HAWKWOOD, SIR JOHN (d. , an English adven turer who attained great wealth and renown as a condottiere in the Italian wars of the 14th century. His name is variously spelt as Haccoude, Aucud, Aguto, etc., by contemporaries. He was perhaps the son of a tanner of Hedingham Sibil in Essex, and was apprenticed in London, whence he went, in the English army, to France under Edward III. and the Black Prince. He was cer tainly of knightly rank, which he may have received from Ed ward III. On the peace of Bretigny in 136o, he collected a band of men-at-arms, and moved southward to Italy, where the White Company, as his men were called, assisted the marquis of Mon ferrato against Milan in 1362-63, and the Pisans against Flor ence in 1364. Af ter several campaigns in central Italy, Hawk wood in 1368 entered the service of Bernabo Visconti. In 1369 he fought for Perugia against the pope, and in 13 7o for the Visconti against Pisa, Florence and other enemies. In 1372 he defeated the marquis of Monferrato, but soon afterwards, re senting the interference of a council of war resigned his com mand, and the White Company passed into the papal service, in which he fought against the Visconti in 13 75. In 1375 the Florentines agreed to pay him and his companion 130,00o gold florins in three months on condition that he would not fight against them ; and in the same year the priors of the arts and the gonfalonier awarded him a pension of 1,200 florins per annum. In 1377, under the orders of the cardinal Robert of Geneva, legate of Bologna, he massacred the inhabitants of Cesena, but in May of the same year, disliking the executioner's work put upon him by the legate he joined the anti-papal league, and mar ried, at Milan, Donnina, an illegitimate daughter of Bernabo Visconti. In 1378 and 1379 Hawkwood was constantly in the field; he quarrelled with Bernabo in 1378, and entered the service of Florence, receiving, as before 130,00o gold florins. He served the republic up to 1382, when for a time he was an English am bassador at the papal court. He fought in Naples in 1383 for the marquis of Padua against Verona in 1386, and in 1388 made an unsuccessful effort against Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who had murdered Bernabo. In 1390 the Florentines took up the war against Gian Galeazzo in earnest, and appointed Hawkwood com mander-in-chief. His campaign against the Milanese army in the Veronese and the Bergamask was a triumph of generalship, and in 1392 Florence forced a satisfactory peace from Gian Galeazzo. His latter years were spent near Florence. On his death in the republic gave him a public funeral. Paolo Uccelli painted his portrait in terre-verte on the inner facade of the cathedral.
Of his children by Donnina Visconti, who was probably his second wife, the eldest daughter married Count Brezaglia of Porciglia, podesta of Ferrara, who succeeded him as Florentine commander-in-chief, and another a German condottiere, Conrad Prospergh. His son, John, returned to England and settled at Hedingham Sibil. The children of the first marriage were two sons and three daughters, of whom the youngest married John Shelley, an ancestor of the poet.
See Muratori, Rerum Italicarum scriptores, and supplement by Tar tinius and Manni; Archivio storico italiano; Temple-Leader and Marcotti, Giovanni Acuto (Florence, 1889; Eng. transl., Leader Scott, London, 1889) ; Nichol, Bibliotheca topographica Britannica, vol. vi.; J. G. Alger in Register and Magazine of Biography, v. 1.; and article in Diet. Nat. Biog.