História de uma Família Medieval: Os Hungerfords

Caros senhores,

Deixo aqui um excerto retirado da obra The Illustrated Book of Heraldry de Stephen Slater, que relata a História da familía Hugerford, uma poderosa família medieval inglesa que habitou o Castelo de Farleigh Hungerford:

“One medieval family of the West of England, the Hungerfords of Farlegih Castle, afford na example o fthe none too subtle way in which the nobility of Europe sought to stamp its authority over vast tracts of land and all that lived upon it. In stone, stained glass, parchment and needlepoint, the Hungerfords and many of their kind used heraldry to make a statement: “I am my arms. Hurt them and you hurt me—at your great peril be it.”

Assertion of Identity

The Hungerfords were not remarkable in any way, but were typical of their times: sometimes cultured, sometimes violent self-made, monied, landed, immensely proud, medieval in thought and deed. The family enjoyed its heyday in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, just at the time when the rival royal houses of York and Lancaster were flexing their muscles. It also happened to be the peak of that English heraldic phenomenon, the badge or cognizance; and the Hungerfords made the fullest possible use of their own device—a sickle or, its variation, three interlaced sickles—in many different ways.
Heraldry played a large part in the noble family’s daily life. The Hungerfords stamped their arms on seals, barns, outbuildings and chantries, and set their sickles on seats, ceilings and church towers. Walter, 1st Baron Hungerford, a friend and adviser to the Lancastrian kings, has his arms set, as was his right as a Knight of the Garter, within the Chapel of St george in Windsor Castle itlself. At court he would probably have donned his collar of “Ss”, the livery collar of the dynasty he served so faithfully.

The Acquisition of Arms

Although not perhaps remarkable in their class and time, the hungerfords are intriguing in their use of arms, possibly taking as their own the arms of the Heytesbury family (Per pale indented Gules and Vert a chevron Or), whose heiress had married a Hungerford. They also seem to have done the same with the arms of another family, Fitzjohn of Cherhill (Sable two bars Argent in chief three plates), which later became the acknowledged arms of Hungerford.
The Hungerford crest of a “garb” (a wheatsheaf) between two sickles may also have been adopted from that of another family, Peverell: such arms of alliance were not unusual at the time. The Hungerfords had most probably originated as lower gentry and were non-armigerous, becoming so through marriages with heiresses of more well-to-do families. Even the nature of the garb in the Hungerford arms has an element of mystery about it—is it in fact a sheaf of wheat or pepper, a play on the name Peverell? The Hungerfords delighted in the use of their sickles, often charging their memorials and property with interlacings of sickle, a design well suited to many household ornaments and items of furniture.
In the will of Lord Walter Hungerford, Knight of the Garter (proved at Croydon, 21 August 1447), his son Robert was left “2 altar cloths of red crimson velvet, with diverse compresses de sykeles curiously embroidered...my great alms dish of silver having on each side a lion supporting my coat of arms; a a pair of silver dishes bearing knots of sickles”. Sir Robert Hungerford was, according to his father’s will, to bequeath these items to his heir.
The Hungerfords, proud and privileged as they undoubtedly were, lived in a troubled age. In the records of the time we can read a rising in 1400 against King Henry IV, during which the rebels took several of the King’s “lieges” (lords) prisoners. They compelled Lord Walter, “the King’s Knight, to go with them to go with them and robbed him of the King’s Livery called “Colere” (the collar of Ss) which he was wearing, worth £20”, an enormous sum in those distant days.
Times were to get better for Lord Walter, for in December 1418 he was rewarded with the Lordship of Homet in Normandy in return for an annual fee of a lance to which was attached a fox’s brush (tail), one of the heraldic badges of Henry IV. However, a large part of the Hungerford revenues which arose from the acquisition of spoils in the French wars were used to bail out Lord Walter’s grandson, Sir Robert, who was taken prisoner at the Battle fo Castillon in 1453, a battle which brought the Hundred Years’ War to a close with defeat for the English. One of the members of the deputation sent over to France to treat with Sir Robert’s captors was Chester Herald—fulfilling one of the many duties undertaken by the herald of the time.

Heraldry and Eternity

The Hundred Years’ War, the Black Death and death in childbirth were among many perils the Hungerfords had to face, just as they reached the peak of their power in the English West Country. Beyond death, there was Purgatory, that period in which souls were lodged in Heaven’s waiting room, wainting for their family to purchase a promotion heavenwards through prayer and good deeds. Here too, heraldry had its part to play. The Hungerfords, in common with many of their peers, endowed “chantries”, chapels where the priests were employed solely to sing or chant daily masses fot the noble benefactors. The wills of the latter make frequent mention of the trappings of their chantries and the priests that served them. Presumably it was hoped that, of God in his Kingdom was looking down, he would notice the arms and badges of the noble family concerned and be grateful for the display. That, at any rate, must have been the thinking of the Lord Walter, when he gave to the Abbey Church of Bath a cope of red velvet patterned with waves and two other copes of gold damask velvet, that was “worked with myne armes for better memory”:
The theme was taken up in the will of Lord Walter’s daughter-in-law, the formidable Margaret Botreaux, Lady Hungerford. In the document she bequeaths to the Priory of Launceston (in Cornwall) a pair of vestments of red and green (the Hungerford livery colours) with the arms of Hungerford and Botreaux on the cross, and a furthernew pair of vestments to be worked with the arms of Hungerford, Beaumont and Botreaux. At Salisbury Cathedal, the wonderful altar cloths that Lady margaret gave included several bearing Lord Hungerford’s crest and arms. Even the chantry chapels themselves, as in the case of the Hungerford Chapel in Wellow church, near Bath, might be brightly painted in the family livery colours.
On Salisbury Plain, over the borders of Wiltshire into Somerset and Gloucester and far and wide in the Wset Country, teh Hungerford name spread itself. Whenever they acquired land, and wherever they had their souls prayed for, they stamped their authority through heraldry. Even on their last journey, entombed in their coffins, the Hungerfords could still afford a final nod to their arms, as the lock panel on their own family vault at Farleigh Castle was charged with the Hungerford shield. So famous were they in the West Country that other noble families in the area were keen to show an attachment to them through arms. In the 18th century, long after the Hungerfords had left the Plain, the Pleydell-Bouveries chose to use Lord Walter’s chantry chapel in Salisbury Cathedral for their own pew, decorating it with over 50 shields of arms recording the Hungerfords marriages and descent from that family.”

A razão pela qual transcrevi este extenso texto foi porque penso que ilustra bem a realidade histórica das famílias medievais inglesas, podendo até haver no Fórum descendentes desta família. Agradeço a partilha de informação sobre os Hungerfords ou sobre famílias medievais em geral.

Com os melhores cumprimentos,

Henrique Sousa de Azevedo

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