STAFFORD, Humphrey III

A member of one of the most prominent landed families of the west Midlands, Stafford had an eventful life that ended violently on the scaffold at Tyburn. For fear of losing the lands he had gained, legitimately or otherwise, under the Yorkists he had thrown in his lot with Richard III and then in desperation rebelled against Henry VII. He had not displayed such strong political commitment previously in his career when, ironically, he was an esquire of largely Lancastrian associations. Although he became an experienced parliamentarian in those earlier years, it is likely that the desire to further his family’s cause against a hated enemy, Sir Robert Harcourt*, was his primary motivation for seeking election to the majority of his five Parliaments.

Born a second son and not originally destined to succeed his father and namesake, Stafford attained his majority in about 1448. He came of age at a troubled time for his family, for his elder brother Richard was killed while brawling with Harcourt in May that year. The Staffords were already on bad terms with Sir Robert, who held lands adjoining their estate at Chebsey in Staffordshire, apparently over the past ‘takyng of a dystres’. As fate would have it, Sir Humphrey and Richard Stafford encountered their opponent at Coventry, blows were exchanged and in the ensuing violence Richard and two of Harcourt’s servants died. A neutral contemporary account of the fracas indicates that it arose out of hot temper and that both sides were equally to blame, although the Staffords claimed otherwise. According to the indictments they secured against Harcourt and his men, Richard’s death was a premeditated act carried out at the behest of Harcourt’s widowed mother.9 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 88-90; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 57-58; KB27/751, rex rots. 3, 7, 19, 20; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 186, 197-8.

With the loss of his brother, the younger Humphrey was now Sir Humphrey Stafford’s heir. He may have resided in Wiltshire for the remainder of his father’s lifetime, since the Stafford manor at Ditchampton in that county was assigned to him following his brother’s death.10 Add. Roll 74169. He was soon directly involved in his family’s efforts to avenge the dead Richard Stafford. Within months of his brother’s death, he formally appealed Harcourt, his mother and servants, either for murder or accessory to murder, in the court of King’s bench.11 KB27/750, rot. 47; 751, rot. 72; 752, rot. 24d; 753, rot. 29d; 754, rot. 53d; 755, rot. 24. Notwithstanding his appeal, the indictments taken against Harcourt and his men and a petition that Sir Humphrey Stafford presented to the Crown, justice proved highly elusive. It was not as if the Staffords lacked for useful connexions, for they were either already linked, or were soon to form links with several important magnates, including their distant relative Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, Sir James Butler (created earl of Wiltshire in July 1449), John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick, Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, and Richard Neville, earl of Warwick. In particular, their ties with Butler and Beauchamp, whose son Richard† had married the younger Humphrey’s sister Elizabeth, gave them useful links with Court circles. Furthermore, they took the trouble to secure seats in the five Parliaments immediately following Richard Stafford’s death, Sir Humphrey in that of February 1449 and Humphrey in the consecutive assemblies of November 1449, 1450, 1453 and 1455. Unfortunately for them, Harcourt also had powerful friends within the royal establishment, and the influence to gain election to the Parliament of 1450 as a knight of the shire for Oxfordshire.12 Carpenter, 428, 454-5, 684, 689, 700.

In the end, the continued success of their opponent in evading a trial drove the Staffords to seek violent redress. Perhaps the last straw was the pardon granted to one of those indicted for Richard Stafford’s murder, the parson John Male, on 26 Apr. 1450.13 CPR, 1446-52, p. 324. Six days later, father and son assembled over 200 supporters at Wychwood forest in Warwickshire. Apart from many servants and tenants, their force included the younger Humphrey’s brother-in-law Richard Beauchamp, then resident at Grafton, and Thomas Burdet*. Riding through the night, the Staffords and their band arrived at Stanton Harcourt, Harcourt’s residence in Oxfordshire, on the following day. When the raid began Harcourt and his servants were attending mass at the local parish church and they took refuge in its bell tower. During a six-hour siege the attackers fired volleys of arrows at the building, so mortally wounding William Massy, one of the Harcourt retainers involved in the fracas at Coventry. The raiders also attempted to smoke Sir Robert out by setting fire to the chamber under the tower but still he refused to emerge. In the end, the Staffords withdrew, having looted Harcourt’s house and farm buildings.14 KB9/266/51; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 207-8; KB27/766, rex rots. 3-4d.

The raid on Stanton Harcourt happened just three days after the last session of the Parliament of 1449-50 opened at Leicester. It was perhaps no coincidence that it also occurred on the very day that the King’s former chief minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, whom the Parliament had impeached in the previous session, was murdered while on his way into exile. For over a decade, Harcourt had been associated with the duke, who may have protected him from the Staffords and helped him to evade justice. Unfortunately for the Staffords, their adversary still possessed friends at Court after Suffolk’s death, and within three weeks of the raid the authorities issued a commission of oyer and terminer at his behest. The Staffords and their men were duly indicted, and on 25 May Harcourt was pardoned for any murders, felonies, insurrections and misdeeds he might have committed, and for all resulting outlawries.15 Storey, 58; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 329, 386-7; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 201. Less than a month later, Sir Humphrey Stafford was killed in Kent while fighting the followers of Jack Cade. It was now left to his heir, then some 23 years of age,16 C139/137/7. to continue the feud.

Given the Staffords’ substance as landowners, the younger Humphrey and his family did not lack for resources with which to oppose Harcourt, even if he was never particularly effective at managing his scattered landed holdings. The Stafford estates were certainly large, comprising numerous manors and other lands in Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire, in the east Midlands, Wiltshire and south-east England, including the inheritance of Humphrey’s mother, the younger of the two daughters and coheirs of Sir Thomas Aylesbury†. A valor of the estates drawn up at Michaelmas 1449 recorded that Sir Humphrey Stafford then, towards the end of his life, enjoyed a total annual income of just over £420 (about £370 net) from his lands and a further £70 p.a. in fees. For the purposes of the income tax of 1436, he had occupied the position of the most highly rated landowner in Worcestershire, even though his estates had been considerably undervalued at only £266. Another valor drawn up for the younger Humphrey just after he had succeeded his father put his net annual income from lands and fees at only £146, but this document covers only part of his inheritance. For a start, his widowed and long-lived mother appears to have kept possession of Milton Keynes and the other manors in Buckinghamshire and Surrey that she had brought to the Stafford family. Eleanor Stafford also enjoyed dower rights in her son’s paternal inheritance, including the manor of Ditchampton, the property formerly assigned to him, along with a third share of that of Chebsey in Staffordshire.17 Add. Rolls 74168, 74171, 74175-6, 74178; Carpenter, 53. In 1453 she recovered her dower share of Chebsey from her son, but this does not prove that the pair had fallen out with each other, since the suit was probably collusive: CP40/771, rot. 149d. Furthermore, Sir Humphrey Stafford had set aside a small part of his estates, including the Warwickshire manor of Grandborough, for his younger son Thomas.18 C142/33/70, 143; 75/89.

Shortly after Sir Humphrey’s death, the younger Humphrey rode to Stafford to meet the duke of Buckingham, although for what purpose is not recorded.19 Add. Roll 74170. Although still a young man, he was not lacking in political experience, given his recent Membership of the Parliament of 1449-50. No doubt he could also look to his mother, with whom he was the joint administrator of his intestate father’s lands and goods, for help and advice in managing family affairs.20 CP40/779, rot. 435; CPR, 1452-61, p. 379. According to contemporary records, Sir Humphrey had died intestate, although an inq. of the mid 16th century refers to a will he had made in Oct. 1442: C142/75/89. Assuming it ever existed, this will must have been found invalid shortly after his death. After a new Parliament was summoned for 6 Nov. 1450 he gained re-election to the Commons, to which Harcourt also won a seat as a knight of the shire for Oxfordshire. By that date the political climate had changed, for Harcourt’s friends at Court were now on the defensive against their opponents, and on 23 Nov. Stafford and his associates were pardoned for their crimes in Oxfordshire. In February 1451, during the second session of Parliament, Harcourt finally gave himself up for trial in King’s bench for the Coventry affray. With the help of sureties, he remained a free man during the trial, which extended into the following year.21 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 461-2; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 197-8. In the next session Stafford found the time for another matter. Taking the opportunity provided by the recent Act of Resumption, he acquired a stake in the keeping of the lordship of Odiham in Hampshire on 12 May 1451. Before the Act, the Household esquire John Basket* had farmed Odiham alone, but now he was obliged to share it with Stafford. It was assigned to them for 12 years at a farm of £50 p.a.22 CFR, xviii. 199.

The outlawry that Harcourt had incurred was revoked on the basis of a legal technicality in January the following year, although he was ordered to answer the still pending appeal that Stafford had begun against him for the murder of Richard Stafford. Presumably he was able to stay that action by producing his letters of pardon of May 1450, just as Stafford and 19 associates used their pardon of November the same year to halt their own trial for the Stanton Harcourt raid when it opened, again in King’s bench, in Michaelmas term 1452. By then Stafford had also taken the trouble to secure another royal pardon, dated the previous 6 July. The unresolved feud, which had yet decades to run, caused divisions within the affinity of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, since by the early 1450s Harcourt had, like Stafford, become a retainer of that lord. It was perhaps his connexion with Neville that led Harcourt to align himself with the Yorkists before the end of the same decade, in spite of his previous links with the Court. While maintaining his own links with Neville, Stafford was not to identify fully with the Yorkists until a later date. Following the accession of Edward IV, Harcourt’s ties with the Yorkist Crown protected him from the Staffords until Edward lost his throne in 1470.23 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 207-8; C67/40, m. 25; Carpenter, 455, 512n.

Stafford’s association with Neville dated back to the beginning of the latter’s earldom. In September 1449 he accompanied his patron, then a young man who had become earl just a few months earlier, on a visit to Abergavenny, the Welsh lordship that Neville claimed in the right of his wife.24 K.B. McFarlane, Eng. in the 15th Cent. 236n; Add. Roll 74169. Another claimant was the new earl’s uncle Edward Neville, created Lord Abergavenny in 1450, but in due course Edward had to give way to his powerful nephew. During the first half of the 1450s Stafford himself appears to have had some sort of disagreement with Lord Abergavenny, over lands or rights at Feckenham in Worcestershire.25 Oxf. DNB, ‘Neville, Edward, first Baron Bergavenny’; Add. Roll 74173. On at least two occasions in the middle of the same decade Stafford played host to the countess of Warwick, who stayed at Grafton for two days in September 1454 (a visit that cost him £4 12s. 3d.) and again in 1455.26 McFarlane, 236n. In spite of such links, it is not entirely clear when (or indeed if) he became one of Warwick’s annuitants, although a valor made for him in 1451 indicates that he was then hoping for a fee from the earl. On the basis of the valor, Stafford is often cited as an example of a multiple fee-taker typical of the age of ‘bastard feudalism’. Whatever his success in obtaining a fee from Warwick, it also shows that by that date he was certainly receiving annuities of ten marks each from the earl of Wiltshire and Lord Beauchamp of Powick and 40s. from Lord Sudeley, as well as further sums from six churchmen: the abbots of Pershore and Evesham (£4 each), the abbot of Halesowen (two marks), the abbot of Bordesley (20s.), the prior of Studley (53s. 4d.) and the prior of Worcester (40s.). Like the earl of Warwick, the bishop of Worcester is also listed in the fees section of the valor but, as with Warwick, there is no sum entered after his name.27 Add. Roll 74171. Stafford was, however, to become steward of the bishop’s estates later in his career, and this office, granted to him for life, no doubt assisted his admission to the important guild of the Holy Cross at Stratford-on-Avon, a borough of which the bishop was lord, in 1474.28 Shakespeare Centre Archs., Guild of Holy Cross, Stratford-upon-Avon mss, BRT1/1, f. 103v. The valor of 1451 probably marks a high point in Stafford’s fee-taking. By 1453-4 he had lost his annuities from the abbots of Pershore and Bordesley and the prior of Worcester; in the following year he received the livery of Lord Sudeley but was paid nothing by Lord Beauchamp and the abbot of Evesham; and by the later 1450s it would appear that only the earl of Wiltshire was still paying him a fee on a regular basis.29 McFarlane, 251, 251n; Add. Rolls 74173-8. Even if some of these fees were short-lived, they indicate that he was a landowner of some standing whose goodwill was worth cultivating.

The frequency with which Stafford, in spite of his relative youth, was elected to Parliament is further testimony of his standing in the west Midlands. If the desire to advance his cause against Harcourt was his main motive for seeking a seat in the Commons, he happened to sit in some of the most momentous Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign. His first had brought down Harcourt’s patron, the duke of Suffolk, and his second, called in the wake of the rebellion in which Sir Humphrey Stafford had lost his life, was an equally dramatic assembly. It called upon the King to banish the duke of Somerset and other leading courtiers, passed an Act of Resumption and witnessed a call for Richard, duke of York, to be made the childless King’s heir presumptive. When Stafford was re-elected to the Commons again in 1453, the Court had recovered the political initiative. Presumably he was returned in the Court’s interest, since he should probably be identified with the Humphrey Stafford who was an esquire of Queen Margaret’s household in 1452-3.30 This Humphrey received wages of £4 15s. 7½d. for 153 days’ attendance that year, as well as a gold bracelet (armilla) which the queen gave to him as a New Year’s gift: A. R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parlt. 185, 202, 226. It is impossible to tell whether he was the subject of this biography or his cousin and namesake, Humphrey Stafford II* of Maiden Newton, Dorset. The calling of the Parliament of 1453 was in large part prompted by the government’s need for taxes, to repay loans raised by the Crown for the defence of Calais, the keeping of the sea and the re-conquest of Gascony. Stafford and his fellow knight of the shire, (Sir) Walter Skulle*, had played a part in seeking such loans in Worcestershire, by virtue of a commission of 21 Dec. 1452. Once Parliament had opened, it was ordered that anyone who had lent money to the King since Michaelmas 1452 should have his loan repaid directly from the tax render, under the supervision of the commissioners for the loans and the Members of the Commons. Some time later, the authorities took action against Stafford, Skulle and their receiver, William Broke, in the Exchequer, because they were not satisfied that they had accounted fully for the loans they had raised. As a result, Broke spent time in the Fleet prison and in 1455 he, Stafford and Skulle were ordered to satisfy the Crown of a still outstanding sum of just under £31.31 PROME, xii. 211, 215; E159/230, recorda Trin. 19. The political situation had yet again changed dramatically when Stafford was re-elected to the Parliament of 1455, the last in which he is known to have sat as a knight of the shire for Worcestershire, since it met after the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans.

The account for 1454-5 of John More, Stafford’s receiver and steward of his household, suggests that his master was present at St. Albans, and that he fought on the losing side. It records that by 16 May 1455, six days before the battle, Stafford was riding eastwards with a small company he had raised. Thanks to his willingness to accept fees from a range of noble patrons, he possessed links with leaders of both parties, but he was probably responding to a royal summons, since the same account includes payments to servants of the duke of Somerset, for bringing ‘le Charyot’ and horses.32 McFarlane, 235-6, 236n; Add. Roll 74174. On this occasion Stafford’s ties with the earl of Wiltshire and Lord Sudeley, both of whom were with the King at St. Albans, seem to have overridden those with the earl of Warwick, by now a leading ally of Richard, duke of York, and he was certainly an enemy of Neville’s before the end of the same decade.33 CP40/799, rot. 490. There is further evidence to suggest that Stafford sided with the Lancastrians at the time of St. Albans. Eight days before the battle, the Crown issued commissions to raise loans throughout the realm, supposedly for the defence of Calais but in reality to support the King against his opponents. Stafford himself was not one of the commissioners, although he subsequently received the huge sum of £542 on behalf of the earl of Wiltshire.34 W. Smith, ‘R. Finance and Politics, 1450-5’ (Manchester Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1998), 374; E403/801, m. 3. The treasurer of England until removed from office by the victorious Yorkists, Wiltshire had accompanied the King to St. Albans, from where – or so it was said – he ignominiously fled the battlefield.35 C.A.J. Armstrong, ‘Politics and the Battle of St. Albans’, Bull. IHR, xxxiii. 43.

Whatever Stafford’s part in the events of May 1455, he is not known to have fought in any other civil war battle before Richard III’s reign and for most of his career he was not irredeemably bound to either side of the political divide. Just two years after St. Albans, for example, he received a pardon in his capacity as a mainpernor for the unruly Sir William Herbert*, a servant of both the duke of York and the earl of Warwick.36 CPR, 1452-61, p. 360. On the other hand, he clashed dramatically with Warwick a little over three years later. In early November 1458, Neville was caught up in a disturbance at Westminster Hall, perhaps while leaving a meeting of the Council. Apparently emanating from an exchange of words between one of his retinue and a royal servant, the fracas saw members of his party exchange blows with a band of Household men and other supporters of the Court. Matters got so out of hand that Warwick was forced to make a hurried escape by his barge on the Thames. Afterwards naming Stafford, as well as the treasurer of the Household, Sir Thomas Tuddenham*, the esquire for the body, Thomas Daniell*, and others as his assailants, Neville viewed the fracas as an attempt on his life.37 M. Hicks, Warwick, 152-3; CP40/799, rot. 490. In the autumn of 1460, while York and his allies had control of the government, the earl took the opportunity to seek redress at law over the incident. He sued the alleged assailants in the court of common pleas, claiming that they had lain in wait to kill him and had wounded four of his servants. Yet there is no evidence that the suit, still pending when Henry VI was ousted from the throne a few months later, reached a conclusion.38 CP40/799, rot. 490; 800, rots. 87d, 94d.

Following an ad hoc commission to which he was appointed in late 1457, Stafford played no further part in local government for several years, whether for political reasons, his own choice or both. A few months before that appointment, he had stood surety, under pain of £1,000, for John Stafford of Hook Norton in Worcestershire, to guarantee that the latter would appear before the King in Chancery in Michaelmas term 1457. For his part, John (perhaps John Stafford II*) gave a like undertaking under the same pain for his own appearance there. Whatever the reason for the securities, the pair were probably related since the Staffords of Grafton held a manor at Hook Norton, John’s place of residence.39 C244/83/31; VCH Worcs. iii. 184. Before the end of the 1450s, Stafford acquired another royal pardon,40 C67/42, m. 40 (20 Jan. 1458). and fell out with Edward Hastings, another Worcestershire esquire, over a debt of £20 that Hastings allegedly owed him.41 CPR, 1452-61, p. 455; C67/42, m. 40. He was also still active as an administrator of his late father’s estate in this period,42 CP40/779, rot. 435; CPR, 1452-61, p. 379. perhaps particularly so, given the distractions his co-administrator faced. By now his mother Eleanor Stafford was caught up in a long-running and complicated dispute over estates once held by Sir John Keynes of Dodford, Northamptonshire, and later by Sir John Cressy*. Through her descent from a junior branch of the Keynes family, Eleanor had taken possession of the valuable manor of Dodford, as well as that of Oxhill in Warwickshire, in the mid 1450s. In doing so, she had seen off the challenge of a more rightful claimant, Katherine the wife of William Hathwick, but Katherine’s son John had refused to give up his claim. In the early 1460s John Hathwick had recovered Oxhill against Eleanor at law, while agreeing that she could keep Dodford if she paid him and his wife an annuity of £10 for the rest of their lives. Stafford himself had no direct interest in the matter, even though he was his mother’s heir, since she decided that her younger son Thomas should succeed to Dodford. Unfortunately for Eleanor, she did not retain the manor peaceably for long, since she was soon up against far more formidable opponents. Another claimant sold his supposed title to Dodford to Jacquetta of Luxembourg, mother of Queen Elizabeth Wydeville, who devised it to her son Edward Wydeville. As a result Eleanor and Thomas found themselves disputing the manor with the Wydevilles, in a quarrel that was not settled until late in Edward IV’s reign.43 G. Baker, Northants. i. 351-6; CFR, xix. 205-6; JUST1/1547/5; CP40/772, rot. 471; 778, rot. 131; KB27/808, rot. 76; CP25(1)/179/96/11; Carpenter, 544-5; VCH Warws. v. 125.

Following Edward’s seizure of the throne, Stafford was excluded from any part in local administration until 1465, probably because the Yorkist regime, of which his old enemy Sir Robert Harcourt was a prominent supporter, suspected his loyalty. Early in the new reign, and presumably at Harcourt’s bidding, the authorities issued fresh writs for the arrest of those who had taken part in the raid on Stanton Harcourt, notwithstanding the pardon issued in November 1450, so perhaps prompting Stafford to apply for the royal pardon he secured in August 1462.44 KB27/806, rex rot. 17; C67/45, m. 28 (20 Aug.). As it happened, any distrust that the Yorkist government felt towards Stafford was relatively short-lived. In the spring of 1465 he was summoned to receive a knighthood, presumably at the coronation of Elizabeth Wydeville, and at the end of the same year the leading Yorkist William, Lord Hastings, acted as a witness on his behalf.45 PSO1/27/1431; E326/10789. In the event he chose to decline the summons and, unlike his father, he was never knighted.46 A fact sometimes missed by his contemporaries, as well as by modern authorities. For example, he is styled ‘Sir Humphrey’ in a comm. of array of Mar. 1472 (CPR, 1467-77, p. 350) and he is likewise referred to as such in C.D. Ross, Ric. III, 116. Among Stafford’s more regular associates in this period was Thomas Burdet, his accomplice in the attack on Stanton Harcourt. In early 1464 John Hampton II*, a former member of the Lancastrian Household, entrusted the manors of Kinver and Stourton in Staffordshire to the MP, Burdet and other feoffees, probably unwillingly since this transaction began the process by which the properties were alienated from Hampton’s heirs. Just over a year later, Stafford was one of a group of leading gentry that stood surety in the Chancery on behalf of Burdet, whose career was punctuated with episodes of violent behaviour.47 E326/10798; CPR, 1461-7, p. 379; C244/99/27, 39. He himself fell out with Burdet in the following decade, not long before the latter was executed for treason in 1477.

The mid 1460s also witnessed one of the most important events of Stafford’s life, his marriage to Katherine Fray in 1465. By then Stafford was approaching 40 years of age, so it is possible she was not his first wife. Even if his only known spouse, she was not his only female companion, for he had fathered at least two illegitimate sons, perhaps by Joyce Middlemore, a lady for whom he had bought presents on more than one occasion in the mid 1450s.48 McFarlane, 99; Add. Rolls 74173-4. Katherine, a daughter and coheir of the late chief baron of the Exchequer, Sir John Fray, brought a share of her wealthy father’s lands to the Staffords. In return, Stafford awarded her a jointure interest in several of his manors in the west Midlands and Wiltshire, including that of Grafton, by means of a settlement witnessed by Lord Hastings. Through the marriage, the Staffords were in due course to acquire the Fray manors of Rushden and Cottered in Hertfordshire, Sudbury in Bedfordshire and Farmcot in Gloucestershire, an inn called Le George in St. Neots, Huntingdonshire, and three messuages in the parish of St. Lawrence Jewry in London. According to inquisitions taken after Katherine’s death, these properties were together worth nearly £40 p.a., probably an undervaluation. While there is no doubt that her holdings significantly augmented the Staffords’ estates, the marriage was the latest in a series of matches made by successive heads of the family to heiresses of lands in other parts of the country. The result was that, as they grew, the Staffords’ landed holdings became increasingly scattered and more difficult to administer. They were certainly not very well run under Stafford although he had taken the step of employing Thomas Throckmorton*, an able and experienced administrator, as an auditor by 1463. Faced with declining revenues, he appears to have relied on accumulating more land to improve his situation, instead of managing better what he already held. Inevitably this led him into disputes that, in turn, embroiled him in the very kind of high politics that ultimately were to cost him his life.49 Carpenter, 109, 118-19, 210, 494; CP40/815, cart. rot. 1; E326/10798; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 224-6, 230, 236; CPR, 1485-94, pp. 198-9.

In the years immediately following his marriage, Stafford was involved in several lawsuits. These were seemingly relatively minor disputes, although he took the trouble to obtain yet another royal pardon in late 1468.50 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 2, 7; CP40/824, rots. 325d, 427; C67/46, m. 15 (15 Nov.). Among those with whom he quarrelled was John Wykes, who sued him in the Chancery earlier that year. Katherine Stafford and her sisters had inherited an interest in an estate in Kent that Sir John Fray had held as a feoffee of Wykes’s father, and Wykes claimed that they and their husbands were wrongfully refusing to release the properties to him. In the following decade the Fray coheiresses faced a similar claim from John Whittingham over Salden in Buckinghamshire, a manor which Whittingham’s father, (Sir) Robert Whittingham I*, had likewise entrusted to Fray to hold to his use.51 C253/42/298; C1/44/191; 48/419; CPR, 1494-1509, p. 191.

An event of far greater significance than these lawsuits, was the death in 1469 of Stafford’s distant kinsman, Humphrey Stafford IV*, earl of Devon, a victim of the political turmoil of that year. The earl’s heirs were his cousins, Anne wife of Sir John Willoughby†, Elizabeth wife of Sir John Colshull* and Eleanor wife of Thos Strangeways†, the three daughters of his paternal aunt Alice Stafford. Theirs was an extensive inheritance, but unfortunately for them the MP took advantage of the troubled times to seize at least eight of the late earl’s manors in Worcestershire and Staffordshire, apparently at some point in 1470.52 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. vi (1), 149-50; KB27/886, rex rot. 1d; VCH Staffs. iv. 79; xx. 104; VCH Worcs. iii. 217-18; PROME, xv. 206-7; CCR, 1485-1500, no. 78. In pursuing this course of action, he was behaving no more badly than the King himself. Among those who unfairly lost land to the Yorkist Crown was his erstwhile patron, Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, obliged to relinquish his castle and lordship of Sudeley, Gloucestershire, to Edward IV’s youngest brother Richard, duke of Gloucester, in November 1469. In all probability the MP was the Humphrey Stafford named among the witnesses to this transaction of highly dubious legitimacy.53 CCR, 1468-76, no. 409.

In the same November Stafford was himself appointed to the commission of the peace in Worcestershire, in spite of the recent activities of his younger brother Thomas Stafford. Thomas was a follower of the earl of Warwick, and he and his patron had been implicated in the death of the King’s father-in-law, Richard Wydeville, Earl Rivers, another victim of the political bloodshed of 1469, since he was among those whom Rivers’s widow, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, subsequently appealed for murder.54 KB27/836, rot. 61d. Whatever Thomas’s culpability, there was certainly no love lost between him and the Wydevilles, given the ongoing controversy over the manor of Dodford. In March the following year, his elder brother was made deputy sheriff of Worcestershire, a position that was in the gift of the earl of Warwick, as the hereditary sheriff of that county, but Humphrey owed his appointment to the Crown rather than to Warwick, then in open rebellion against Edward IV. During the Readeption of Henry VI, of which Warwick was one of the main architects, Humphrey was replaced as deputy sheriff by one of the earl’s men, and he was also dismissed as a j.p. By contrast, Thomas Stafford appears to have fought for Henry VI at the battle of Barnet, so following the lead of his patron, the earl of Warwick. Yet if indeed at Barnet, he was rehabilitated remarkably quickly, since in late April 1471 he received a pardon from Edward IV and was appointed to a commission of array for Worcestershire. He later served on that King’s expedition to France, as did Humphrey’s bastard son William.55 Carpenter, 515-16; C. Carpenter, ‘Duke of Clarence and the Midlands’, Midland Hist. xi. 35; M.A. Hicks, False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence, 236; C81/1502/17; CPR, 1467-77, p. 284; Stowe 440, f. 73v. Humphrey himself, a member of the same commission of April 1471, would seem to have done nothing to lead Edward to question his allegiance during this troubled period, and he was reinstated as deputy sheriff.

Even if Stafford adopted a position of political neutrality during the Readeption, he and his family took full advantage of the opportunity provided by the restoration of Henry VI finally to take revenge on their old adversary, Sir Robert Harcourt. When Edward IV fled abroad in the autumn of 1470, Harcourt lost his most important protector, although he is said to have believed that the earl of Warwick and other leading supporters of the Readeption would ensure that he would come to no harm at the hands of his old enemies. If this is true, his trust was sorely misplaced, for on 14 Nov. that year he was murdered ‘in his owyn place’ by Stafford’s bastard son William Stafford and two yeoman accomplices, John Shaylle of Evesham and Richard Reynold of Kidderminster. While the Readeption government ruled the country, there was little or nothing that Margaret, the Yorkist Harcourt’s widow, could do to obtain justice, but in November 1471, several months after Edward IV regained the throne, she began an appeal in King’s bench. Naming William Stafford, Shaylle and Reynold as the principals, she also appealed the MP, his brother Thomas and some 150 others as accessories to murder. Over the next four years Margaret doggedly pursued her case. As it was an appeal of murder, she was unable to appear by attorney, so obliging her at every law term throughout this period to come into court in person. Unfortunately for her, Stafford used his position of deputy sheriff of Worcestershire to obstruct writs relating to her case that were sent to that county. To add to her problems, Edward IV was now providing Stafford with the protection he had once afforded her late husband. Eventually Margaret gave up, withdrawing from her prosecution in Michaelmas term 1475. Justice took second place to Edward IV’s desire to win greater control of the west Midlands by offering royal patronage to the gentry there.56 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 360-1; ii. p. xxv; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iv. 176-7, 189-90; vi (1), 96-97; PSO1/37/1937; Harcourt Pprs. ed. Harcourt, i. 70; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 512n.

While Margaret’s appeal was still pending, Stafford was appointed to several ad hoc commissions, restored as a j.p. in Worcestershire and added to the commission of the peace in Warwickshire. In February 1474 he was placed on a commission ordered to arrest the participants in a quarrel between two other landed families of the west Midlands,57 CPR, 1467-77, p. 430; Carpenter, ‘Duke of Clarence and the Midlands’, 33. although he himself was soon in dispute with one of his fellow commissioners, Sir John Greville, and with Greville’s son Thomas Cokesey†. The dispute with the Grevilles, which appears to have arisen from his resentment of their growing influence in the west Midlands, was no minor affair, for in June 1474 the Crown took bonds for no less than 1,000 marks each from him and Greville, to ensure that they would keep the peace towards each other.58 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 517; E405/58, rot. 5d; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1274. There was certainly no love lost between the Staffords and Cokesey, whom the Tudor antiquary John Leland noted ‘killed a bastard sunne, by force, of Stafford of Wicestreshir’, notwithstanding ‘the brag that Stafford bare in Wicestreshir’. It is not entirely clear whether by ‘Stafford of Wicestreshir’ Leland meant the subject of this biography or another of the Staffords of Grafton, not least because he did not record when the killing took place.59 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, iv. 80. In spite of the dispute with Greville and his son, Stafford kept the favour of Edward IV, who in October 1474 assigned to him and his heirs-male estates that had once belonged to his former patron, James Butler, earl of Wiltshire. Valued at £85 p.a., these holdings comprised the manors of Clent, Handworth and Mere in Staffordshire and those of Stoke Severn and Eckington in Worcestershire.60 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 474-5. Stafford was again caught up in regional feuding later in the same decade, this time after having fallen out with his onetime friend Thomas Burdet. The circumstances of the quarrel are unknown, but the authorities took securities from both Stafford and his younger brother Thomas in mid 1476, to ensure they would appear in Chancery and before the Council in the following Michaelmas term to answer for their part in it, and to guarantee that they would not harm Burdet in the meantime. There was further trouble between the Staffords and Burdets in the spring of 1482, when Stafford’s bastard sons John and William Stafford entered and occupied the main Burdet manor at Arrow, Warwickshire.61 C244/122/83, 144; CPR, 1476-85, p. 319.

Yet another quarrel in which Stafford was embroiled during Edward IV’s second reign arose from his earlier seizure of the manors claimed by the heirs of the earl of Devon. The King had tacitly accepted his illegal occupation of the manors by referring to him as the possessor of the properties in a pardon of November 1472,62 C67/49, m. 13. but Anne Willoughby’s son Sir Robert Willoughby ejected him from them in September the following year. Just days later a jury indicted Sir Robert for his actions, after which Stafford sued the Willoughbys, Colshulls and Strangeways for forcible entry, so ensuring that the King was his co-plaintiff. In pleadings heard in the common pleas in Michaelmas term 1474 the defendants asserted that they had simply retaken possession of what was rightfully theirs. Stafford responded by claiming that he was the rightful heir, by virtue of supposed settlements made in the time of the late earl’s grandfather, Sir Humphrey Stafford* of Hooke. The case was still pending in 1477, and exactly when Stafford retook possession of the disputed estates is unclear. At some stage before the end of the reign, the Colshulls, Strangways and Sir Robert Willoughby, who inherited his mother’s claim in the late 1470s, petitioned the council of the young prince of Wales about their opponent’s occupation of three of the manors, Bedcote, Stourbridge and Belbroughton. The petition was to no avail, for Stafford, one of the King’s feed men and an esquire of the body by the end of Edward IV’s reign, was too strong. Following the accession of Edward V, Willoughby chose to pay the Crown a fine rather than face a jury for his forcible entry of 1473. He was fined no more than the nominal sum of one mark but he and his coheirs were still left without redress, which they likewise had no hope of obtaining during the reign of Richard III.63 KB27/886, rex rot. 1d; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iv. 204-7; vi (1), 149-50, 150n; SC8/344/E1310; C67/51, m. 34. In short, for as long as Stafford lived and a Yorkist King sat on the throne, they were excluded from a substantial part of their inheritance. It is hardly surprising that Willoughby subsequently adopted the cause of Henry Tudor.

The favour in which Stafford was by then held by the Yorkist Crown probably played a part in his election to his last Parliament and helped his mother and brother finally to win their claim to Dodford. In all likelihood it was in the King’s interest that he was elected to his last known Parliament in 1478, this time as a knight of the shire for Warwickshire. The main purpose of the Parliament was to condemn George, duke of Clarence, for treason. After summoning it, the Crown worked to secure a compliant lower House, to which was returned a significant number of royal servants.64 PROME, xiv. 344. Following Edward IV’s recovery of the throne in 1471, Stafford had accepted an annuity from Clarence,65 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 693. Richard Neville’s successor as earl of Warwick, but this must have counted for nothing once the duke was arrested. As for Dodford, it unclear whether the Staffords had managed continuously to retain the manor since John Hathwick had released it to Eleanor Stafford in the early 1460s.66 CP25(1)/179/96/11. It was certainly in their hands late in the following decade but their possession remained disputed. In March 1477 Eleanor formally relinquished her title in Dodford to her younger son and his issue, although in practice she retained an active interest in the property.67 C142/135/85. Eight months later, the Staffords’ feoffees were licensed to use the issues of Dodford to support a chantry that the family was founding in memory of the late Sir Humphrey Stafford at Bromsgrove.68 CPR, 1476-85, pp. 11, 57. If this was a deliberate attempt to stymie their opponents it failed, since the Wydevilles continued to press their claim. The long-running quarrel was only brought to an end when Edward IV personally arbitrated between Sir Edward Wydeville (as he by then was) on the one side and Stafford’s mother and brother on the other in 1481. In his award of 15 June that year the King assigned Dodford to Eleanor and Thomas Stafford, although he also directed that they should pay £200 to Sir Edward, whom he himself would further compensate with a grant of lands worth £50 p.a. The King’s willingness to override the claims of his own in-laws is striking, and all the more so given the alleged involvement of Thomas Stafford in the murder of Earl Rivers, but in this particular instance the Wydevilles were obliged to give way to the family of an important royal retainer.69 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 544-5; Baker, i. 353. Just two days before making the award, the King had again favoured the MP by assigning to him the farm of the subsidy and alnage of cloth in Worcestershire, Herefordshire and the cities of Worcester and Hereford, a grant for which Thomas Stafford acted as one of his brother’s sureties.70 CFR, xxi. no. 622.

About a year after the Dodford award, Stafford suffered a personal loss, for his wife died at some stage in mid 1482. If Katherine made a will it has not survived, but that of her sister Margaret, widow of the prominent London grocer Sir John Leynham, shows that she predeceased Margaret by just a few months. Margaret made her will on 27 Apr. that year. It was proved on the following 12 Sept. but between those two dates she added three codicils. In the first, dated 21 June, she bequeathed various household items to Katherine and Stafford, as well as assigning to her sister a sum of £50 that her uncle Thomas Danvers* owed her, the testator. More significantly, she left her manor of Farmcot in Gloucestershire to the couple, with remainder to Katherine’s heirs. It was Katherine’s death that prompted Margaret to add the second codicil just over two weeks later, on 6 July. In this she directed that Margaret Stafford, her goddaughter and Katherine’s daughter, should inherit three silver goblets originally intended for Katherine. In the third codicil, made on the following 9 July, she reassigned Danvers’s debt towards the marriages of the younger Margaret and her sisters.71 Logge Reg. of PCC Wills, i. 169-79. An inq. held 4½ years later incorrectly stated that Katherine had died on 12 May 1482: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 230. These other daughters of Katherine are not named in the will, although Margaret Stafford had at least two sisters, Joyce and Anne, who were to make good marriages to Sir Marmaduke Constable† and John Neville, Lord Latimer, respectively.72 Oxf. DNB, ‘Constable, Sir Marmaduke’; ‘Neville, John’; CFR, xxi. nos. 667, 743. It is not certain that Stafford, who also lost his mother in 1483, ever remarried.73 Possibly he did, for in the same year the bp. of Worcester commissioned the vicar of Bromsgrove to conduct a marriage between Humphrey Stafford and Margaret, da. of William Stafford. The identities of the couple have not been established: Worcs. Archs., Reg. Alcock, 131; VCH Worcs. iii. 126n.

Following Katherine’s death, Stafford kept possession of her estates, as he was legitimately allowed to do by reason of the courtesy of England. Completely unlawfully, he also continued to occupy those manors that he had taken for himself following the death of his namesake, the late earl of Devon. Ultimately, it was his desire to keep these lands that caused his downfall. After Richard III seized the throne, Stafford’s chief opponent Sir Robert Willoughby participated in the duke of Buckingham’s rebellion of 1483 and then fled abroad to join Henry Tudor. Fearing the loss of his ill-gotten gains and of his grants from Edward IV if Richard were overthrown, Stafford took an opposite course by committing himself irreversibly to the usurper’s cause.74 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 119, 553. He too was active during Buckingham’s rebellion, helping to prevent the duke’s followers in Wales from crossing into England by destroying the bridges across the upper Severn, then swollen by some of the heaviest rains for years. In 1485 Stafford turned out for Richard at Bosworth, as did his brother Thomas. Both of them survived the battle and escaped the battlefield, fleeing with Francis, Viscount Lovell, to the sanctuary of Colchester abbey, where they remained for nearly eight months.75 Ross, 116, 225; J.R. Lander, Govt. and Community, 319; A. Goodman, Wars of the Roses, 87; Polydore Vergil’s English Hist. (Cam. Soc. xxix), 225; Williams, 181.

While in sanctuary, Stafford was attainted in the first Parliament of Henry VII’s reign. His late wife’s lands were not covered by the Act of Attainder but they were also taken into the King’s hands, owing to the minority of her heir, the son and namesake she had borne him.76 PROME, xv. 108; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 225-6, 230, 236. Sir Robert Willoughby and his aunts, the by now widowed Elizabeth Colshull and Eleanor Strangways, petitioned the same Parliament about the manors that Stafford had taken from them. They declared that their opponent had occupied the properties with the support of Richard III and those of ‘great strength and might’ in the west Midlands. Adding that they had retaken possession of them immediately after Bosworth, they prayed that these estates should remain outside the scope of Stafford’s attainder. The Crown granted their request, although it reserved the right to investigate within the next two years whether any of the lands in question actually belonged to the King. It also took a bond for the enormous sum of £2,000 from Willoughby, in order to hold him and his aunts to this important proviso.77 PROME, xv. 206-7; CCR, 1485-1500, no. 78.

The Parliament of 1485 sat until 4 Mar. 1486 and shortly afterwards Henry VII embarked on a royal progress to northern England. En route he stopped at Lincoln, and while there received the news that Viscount Lovell and the two Staffords had broken out of sanctuary. Affecting no great concern, Henry continued on his journey but by the time he reached Pontefract on 20 Apr. he had a full-scale rebellion on his hands, with Lovell preparing an attack on York and Stafford raising revolt in Worcestershire. The King reacted by despatching his retinue, some 3,000 strong but poorly armed, against Lovell, while at the same time offering a general pardon to the viscount’s men. Lovell fled and when word of the débâcle reached the west Midlands the revolt there likewise collapsed. Also taking flight, Stafford hid for a time in a wood near Bewdley in Worcestershire, to where he was tracked down by a force jointly headed by his old enemy Thomas Cokesey and one of Cokesey’s uncles. Managing to elude his pursuers, said to have numbered 400 men, he rode south-east and on 11 May he took sanctuary again, this time at the abbot of Abingdon’s liberty of Culham in Oxfordshire.78 P. Vergil, Anglica Historia (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, lxxiv), 10, 12; Williams, 181-2, 186; Goodman, 97.

By then a powerful group of oyer and terminer commissioners, including Sir Robert Willoughby, was already taking indictments in the west Midlands against those who had participated in Stafford’s abortive uprising. These allege that he had raised men for his cause through personal contact, by sending messages to those whom he had hoped to recruit and through the spreading of deliberate falsehoods. He was also said to have produced forged letters of pardon, pretending that the King had annulled his attainder and that he was now a true liegeman of Henry VII, to whose aid he purposed to ride northwards. One of the indictments suggests that he had also tried to appeal to old feudal and regional loyalties, for those who had joined the rebellion in Birmingham were said to have taken up arms crying ‘a Warwyk a Warwyk’, the title now held by a potential claimant to the throne, the late duke of Clarence’s young son Edward. Among those indicted for complicity in the rebellion were Stafford’s bastard sons John and William (of whom John was also charged with having stolen horses from the King’s close at Upton-on-Severn), Richard Burdet and the citizens of Worcester. Burdet, the eldest son of Stafford’s onetime friend Thomas, was accused of having helped Stafford to escape from Bewdley by warning him of the approach of his pursuers, while the bailiffs and commonalty of Worcester were indicted for having neglected to guard their gates properly, so allowing Stafford’s followers to gain entry. As it happened, the city escaped any punishment, since Henry VII was remarkably generous in granting pardons to those caught up in the rebellion in the west Midlands. For several years from mid 1486 onwards, a steady stream of indicted rebels surrendered to the Marshalsea prison in Southwark and then produced the letters of pardon they had already acquired when brought before the court of King’s bench. The King even forgave Thomas Stafford because ‘he was thought not to haue attempted anie thing of himselfe otherwise than by the euill counsell and persuasion of his elder brother’. In the end, it appears that only Stafford himself was shown no mercy.79 KB27/900, rex rot. 11; 905, rex rots. 1, 7; 907, rex rot. 4; 909, rex rots. 3, 13; 910, rex rot. 2d; KB9/127/7-9, 11; 138/1-89; 371/16-19; Williams, 183-4, 186; R. Holinshed, Chrons. (1807-8 edn.), iii. 484.

The authorities proved their determination to punish Stafford by forcibly removing him from Culham just two days after he had sought refuge there. On the night of 13 May 1486 Sir John Savage† and 60 followers broke into the sanctuary, dragged him out and took him to the Tower of London. On 22 May he was brought before the justices of oyer and terminer then sitting at Worcester, where the abbot of Abingdon also appeared to protest about the breach of his sanctuary. The matter was referred to the Council and then the Exchequer chamber, where a debate was held on 15 June, but the King’s anxiety to secure a quick ruling against the abbot’s charter caused problems. Neither the chief justices nor the chief baron of the Exchequer were present when the case was referred to Exchequer chamber, where the puisne judges protested that they should not give an opinion on a case already begun, since that would be a breach of due process. Having returned to London, (Sir) William Hussey*, c.j.KB, visited the impatient monarch on 16 June and persuaded him to allow the judges to deal with the matter in King’s bench. On the 20th Stafford was escorted from the Tower to that court where he protested about the breach of sanctuary and requested counsel. To Henry VII’s displeasure, he was given several days to prepare his defence, which was to plead for his restoration to sanctuary, while giving the abbot of Abingdon the opportunity to prove his abbey’s sanctuary rights took up further time. The actual trial was not held until 29 June and on the following day the court finally gave the King what he wanted by ruling that traitors could not claim the right of sanctuary, except in the most exceptional of cases. Unable to gainsay the court’s decision, Stafford was sentenced to death and returned to the Tower. Hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 8 July, he (or whatever part of his body that was not put on public display elsewhere in the kingdom) was buried in the church of the Greyfriars in London.80 Williams, 186-7; Holinshed, iii. 484; E.W. Ives, Common Lawyers: Thomas Kebell, 245-6; Sel. Cases in Exchequer Chamber, ii (Selden Soc. lxiv), 115-24; Collectanea Topographia et Genealogica ed. Nichols, v. 282.

Shortly after Stafford’s trial and execution, the King began to grant away parts of his estates. On 17 July the Household knight Sir Gilbert Talbot† received a grant in tail-male of the manors of Grafton and Upton Warren in Worcestershire.81 CPR, 1485-94, p. 111. Although a few months later Talbot was holding them in association with Sir Richard Guildford†: CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 1170. On the following 6 Oct. the King made a joint grant on like terms to his esquire, John Darell†, and John Pympe of the properties that Stafford had held in Worcester, and of his manors and lands at Eastbury, Kenswick, Kidderminster, Droitwich, Hadzor, Hanbury, Bromsgrove, King’s Norton, Elmbridge, Ombersley, Feckenham, Inkberrow and Tardebigg, all of which were also in Worcestershire.82 CPR, 1485-94, p. 140; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1224. The King’s Norton holdings probably included those lands there that the Crown had awarded to Sir Gilbert Talbot in 1485, a gift which appears never to have come into effect: VCH Worcs. iii. 184. On the same day, John Waller the younger received moieties of the late MP’s manor of Chebsey, hamlet of Shallowford and other lands in those Staffordshire parishes, again in tail-male. Eleven days later, the King’s servant Nicholas Gaynesford* and his grandson Robert obtained a grant of the other moieties of Chebsey and Shallowford during pleasure. In October 1487 Henry VII assigned the manor at Pytchley in Northamptonshire and the manor and advowson of Abinger in Surrey to his counsellor Sir John Guildford, and in May 1488 Stafford’s lands at Hoon in Derbyshire went to Sir James Blount†, two other grants in tail-male. In the following September, the knight of the body, Sir Edward Poynings†, acquired a grant on like terms of the Stafford manor of Milton Keynes and other manors and lands in Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire, and some 18 months later the King granted a manor that Stafford had held at Eastham in Worcestershire to Sir George Vere and Ralph Hakluyt† in survivorship. As for Stafford’s holdings in London, these passed through the hands of the King’s secretary in the French language, Stephen Frydon, the yeoman of the cellar, John William†, the grocer, Richard Hadley, and then, in 1501, the yeoman of the chamber, William Madok.83 CPR, 1485-94, pp. 140, 145, 150-1, 230-1, 250, 269, 271, 302. Madok obtained a confirmation of his grant shortly after the accession of Henry VIII, who in late 1510 re-granted Abinger to Richard Jernegan. Initially Jernegan received the manor during pleasure, but in 1513 it was reassigned to him in tail-male.84 LP Hen. VIII, i. nos. 257 (56), 683 (38); ii. no. 2684 (46).

When Stafford was put to death his son and heir Humphrey was a child of just nine years of age. In January 1487 the King granted the boy’s wardship and marriage to his father’s erstwhile pursuer Thomas Cokesey, by now a knight of the body. Cokesey’s grant was renewed in the following April, although it appears not to have included the late Katherine Stafford’s manor of Sudbury in Bedfordshire, and her messuage known as Le George in St. Neots, since Sir John Fogg† obtained the keeping of these properties in late January 1488. By February 1497 Cokesey had surrendered his grant in favour of his fellow knight of the body, Sir Edward Poynings.85 CPR, 1485-94, pp. 84, 159, 171, 198-9. The younger Humphrey Stafford had proved his age by March 1500 when the King ordered the relevant escheators to allow him possession of his late mother’s estates.86 CCR, 1485-1500, no. 1160. During the Parliament of 1504 he and other gentlemen successfully petitioned for the overturning of the attainders of their fathers in 1485, but he never fully regained his paternal inheritance, since the Crown reserved the rights of any of the King’s grantees affected by this annulment.87 PROME, xv. 331-3. He succeeded to the estates of his childless uncle Thomas Stafford, who died in 1517,88 C142/33/70, 143; 35/85; Baker, i. 353. and recovered an important part of his late father’s lands following the death of Sir Edward Poynings without legitimate issue four years later, but Grafton and Upton Warren were permanently lost to the Talbots.89 VCH Bucks. iv. 403; VCH Worcs. iii. 126. Owing to the loss of Grafton, the younger Humphrey took up residence at Blatherwycke in Northamptonshire. Subsequently knighted, he lived until 1545.90 PCC 14 Alen (PROB11/31, ff. 111v-112v); C142/72/86(1).