Giles Alington

Sir Giles Alington (June 1499 – 22 August 1586) was a knight; Lord of the Manor of Horseheath, Cambridgeshire; and High Sheriff and MP for Cambridgeshire. Family background In the lead up to the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 King Richard III appointed Sir William Alington of Horseheath, Knt., his Commissioner of Array for Cambridgeshire. He made his last will on 15 August and was killed fighting alongside John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk. His son and heir was Sir Giles Alington (1483–1522), a Knight of the Bath and twice High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, who had married Mary Gardiner, daughter & heiress of Sir Richard Gardiner, (died 1489) Lord Mayor of London by his spouse Audria, daughter of William Cotton, Lord of Landwade Manor, Cambridgeshire. The Alingtons who dwelt at Horseheath Hall thrived under the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, and had the privilege of handing to the King his first drink at coronations. Sir Giles Alington was one of the party attending Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold tournament in 1520. Biography Sir Giles Alington was the eldest son of the eleven children of Sir Giles (1483-1522) and his wife, Mary. He was knighted by King Henry VIII at Whitehall Palace, London, on 11 November 1530. He attended the King as Master of Ordnance at the siege of Boulogne-sur-Mer, noted on the inscription of a clock which he brought from that siege, and affixed over the offices at Horseheath Hall, in which was contained the alarm bell of the garrison of Boulogne.