STAFFORD, Fulk

Of uncertain antecedents, Stafford was perhaps a cadet member of the Staffords of Grafton, for one (albeit unsubstantiated) pedigree shows that Ralph Stafford† (d.1410) of Grafton had a younger son of that name. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 444-5; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. (1910), 320. HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 794, suggests that he was Ralph’s gds. At various stages in his career he resided at Harvington and Kidderminster in Worcestershire and Brome in Staffordshire, but it is not known to what he owed his association with those parishes. During the 1440s he appears to have held a tenement in the town of Stafford, CPR, 1441-6, p. 393. It is worth noting that the already mentioned Ralph Stafford held property in Stafford: The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 444. and, perhaps, lands at Pedmore in Worcestershire. In the latter part of that decade he sued Sir Maurice Berkeley I* and 25 of his followers at Westminster, for attacking and wounding his servant Thomas Hert at Pedmore in October 1447. The plea rolls do not record what Hert was doing at Pedmore, although it is possible that he had visited that parish to attend to lands that his master held there. The matter was referred to a jury but a trial was still pending in late 1450. KB27/749, rots. 37, 37d; 750, rot. 28.

There is no evidence that Stafford possessed estates of any significance before Edward IV’s reign, and his almost total non-participation in local government might suggest that he had little stake in land until late in life. For much of his career he made his way in the world as a servant of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, although he was perhaps initially associated with another patron, since ‘Foukes’ Stafford was among the mounted men-at-arms serving in Normandy under Sir James Butler, the future earl of Wiltshire, in mid 1442. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Fr. mss, 25776/1558. But problems of legibility render uncertain the Christian name of Butler’s retainer. Ironically, assuming that the soldier and the subject of this biography were one and the same man, it was from Butler’s confiscated estates that Stafford was to gain significantly in lands 20 years later. Exactly when Stafford entered Neville’s service is unknown, but Warwick had granted him a fee of £10 p.a. for life, drawn from the lordship of Walsall, by 1452-3. In June 1453 the earl seized Cardiff and Cowbridge castles in south Wales, part of the Despenser inheritance in dispute between him and Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset. Stafford must have participated in this episode, since in the following August he received a further £10 from Warwick to reimburse him for his costs and expenses in his patron’s service, in particular those incurred at Cardiff. Egerton Roll 8536; M. Hicks, Warwick, 85. Neville’s dispute with Somerset prompted him to ally himself with Richard, duke of York, and Stafford followed his master’s example by becoming an adherent of the Yorkist cause.

In the meantime Stafford became caught up in other quarrels, apparently of his own rather than of his powerful patron. On 20 July 1453 a jury indicted John Girryke, a ‘yeoman alias labourer’ lately of Bromyard in Herefordshire at sessions of the peace for that county presided over by William Yelverton*, Sir John Barre* and others. The jurors found that he had entered the house of one John Hayton on the night of the previous 16 July with the intention of murdering and robbing one of its occupants for the night, the local sheriff Thomas Cornwall, at the behest of Fulk and one of his kinsmen, Humphrey Stafford of Halmond’s Frome, Herefordshire. At the end of the year the indictment was called into the court of King’s Bench. KB9/272/8-9. The Staffords were arrested and imprisoned in Hereford castle, and on 24 Jan. 1454 Miles Skulle, one of the j.p.s who had taken the indictment, and others were commissioned to deliver that gaol of both of them. CPR, 1452-61, p. 167; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. (1910), 320. What lay behind this affair is unknown but it seems most likely that it had arisen from a private dispute between Cornwall and the Staffords. Allthough Cornwall was later a Lancastrian loyalist, as was another of the justices at the sessions of the peace, Thomas Fitzharry*, Barre was probably still a follower of the duke of York at this date.

Soon again at liberty, Fulk and Thomas Young II*, one of the duke of York’s leading counsellors, obtained the keeping of the Worcestershire estates of the late Robert Arderne* on 4 Mar. 1454. Arderne was the only man of any standing to have suffered the death penalty for his involvement in the duke’s rising of 1452, and it is likely that Stafford and Young received the grant on behalf of his son and heir, Walter Arderne, rather than themselves. By now York, who would become Protector of England just over three weeks later, had returned to the centre of national affairs and was well placed to help the son of his unfortunate retainer. Some time afterwards, Walter gained permission to enter his father’s lands as though they had never been forfeit, by means of a petition probably presented to the Parliament of 1455. CFR, xix. 82-83; SC8/89/4403.

The Parliament, called by the victorious Yorkists in the wake of the battle of St. Albans, was the first in which Stafford is known to have sat. While an MP he became deputy sheriff of Worcestershire, by appointment of the hereditary sheriff of the county, his patron the earl of Warwick. He incurred the further displeasure of the authorities while deputy sheriff, again in unknown circumstances. In March 1457 he and three mainpernors, Humphrey Stafford of Halmond’s Frome, Henry Ferrers† of Tamworth and Edmund de la Mare of Little Hereford, were obliged to provide securities (for £200 in his case and £100 in that of each of his sureties) for his appearance in Chancery in the following Michaelmas term and as a guarantee for his good behaviour in the meantime. C244/82/51. Whatever lay behind the taking of these securities, it was probably in connexion with the same matter that he purchased a royal pardon in January 1458. C67/42, m. 43. At the end of the following April Stafford himself acted as a surety, for the appearance, likewise in Chancery, of Robert Laverok, yeoman, C244/84/82. and in May the same year he put his name to a bond on behalf of Warwick’s younger brother, Sir John Neville. The bond, bearing a penalty of £100, was a security Sir John gave to the queen in connexion with his recent marriage to her former ward Isabel, the daughter and heir of (Sir) Edmund Ingoldisthorpe*. CCR, 1454-61, p. 300; SC8/28/1398-9.

In the autumn of 1459 Stafford was with Warwick at Ludford, where a royal army confronted and outfaced the Yorkist forces, but he did not subsequently flee with his master to Calais. Shortly afterwards, the King pardoned him, William Hastings (the future Lord Hastings) and other esquires who had resisted the Crown at Ludford or elsewhere although their estates were still liable to forfeiture. During the Parliament of 1459 these Yorkist esquires appealed for more generous treatment, by means of a petition submitted through the Commons. Not only, they asserted, had several of them never committed any previous offence against the King, some of them had actually turned out for him to subdue rebels on earlier occasions. In return for more favourable treatment, they offered to pay the Crown such individual fines as were appropriate, with the money so raised being employed for the defence of the Welsh marches and the keeping of the seas. Furthermore, should any of them fail to pay his fine he should permanently forfeit all his estates. The petition succeeded for it gained the royal assent. PROME, xii. 502-4. According to J. Stow, Annales of Eng. ed. Howes, 406, Stafford was attainted in this Parl. but he is not named in the Act of Attainder passed by that assembly.

In spite of his pardon, Stafford did not forsake the Yorkist cause, although it is not known whether he took up arms again following the debacle at Ludford. After the Yorkists regained control of the government in the following year, the earl of Warwick appointed him to another term as deputy sheriff of Worcestershire and he gained election to his second Parliament, the momentous assembly that agreed that the duke of York should succeed Henry VI as King. His fellow knight of the shire was another Yorkist, John Stafford II*, probably one of his kinsmen. HP Biogs. 791 states that John was Fulk’s brother; perhaps on the basis of the already mentioned but unsubstantiated family tree showing that Ralph Stafford of Grafton had a yr. son named Fulk. According to the same tree, Ralph also had another yr. son, John Stafford (fl.1411) of Wilbrighton: Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. (1910), 320. In January 1461, while the Parliament was still sitting, the two Staffords were appointed to a commission charged with arresting and imprisoning those guilty of unlawful gatherings – presumably recalcitrant Lancastrians – in 11 counties throughout the south-east and the Midlands.

Several weeks later, John Stafford was killed fighting for the Yorkists at the battle of Towton. Fulk did not long survive him, although while he lived he profited significantly from the accession of Edward IV. In January 1462 Edward granted him the manors of Cradley, Old Swinford, Hagley, Gannow and Upton Snodsbury in Worcestershire, those of Clent, Mere and Handsworth in Staffordshire and the advowsons of Old Swinford, Handsworth and Forton (the Staffordshire parish in which Mere lay) – all properties forfeited by the late earl of Wiltshire – to hold to him and the heirs male of his body. CPR, 1461-7, p. 112. Through his lordship of Old Swinford, Stafford became the feudal overlord of Humphrey Stafford IV*, who had recently inherited the manors of Bedcote and Stourbridge in Worcestershire and Amblecote in Staffordshire, all of which were held of Old Swinford. VCH Worcs. iii. 213, 217-19; C140/3/30. Stafford’s possession of at least one of his new manors, Upton Snodsbury, did not go unchallenged, since John, Lord Lovell, claimed it as part of his Burnell inheritance. CPR, 1461-7, p. 87; VCH Worcs. iv. 209. The estates that Stafford received in 1462 were valued at no less than 200 marks p.a., CPR, 1461-7, p. 112. a mark of the high esteem in which the Yorkist Crown must have held him. Perhaps he had performed a particularly noteworthy feat of arms during the civil wars; or perhaps he was favoured because he was a member of the new King’s household. For want of extant accounts for Edward IV’s reign predating 1463, it is impossible to establish whether he had in fact joined the Household and his grant does not indicate that he had any connexion with the royal establishment. Another possibility is that he secured his extremely valuable grant through the good offices of his patron, the earl of Warwick.

Last heard of in mid 1462 when he received a royal pardon, C67/45, m. 25 (1 July). Stafford had little time to enjoy his new estates, for he died later that year or at the very beginning of 1463. If not childless when he died, he was certainly not survived by any sons, for in January 1463 the King reassigned the estates he had granted him to three royal servants. On 22 Jan. Old Swinford, Gannow and Upton Snodsbury were granted to Sir John Scott†, controller of the Household, and his heirs; on the 26th Clent, Handsworth and More were given to the ‘King’s knight’ Sir Walter Wrottesley and his male issue; and on the following day Cradley and Hagley were granted to another royal servant Thomas Prout on the same terms. All of these grants respected the rights of Stafford’s widow, Margaret, since they were of two thirds of the manors in question, along with the reversion of those third parts that she held in dower. CPR, 1461-7, pp. 217, 221, 223; VCH Worcs. iii. 51. In the following month, the King’s mother Cecily, duchess of York, made a grant to Alexander Holt, serjeant of her pantry, and his wife of a much less significant property previously held by Stafford, a tenement at King’s Norton in Worcestershire. CPR, 1461-7, p. 300. A year later, Margaret Stafford obtained letters patent safeguarding her dower rights, and in August 1464 Scott’s grant was renewed. CPR, 1461-7, pp. 297-8, 329-30; 1476-85, p. 5. It would appear that Scott had yet to obtain possession of Upton Snodsbury at that date, since Lord Lovell’s widow Joan was to die seised of it in 1467. VCH Worcs. iv. 209. Later, in November 1476, Scott received a new grant of that manor and of Old Swinford, but this time in tail-male. CPR, 1476-85, p. 5. Another of the grantees, Prout, appears to have died without male issue, for in February 1474 Cradley and Hagley were reassigned to the queen. Margaret Stafford’s dower rights were again reserved in this instance, as they were in January 1479 when the queen received licence to give the manors away to Westminster abbey. CPR, 1467-77, p. 419; 1476-85, pp. 133-4; VCH Worcs. iii. 133. In July 1481 Sir John Scott surrendered his previous royal grants, including his share of the former earl of Wiltshire’s estates, in return for lands in Kent. The letters patent granted to him on that occasion stated that Margaret Stafford was by then dead, but this was a mistake, for her dower rights were again reserved when the Crown granted Old Swinford and Gannow to the deans and canons of Windsor in the following November. CPR, 1476-85, pp. 281, 285; VCH Worcs. iii. 216. Letters patent of February 1484 provide further proof that she was still alive. These confirmed her in a rent of 20 marks p.a. from the lordships of Salwarpe and Droitwich in Worcestershire, which the late Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, had granted her for life in March 1463. CPR, 1476-85, p. 379. The letters also show that she had married again, to John Bernard of Northamptonshire. The inquisition post mortem of Bernard, who died on 1 Oct. 1485, shows that Margaret had become his wife by November 1476, when he had awarded her a jointure interest in the manor and advowson of Abington in that county. The long-lived Margaret also outlived Bernard but the date of her own death is not recorded. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 79.