STAFFORD, Humphrey I

From a cadet line of an old and distinguished family, Stafford was of considerably more exalted lineage than many of his fellow gentry. A great-great-grandson of Ralph Stafford (d.1372), 1st earl of Stafford, he was a distant cousin of Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, and a kinsman of one of the most influential churchmen of his day, John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells and archbishop of Canterbury. As a second son, he was not initially expected to succeed to his father’s estates, an eventuality brought about by the early death of his elder brother. He himself lived to a relatively advanced age, even if his life was cut short in the great rebellion of 1450. In keeping with the turbulent times, both of his sons also died violently, of whom one was killed in a street brawl at Coventry and the other died on the scaffold at Tyburn.

The early career of Stafford’s father and namesake was similarly marked by violence. Having participated in a murder while still in his teens, the elder Humphrey Stafford feuded with William, Lord Beauchamp of Abergavenny, among others, in the first decade of the fifteenth century. In spite of such behaviour, he remained unpunished, protected no doubt by his family connexions and his status as a retainer of Henry of Monmouth, prince of Wales. Although he sat as a knight of the shire for Worcestershire in the Parliament of 1415, he played a very limited part in the administration of his home county, probably because he survived his own father, Ralph Stafford† of Grafton, by no more than eight years and spent much of the latter part of his career overseas. In 1417 he enlisted in the retinue that Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, the lord from whom he held Grafton, took to France. He appears to have gained his knighthood while campaigning in Normandy the following year, and he was probably still in France when he died on 20 Feb. 1419.12 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 436-7.

The elder Humphrey’s heir was his first-born son John. In 1419 John had yet to reach his majority, and the Stafford estates were entrusted to the custody of his distant cousin Sir Richard Stafford* of Hooke, Dorset. Apart from his paternal inheritance in the west Midlands, notably the manors of Grafton and Leamington Hastings in Warwickshire, John was also the heir to the considerable landed holdings that his late mother, the daughter and heir of the Leicestershire knight Sir John Burdet, had brought to the Stafford family. These estates included the manors of Huncote in Leicestershire, Bourton on Dunsmore in Warwickshire, and Ditchampton in Wiltshire, of which properties John, perhaps still short of his majority, was permitted to take possession of Ditchampton in late 1419.13 Ibid. 437; CIPM, xxi. 183-7; CFR, xiv. 305-6. In the inqs. post mortem for the er. Humphrey, John is variously described as being aged 18 years ‘and more’ or 20 years ‘and more’. On the other hand, John’s own inqs. post mortem found that his yr. bro. and h., the subject of this biography, was aged 22 ‘and more’ in mid 1422: CIPM, xxi. 911-14.

While his elder brother was still alive, the younger Humphrey Stafford occupied himself by following his father’s example and enlisting for service in France. In May 1421 the Crown granted him letters of protection as a member of the retinue that Richard Beauchamp, the newly created earl of Worcester, was preparing to take across the Channel, and in the following month he mustered with the earl at Sandwich.14 DKR, xliv. 630; E101/50/1. Beauchamp was the son and successor of the Lord Abergavenny with whom Stafford’s father had quarrelled in Henry IV’s reign,15 CP, xii (2), 842. but evidently these earlier differences were now long forgotten. Stafford’s time across the Channel was probably curtailed by the deaths of his brother John and of the earl of Worcester, both of whom died in March 1422. It is nevertheless very likely that he saw further service in France between that date and his appointment as lieutenant of Calais in 1442, and that the knighthood he had won by late 1430 was earned in the field.

Some 22 years of age and yet to marry when he succeeded his brother,16 CIPM, xxi. 911-14. Stafford found a wife between early 1425 and mid 1427. His bride was a good match, for Eleanor was an heiress, the younger of the two daughters of the extremely wealthy Buckinghamshire knight Sir Thomas Aylesbury.17 Ibid. 93-104. Sir Thomas’s heir, her brother John Aylesbury, had followed him to the grave while still a minor in May 1422, and John’s infant son and heir Hugh had died in October 1423. At Hugh’s death the Aylesbury inheritance had passed to Eleanor, then some 17 years of age, and her elder sister Isabel, who had married the east Midlands knight Sir Thomas Chaworth* in Sir Thomas Aylesbury’s lifetime.18 Ibid. 889-94; xxii. 267. Eleanor brought holdings in Buckinghamshire, Surrey and Northamptonshire to the Staffords, including the important manor of Milton Keynes, as her share of the Aylesbury inheritance.19 VCH Bucks. iv. 284, 304, 403; PSO1/63/14; VCH Surr. iii. 131; CFR, xv. 274; CPR, 1446-52, p. 274. For some years after Hugh’s death the Aylesbury estates were far from unencumbered, since Eleanor’s mother, Katherine, and John Aylesbury’s widow, Margaret, held parts of it in dower.20 VCH Bucks. iv. 403; CIPM, xxii. 267-8; xxiv. 671-3; CFR, xv. 274; xvi. 306; PSO1/63/14. Margaret, having found a new husband in John Skelton (perhaps John Skelton I*), died in 1429, but Katherine survived until July 1436.21 CIPM, xxiii. 254-5; xxiv. 671-3.

The inheritance of Eleanor Stafford, once she had come fully into her own, was probably worth about £100 p.a., if not considerably more. Milton Keynes, valued at just under £50 p.a. in the mid fifteenth century, was a particularly important manor and Stafford used it as one of his residences. It was thanks to Milton Keynes and his wife’s other holdings in Buckinghamshire that he was qualified to serve two terms as sheriff of that county and Bedfordshire. At the same time, however, the acquisition of Eleanor’s inheritance only increased the difficulties he already faced in estate management. Stafford’s marriage was one of a series of matches made by successive heads of his family to heiresses of lands in other parts of the country. As a result, the Stafford estates became increasingly scattered and more difficult to administer, and Stafford lacked either the time or inclination to devote his fullest personal attention to them.22 C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 118, 162, 171. He must have relied heavily on the likes of his receiver-general, John More, a Frenchman by birth, and his auditor William Pullesdon* for help in managing his holdings.23 Add. Rolls 74129, 74159, 74165; E159/214, recorda Trin. rot. 17. For the purposes of the income tax of 1436 Stafford was calculated to hold lands worth just £266 p.a., probably because he had abused his position as a commissioner for that subsidy to disguise the true value of his holdings.24 Carpenter, 53. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 437, states incorrectly that the assessment of £266 was for his lands in Worcs. alone: even though the records for the tax of 1436 listed landowners by their counties of residence, the assessments were for their holdings throughout the kingdom. In the same year the Crown, presumably unaware of his actual landed wealth, requested no more than £40 when asking him to contribute to a loan, for the raising of which he was likewise one of the commissioners.25 PPC, iv. 329. Although Stafford made no notable acquisitions of land between 1436 and the late 1440s, a valor of his estates (including the Aylesbury lands) drawn up in 1449 found that he enjoyed a landed income of £420 p.a. (probably about £370 net after the deduction of certain expenses).26 Carpenter, 53, 207; Add. Roll 74168. He added to his family’s holdings, if only temporarily, in the late summer of 1449 when Sir William Trussell† mortgaged the manor of Kibblestone, Staffordshire, to him for an unknown sum. After Trussell failed to redeem the mortgage by a given day, 2 Feb. 1450, Kibblestone passed to the Staffords. Immediately after the MP’s death later that year, however, his son and successor agreed to sell it to their distant kinsman and namesake, Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham.27 Add. Ch. 73365. In the event the sale never took place and the manor passed to the Vernons, who had laid claim to part of the Trussell estates, over which Sir Richard Vernon had begun to trouble Sir William Trussell by the early 1440s.

The duke of Buckingham features prominently in the valor of 1449, which also lists the fees, amounting to £70 p.a., Stafford received from his lay and ecclesiastical patrons at that date. The most substantial sum came from Buckingham, who paid him 40 marks, while he took a further 20 marks from both Cecily, dowager duchess of Warwick, and the new earl of Wiltshire, James Butler, and smaller amounts from several churchmen, among them the bishop of Worcester and the abbots of Evesham and Pershore.28 Add. Roll 74168. By this date he also enjoyed important ties with two other noblemen, John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick, to whose son Richard Beauchamp† he had married his daughter Elizabeth, and Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, both allies of Wiltshire in the west Midlands.29 Carpenter, 684; CP, ii. 47. Outside that region, Stafford forged a connexion with John Mowbray, 3rd duke of Norfolk, for whom he was a feoffee in Essex.30 L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 449. Stafford’s association with the duke of Buckingham dated back to at least the beginning of 1440, when that lord was still earl of Stafford, and probably much earlier. In January 1440 the earl appointed Stafford a justice itinerant in his lordships in south Wales and the marches, and after becoming captain of Calais in 1442 he appointed Sir Humphrey as his lieutenant there. Five years later, Stafford became a feoffee to the use of the last will of his noble namesake, by then the duke of Buckingham.31 CPR, 1446-52, p. 78. Despite his ties with Buckingham, Stafford did not always act in the best interests of that lord. Most notably, his association with the Beauchamp of Powick-Sudeley-Wiltshire nexus was scarcely helpful to the duke, given that this was competing with Buckingham for influence in Worcestershire and south-west Warwickshire.32 Carpenter, 411; M.C. Carpenter, ‘Beauchamp Affinity’, EHR, xcv. 518.

During the earlier part of his career, one of Stafford’s most important patrons was Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, the lord with whom his father had served in France. Soon after succeeding the elder Humphrey, he himself was associating with the earl and leading members of the Beauchamp affinity, and by the early 1430s he was certainly one of Warwick’s feed men.33 CCR, 1422-9, p. 127; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 689. It was to Beauchamp that he owed his appointment as deputy sheriff of Worcestershire in 1431, since the earl was the hereditary sheriff of the county. The annuity he received from the Duchess Cecily, widow of Beauchamp’s son and successor Henry, duke of Warwick, indicates that he remained associated with the Beauchamps in the decade following the earl’s death in 1439.34 Add. Roll 74168. The Staffords of Grafton maintained their connexion with the earldom of Warwick after it passed to Richard Neville in 1449, for Stafford’s son and namesake would enter Neville’s service.

The link with the Beauchamps was probably significant for Stafford’s early parliamentary career. Given his youth and inexperience when he first entered Parliament, he may have depended on the earl of Warwick’s support for his election as a knight of the shire for Worcestershire in 1423. He had yet to hold local office when he took up his seat, although he was pricked as sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire just a few weeks later. By contrast, his fellow knight of the shire, John Wood I*, was an administrator and parliamentarian of considerable experience. A highly competent lawyer, Wood was also a Beauchamp retainer, as was his fellow lawyer, John Vampage*, with whom Stafford was returned to his second Parliament in 1426. It was thanks to his landed interests in Staffordshire that Stafford was able to gain re-election as a knight of the shire for that county in 1427, and thanks to his wife’s estates in Buckinghamshire that he was pricked as sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire shortly after the Parliament of 1427 had opened. Although the Parliament sat until late March 1428, Stafford and his fellow MP Sir John Gresley* petitioned the Crown three months before it was dissolved, to complain that the sheriff of Staffordshire, Sir Richard Vernon*, owed them money for their parliamentary wages.35 E5/485.

In November 1430 Stafford was yet again pricked for the shrievalty, this time for Warwickshire and Leicestershire, and placed on the commission of the peace for Worcestershire, on which he served almost continuously for the rest of his life. In 1431 he was placed on his first ad hoc commission and began a term as deputy sheriff of Worcestershire, by appointment of the earl of Warwick. In the late 1430s he served yet two more terms as a sheriff, first in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire and then immediately afterwards in Warwickshire and Leicestershire. In short, he assumed an administrative load that was far greater than that of his father before him and considerably more than that of his son after him. As an office-holder of high social rank, he was a figure of considerable influence in the west Midlands in his own right. It was due to his influence that the monk William Hertylbury became sacristan of the cathedral priory at Worcester in the autumn of 1440. Initially Hertylbury’s candidature for the office was in doubt because of rumours that he was a man of immoral conduct, but with Stafford’s support these rumours were quashed and he gained election.36 C1/75/107. At times Stafford must have tired of local government, for on 17 Feb. 1441 he was exempted from having to accept any further Crown appointments against his will.37 CPR, 1436-41, p. 540. Just a day later, however, he was made a subsidy commissioner, and subsequently he was placed on other ad hoc commissions and on the commission of the peace in Warwickshire.

It was during his second term as sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire that Stafford came into conflict with Joan Beauchamp, Lady Abergavenny, widow of the lord with whom his father had quarrelled in the early fifteenth century. The dispute with Joan arose from her behaviour in the west Midlands. In the 1420s she began to challenge the influence that her nephew, the earl of Warwick, enjoyed in the region, and there were affrays between her followers and the earl’s men and his allies in 1425, 1429 and 1431. The Crown reacted with proceedings against her in the court of King’s bench. It did so on the strength of recognizances to keep the peace it had taken from Joan and several sureties in 1418, following a quarrel between her and the earl of Warwick’s retainers Sir Thomas† and Nicholas Burdet. As sheriff, it was Stafford’s duty to summon the jurors for the King’s bench proceedings, and in 1431 they found that Joan had broken the conditions of the recognizances of 1418. As a result, it was ruled that she should forfeit the £1,200 in which she was bound, and each of her sureties £200. In the autumn of that year she tried to challenge the ruling by suing Stafford in the Exchequer, claiming that he had deliberately empanelled a jury biased against her, in breach of statute and to her great damage. According to Joan, her bitter enemy the clerk John Verney, a servant of the earl of Warwick, had directed Stafford whom to place on the jury. She added that Verney had paid Stafford £100 to do his bidding, as well as further substantial sums to the jurors, who included his own son, Richard Stafford, and servants of the earl of Warwick like Thomas Porter* and John Waldeve, so that they would find against her. In the event, Joan came to terms with both the Crown and Stafford (who absolutely denied her claims) in 1433, meaning that her suit against the latter never came to a conclusion. In July that year the King pardoned her sureties and reduced her own enormous penalty, but only to £1,000, and she released any right of action against Stafford.38 Oxf. DNB, ‘Beauchamp, William (V)’; CCR, 1413-19, p. 500; CPR, 1429-36, p. 295; PROME, xi. 55-62, 127; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 413-15; E13/139, rots. 12, 22; E159/210, brevia Trin. rot. 4d; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 130n, 174; VCH Staffs. iii. 197. In the end, the dispute between Joan (who died not long afterwards) and Stafford had no long lasting repercussions, given that he subsequently formed a connexion with her grandson and heir James Butler, afterwards earl of Wiltshire.

Even if Joan’s Exchequer suit is no proof of any misconduct on his part as sheriff, Stafford was quite as prepared as her (and indeed his own father) to engage in acts of lawlessness when it suited him. One example of such misbehaviour on his part is the ill treatment he meted out to the then escheator of Worcestershire, John Bachecote, in 1438, prompting that official to submit a formal complaint to the Exchequer.39 E159/214, recorda Trin. rots. 17, 17d. In June that year Bachecote sent a couple of his subordinates to Chadwich near Bromsgrove to seize the livestock of John Bekke, whom one of the central courts at Westminster had outlawed. Bekke persuaded the two officials not to make the seizure but to accompany him to Bromsgrove where he would provide them with certain securities. At Bromsgrove, however, the escheator’s men were confronted by Stafford’s servant John More, who called them ‘Brybours and theves’ and threatened to place them in the stocks. Having made their escape, the officials reported what had happened to Bachecote, who later rode out to seize the livestock himself. Just outside Bromsgrove, while driving the livestock before him, he encountered a large group of people from the town, who warned him not to take the animals any further because their lord, Sir Humphrey Stafford, along with Fulk Stafford40 Presumably Fulk Stafford*, identified in one ped. as a cadet member of the Staffords of Grafton: Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. (1910), 320. and 30 armed followers were out looking for him and were not far away. The frightened escheator sought refuge in an inn in the town where Stafford found him soon afterwards. Calling Bachecote a ‘Brybour’, ‘horeson’ and ‘knave’ and asking him if he was one of Sir Nicholas Conway’s men, Stafford forced the escheator to kneel in front of him and laid his dagger against his throat placed down before him. In spite of his predicament, Bachecote had the nerve to address Stafford’s servant More as a ‘Frenssh knave’, to which the angry More retorted that he was a true liege man, and that the King himself had a French mother. Adopting a more emollient tone, Stafford then tried to persuade the escheator to accept a security in exchange for the seized livestock. Eventually, late into the night, Bachecote was permitted to set off for home, accompanied by one of Stafford’s men. Stafford claimed that the escort was necessary to ensure that Bachecote arrived home alive, for ‘all the Countre… was uppe’. Along the way the two men encountered an armed band that had lain in wait for Bachecote at Wychbold, but the escheator’s escort told them that Stafford had ordered that the escheator should not be harmed. No doubt the would-be assailants were men that Stafford had sent out to hunt for Bachecote earlier in the day, before he himself had found the escheator at Bromsgrove. It is not clear what lay behind this curious episode, of which 41 CPR, 1436-41, p. 398. Bachecote’s version of events cannot have been too far removed from the truth, for within weeks Stafford and five associates, including Fulk Stafford and More, chose to compound by fine with the King rather than face any further inquiry. The escheator’s complaint shows Stafford displaying the very sort of high-handed arrogance that would bring about his downfall. He had also behaved in a manner hardly appropriate to the office of sheriff he then held (albeit elsewhere, in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire), although this did not deter the authorities from pricking him to his third term as sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire a few months later.

By 1438 Stafford was also quarrelling with Robert Catesby over the manor of Hopsford in Withybrook, a property once held by his ancestors, the Hastings family. The dispute was finally resolved in 1441, after Stafford’s patron, the earl of Stafford, persuaded the parties to refer the matter to arbiters who assigned the manor to the MP.42 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 139 (CP40/708, rot. 117d); VCH Warws. vi. 266; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 429; Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 162. It was the earl who found a useful outlet for Sir Humphrey’s energies in the following year, by appointing him his lieutenant at Calais. The appointment is recorded in an indenture of 5 Nov. 1442, which stated that Stafford was to exercise the office for a year, as from the previous 21 Oct., and that he was to supply eight men-at-arms and ten archers. In return he was to receive wages of 2s. per day, along with some £113 in customary and discretionary wages and expenses.43 Peniarth mss, 280, pp. 2-3. Shortly before embarking for Calais, Stafford is said to have made a will in which he named his kinsmen, Bishop John Stafford and William Stafford*, and others, including Lord Sudeley, as his feoffees.44 C142/75/89. Even if there was no such will, he was evidently on good terms with his cousin William, the younger brother of Sir Richard Stafford of Hooke. He was certainly one of William’s feoffees, and earlier in his career he had acted for Sir Richard as a surety.45 Hants RO, Clarke Jervoise mss, 44M69/C/493; CFR, xv. 119-20.

As it happened, Stafford was lieutenant of Calais for considerably longer than a year, and probably until his namesake relinquished the captaincy at the end of March 1450.46 Harriss, 31 and n. During his time in the office the Crown tasked him with investigating fraud at the Calais mint (presumably in connexion with embezzlements committed by the former keeper of the mint, (Sir) Robert Whittingham I*),47 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii. 476. The writ ordering Stafford to investigate was issued on 4 Jan., although of what year is uncertain. Letters and Pprs. incorrectly dates it ‘30 Hen. VI’ (by which stage Stafford was dead), but no doubt it dates from the early 1440s when a full-scale inquiry into Whittingham’s conduct was held: The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 844. and appointed him to a couple of embassies. In 1444 he and other ambassadors went to Holland and Zeeland to negotiate better trading conditions for denizen merchants, and just over four years later he was among those appointed to treat with representatives of the duke of Burgundy. During his lieutenancy, Stafford was often absent from Calais, and not only on diplomatic missions. In April 1446, for example, his captain gave him licence to return home to attend to business there,48 Peniarth mss, 280, p. 40. and the Crown allowed him to continue receiving his wages as lieutenant when he was in England rather than at Calais.49 E159/224, brevia Mich. rot. 23.

Early in the following year Stafford was returned to his fourth Parliament, once again as a knight of the shire for Worcestershire. He was elected to the Commons with Walter Skulle*, an esquire who had overcome his obscure origins to become a figure of some prominence in the county. Whatever Skulle’s background and lineage, they were not lowly enough to preclude a marriage alliance with the Staffords, for his son Thomas married Sir Humphrey’s daughter Anne.50 C1/24/57. Assuming that it had not already occurred at the time of the election to the Parliament of 1447, the marriage was definitely contracted during Stafford’s lifetime. Another marriage that certainly took place in this period was that of Anne’s sister Elizabeth, who married Richard Beauchamp of Powick in January 1447, in a ceremony conducted at the Beauchamp family chapel at Alcester, Warwickshire.51 CP, ii. 47. Stafford was attending to another important family matter in the following October, when he obtained letters patent licensing him to found a perpetual chantry in Bromsgrove parish church. He was also authorized to place lands worth 20 marks p.a. and not held in chief in mortmain for the purposes of paying the salaries of the two chaplains who were to serve his foundation, which was to be known as ‘Sir Humphrey Stafford’s chantry’. Apart from the MP and other members of his immediate family, the King and queen were to benefit from the masses and other services conducted by the chaplains.52 CPR, 1446-52, p. 108. Stafford’s letters patent refer to him as a ‘King’s knight’, possibly a sobriquet earned through his service at Calais. It is unlikely that he had joined Henry VI’s household since he does not feature in any of the extant Household accounts of the mid fifteenth century, including those for 1446-7 and 1447-8.53 E101/409/16; 410/1. In spite of his licence, Stafford’s chantry remained unfounded at his death and was only finally established three decades later.54 CPR, 1476-85, pp. 11, 57.

Just over a year after the Parliament of 1447, there occurred the well-known fracas at Coventry in which Stafford’s eldest son Richard lost his life. In the spring of 1448 father and son were attending the city’s Corpus Christi fair with their patron Sir James Butler. On the evening of 22 May, having escorted Butler to his inn, they happened to come upon Sir Robert Harcourt* in the street. Harcourt’s principal residence was Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire but he also held lands in the Midlands, including an estate at Ellenhall in Staffordshire that adjoined the Stafford manor at Chebsey. He and the Staffords were already on bad terms with each other. There was an old quarrel between them over the ‘takyng of a dystres’ and in early 1446 Stafford had sued one of Harcourt’s servants, Richard Faukes of Coventry, ‘gentleman’, for 200 marks. Stafford had taken a bond for that amount from Faukes in 1438, but the latter had claimed that he had entered into the security under duress, while a prisoner of Sir Humphrey and his ‘coven’ at Loughborough in Leicestershire. According to a contemporary account, when the Staffords encountered Harcourt at Coventry in May 1448 Sir Humphrey and Sir Robert rode past each other without incident, but blows were exchanged as Richard Stafford drew alongside Harcourt. The latter struck Richard on the head with his sword but failed to fell his opponent who went for him with his dagger. At that very moment, Richard stumbled, enabling one of Harcourt’s men to knife him in the back, killing him almost instantly. Sir Humphrey was also struck from behind and knocked off his horse as he was turning back to find out what was happening, and in the mêlée that followed his servants killed two of Harcourt’s men and others of those involved were hurt.55 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 88-90; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 57-58; E13/144, rot. 25.

The next day the city coroners named Harcourt as principal in Richard Stafford’s murder,56 KB9/259/70. but the death of the sheriff of Warwickshire, Thomas Porter, on 28 May delayed the taking of indictments against Sir Robert and his servants until 16 July. According to these indictments and an appeal that Sir Humphrey’s new heir, his younger son and namesake, began in the court of King’s bench, Richard’s assailants had acted at the behest of Harcourt’s mother, with the intention of killing both Staffords. In reality, it is likely that the fracas had arisen out of hot temper and that both sides were equally to blame. Following his indictment, Harcourt was arrested and committed to the custody of (Sir) Thomas Stanley II*, the constable of Chester castle, where he was possibly kept for a year or more. In spite of his incarceration, he was able successfully to apply to the Crown for a stay in the proceedings against him, prompting the MP to protest to the King in a petition of his own. Stafford’s request that the chief justice of King’s bench should recommence the proceedings was granted on 22 Mar. 1449 and Harcourt was finally outlawed on the following 30 June. Notwithstanding the indictments, the younger Humphrey Stafford’s appeal, Sir Humphrey’s petition and the outlawry, Harcourt continued to evade the law, even though the Staffords did not lack for noble patrons. In particular, the MP’s associations with Butler (created earl of Wiltshire in July 1449) and Lords Beauchamp of Powick and Sudeley gave him useful links with Court circles.57 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 684. No doubt it was in pursuit of their cause that he and the younger Humphrey secured seats in the Parliaments of 1449 (Feb.) and 1449-50 respectively. Unfortunately for them, Harcourt also had powerful friends within the royal establishment, notably the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk.58 Ibid. 428, 454-5, 684; Storey, 57-58; KB27/750, rot. 47; 751, rot. 72, rex rots. 3, 7, 19, 20; 752, rot. 24d; 753, rot. 29d; 754, rot. 53d; 755, rot. 24; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 186, 197-8; E28/78/80.

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, a cleric named John Male, on 26 Apr. 1450.59 CPR, 1446-52, p. 324. On the following 1 May, Sir Humphrey and his son and namesake assembled over 200 supporters, including the knight’s son-in-law Richard Beauchamp (then resident at Grafton) and Thomas Burdet*, at Wychwood forest in Warwickshire. The Staffords and their band rode through the night to Stanton Harcourt, arriving there on the following day while Harcourt and his servants were attending the local parish church. Those inside the church took refuge in its bell tower, and there followed a six-hour siege. The besiegers fired volleys of arrows at the building, managing mortally to wound 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 to no avail. Eventually the Staffords withdrew, venting their frustration by looting Harcourt’s house and farm buildings before they left.60 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 454-5; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 207-8; KB9/266/51; KB27/766, rex rots. 3-4d.

If Harcourt’s connexions with the duke of Suffolk had helped him to evade justice, it was probably no coincidence that this episode occurred just after the last session of the Parliament of 1449-50 had opened at Leicester. The duke had suffered impeachment in the previous session of the same Parliament, in which the younger Humphrey sat as an MP, and he had been murdered on his way into exile on 1 May 1450, the very day of the raid. Unfortunately for the Staffords, Harcourt still possessed friends at Court after Suffolk’s death. In the wake of the attack on Stanton Harcourt, the authorities quickly issued a commission of oyer and terminer and Sir Humphrey, his son and others who had participated in the attack were duly indicted.61 Storey, 58; CPR, 1446-52, p. 386-7; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 201. To make matters worse, on 25 May Harcourt obtained a royal pardon for any murders, felonies, insurrections and misdeeds he might have committed, and for all resulting outlawries.62 CPR, 1446-52, p. 329.

As it happened, Sir Humphrey Stafford did not live to see his opponent finally brought to trial, because less than a month later he was killed in Kent, fighting the followers of Jack Cade. Evidently his attack on Stanton Harcourt had not made him persona non grata with the Crown, since he was a member of the army which Henry VI himself led against the rebel camp at Blackheath on 18 June 1450. Upon arriving at Blackheath, the King found that the rebels were gone, having retreated overnight. Stafford and his cousin, William Stafford, were therefore despatched deeper into Kent on a reconnaissance mission to establish their whereabouts. Riding with no more than a small force, the Staffords tracked the rebels down to the vicinity of Sevenoaks. Overcome by hubris, they arrogantly assumed that they could defeat the rebels by themselves, so winning ‘singuler worshippe and laude’, but when they launched an attack they were quickly overwhelmed. William Stafford, one of ‘the mannlyste man of alle thys realme of Engelonde’, fought valiantly ‘wt a two hand sworde on horsebake’, and then on foot after ‘one wt a pike forke bare hym out of his sadle’, but he, his cousin and many of their men were killed. The victorious rebels stripped Sir Humphrey’s body and Cade himself donned his brigandise (of ‘velvet Garnysshid wt gilt nayle’), salet and spurs, and so, acerbically remarked one chronicler, ‘a knave was made a knygth’.63 English Chron. (Cam. Soc. lxiv), 66; Letters and Pprs. ii. [767]; John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Miscellany xxiv), 199; Gt. Chron. London ed. Thomas and Thornley, 181-2; Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xxviii), 67; Six Town Chrons. ed. Flenley, 131, 154; C.L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 273n, 360, 366, 371; Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 191. The Staffords’ rash conduct at Sevenoaks had serious consequences, for had they not confronted the rebels the revolt would probably have petered out; with Cade’s followers, having already retreated from Blackheath, dispersing relatively peacefully. Following the encounter at Sevenoaks, however, Cade’s men regained heart and regrouped and murmurings of discontent were heard within the ranks of the royal army. The King was obliged to withdraw to London and then to Kenilworth while the rebels began a new advance on the City, which they entered in early July.64 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 612, 624-5.

The heir to Stafford’s estates was his surviving son and namesake, then some 23 years of age.65 C139/137/7. It fell to the younger Humphrey to continue the feud with Sir Robert Harcourt, against whom the Staffords did not finally obtain revenge until his bastard son William Stafford and two accomplices murdered Harcourt ‘in his owyn place’ in November 1470.66 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 360-1; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iv. 176-7, 189-90; vi (1), 96-97. Along with the widowed Eleanor Stafford, the younger Humphrey had the responsibility of administering his late father’s estate.67 CPR, 1452-61, p. 379; C67/40, m. 27; 41, m. 28; 45, m. 43; CP40/779, rot. 435. It would appear that Sir Humphrey had died intestate, even though an inquisition post mortem held for his grandson (yet another Humphrey Stafford) nearly a century later refers to the supposed will that the knight had made in October 1442, shortly before embarking for Calais.68 C142/75/89. Assuming that it had ever existed, it must have been found invalid shortly after his death. The MP is however known to have provided for his younger son Thomas, for whom he had set aside the manor of Grandborough in Warwickshire and other lands.69 C142/33/70, 143.

Eleanor Stafford enjoyed a long and energetic widowhood, surviving until early 1483 and remaining active in her old age. Apart from acting as an administrator of her late husband’s estate, she vigorously pursued her own claim to lands once held by Sir John Keynes of Dodford, Northamptonshire, and later by Sir John Cressy*. Basing her claim on her descent from a junior branch of the Keynes family, she took possession of the manor of Dodford and of that of Oxhill, Warwickshire, in the mid 1450s. Early in the following decade she was forced to come to terms with a more rightful claimant, John Hathwick, to whom she surrendered Oxhill while keeping Dodford.70 G. Baker, Northants. i. 351-6; CFR, xix. 205-6; KB27/808, rot. 76; JUST1/1547/5; CP25(1)/179/96/11; CCR, 1468-76, no. 909. For the Dodford dispute see S.J. Payling, ‘Imposter Pilgrim’, in The Fifteenth Cent. X ed. Kleineke, 34-38. Unfortunately for her, 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 her younger son Thomas, to whom she had decided to leave the manor, found themselves in dispute with the Wydevilles.71 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 544-5.

In the mid 1470s the quarrel over Dodford became entangled with a scheme by Eleanor to resurrect her late husband’s plan for a chantry at Bromsgrove, although on a lesser scale than Sir Humphrey Stafford’s proposed foundation since it was to be served by just one chaplain. In January 1476 she, her sons and a couple of feoffees, the judge Thomas Lyttleton and the King’s serjeant John Catesby, obtained new letters patent permitting them to establish such a chantry and by November 1477 she had nominated Thomas Hardyng to serve as its chaplain.72 CPR, 1476-85, pp. 11, 57. She also arranged for Hardyng to draw his salary from the issues of Dodford, but if this was a deliberate attempt to stymie the Wydevilles it did not work, since they continued to press their claim. The long-running quarrel did not end until mid 1481, when Edward IV personally arbitrated between Sir Edward Wydeville (as he by then was) on the one side and Eleanor and Thomas Stafford on the other. The King decided that the Staffords should keep Dodford, 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 wife’s family is striking, and all the more so given that Thomas Stafford had been among those retainers of the earl of Warwick implicated in the death of the queen’s father, Earl Rivers, in 1469. Unfortunately for the Wydevilles, Edward IV was unwilling to rule against the Staffords, lest he should lose the services of Thomas’s elder brother, Humphrey Stafford, by then an important royal retainer in the west Midlands.73 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 510, 544-5; Baker, i. 353; KB27/836, rot. 61d.

Even more closely associated with the Yorkist Crown during the reign of Richard III, Humphrey took up arms against Henry Tudor, first at Bosworth and then in rebellion in 1486, and was executed for treason. Thomas Stafford, who had accompanied his brother to Bosworth and joined him in rebellion, was pardoned and survived until 1517.74 Polydore Vergil’s English Hist. (Cam. Soc. xxix), 225; R. Holinshed, Chrons. (1807-8 edn.), iii. 484; C142/33/70. Although Humphrey’s attainder was reversed in 1504, the Staffords were unable to recover all of their estates, of which Grafton was among the permanent losses.75 PROME, xv. 331-3; VCH Worcs. iii. 126. After Grafton had gone, they adopted Blatherwycke in Northamptonshire, one of the properties that Sir Humphrey Stafford had acquired in marriage, as their principal seat, so weakening their association with the west Midlands.