Historic Posters
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Stoke Park The estate’s owners from c1040 to 1581 The Stoke & Poges Families The Hungerford Family Owners of Stoke Park from 1066 to 1331 Owners of Stoke Park from 1441 to 1485 fter the victory at Hastings in 1066 William Fitz-Ansculf was obert, Lord Hungerford (commonly called Lord Moleyns) given use of the estate by King William I. In the Domesday inherited Stoke Park by reason of marriage to the fifteen A Book of 1086 he is listed as holding the Manor (one of R year old Alianore, daughter of William, Lord Moleyns. his many estates) as tenant “in capita” (direct from the Crown). Prior to this it was owned by Siret, the vassal Like his father in law he was a man of action and fought for (servant) of the Saxon King Harold. the last Lancastrian King, Henry VI during the final campaigns of the Hundred Years War. In 1453 he was Ansculf’s descendents called themselves de Stoke and captured by the French at Castillon but was released seven later they purchased the estate from the Crown. In c1120 years later after £3,000 was paid in ransom. On his return Hugh de Stoke is registered as owner of the estate and to England he fought in the Wars of the Roses with the following Richard de Stokes death in 1262 Humbert de Lancastrians who were defeated at Towton Fields in 1461. Poges (Pugeys) became guardian of his daughter, Amicia. He was beheaded in 1464 when the Yorkists, led by Edward IV, defeated Henry VI at Hexham. Robert’s body is buried in Humbert’s son, Sir Robert, a knight of the county for the north aisle of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury. Edward I, married Amicia in 1291. Their marriage also gave the village its current name, Stoke Poges. The Manor had Robert’s son, Thomas, was also beheaded in the Tower of been called “Stoke Ditton” until 1322 and appears as such in London in 1469, on the orders of Edward IV. His daughter the Domesday Book. Mary married Sir Edward Hastings. It was their granddaughter, Gille (the last de Poges) who Edward IV took his retribution and the Stoke Park Estate which married the Treasurer to King Edward III, Sir John de Molines, had continued by descent since 1086 was fortified to the Crown in 1331. to become parcel of the honour of Windsor. Henry, 2nd Earl of Huntingdon K.G. The de Molines Family The Hastings Family Owners of Stoke Park from 1331 to 1441 Owners of Stoke Park from 1485 to 1581 n 1331 Stoke Park was inherited by the wealthy nobleman Sir John de Molines through his wife Gille he Hastings, like the Hungerfords, supported the House of Lancaster and they shared the same de Molines. In the same year he obtained a royal licence to fortify the Manor House, and enclose fate when Sir Edward Hastings’ father was murdered in 1484 by the command of the Yorkist King Ithree woods. He also rebuilt St. Giles church creating a boundary around the estate. TRichard III; all his lands were forfeit to the Crown. However, King Henry VII, after overthrowing Richard at Bosworth in 1485, restored to Edward all his family’s lands and also the lands of Sir Thomas Sir John combined the imposing duties of Marshal of the King’s Falcons, Supervisor of the Queens Hungerford, Knt., his wife Mary’s father. Those lands included Stoke Park. Castles and Treasurer to the eighteen year old King Edward III (1312 - 1377) who had ascended the throne in 1327. As treasurer Sir John had financed the King’s attempt to claim the French throne which Sir Edward and Mary had one son, George, who inherited Stoke Park in 1506, and one daughter, Anne. resulted in the beginning of the Hundred Years War in 1338. This claim was not formally withdrawn George was a faithful servant of Henry VIII. He took part in the expedition to France made by the King until 1802. in 1513 at which time Terouenne and Tournai were restored to the English Crown. George advanced to the Title of 1st Earl of Huntingdon in 1529 and was one of the Peers who subscribed the letter to Stunning victories at Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356) led by the King’s eldest son, Edward (1330 - Pope Clement VII, intimating to him, that if he did not comply with King Henry in the business of the 1376), known to history as the “Black Prince”, gave way to uneasy peace in 1360. The peace had been divorce between the King and Catherine of Spain, he must expect that they would shake off his partly forced by the outbreak of the plague in 1348 which lasted for two years and killed half of the supremacy. George was also one of the 26 peers whose judgement condemned Anne Boleyn to the population of England. block in 1536. George married Anne, daughter of Henry, Duke of Buckingham, and they had five children, Francis (who succeeded him to his honours), Edward, Thomas, Henry and William. On his After failing to raise the required money (£100,000) from Antwerp moneylenders for the King’s seige of death in 1543 he was buried in the chancel of St. Giles Church. Tournai in 1340, Sir John was charged with failing the King in his extremity and was thrown into the Tower of London. His lands and goods were seized until his release in 1345. He was arrested again in Francis Hastings 2nd Earl of Huntingdon became General and Commander in Chief of the King’s Army 1355 and imprisoned at Nottingham Castle where he later died. In 1359 John’s son, William, obtained in 1549. After retiring from the Army he spent a considerable time improving the Stoke Park estate. He his father’s lands under a settlement upon him for life, from the King. rebuilt the Stoke Park Manor House in l555. He also built a chapel adjoining St. Giles Church, where his mother and father lay buried with images of them in stone. He placed a vault in the Chapel for his Sir John’s great grandson, William, was raised to the peerage. Lord William’s son, also called William, brother, William, and when he died in 1560 he was buried there with a plate of copper representing his was killed in 1429 fighting for Edward III’s Lancastrian great-grandson Henry V in the Hundred Years image, in harness, with the garter and a memorial in writing to him in his arms. Francis left the estate War (which was partly instigated by his ancestor Sir John) defending a bridge during the siege of to his son Henry. Orleans. He was the last of the male de Molines and so the estate passed to William’s son-in-law Robert, Lord Hungerford. Henry Hastings, the 3rd Earl, fell upon hard times and had to sell the property in l58l to the Crown. He was the last person to inherit Stoke Park in a line of descent that had continued for 515 years when his Both Sir John and Lord William’s tombs are at St. Giles Church, Stoke Poges. ancestors had forced the Saxon Prince Siret from his land in 1066. The Manor House at Stoke Park, built by the 2nd Earl of Huntingdon in 1555. St. Giles’ Church is also shown. One third of the Manor can still be seen today. The Church also survives but without its spire which was destroyed in the 1920’s. The Penn Family Owners of Stoke Park from 1760 to 1848 ohn Penn (1760 - 1834), a poet, a scholar and prolific patron of layout of 1750 which had been designed for the Manor House. Humphry architecture was responsible for most of what can be seen at Stoke Park Repton was selected and he created a new plan in 1792. Jtoday including the Mansion, the monuments to Sir Edward Coke (1800), Thomas Gray (1799) and the Repton bridge (1798). Repton and Wyatt were only part of the “Committee of Taste” John created which included Joseph Farrington (Painter), Nathanial Richmond Thomas Penn, the son of the founder of Pennsylvania (William Penn), had (Landscape Artist) and William Mason (Landscaper). With the help of these purchased the estate in 1760 and virtually governed his lands in America men he constantly reassessed the success of the house and the landscape. from Stoke Park for the next 15 years. John inherited the estate in l775. His judgements were based on his obsession with seeing forms in their Having spent a considerable time away from Stoke in Geneva and America, scenic context and this led to the landscape, house and monuments all John returned to Stoke Park in l789 with £130,000 from the new being adjusted according to the view they presented. Commonwealth in compensation for the family’s twenty-one million acres in Pennsylvania (less than 10% of what he claimed it was worth). A pension John was a remarkable man in many ways. He was High Sheriff of of £4,000 a year was also granted by the British Parliament to compensate Buckinghamshire in 1798, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army and from 1802 for the inadequacy of the initial payment. MP for Helston, in Cornwall. He was also an author of some repute. One of his books, an ‘Historical Account of Stoke Park’ was published in John decided that the old Manor House, built in 1555, was too dilapidated l8l3. Penn, although unmarried himself, also felt perfectly competent to for repairs to be made and decided instead to build a new house in a tackle the problems of those who were, and in l8l7 founded a “matrimonial prime spot on rising ground in the centre of the parkland, with good views society”, which had as its object the improvement of domestic life for of the surrounding countryside including Windsor Castle.