JANOS

HUNYAIDI (c. 1387-1456)  , Hungarian statesman and warrior, was the son of Vojk, a Magyarized Vlach who married Elizabeth Morzsinay . He derived his family name from the small estate of Hunyad, which came into his father's possession in 1409 . The later epithet Corvinus, adopted by his son Matthias, was doubtless derived from another property, Piatra da Corvo or Raven's Rock . He has sometimes been confounded with an elder brother who died fighting for Hungary about 1440 . While still a youth, he entered the service of King Sigismund, who appreciated his qualities and borrowed money from him; he accompanied that monarch to Frankfort in his quest for the imperial crown in 1410; took part in the Hussite War in 1420, and in 1437 drove the Turks from Semendria . For these services he got numerous estates and a seat in the royal council . In 1438 King Albert II. made him ban of Szoreny, the district lying between the Aluta and the Danube, a most dangerous dignity entailing constant warfare with the Turks . On the sudden death of Albert in 1439, Hunyadi, feeling acutely that the situation demanded a warrior-king on the throne of St Stephen, lent the whole weight of his influence to the candidature of the young Polish king Wladislaus III . (1440), and thus came into collision with the powerful Cilleis, the chief supporters of Albert's widow Elizabeth and her to Aberdeen, and on the 19th of March 1607 he was summoned before the privy council . Huntly thereupon went to England and appealed to James himself . He was excommunicated in 16o8, and imprisoned in Stirling Castle till the loth of December 16ro, when he signed again the confession of faith . Accused of Romanist intrigues in 1616, he was ordered once more to sub-scribe the confession, which this time he refused to do; imprisoned at Edinburgh, he was liberated by James's order on the 18th of June, and having joined the court in London was absolved from excommunication by Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury; which absolution, after some heartburnings at the archbishop's interference, and after a further subscription to the confession by Huntly, was confirmed by the Kirk .

At the

accession of Charles I . Huntly lost much of his influence at court . He was deprived in 1630 of his heritable sheriffships of Aberdeen and Inverness . The same year a feud broke out between the Crichtons and Gordons, in the course of which Huntly's second son, Lord Melgum, was burnt to death either by treachery or by accident, while being entertained in the house of James Crichton of Frendraught . For the ravaging of the lands of the Crichtons Huntly was held responsible, and having been summoned before the privy council in 1635 he was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle from December till June 1636 . He left his confinement with shattered health, and died at Dundee while on his journey to Strathbogie on the 13th of June 1636, after declaring himself a Roman Catholic .