Hungerford Henry Dunch, MP

Family and Education bap. 20 Jan. 1639, 1st s. of Edmund Dunch† of Little Wittenham by Bridget, da. and h. of Sir Anthony Hungerford of Down Ampney. educ. Christ Church, Oxf. 1655. m. 30 Apr. 1677, Katherine, da. and h. of William Oxton, Brewer, of Westminster, 1s. suc. fa. 1678.1

Offices Held

Commr. for militia, Berks. and Oxon. Mar. 1660, assessment, Berks. 1665-d., col. of militia ft. by 1664; j.p. Glos. and Wilts. 1666-d.

Biography Dunch was descended from an auditor of the Mint who bought the ex-monastic manor of Little Wittenham in 1552, and sat for Wallingford, five miles away, in 1563. His father, a Parliamentarian in the Civil War, represented the borough in the Long Parliament and Berkshire under the Protectorate before receiving a ‘peerage’ from his cousin, Oliver Cromwell. From his mother Dunch inherited Down Ampney, two miles from Cricklade. His father withdrew from politics after the collapse of the Commonwealth, and at the general election of 1660 Dunch, who had just come of age, was returned for both Wallingford and Cricklade, choosing to sit for the latter. An inactive Member of the Convention, he was appointed only to the committee to bring in the bill for the abolition of the court of wards. Although he was nominated to the proposed order of the Royal Oak, with an income of £2,000 p.a., his background probably prevented him from standing in 1661, but he regained his seat at the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament. He was marked ‘honest’ on Shaftesbury’s list and appointed to the committee of elections and privileges in the first Exclusion Parliament, but he was absent from the division on the bill. He was re-elected in August, but probably never took his seat. He died on 9 Nov. 1680, and was buried at Little Wittenham ‘without pomp or vain expense, but with a bountiful largesse to the poor’. A distribution of £200 in Cricklade ensured the survival of the family interest, and his son was returned for the borough as a Whig in 1701.2

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690 Authors: M. W. Helms / Leonard Naylor Notes 1. Westminster City Lib. St. Martin in the Fields par. reg.; Vis. Berks. (Harl. Soc. lvi), 197; London Mar. Lic. ed. Foster, 426; PCC 59 Laud; Wood’s Life and Times (Oxf. Hist. Soc. xxi), 105, 500. 2. VCH Berks. iv. 382; Keeler, Long Parl. 161 2; PCC 144 Bath