Anthony Wingfield of Sibston (1506–1593) was an English courtier, a gentleman usher and Black Rod from 1591 until his death. He was one of the fifteen children of Sir Anthony Wingfield and his wife Elizabeth, née Vere.
Career and family Anthony married firstly Katherine (died 1558), daughter of Sir Thomas Blennerhassett of Frenze, Norfolk, and widow of John Gosnold (d.1554) of Shrubland Park in Barham, Suffolk;J. Pound, 'Gosnold, John (by 1507-54), of Otley, Suff. and London', in S.T. Bindoff (ed.), The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558 (from Boydell and Brewer 1982), History of Parliament Online.
He married secondly Jane (died 1562), daughter of Edmund Purpett of the manor of Waldingfield;Tentatively identified as the former Lutterell manor of Woodhall by W.A. Copinger, The Manors of Suffolk. Notes on their History and Devolution, I: The Hundreds of Babergh and Blackbourn (T. Fisher Unwin, London 1905), at p. 245 (Google). See I.P.M., 33 Henry VIII. 78.
He married thirdly Elizabeth Wingfield nee Leche, a daughter of Ralph Leeche of Chatsworth, Derbyshire, and a half-sister of Bess of Hardwick.Alan Bryson, "Bess of Hardwick, a life", Lisa Hopkins, Bess of Hardwick: New Perspectives (Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 18–19. Wingfield wrote to his wife about the purchase of suitable New Year's Day gifts for Elizabeth I,Alison Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick's Letters: Language, Materiality and Early Modern Epistolary Culture (Routledge, 2017), p. 181. including a cloak and safeguard of watchet blue satin.Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd (Maney, 1988), p. 95.
Ushers took charge of arrangements for the lodgings of the Queen when she went on progress. When William More was reluctant to host the Queen at his newly rebuilt Loseley Park he asked Wingfield to prevent the visit. Wingfield enlisted courtiers to speak to Elizabeth about the unsatisfactory small rooms at Loseley, but the visit went ahead.Mary Hill Cole, The Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony (University of Massachusetts, 1999), pp. 43, 87.
Wingfield made preparations for a tournament of running at the tilt in November 1589.David Cook and F. P. Wilson, "Dramatic Records in the Declared Accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber", Malone Society Collections, VI (London, 1962), p. 91. He was Black Rod from 1591 until his death in 1593.
Notes
References and further reading Wingfield, Edward Mervyn: “Muniments of the Ancient Saxon Family of Wingfield”, London 1894. Archdale, Henry Blackwood: Memoirs of the Archdales, Enniskillen, 1925, p. 11-12 Barry, T. Life and Family History of William Honnyng, London, 2008, page 93
External links Letter from Anthony Wingfield to his wife Elizabeth, discussing a cloak and a safeguard to be made as a New Year gift: Folger Shakespeare Library