Who were the first Lunsfords?

Answer 1

Thomas Lunsford was born in 1610 at Wileigh in East Hoathly, the family home for nearly three hundred years. His was a noble heritage that dated back to the 1,000's with a family rich in military history. His Saxon ancestors fought against William the Conqueror at The Battle of Hastings in 1066, and a long stream of native sons were soldiers who defended Sussex and England generation after generation.

Thomas would have lived a charmed life. He and his twin brother, Herbert, and their five other siblings born between 1607 and 1615 ( Lisle, William, Anne, Henry, Sarah), plus potentially still-living grandparents, would have made a houseful for their parents, Thomas Lunsford, Sr. and his wife Katherine Fludd. They shared the county with their cousins the Pelhams and other distant relatives. All were either related to the English monarchy, were statesmen, or somehow served the Kings and Queens at the time. This was all possible because London was only 50 miles away. But the Lunsford's noble life was coming to an end.

In 1632 when Thomas Jr. was in his early 20's, his father was imprisoned in Fleet Prison, a debtor's prison, because he could not pay his debts. It appears he led a careless and extravagant lifestyle. At about this same time Thomas was involved in what would become an famous incident and set the stage for his future. On June 29, 1632 his cousin and neighbor, Sir Thomas Pelham, was hunting deer on his own property and one of his dogs crossed onto the Lunsford grounds and was shot by one of the Lunsford sons. At a later point, Thomas Lunsford sneaked onto Halland Park on the Pelham grounds, shot a deer and assaulted the keeper of the park. He was arrested, tried and ordered to pay 1,000 pounds to the King and 750 pounds to Sir Thomas Pelham. This only enflamed Thomas Lunsford and his brothers, who probably steamed over the situation for the next year.

One Sunday in August 1633, as Sir Thomas Pelham was coming from church with his wife, the Lunsfords, led by Thomas, and accompanied by his servant Morris Lewis, with the ferocity of a gang of hit-men, attempted to kill him, two of the bullets from his pistol entering the church edifice. The assault created indignation in the neighborhood, and the Earl of Dorset was active in bringing Lunsford before the Star Chamber Court. He wrote to Pelham on October 27, 1632 that he would use every effort "to right your reputation and secure your person against that young outlaw, who neither fears God nor man." In the same letter Thomas is called "a debauched creature, degenerate from all gentile birth and education, and takes glory to be esteemed rather a swaggering ruffian than the issue of that ancient and honest family."

Once again Thomas was tried and ordered to pay 5,000 pounds to the King and 3,000 pounds damages to Sir Thomas Pelham. Thomas Lunsford was sent to Newgate Prison until the penalty was paid. For a long time Lunsford suffered from wounds he received in attacking Pelham's carriage, and one day, on the plea that he wanted some fresh air, bribed one of the guards who allowed him to walk outside of the prison. He never returned, and it was supposed that he escaped to France and joined the French Army.

Thomas Lunsford, Sr. remained in Fleet Prison for four years, and among his fellow prisoners was Alexander Leighton, who had been a professor in the University of Edinburgh, then a Presbyterian minister in London, and for his Puritanism had lost both ears, been branded on the cheek, and confined to Fleet Prison for life. Being a physician we well as a theologian, Leighton watched the declining health of the elder Lunsford. In spite of the bad blood between the two families, it was the influence of Sir Thomas Pelham that the imprisoned Lunsford was liberated and returned home, where he died November 4, 1637.

It wasn't long before the boisterous Lunsford was again making headlines. On the outbreak of the Bishop's Wars in 1639, Lunsford returned to England and offered his services to King Charles, who pardoned him and remitted his fine. He became a favorite of the King after fighting courageously at the disastrous battle of Newburn in August 1640. In December 1640, during the riots and disturbances in London, King Charles was induced to retire an excellent and competent governor of the Tower, Sir William Balfour, a known puritan and supporter of Parliament, and appoint as his successor the reckless, notorious swashbuckler Thomas Lunsford. Lunsford was the sort of adventurer who might involve himself in a military coup. The appointment seemed to be confirmation of King Charles' secret desire to regain freedom of action through a military coup.

At the Royal Exchange the merchants (who sent their gold to the Tower to be coined) expressed astonishment and distrust, and the City Council in a petition to the House of Commons proclaimed that he was an outlaw, notorious for outrages, a man of decayed and desperate fortune. On Sunday, December 26th, the Lord Mayor twice visited the King and told him that if the appointment was not revoked, the Apprentices would attack the Tower and eject Lunsford. Charles yielded to the pressure of public opinion, but two days after the removal of Lunsford, the King aroused the indignation of the citizens by making him a knight and appointing him commander of an unofficial royal guard at the Palace of Whitehall.

Lunsford's men twice dispersed rioting apprentices and citizens at sword-point, and in January 1642 they guarded the King during his disastrous attempt to arrest the Five Members in the House of Commons. Parliament ordered Lunsford's arrest after he joined Lord Digby in an attempt to seize the county magazine at Kingston-on-Thames in the King's name. Released from prison in June, he joined King Charles at York. In the Civil War Lunsford rose to the rank of colonel.

Lunsford was taken prisoner after the battle of Edge Hill in October 1642 and was imprisoned at Warwick Castle. The following March in a prisoner exchange he was exchanged for Colonel Stevens, a Parliament officer. In May 1643 he rejoined the King at Oxford. In April 1644 he was governor of Bristol and governor of Monmouth. After the defeat of the King's army at Naseby in June 1645, Lunsford attempted to rally support for the Royalist cause in Wales, but he was captured at the siege of Hereford in December 1645 and ordered by the Commons to be committed to the Tower of London for high treason for levying war against Parliment. In June 1646 he was back at the Tower, this time as a prisoner of war. His second wife, Catherine, was permitted to share his confinement where she gave birth to a one of their children (Phileppa ca 1637, Elizabeth 1642, Mary 1647). Because of his history of violence and the attacks on his character over the years, he and his troops, the Roundheads, were said to be cannibals and child-eaters, and Puritans taught their children to fear his very name. Although he was an excellent soldier and gentleman, he was painted as an ogre who "roasted babies and stewed sucklings."

Lunsford remained a prisoner in the Tower of London until August 1649 when he was granted permission to emigrate to Virginia with his wife and family. He sold Wileigh and departed for the colony that was still loyal to the crown.