STAFFORD, Roger (c.1575-1641)

When Henry Stafford, 5th Lord Stafford died childless in August 1637, his barony passed to a distant cousin, Roger Stafford, whose father Richard was a younger son of Henry Stafford^†, 1st Lord Stafford. This branch of the family had fallen on hard times, as Richard was cheated out of his rightful patrimony of £2,000 in cash and a Staffordshire manor. By the mid 1570s he and his wife were living at Malpas, in Cheshire, where Roger himself was born. Richard was outlawed in 1574, presumably for debt, and is said to have died ‘very poor’, sometime after the birth of his daughter Jane in 1581.6 Staffs. Peds. 213; CPR, 1572-5, pp. 109, 205; Gent. Mag. 668-9. Following his death, his widow Mary tried in vain to secure the jointure to which she was legally entitled. Thereafter, until her own death in about 1632, she most likely turned to her relatives for financial support, as she was buried at Brereton, Cheshire, the seat of her half-brother, Sir William Brereton^‡ and his descendants. Given his parents’ hardships, it is little surprise that Stafford himself passed much of his life in obscurity. Indeed, according to an eighteenth-century account, ‘in his youth [he] went by the name of Fludd, or Floyde’. Conceivably he was raised by a man of that name who has been identified as a servant of his uncle, George Corbett.7 Gent. Mag. 668-9; Vis. Cheshire (Harl. Soc. xviii), 42.

By 1637 all contact between Stafford and his paternal family had evidently been lost. After the 5th Lord Stafford died, his property was inherited by his sister Mary, as heir general, but his barony could descend only through the male line, which was widely assumed to be extinct. Two months later, Mary married William Howard^†, younger son of her guardian Thomas Howard^*, 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel, and word soon spread that Charles I intended to revive the Stafford title for William, in the right of his wife.8 Minutes of Evidence before the Cttee. of Privileges: Stafford Peerage Case, 63-7; CP, xii. pt. 1, p. 191; SP16/377/114; Newsletters from the Caroline Ct. 1631-8 ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxvi), 317. That plan abruptly collapsed in November 1637, when Stafford unexpectedly turned up in London and staked his claim to both the barony and the ancestral estates. His arrival caused considerable consternation at court. Writing to Robert Sidney^*, 2nd earl of Leicester, William Hawkins observed: ‘[Stafford] is a man of mean aspect and of poor education, but he standeth so stiffly to his pretended right that a commission is awarded … to examine the matter upon oath’.9 SP16/467/48; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 138. The king certainly took the matter extremely seriously. Ordinarily, in the absence of a Parliament, peerage disputes were referred to arbitration by the earl marshal. However, that office was currently held by Arundel, who could not be considered unbiased in this case. Accordingly, Charles assigned the inquiry to three other highly trusted servants, Henry Montagu^*, 1st earl of Manchester, Edward Sackville^*, 4th earl of Dorset, and Secretary of State Francis Windebank^‡, advising them that ‘a person of so mean a quality should not be suffered to take upon him the name and pretended right to be of so noble and ancient a family, but upon good and apparent grounds’.10 T. Rymer, Foedera, ix. pt. 2, p. 121.

In the event, it took nearly two years to resolve this question. Both Stafford and Howard were required to present legal arguments to justify their respective claims to the barony. How Stafford funded his counsel is unclear, and initially he struggled to produce documentary evidence to establish his identity and the absence of alternative male heirs. Ultimately these points seem to have been settled in his favour. In the meantime Howard pursued a different line of attack, seeking to prove that the peerage was inextricably linked with possession of the feudal, territorial barony of Stafford, to which he enjoyed a clear title through his wife. This strategy foundered because, although the two entities had arguably been inseparable during the medieval period, the peerage had been recreated in 1547, following the attainder of the 1st Lord Stafford’s father, Humphrey Stafford^†, 3rd duke of Buckingham. The act of Parliament which reversed the attainder explicitly vested the peerage in the male line, while allowing for the family’s property to descend to heirs general. Thus at best, Howard could only claim a right to the medieval barony, not the Tudor creation which Stafford was pursuing.11 SP16/377/115-16; 16/537/56; CP, xii. pt. 1, p. 173; Stafford Peerage Case, 58-67.

By the autumn of 1639, stalemate had been reached. The law favoured Stafford’s claim, but the would-be baron entirely lacked the property and breeding necessary to support the dignity of a peerage, a circumstance entirely unacceptable to the king, who remained intent on advancing Howard. Accordingly, on the spurious ground that the wording of the 1547 Act was ambiguous, Charles ordered both Stafford and Howard to surrender their claims to his judgment. By way of compensation, Stafford was offered a £100 pension for life, to be provided by the earl of Arundel. Having no real choice in the matter, Stafford accepted these terms, and formally resigned his right to the barony in December 1639. He then confirmed the deal with a fine and recovery in the court of Common Pleas, the standard procedure for concluding a property sale.12 SP16/467/48; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 53; Stafford Peerage Case, 84-5; CP, xii. pt. 1, p. 188. After a decent interval, Howard was created Lord Stafford in September 1640, and allowed the precedence formerly enjoyed by the 5th baron, a rather pointed royal endorsement of his original claim.13 Stafford Peerage Case, 85-7; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 55.

Strictly speaking, the king was perfectly entitled to demand the surrender of Stafford’s title. However, such a step had not been taken in more than a century, and once the Long Parliament met he faced a backlash in the House of Lords. First, on 6 Nov. 1640, the issue of the new Lord Stafford’s precedence was referred to the committee for privileges, a challenge which Charles quickly sidestepped by advancing Howard to the viscountcy of Stafford.14 CP, iii. 590; LJ, iv. 84b; Stafford Peerage Case, 88-9. Then, in the following February, the Lords resolved that peerages were inalienable, and could not be surrendered to the crown, a decision which effectively upheld Stafford’s claim, and established his status as legitimate 6th baron according to modern conventions. On 26 Feb. the peers also began inquiries into the legality of his Common Pleas fine, before the matter was dropped due to the press of other business.15 LJ, iv. 150a, 172b.

Meanwhile, Stafford himself had once more retired to the country. There is no substance to the tradition that he was kept a virtual prisoner by Arundel until his death, to ensure that he remained childless.16 Staffs. Peds. 213; In reality, he was living at Smallwood, Cheshire when he died in June 1641, having never sat in Parliament. Stafford’s will indicates that he enjoyed the patronage of his kinsman Sir William Brereton^‡ of Handforth, Cheshire, who had supplied him with a horse. He was also receiving regular financial support from the ‘elder Lady Brereton’, perhaps an arrangement pre-dating his pension, assuming that Arundel kept up the payments. Although he claimed the privileged status of ‘esquire’, he had few possessions. The inventory taken after his death listed clothing, some simple table wares, a fowling piece and fishing net, a sword, and a ‘trunk … with divers writings’. He may well have been living with his widowed sister, Jane Maiowe, who was appointed his executor. At his own request, Stafford was buried in the churchyard at Brereton, not far from his mother’s grave.17 Cheshire Archives, WS 1641; P138/1/1; Vis. Cheshire (Harl. Soc. xviii), 36-7; Vis. Cheshire (Harl. Soc. lix), 28-9.