Edward Hungerford

Sir Edward Hungerford (20 October 1632-8 July 1711), of Farleigh in Wiltshire was an English Member of Parliament.

He was the son of Anthony Hungerford, a Royalist MP who had been imprisoned during the Civil War, and was heir to one of Wiltshire's leading families. (His ancestors included the 14th century Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Thomas Hungerford.) By the time of the Restoration, he held about thirty manors in Wiltshire, including the family seat at Farleigh Castle, as well as the estates of what had been the junior branch of the family, at Black Bourton in Oxfordshire.

He entered Parliament in 1660 as member for Chippenham, and subsequently also represented New Shoreham and Steyning. He was made a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Charles II, but later his opposition to the court saw him excluded from office.

His spendthrift habits dissipated the family fortune. He sold Farleigh to the Bayntuns, and eventually lost all his remaining estates. In 1682, in an attempt to restore his finances, he erected a market hall on the site of Hungerford House at Charing Cross in London (which had burned down in 1669), but this eventually was sold as well, to its architect Christopher Wren. Hungerford Market survived until the 19th century, when Charing Cross Station was built on the site; the name survives in Hungerford Bridge.

References

*D Brunton & D H Pennington, "Members of the Long Parliament" (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
*Concise Dictionary of National Biography (1930)
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