in the locality are numerous and carefully preserved. Hungerford is also a favourite hunting centre. A horn given to the town by John of Gaunt is preserved in the town hall, another horn dating from 1634 being used to summon the manorial court of twelve citizens called feoffees (the president being called the constable), at Hocktide, the Tuesday following Easter week. In 1774, when a number of towns had taken action against the imposition of a fee for the delivery of letters from their local post-offices, Hungerford was selected as a typical case, and was first relieved of the imposition.
HÜNINGEN, a town of Germany, in Alsace-Lorraine, situated
on the left bank of the Rhine, on a branch of the Rhine-Rhone
canal, and 3 m. N. of Basel by rail. Pop. (1905) 3304. The
Rhine is here crossed by an iron railway bridge. The town boasts
a handsome Roman Catholic church, and has manufactures of
silk, watches, chemicals and cigars. Hüningen is an ancient
place and grew up round a stronghold placed to guard the passage
of the Rhine. It was wrested from the Imperialists by the duke
of Lauenburg in 1634, and subsequently passed by purchase
to Louis XIV. of France. It was fortified by Vauban (1679–1681)
and a bridge was built across the Rhine. The fortress
capitulated to the Austrians on the 26th of August 1815 and
the works were shortly afterwards dismantled. In 1871, the town
passed, with Alsace-Lorraine, to the German empire.
See Tschamber, Geschichte der Stadt und ehemaligen Festung Hüningen (St Ludwig, 1894); and Latruffe, Huningue et Bâle devant les traités de 1815 (Paris, 1863).
HUNNERIC (d. 484), king of the Vandals, was a son of King
Gaiseric, and was sent to Italy as a hostage in 435 when his
father made a treaty with the emperor Valentinian III. After his
return to the Vandal court at Carthage, he married a daughter of
Theodoric I., king of the Visigoths; but when this princess was
suspected of attempting to poison her father-in-law, she was
mutilated and was sent back to Europe. Hunneric became king
of the Vandals on his father’s death in 477. Like Gaiseric he was
an Arian, and his reign is chiefly memorable for his cruel persecution
of members of the orthodox Christian Church in his
dominions. Hunneric’s second wife was Eudocia, a daughter
of Valentinian III. and his wife Eudocia. (See Vandals.)
HUNNIS, WILLIAM (d. 1597), English musician and poet, was as early as 1549 in the service of William Herbert, afterwards earl of Pembroke. His friend Thomas Newton, in a poem prefixed to The Hive of Hunnye (1578), says: “In prime of youth thy pleasant Penne depaincted Sonets sweete,” and mentions his interludes, gallant lays, rondelets and songs, explaining that it was in the winter of his age that he turned to sacred lore and high philosophy. In 1550 he published Certayne Psalms . . . in Englishe metre, and shortly afterwards was made a gentleman of the Chapel Royal. At Mary’s accession he retained his appointment, but in 1555 he is said to have been one of a party of twelve conspirators who had determined to take Mary’s life. Nothing came of this plot, but shortly afterwards he was party to a conspiracy to dethrone Mary in favour of Elizabeth. Hunnis, having some knowledge of alchemy, was to go abroad to coin the necessary gold, but this doubtful mission was exchanged for the task of making false keys to the treasury in London, which he was able to do because of his friendship with Nicholas Brigham, the receiver of the exchequer. The conspirators were, however, betrayed by one of their number, Thomas Whyte. Some of them were executed, but Hunnis escaped with imprisonment. The death of Mary made him a free man, and in 1559 he married Margaret, Brigham’s widow, but she died within the year, and Hunnis married in 1560 the widow of a grocer. He himself became a grocer and freeman of the City of London, and supervisor of the Queen’s Gardens at Greenwich. In 1566 he was made Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal. No complete piece of his is extant, perhaps because of the rule that the plays acted by the Children should not have been previously printed. In his later years he purchased land at Barking, Essex. If the lines above his signature on a 1557 edition of Sir Thomas More’s works are genuine, he remained a poor man, for he refuses to make a will on the ground that “the good that I shall leave, will not pay all I owe.” In Harleian MS. 6403 is a story that one of his sons, in the capacity of page, drank the remainder of the poisoned cup supposed to have been provided by Leicester for Walter Devereux, 1st earl of Essex, but escaped with no injury beyond the loss of his hair.
Hunnis’s extant works include Certayne Psalms (1549), A Hive full of Hunnye (1578), Seven Sobbes of a sorrowful Soule for Sinne (1583), Hunnies Recreations (1588), sixteen poems in the Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576), and two in England’s Helicon (1600). See Mrs C. Carmichael Stopes’s tract on William Hunnis, reprinted (1892) from the Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschaft.
HUNS. This or some similar name is given to at least four
peoples, whose identity cannot be regarded as certain. (1) The
Huns, who invaded the East Roman empire from about A.D. 372
to 453 and were most formidable under the leadership of Attila.
(2) The Hungarians or Magyars. The Magyars crossed
the Carpathians into Hungary in A.D. 898 and mingled with the
races they found there. The modern Hungarians (excluding
Slavonic elements) are probably a mixture of these Magyars with
the remnants of older invaders such as Huns, Petchenegs and
Kumans. (3) The White Huns (Λευκοὶ Οὕννοι or Ephthalites),
who troubled the Persian empire from about 420 to 557 and were
known to the Byzantines. (4) The Hûnas, who invaded India
during the same period. There is not much doubt that the
third and fourth of these tribes are the same, and it is quite
likely that the Magyars are descended from the horde which sent
forth the Huns in the 4th century, but it is not demonstrable.
Neither can it be proved that the Huns and Magyars belonged
either physically or linguistically to the same section as the
Hûnas and Ephthalites. But the occurrence of the name in
both India and Europe is prima facie evidence in favour of a
connexion between those who bore it, for, though civilized races
often lumped all their barbarian neighbours together under one
general name, it would seem that, when the same name is applied
independently to similar invaders in both India and eastern
Europe, the only explanation can be that they gave themselves
that name, and this fact probably indicates that they were
members of the same tribe or group. What we know of the
history and distribution of the Huns does not conflict with this
idea. They appear in Europe towards the end of the 4th century
and the Ephthalites and Hûnas in western Asia about fifty years
later. It may be supposed that some defeat in China (and the
Chinese were successful in driving back the Hiung-nu in the
1st century A.D.) had sent them westwards some time earlier.
One body remained in Transoxiana and, after resting for a time,
pushed their way through the mountains into Afghanistan and
India, exactly as the Yüe-Chi had done before them. Another
division pressed farther westwards and probably made its headquarters
near the northern end of the Caspian Sea and the
southern part of the Ural Mountains. It was from here that the
Huns invaded Europe, and when their power collapsed, after the
death of Attila, many of them may have returned to their
original haunts. Possibly the Bulgarians and Khazars were
offshoots of the same horde. The Magyars may very well have
gradually spread first to the Don and then beyond it, until in the
9th century they entered Hungary. But this sketch of possible
migrations is largely conjectural, and authorities are not even
agreed as to the branch of the Turanians to which the Huns
should be referred. The physical characteristics of these nomadic
armies were very variable, since they continually increased their
numbers by slaves, women and soldiers of fortune drawn from
all the surrounding races. The language of the Magyars is Finno-Ugric
and most nearly allied to the speech of the Ostiaks now
found on the east of the Ural, but we have no warrant for assuming
that the Huns, and still less that the Ephthalites and Hûnas,
spoke the same language. Neither can we assume that the Huns
and Hûnas are the same as the Hiung-nu Of the Chinese. The
names may be identical, but it is not certain, for in Hun may
lurk some such designation as the ten (Turkish on or ūn) tribes.
Also Hiung-nu seems to be the name of warlike nomads in general,
not of a particular section. Again the Finnish languages spoken
in various parts of Russia and more or less allied to Magyar
must have spread gradually westwards from the Urals, and their
