John Hungerford (c. 1658 – 8 June 1729) was an English lawyer and Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1692 and 1729. He was legal counsel for the East India Company, and also defended several of those accused of being Jacobites in the years following the rising of 1715.
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Early life
Hungerford was the eldest son of Richard Hungerford of Wiltshire and his wife Ann Price, daughter of Ellis Price of Gatcome, Isle of Wight. A claimed connection with the family of Farleigh, according to William Hardy writing in the Dictionary of National Biography, has not been ascertained. He was admitted at Lincoln's Inn on 7 August 1677, graduated Master of Arts (MA) at Cambridge per literas regias in 1683 and was called to the bar in 1687. He married Mary Spooner, daughter of Abraham Spooner, vintner, of London on 5 August 1687.
Career
By 1691 Hungerford was Cursitor of Yorkshire and Westmorland, which may have helped his political ambitions. He was returned as Member of Parliament for Scarborough at a by-election on 28 April 1692. He was very active in Parliament and was appointed chairman of the committee of the house to whom the Orphans Bill was committed. On 23 March 1694 he received from the promoters of the bill a sum of twenty guineas "for his pains and services" in that capacity. This was discovered and his explanation was naïve and unconvincing and he was voted guilty of a ‘high crime and misdemeanour’ and expelled from the House of Commons on 26 March 1695.