally a reliable source concerning manorial descent, says that ‘the public records are remarkably silent respecting this place’. By 1476 it was in the hands of the Hungerford family and descended in the same line as Heytesbury.
The Hungerfords were a wealthy and important family who owned property all over the south west of the country, including numerous manors in the Upper Wylye Valley. Heytesbury became the centre of their sheep rearing empire in the 14th and 15th centuries. A lasting memorial to the family is the Hungerford Almshouses, founded in 1442. Today it is known as the Hospital of St. John.
After the Reformation the manor changed hands twice, belonging to the Wheeler and Moore families. In 1641 the Moores sold it to Edward Ashe of London & Halstead. The land was inherited by his granddaughter, who married Pierce A’ Court of Ivychurch near Salisbury. The A’Courts continued to hold Heytesbury until the 1920s when the estate was broken up. The House was later acquired by Siegfried Sassoon and much of the land north of the village was bought by the War Department for inclusion in the Imber Range. The A’Court family, who were given the title Lord Heytesbury in 1828, continued to live in the village until 1971 when William, 5th Baron Heytesbury, died.
There are many listed buildings in Heytesbury, including nearly thirty 18th century houses and cottages. Apart from the church, the most well known building in the village is the Hospital of St. John, originally known as the Almshouses. It was built in 1442 by Walter, 2nd Lord Hungerford, for twelve poor, unmarried men who were looked after by one woman. There was also a chapel and provision for a schoolmaster. The Hospital was re-founded in 1472 by Lady Margaret Hungerford in honour of her late father-in-law Walter and her husband Robert. It owes its survival to her, as Margaret worked hard to ensure that the Hospital had a reliable income.
In 1765 the Hospital was destroyed by fire and was rebuilt in 1766-7 by the Trowbridge architect Esau Reynolds. The new building cost about £1,600 and was built round three sides of a rectangle with a coach house at the north corner and a clock with bell over the main entrance.
1962 saw the first major development in over 500 years. Flats for married couples were provided at a cost of £38,000 and the coach house was converted into a chapel. In 1969 there was a further building programme on the north side of the Hospital.
Heytesbury House stands on the site of the medieval mansion at East Court. Walter, Lord Hungerford was in the process of repairing and enlarging the house when he was arrested by Henry VIII. The property was seized and fell into disrepair. In the 17th century it was owned by the Ashe family who later rebuilt the house in 1782. It has a fine dining room with a decorative chimney piece brought from Wardour. It remained the property of the Ashe family and the A’Court family until 1926. It was later occupied by Siegfried Sassoon and then his son George until 1994. The house has now been restored and divided into apartments. The grounds and buildings surrounding the main house have also been developed and landscaped. The area is now known as Heytesbury Park.
- Born in the year 1503 Walter Hungerford was the only child of Edward Hungerford and his first wife Jane Zouche, the daughter of John la Zouche, 7th Baron Zouche. Walter was nineteen years old at his father's death in 1522, at which point his father left his entire personal estate to his second wife Agnes Hungerford. As it happens his father's disposition of his property became somehwat academic when Agnes was convicted of murdering her first husband James Cotell, for which crime she was hanged at Tyburn on the 5th February 1523.
Walter was therefore granted livery of his father's former lands on the 15th July 1523, including the manor of Farleigh Hungerford in Somerset. He subsequently became a squire of the body to Henry VIII, and then went through a number of marriages in quick succession. His first wife was Susan, the daughter of John Danvers of Dauntsey in Wiltshire, but she was certainly dead by the 22nd March 1527, as it was on that date on which Walter signed the agreement to marry his second wife. She was Alice, the daughter of William Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys of the Vine who in turn had died by March 1532 when William agreed to marry his third wife, Elizabeth daughter of John Hussey, Baron Hussey of Sleaford which duly took place October 1532.
Walter's career was soon to benefit from the efforts that his new father-in-law made on his behalf, as having become a magistrate for Wiltshire in 1532, the Lord Hussey then wrote a letter to Thomas Cromwell on the 20th August 1532 recommending his future son-in-law. As a result William was appointed to the post of sheriff of Wiltshire in 1533, and subsequently appears to to have proved ao useful to Cromwell that the latter made a memorandum note in June 1535 that Walter ought to receive some kind of reward. The result was that he was summoned to Parliament by a writ addressed to 'Waltero domino Hungerford de Haytisbury chr' on the 27th April 1536, being therefore regarded as the Baron Hungerford of Heystesbury, and duly took his seat in the House of Lords on the 8th June 1536.
It however seems that his new wife Elizabeth was less than happy with her married life as she wrote to Thomas Cromwell in 1536 appealing for his help. She claimed that her husband had kept her imprisoned at Farleigh Castle since their marriage and that Walter's chaplain John A'Lee had made several attempts to poison her. She also wrote that, "I may sooner object such matters against him with many other detestable and urgent causes, than he can against me, if I would express them, as he well knoweth"; hinting darkly that there was much more that she could say about her husband's misdemeanours.
However it does not appear that Cromwell took the slightest notice of these allegations as Walter carried on much as before. Indeed now that he was a peer he found himself invited to attend some of the more important ceremonial occasions, and was present at the baptism of Prince Edward in October 1537, followed by the funeral of Jane Seymour in November 1537. Walter was then appointed to the county bench for Somerset in the following year, and in January 1540 was present at the reception held for Anne of Cleves. All this time Walter was active in the local land market, gradually building up his estates which were worth over £1,000 by the beginning of 1540. Unfortunately having attached himself to Thomas Cromwell during the 1530s he found himself caught up in the latter's downfall.
After Cromwell was attainted on the 15th June 1540, a bill of attainder was introduced in Parliament against Walter on the 2nd July, passed on the 14th, and received its royal assent on the 24th, depriving him of both title and estates and, as it turned out, his life as well. There were three prinicpal charges laid against Walter; firstly that he had employed as his chaplain a man named William Byrde or Bird, the vicar of Bradford in Wiltshire, who was a known traitor and was attainted at the same Parliament for supporting the Pilgrimage of Grace and calling the king a heretic; secondly, that he had employed another chaplain named Hugh Wood who, together with a certain Dr. Maudlin, had apparently practised witchcraft in order to establish the king's date of death as well as his chances of victory over the aforesaid rebels; and last but not least, that he had practised an "unnatural vice".
As it happens it appears to be the last charge that everyone took seriously at the time. As the French ambassador Charles de Marillac wrote in a letter on the 29th July 1540, Walter was "Attainted of sodomy of having forced his own daughter and having practiced magic and invocation of devils" which, of course, may well have been what his estranged wife had earlier been hinting at. (And who also may have been the source of this particular accusation in the first place.) Although it must be said that there are those that suspected that the allegations of treason had more to do with king Henry's desire to possess the Hungerford estates rather than any real political transgression on Walter's part.
Nevertheless Walter was duly beheaded at Tower Hill on the 28th July 1540, the same day as his former patron Thomas Cromwell. The chronicler Raphael Holinshed recorded that Walter was a man "who at the hour of his death seemed unquiet, as many judged him rather in a frenzy than otherwise", and casually mentioned that his torments had a simple explanation since (of course) "he suffered for buggery". According to the Great Chronicle of London his severed head was displayed on London Bridge, whilst his body was buried in the grounds of the Tower of London.
Walter left behind two sons and three daughters. His elder son Walter Hungerford, later known as 'the Knight of Farleigh' was later granted land by Edward VI in 1552, and soon afterwards succeeded in persuading Queen Mary to reverse the attainder and restore to him the confiscated estate of Farleigh Hungerford in 1554. He later died in 1596 without any surviving sons, and the property passed to his half-brother Edward who later died without issue in 1608. However it does not appear that his title was ever restored, and neither the younger Walter nor any of his heirs or descendants appear to have sought to revive the title.
- HUNGERFORD, WALTER, Lord Hungerford of Heytesbury (1503–1540), was the only child of Sir Edward Hungerford (d. 1522). His father, son and heir of Sir Walter Hungerford [see Hungerford, Robert, (1431–1464), ad fin.], accompanied Sir Walter to Scotland in 1503; served in the English army in France in 1513, when he was knighted at Tournai; was sheriff for Wiltshire in 1517, and for Somerset and Dorset in 1518. In 1520 he attended Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold; died on 24 Jan. 1521–2, and left his surviving wife sole executrix (cf. Gent. Mag. 1858, pt. i. p. 122). Walter's mother was his father's first wife, Jane, daughter of John, lord Zouche of Haryngworth. His father's second wife was Agnes, widow of John Cotell. She had (it afterwards appeared) strangled her first husband at Farleigh Castle on 26 July 1518, with the aid of William Mathewe and William Inges, yeomen of Heytesbury, Wiltshire, and seems to have married Sir Edward almost immediately after burning the body. Not until Sir Edward's death were proceedings taken against her and her accomplices for the murder. She and Mathewe were then convicted and were hanged at Tyburn on 20 Feb. 1523–4; she seems to have been buried in the Grey Friars' Church in London Stow, Chronicle, p. 517; Grey Friars' Chronicle, Camd. Soc., ed. Nichols, pp. 43, 100, where the attempts at identification are hopelessly wrong; Antiquary, ii. 233). An interesting inventory of Lady Hungerford's goods, taken after her trial, is printed in ‘Archæologia,’ xxxviii. 353 sq.
Walter was nineteen years old at his father's death in 1522, and soon afterwards appears as squire of the body to Henry VIII. In 1529 he was granted permission to alienate part of his large estates. On 20 Aug. 1532 John, lord Hussey of Sleaford [q. v.], whose daughter was Hungerford's third wife, wrote to Cromwell stating that Hungerford wished to be introduced to him (Letters, &c. of Henry VIII, v. 538). A little later Hussey informed Cromwell that Hungerford desired to be sheriff of Wiltshire, a desire which was gratified in 1533. Hungerford proved useful to Cromwell in Wiltshire (cf. ib. vi. 340–341), and in June 1535 Cromwell made a memorandum that Hungerford ought to be rewarded for his well-doing (ib. viii. 353). On 8 June 1536 he was summoned to parliament as Lord Hungerford of Heytesbury. In 1540 he, together with his chaplain, a Wiltshire clergyman, named William Bird, who was suspected of sympathising with the pilgrims of grace of the north of England, was attainted by act of parliament (Parliament Roll, 31 & 32 Henry VIII, m. 42). Hungerford was charged with employing Bird in his house as chaplain, knowing him to be a traitor; with ordering another chaplain, Hugh Wood, and one Dr. Maudlin to practise conjuring to determine the king's length of life, and his chances of victory over the northern rebels; and finally with committing unnatural offences. He was beheaded on Tower Hill on 28 July 1540, along with his patron Cromwell. Hungerford is stated before his execution to have ‘seemed so unquiet that many judged him rather in a frenzy than otherwise.’(A ‘brief abstract’ of his escheated lands appears in Hoare's Modern Wiltshire, ‘Heytesbury Hundred,’ pp. 104–7).
Hungerford married thrice: (1) Susan, daughter of Sir John Danvers of Dauntsey; (2) in 1527, Alice, daughter of William, lord Sandys; and (3), in October 1532, Elizabeth, daughter of John, lord Hussey. His treatment of his third wife was remarkable for its brutality. In an appeal for protection which she addressed to Cromwell about 1536 (printed from MS. Cotton Titus B. i. 397, in Wood's Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, ii. 271 sq.) she asserted that he kept her incarcerated at Farleigh for three or four years, made some fruitless attempts to divorce her, and endeavoured on several occasions to poison her (cf. Froude, History of England, iii. 304 n. popular ed.). After his execution, she became the wife of Sir Robert Throckmorton.
Hungerford left two sons (Leland, Itin. ii. 32) and two daughters, all apparently by his third wife. The elder, Sir Walter Hungerford (1532–1596), called ‘the Knight of Farley,’ was granted land by Edward VI in 1552, and was restored by Queen Mary to the confiscated estate of Farleigh in 1554, when the attainder on his father was reversed. He was sheriff of Wiltshire in 1557, and died in December 1596. Two portraits, one dated 1560 and the other 1574, are engraved in Hoare's ‘Modern Wiltshire, Heytesbury Hundred,’ pp. 112 sq. In Hoare's time (1822) they both belonged to Richard Pollen, esq. In the earlier picture Hungerford is represented in full armour, and about him are all the appliances of hunting and hawking, in which the inscription on the picture states that he excelled. A hawk is on his wrist in the later portrait. Serious domestic quarrels troubled his career. About 1554 he married his first wife, Ann Basset, maid of honour to Queen Mary, and about 1558 his second wife, Anne, daughter of Sir William Dormer, of Ascot, by whom he had four children, a son, Edmund (d. 1587), and three daughters. In 1570 he charged his second wife with attempts to poison him in 1564, and with committing adultery between 1560 and 1568 with William Darrell of Littlecote. Lady Hungerford was acquitted, and Hungerford, refusing to pay the heavy costs, was committed to the Fleet. His wife, in October 1571, was living with the English Roman catholics at Louvain, and in 1581, when at Namur, she begged Walsingham to protect her children from her husband's endeavours to disinherit them. He left his property to his brother Edward, with remainder to his heirs male by a mistress, Margery Brighte, with whom he went through the ceremony of marriage in the last year of his life, although Lady Hungerford was still alive. After his death Lady Hungerford recovered ‘reasonable dower’ from her brother-in-law, Sir Edward Hungerford, and died at Louvain in 1603. Sir Edward, a gentleman-pensioner to Queen Elizabeth, was twice married, but died without issue in 1607. He left to his widow (d. 1653) a life interest in the estates, with remainder to his great-nephew, Sir Edward (1596–1648) [q. v.], son of Sir Anthony Hungerford [q. v.], of Black Bourton, Oxfordshire.
[Authorities cited; Dugdale's Baronage; Burke's Extinct Peerage; Hoare's Hungerfordiana, 1823; Jackson's Guide to Farleigh-Hungerford, 1853, and Sheriffs of Wiltshire; Burnet's Hist. of Reformation, i. 566-7; Hall's Society in the Elizabethan Age; Hoare's Modern Wiltshire, Heytesbury Hundred, pp. 110 sq.; Brewer and Gairdner's Letters and Papers of Henry VIII; Antiquary, ii. 233.]
- Walter 1st Baron Hungerford of Heytesbury was the former squire of the body to Henry VIII, but was attainted by act of parliament in 1540. Walter was charged with an involvement in various seditious plots against the King and also with ‘committing unnatural offences.’ He was beheaded at Tyburn on July 28, 1540 gaining the dubious distinction of being the first person to be executed under the Buggery Act of 1533. Sir Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s favourite henchman, lost his head alongside Walter that same day.
- Walter was a close associate of Thomas Cromwell. On the 16th of July 1540, he was attainted for sodomy, sorcery and subversion. He was beheaded, along with Thomas Cromwell, on the 28th of July 1540 when the Barony was forfeited.
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Dutton, Berrett & Hungerford Twigs
1503 - 1540 (37 years)
[1, 3, 6] 
