STAFFORD, John I

Stafford appears to have hailed from the city of York. Through most of his career he is distinguished in the city records (and sometimes elsewhere) by the epithet ‘junior’ from an older John. Our MP is described as ‘junior’ as late as 1448: JUST1/1544, rot. 23. He may have been the latter’s son, for the two men had something in common beyond their name: when, in May 1420, the elder John took a lease of property in Fossgate, our MP was one of the feoffees named to ensure that the lease was honoured; in 1422 the two men joined in taking a statute staple from a York goldsmith; and in the early 1430s the elder John acted as one of the feoffees when our MP purchased as many as 13 messuages in York. York Memoranda Bk. iii (Surtees Soc. clxxxvi), 40-42; C241/219/64; CP25(1)/280/156/24; 157/13. Whatever their relationship, the younger John enjoyed a far more notable career than his namesake. Admitted to Lincoln’s Inn by 1420, he flourished there. Indeed, for the next 20 years he was intimately involved in the inn’s affairs. His readings can be tentatively dated to 1428 and 1434, and between 1426 and 1432 he served two terms as pensioner and one as governor. L. Inn Adm. i. 4; Readings and Moots, i (Selden Soc. lxxi), p. xii; L. Inn Black Bks. i. 2-4. He is to be distinguished from the attorney active in the London mayor’s court between 1423 and 1428. In 1437 that John secured a papal dispensation to take holy orders: Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 162, 222, 279; CPL, viii. 648. On 5 Nov. 1436 he was one of 19 senior members of the inn who promised to continue in residence for a month on three occasions over the following three years, either at harvest or Lent, and assist ‘the execucion of all apointementes to be writen and ordeined for the good gouernaunce of the Compaignie’. It has been plausibly argued that this was an effort to improve the legal training offered by the inn by providing ‘senior men to train new recruits and particularly to assist with the readings’. L. Inn Black Bks. i. 7; E.W. Ives, Common Lawyers: Thomas Kebell, 41. Thereafter he served consecutive terms as one of the governors in 1439-41, but he did not hold office there again. Instead he turned his attention to affairs in his native north. L. Inn Black Bks. i. 9-10. In 1450-1 one of the serving governors, Henry Etwell, joined Stafford in the use of a chamber originally assigned to him alone, implying, perhaps, that our MP was less often in the Inn than he had once been: ibid. 20.

This is not, of course, to say that Stafford did not have local clients before the early 1440s. From at least 1431 he was retained by Durham priory at an annual fee of 20s., a fee he enjoyed for the rest of his life; by February 1433, he enjoyed the same fee from the corporation of York, which he continued to serve until at least 1450; and in 1438 he offered mainprise on behalf of the priory of Newburgh in the North Riding. B. Dobson, Durham Priory, 132; York City Chamberlains’ Acct. Rolls, 1396-1500 (Surtees Soc. cxcii), 12, 62; CPR, 1436-41, p. 150. It was also at this early stage of his career that he was elected to his only recorded Parliament. In company with another lawyer, Robert Lambton*, he was returned in 1432 for Appelby, the representation of which, even at this early date, was dominated by outsiders. His lack of connexion with his constituency may explain why his Christian name has been written over an erasure on both the return and the dorse of the writ. C219/14/3. Later evidence shows that he was employed by the Cliffords, the lords of the borough, but that employment may not date back to the early 1430s. A more important factor in his return was probably his place at Lincoln’s Inn: his contemporaries there, Robert Crackenthorpe*, Thomas Manningham†, Thomas Pety*, Nicholas Stanshawe* and William Anderby*, had all represented Appleby since 1414. Stafford’s willingness to follow them may have arisen from the desire to help a client, Sir John Langton†, the representative of an important York family who had made the transition to gentility. Through his mother, Langton was heir to a moiety of the extensive estates of the Nevilles of Hornby, but his rights were disputed by the Crown. On 18 Feb. 1431, our MP had offered mainprise for Langton when the Crown granted him the keeping of part of this property pending settlement. Significantly, he did so again when this keeping was extended on 12 May 1432, the first day of the Parliament to which he had been returned. CFR, xvi. 31, 87.

None the less, only from the late 1430s did Stafford begin to play a part in local administration. In November 1439 he was appointed to his first ad hoc commission of local government, and four years later he was added to the quorum of the peace in the West Riding. In the meantime, on 3 Apr. 1443 Robert Neville, bishop of Durham, had named him his attorney in the courts of the bishopric at an annual fee of five marks, another indication perhaps that Stafford now spent much more of his time in the north than in London. DURH3/43/29. It is also significant that it was in this period that he made his most important acquisition of property. His early purchases had been confined to his native York; CP25(1)/280/156/24; 157/13, 46. but between 1441 and 1444 he acquired over 200 acres of land and meadow in Toulston (West Riding), about ten miles from the city, from another gentleman of York, John Bekwith. Interestingly, in the acquisition of this property he employed as feoffees two of the local peerage, Thomas, Lord Clifford, and Henry, Lord Scrope of Bolton, an indication of the range of his connexions. W. Yorks. Archive Service, Leeds, Weston Hall mss, WYL639/175-6; CP25(1)/280/158/44; 159/20. His connexion with the Cliffords may have been particularly close, for, in her will of 1446, Lord Clifford’s aunt, Maud Clifford, widow of the ill-fated Richard, earl of Cambridge, bequeathed him five marks, clearly a reward for his legal services. He was also employed by Fountains abbey, on whose behalf he was frequently employed as legal counsel in the 1450s if not before. Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 122; Mems. Fountains Abbey, iii (Surtees Soc. cxxx), 18, 26, 31-32, 59, 74, 102, 111, 135, 144.

Stafford continued to play a part in the government of the West Riding into the 1450s, retaining his place on the quorum of the peace and appearing on the important commission for the assessment of the 1450 subsidy. But his successful, if unspectacular, legal career was approaching an end. His will, drawn up at York on 5 May 1458, demonstrates the wealth that this career had brought him. Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, ff. 365-6. His daughter, Ellen, was left as much as £100 for her marriage portion, and his son, William, was to have 100 marks. His da. Joan had married, at Toulston on 17 Sept. 1447, Christopher, son and heir of Ralph Radcliffe of Bridge Hewick near Ripon, on the promise, seemingly not fulfilled, of a jointure of ten marks p.a.: CP40/776, rot. 336. His other sons were treated less generously: Thomas was to have £40 to provide for him ‘ad scolas’; Halnath was to have only ten marks; and George was to have all his ‘iocalia et ornamenta’. William was constituted as his sole executor, charged with the responsibility of finding a chaplain to pray for his soul, but, by a codicil added on the following day, two local gentry, Henry Vavasour and John, son of Sir John Langton, were named as co-executors. Stafford was dead by 7 June, when the will was proved, and he was presumably buried, as his will had decreed, in the conventual church of the Dominican Friary at York. He was succeeded by another John, who is not mentioned in the will. On 23 Dec. 1459 this John, described as ‘of Toulston, gentleman’, acknowledged a debt of £31 to his brother, Halnath, then a London grocer, before the mayor of the Westminster staple. C241/244/4; C131/74/6.