STAFFORD, John II

The most obscure of Worcestershire’s knights of the shire in Henry VI’s reign, John was returned to the Commons alongside Fulk Stafford*. Fulk was very probably a kinsman but neither man’s place in the pedigree of the Staffords, a family that established branches in several counties in the west and south-west of England over the course of the fourteenth century, is known.2 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 794, states that the two men were brothers but without citing an authority in support of this assertion. It also conflates him with his Yorks. namesake John Stafford I*. No doubt the eye-catching marriage John made to an earl’s grand-daughter would have significantly advanced his status and prospects, had he not so soon afterwards fallen in the very civil conflicts that had made the match possible in the first place.

Possibly he was the son of another John Stafford, an esquire with interests in Worcestershire and Staffordshire who died in August 1421. The latter’s heir was his son and namesake, then an infant aged about four, and the King committed the child’s wardship to a lawyer from the latter county, William Lee*, in February 1422.3 CFR, xiv. 333, 368. The grant to Lee is misdated Feb. 1421 in the fine rolls. A few months later, Lee surrendered the wardship, which was re-granted to Joan Beauchamp, Lady Abergavenny. She agreed to pay the Crown £20 in hand for young John’s marriage, along with an annual rent of 50s. for the custody of his lands.4 CFR, xiv. 440. Assuming that Joan paid a realistic price for the wardship, the boy’s inheritance was negligible. The inquisition post mortem held for his father in Staffordshire in September 1421 does not include any manors, and records that the elder John’s lands in Levedale, Longridge, Penkridge, Cowley, Broom and Stafford were worth just £4 16s. p.a.5 CIPM, xxi. 434.

It is also possible that the MP was the John Stafford associated with the much more prominent Humphrey Stafford III* of Grafton in 1457. In July that year Humphrey stood surety, under pain of £1,000, that John Stafford of Hook Norton, Worcestershire, esquire, would appear before the King in Chancery in the following Michaelmas term. At the same time, John 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.6 C244/83/31; VCH Worcs. iii. 184.

Thanks to the MP’s obscurity, it is only possible to trace the end of his career with any certainty.7 There is no proof that he was the John Stafford esquire whom Thomas Cokkys and John Audley appointed as their attorney in late 1455, to collect certain sums of money which Audley’s relative John Brome II* owed them: CAD, iv. A8245. Also unknown is the identity of John Stafford, an English prisoner in Normandy in June 1457: DKR, xlviii. 421. He made his spectacular and only known marriage late in life. Remarkable in itself, the match also occurred in circumstances that attracted the attention of at least two contemporary chroniclers, who recorded that he was responsible for the death of his wife’s previous husband, the elderly Lancastrian Sir William Lucy. Lucy was killed at the battle of Northampton on 10 July 1460, having ridden from his manor at nearby Dallington to join the King’s army. By the time he arrived, the battle was lost to the Yorkists. In the Yorkist ranks and somehow forewarned of Lucy’s coming, was Stafford, who ‘lovyd that knyght ys wyffe and hatyd hym’ and whose servants cut down the unfortunate Sir William.8 Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 207; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), [773]; S.J. Payling, ‘Widows and the Wars of the Roses’, in The Fifteenth Cent. XIV ed. Clark, 106-7. Stafford’s subsequent marriage to the widowed Margaret Lucy was hugely rewarding, for Sir William had made her an extremely generous jointure settlement of estates in Worcestershire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Kent, Essex and Northamptonshire. These comprised no fewer than 12 manors, including Dallington, where Stafford appears to have taken up residence.9 CPR, 1452-61, p. 352; C140/20/29; CP40/820, rot. 488d. It is not recorded how and when Stafford and Margaret had first met. Presumably it was a love match, given that he was an obscure esquire and she the grand-daughter of an earl, so providing a stark contrast to her previous, arranged union with a knight perhaps 40 years her senior. Aside from the circumstances that had allowed Stafford and Margaret to wed and the social disparity of the match, their marriage was also striking in overriding political divisions, for she was a lady of impeccable Lancastrian connexions. Her half-brother Henry Fitzlewis, who fought for Henry VI at Northampton, had married a sister of Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, and her half-sister Anne Hankford was the wife of Thomas Ormond, brother of the earl of Wiltshire.10 Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. n.s. vi. 37; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 497-8.

The battle of Northampton enabled the Yorkists to regain control of the government and to summon the Parliament to which John and Fulk Stafford were returned as the knights of the shire for Worcestershire. On 29 Oct., just over three weeks after the opening of Parliament, John was appointed to a commission established to secure the arrest of the Northamptonshire esquire, Robert Tanfeld†. Given the Lancastrian associations of Tanfeld’s father, Robert*, it is tempting to ascribe a political reason for the commission, although it is more likely to have arisen from Tanfeld’s campaign of intimidation against Robert Isham, who had replaced the elder Robert as a j.p.11 CPR, 1452-61, p. 649; C1/28/313. In January 1461, while Parliament was still sitting, both 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.

Parliament closed at some stage after the following 3 Feb., and later that month Stafford accompanied the Yorkist captain John Radcliffe, the self-styled Lord Fitzwalter, to the second battle of St. Albans. The battle, fought on 17 Feb., ended in defeat for the Yorkists. Stafford and others of Radcliffe’s retinue, having retreated to the south-west, spent some time at Bristol. There they vented their frustrations by breaking into the house of a local Lancastrian, William Grey, and stealing and selling his goods. While at Bristol, Stafford and his associates lodged with another townsman, John George, who some years later petitioned the chancellor to complain that Grey’s widow was wrongfully suing him for the lost goods.12 Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, p. lxxxiii. By late March 1461 Radcliffe and Stafford had joined the army that Edward IV led against the Lancastrian forces in the north. On the 28th Radcliffe was seriously wounded at Ferrybridge and he died a week later. Having survived that encounter, Stafford was killed at the battle of Towton on the following day.13 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 165; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 165.

Having lost a second husband to a violent death, Margaret Stafford entered a hotly contested marriage with Thomas, son of Thomas Wake*. It proved so controversial because the Oxfordshire lawyer Thomas Danvers*, who had hoped to gain her hand, claimed that she had previously contracted to marry him. Politics may have played a part in her change of mind. Her powerful kinsman, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, had opposed a match with Danvers, perhaps because of the latter’s past Lancastrian associations, while Wake had committed himself to the new Yorkist regime. Whatever the case, a sorely aggrieved Danvers petitioned the chancellor for redress and in October 1465 a commission was issued for the arrest of the Wakes and their legal adviser, Thomas Pachet*.14 C1/31/298; CPR, 1461-7, p. 491. He also took action against Margaret in the court of common pleas, in a suit that came to pleadings in Trinity term 1466. Danvers alleged that she had failed to pay him £300 under the terms of bonds that she had entered into in November 1462, evidently in connexion with their proposed marriage. She responded with a technicality, stating that his original writ had incorrectly addressed her as Stafford’s widow, although by that stage she was already the wife of Wake, and she and Wake pursued a countersuit against him for forcible entry at Dallington.15 CP40/820, rots. 488d, 533. The papacy was also drawn into the dispute after the chancellor, George Neville, archbishop of York, excommunicated Margaret who then appealed to the Roman Curia in protest.16 CPL, xii. 405. Margaret’s troubled marriage with Wake, which produced a son, was short-lived, since she died on 4 Aug. 1466.17 C140/20/29. Wake and Danvers pursued the quarrel after her death and in due course it was referred to arbitration. The results of this are unknown.18 CP40/824, rots. 286, 337; KB27/826, rot. 85d; 827, rot. 70d; C1/90/34.