Edward Bayntun

"It bears the royal arms of the Tudors beneath the oriel window in the upper storey, and in the spandrels of the arch forming the gateway, those of Sir Edward Bayntun, the original builder and his first wife Elizabeth Sulliard, the daughter of Sir John Sulliard, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.

[3] When Queen Anne's downfall began, Sir Edward was trusted with obtaining confessions from the men accused of having relations with her, one of them being Mark Smeaton.

In a letter to Thomas Cromwell in 1536, the Princess Mary recommended that Sir Edward's aunt be rewarded for her service to the King.

[3] When Henry VIII married Jane Seymour on 30 June 1536, Edward was in attendance and served as Master of the Queen's Horses.

Queen Jane died on the 24th, and Dame Isabel was one of the twenty-nine women who walked in succession to mark each year of her life.

[3] Sir Edward was reinstated to his post as vice-chamberlain when he was named to serve the next royal consort in time for the arrival of the suite of Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's next wife.

Sir Edward continued to serve in this office to Queen Katherine Howard, who was the half-sister to his own wife, Dame Isabel.

They had seven children:[3] Bayntun married Isabel Leigh (born c. 1495/7), the daughter of Joyce Culpepper and thus the half-sister of Katherine Howard on 18 January 1531.

[3] Bayntun is described by historian Eric Ives as someone who "shared some of Anne's religious opinions, but he was essentially a career courtier, serving as vice-chamberlain to all Henry VIII's later wives".

[6] T. F. T. Baker in The History of Parliament writes: "... it was Sir Edward who so raised his family above its neighbours that in Wiltshire for a century after the Reformation Bayntons ranked, with Hungerfords and Thynnes, below only the Seymours and the Herberts".