1523. About eight miles from Bath is a village, Farleigh-Hungerford, known locally as Farleigh Castle from the extensive ruins of what was once a proud castle full of life and movement. As the name denotes, the Castle was the seat—one of the seats—of the Hungerford family, established at Heytesbury so far back as the twelfth century. In 1369 the Hungerford of his day, Sir Thomas Hungerford, purchased the manor of Farleigh. In 1383 he obtained permission to convert the manor-house into a castle. Sir Thomas made a great figure in the world: he is the first person formally mentioned in the rolls of Parliament as holding the office of Speaker.
Wandering among the vast ruins, the visitor, prompted by his guide-book, will not fail to note the spot where was formerly a furnace. If there is in all England a place where ghosts should walk, where the midnight owl should hoot, it is in the ruins of Farleigh Castle. For, now nearly four hundred years ago, Farleigh Castle was the scene of a terrible crime, expiated, perhaps in part only, by the death on the scaffold of one of the principal criminals, and of one or two of the abettors of an over-reaching ambition, or of a lawless passion.
In the Chronicle of the Grey Friars is the following passage:—
1523. And this yere in Feuerelle the xxᵗʰ day was the lady Alys Hungrford was lede from the Tower vn-to Holborne, and there put in-to a carte at the church-yerde with one of hare seruanttes, and so carred vn-to Tyborne, and there bothe hongyd, and she burryd at the Grayfreeres in the nether end of the myddes of the churche on the northe syde.
Stow, who in his Annals has a marginal reference to this Chronicle, adds a particular omitted by the earlier Chronicler—that the lady was executed for the murder of her husband. The curiosity of antiquaries was naturally excited by this story, half-revealed, half-concealed. The first discovery made was of the inventory of the lady’s goods. This was printed in Archæologia, vol. xxxviii. (1860). The goods fell into the hands of the king by forfeiture: so it came about that an inventory existed. It is a list of plate and jewels, of sumptuous hangings, “an extraordinary collection of valuable property.”
Finally more of the story was disclosed by Mr. William John Hardy, in the Antiquary of December, 1880. It is one of the greatest interest.
The lady’s name is given as Alice, both by the chronicler and by Stow in his Annals. Stow also, in a list of the monuments in the Grey Friars church, mentions one to “Alice Lat Hungerford, hanged at Tiborne for murdering her husband” (Survey, ed. Thoms, p. 120).
But the lady’s name was not Alice, but Agnes. She was the second wife of Sir Edward Hungerford, who was first married to Jane, daughter of John Lord Zouche of Haryngworth. The date of the death of Sir Edward’s first wife is not known. If we knew it there might arise a new suspicion. Nor do we know the date of Sir Edward’s second marriage, but it must have been not earlier than the latter half of 1518.
Sir Edward Hungerford was one of the great ones of the land. In 1517 he was sheriff for Wilts: in 1518 for Somerset and Dorset. In 1520 he was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. In 1521 he was in Commission of the Peace for Somerset.