STAFFORD, Sir Richard

Richard was probably born in the later years of Richard II’s reign as the son of one of the leading landowners in Dorset. Like many of his peers, he sought to while away the time until he should come into his inheritance by seeking military glory on the battlefields of France. He is not known to have participated in the Agincourt campaign, and may thus have cut his teeth serving in Sir John Blount’s expeditionary force in July 1417.6 E101/51/2. It seems that he distinguished himself in the French wars, for by the spring of 1419 he had been knighted and that March he was entrusted with the custody of the estates of his distant kinsman, Humphrey Stafford† (c.1384-1419) of Grafton, who had died while fighting on the continent, leaving two under-age sons.7 DKR, xli. 740. It seems that Sir Richard himself was in France at this time, and was able to sue directly to the King for what in the event turned out to be no particularly valuable grant, for although Humphrey Stafford’s elder son John (d.1422) was said to be only just over 18 years old, he was granted seisin of his lands in November of the same year.8 CFR, xiv. 305-6; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 437; C138/62/18.

In May 1421 Stafford indentured once more to serve in France for half a year, with a personal retinue of ten men-at-arms and 30 mounted archers,9 DKR, xliv. 622; E101/50/1; 70/6/720. The man who served in John Melton’s expedition of May 1420 appears not to have been knighted, and was probably a namesake: E101/49/36. but Henry V’s unexpected death in the late summer of 1422 may have brought to the fore the need to make provision for a time when the wars had come to an end. Stafford’s prospects were considerable, for apart from his father’s substantial estates, he stood to inherit the lands his mother had brought into the family, consisting of a share of the estates of both her father and maternal grandfather, property altogether worth a princely sum in excess of £570 p.a.10 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 440. For the time being, however, both Stafford’s parents remained very much alive, and it was clear that in the short term he would need to find a landed estate by other means. Before long a profitable marriage presented itself in the person of Maud, only child and heiress presumptive of the Dorset landowner Robert Lovell, who was well known to Sir Humphrey Stafford from their shared parliamentary service for Dorset in May 1421 and 1422. It is indeed possible that it was in the course of one of these parliamentary sessions that the two men agreed on the match, which had been solemnised within a few months of the dissolution of the Parliament of 1422.

Sir Richard now settled down in his native county, and before long began to take over some of his father’s public duties. In 1423 and 1425 he was returned to the Commons as knight of the shire for Dorset, taking the seat that his father had filled in all Parliaments but one since 1417. While sitting in the first of his two Parliaments Stafford was pricked sheriff of the double-bailiwick of Somerset and Dorset, thus serving out much of his parliamentary term in factual, if not literal, contravention of the statutory prohibition of the return of sheriffs. Sir Richard’s sudden substitution for his father in public life caught some men unawares, and even the clerk compiling the pipe roll for 1424 erroneously substituted Sir Humphrey’s name for that of his son at the head of the year’s account.11 E372/269, rot. 31. The correct name is given on rot. 32d. Without doubt Stafford would have found it difficult to attend to his parliamentary duties while administering two counties on the King’s behalf, and it is, if anything, surprising, that there is only limited evidence of litigation arising from his negligence in office.12 E13/136, rot. 9d. Equally, the Crown was apparently content with his conduct, for just days before Stafford should once more have set out for Westminster to attend his second Parliament, Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, died of the plague in Ireland, and Sir Richard was commissioned to assist the escheator of Dorset in the momentous task of taking the inquisiton post mortem and seizing the earl’s vast estates into the King’s hands. The two men were assigned the substantial sum of £40 for their expenses,13 E403/671, m. 16; C139/18/32. but Stafford rewarded himself still further by securing a grant of the custody of two of the earl’s manors, Gussage ‘Bohun’ and Marshwood, during the minority of Mortimer’s heir, the young duke of York, as well as a similar grant of the manor of Crofton which had escheated about the same time on the death of Sir Hugh Courtenay† of Haccombe.14 E159/203, commissiones Trin. rot. 1; CFR, xv. 119-20.

Nevertheless, Sir Richard was not yet ready to settle down for good to the management of his estates, and in the summer of 1426 he once more set out for France, this time in the retinue of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, with a personal following of 39 men-at-arms and 150 archers. With this contingent, Stafford was assigned to the garrison of St. James de Beuvron on the Breton border, under the captaincy of Sir Thomas Rempston†. They had not been established there for long when a Breton army, said to consist of 20,000 men, but probably much smaller, laid siege to the fortified town. The Bretons’ initial assault was successfully deflected by the 900 defenders, English and Norman, and 400 of the assailants were killed. The following night, Rempston, Stafford, and their fellow leaders made a daring sortie with a small party of men, burnt two mills around which 300 of the besiegers were encamped and killed between 60 and 80 of them. Eventually, after a final assault, in the course of which the Bretons had incurred heavy losses and Duke Arthur of Brittany had himself been wounded in the thigh, the French abandoned the siege. They withdrew in some disarray, leaving their guns and tents, and hotly pursued by a detachment of the defenders who claimed to have killed a further 2,500 men in the rout. The victory celebrations were made memorable by the 600 pipes of wine, as well as flour, bread, figs, raisins, eggs, butter and a large quantity of fish, which the Bretons had left behind.15 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 187; H.L. Ratcliffe, ‘Military Expenditure of English Crown 1422-35’ (Oxf. Univ. M.Litt. thesis, 1979), 21-22; CPR, 1422-9, p. 362; E403/675, mm. 12, 15; C76/108, m. 3; E404/42/310; DKR, xlviii. 243; Gt. Chron. London ed. Thomas and Thornley, 149; Chron. London 1089-1483 ed. Nicolas, 167; English Suits Parlement of Paris (Cam. Soc. ser. 4, xxvi), 302.

It is uncertain whether Stafford was wounded in the fighting, but he appears not to have returned to England from this expedition. The precise date of his death is unknown, but he was dead by the autumn of 1427, when his executors (John Newburgh I*, Hugh Deverell, Henry Sherard* and the clerk Henry Blakemore) were being sued by the Crown for the arrears of an annuity which Stafford had failed to pay to Sir Henry Brounflete when sheriff of Somerset and Dorset three years earlier.16 E13/138, rot. 2d. He was survived by his widow, Maud, who within a year had married John, Lord Mautravers (d.1435), de jure earl of Arundel and afterwards duke of Touraine, for whom she bore a son in January 1429. She survived her second husband by less than a year and was buried in Abbotsbury abbey, where her first husband was probably also laid to rest, in line with his family’s tradition.17 CP, i. 248; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 633. At the time of the earl of March’s death, Mautravers had been found to be the rightful owner of the manor of Marshwood, but his title had been set aside when Stafford acquired its custody: CIPM, xxii. 486. Stafford’s daughter and sole heiress, Avice (1423-57), only about four years old when he died, married James Butler (1420-61), later earl of Wiltshire and Ormond. They had no surviving issue and at her death her heir was her first cousin Humphrey Stafford II*.18 C139/89/68; 164/16; CP, x. 127-8.