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. He was appointed High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in the 22nd year of the reign of Henry VIII (1531) and again in the 37th year (1546) of the same monarch. He was returned to Parliament as knight of the shire (MP) for Cambridgeshire in 1529, 1539, 1554 and 1558 and also for Liverpool in 1553. The Alingtons lived at Horseheath Hall for centuries. The house was rebuilt in 1663–1665 by architect Sir Roger Pratt; (Vitruvius Britannicus is wrong in assigning the house to Webb). It was a neo-classical eleven-bay house with a three-bay pediment, quoins, hipped roof, balustrade and belvedere on the roof. It was further enlarged in 1688, but for reasons now unknown pulled down in 1777. The splendid wrought-iron gates went to St John's College and Trinity College Cambridge, and the rectory at Cheveley. Marriages Sir Giles Alington was