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Sometimes history can turn on the simplest of things.
Sir Henry Wyatt (1460–1536) from Allington was a politician and courtier, who became a great friend and supporter of Kings Henry VII and Henry VIII.
As such he did much to further the shape of the country, fighting the pretender to the throne, Lambert Simnel, in the battle of Stoke Field in 1487 and against the French at the Battle of the Spurs in 1513.
In return, he was made Master of the King's Jewels, Comptroller of the King's Mint, a Privy Councillor (one of the king's closest circle of advisors), allowed his own coat-of-arms and granted many titles of land.
Significantly for Maidstone, one of those was Allington Castle, which he received in 1491 and which he set up about transforming into fortified mansion house that it is today.
Allington became the Wyatt (sometimes spelt Wiatt) family seat, and the family - including Henry's son Thomas - maintained strong connections to the area, as commemorated by the Sir Thomas Wyatt pub on the London Road in Allington.
But things could have been very different if it hadn't been for a jail-house cat.
Sir Henry lived first in the reign of Richard III - the last of the Plantagent kings, before the Tudors.
He had been at Eton with Henry Tudor and he was sympathetic to the Tudor cause, even before Richard's death at the Battle of Bosworth.
This rightly made Richard highly suspicious of him.
Some say this led King Richard to imprison Henry in the Tower of London and this is supported by a plaque in St Mary's Church at Boxley in his memory, erected in 1702 by a descendant Edwin Wyatt, which reads: "To the memory of Sir Henry Wiat, of Alington Castle, Knight banneret, descended of that ancient family, who was imprisoned and tortured in the Tower, in the reign of King Richard the third."
But historians say this may have been yet another attempt to besmirch the name of Richard or perhaps a genuine mistake, since both Sir Henry's son and grandson did end up in the Tower of London at some stage.
They say Sir Henry was imprisoned not by the king, but by the Scots who held him for ransom in an unknown jail where he lingered for two years.
Both stories agree on one thing though, the imprisoned knight was gradually starving to death until he made friends with the jail-house cat, who then began catching pidgeons and bringing them to the hungry prisoner to eat.
A family history written in 1721 said that “a cat came into the dungeon with him, and, as it were, offered herself unto him.
"He was glad of her, laid her in his bosom to warm him, and by making much of her, won her love.
"After this she would come every day unto him in diverse times, and when she could get him one, bring him a pigeon.”
After his release, Sir Henry "would ever make much of cats, as other men will of their spaniels or hounds, and perhaps you will never find a picture of him anywhere, but with a cat beside him."
Sadly for the Boxley legend, the 1721 family papers also record his imprisonment as being in Scotland.
Sir Henry died on November 10, 1536, and is buried at Milton, near Gravesend with his wife Anne.
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