nothing to lean to but the king's grace’ (Rot. Parl. v. 347). In April 1457 Buckingham was with the court at Hereford, and a year later accompanied the queen to London for the famous ‘loveday’ between the two rival parties (Paston Letters, i. 416, 426). He remained loyal on the reopening of the struggle in 1459, and in the February following received a grant in recognition of his services against the rebels in Kent (Fœdera, xi. 443). A few months later he sent away the bishops, who appeared with an armed retinue just before the battle of Northampton (10 July 1460) to demand a royal audience for the Yorkist peers. ‘Ye come,’ said Buckingham, ‘not as bishops to treat for peace, but as men of arms’ (English Chron. ed. Davies, p. 96). In the combat that ensued he was slain by the Kentish men beside the king's tent (ib. p. 97). His remains were laid in the church of the Greyfriars at Northampton (Dugdale, i. 166). In his will he left gifts to the canons of Maxstoke (Maxstoke Castle in Warwickshire being a favourite residence) and to the college of Pleshey in Essex, which he had inherited from Thomas of Gloucester (ib.) He was perhaps the greatest landowner in England; his estates lay all over central England, from Holderness to Brecknock, and from Stafford to Tunbridge.
A portrait at Penshurst has no claim to be a likeness; it was painted by Lucas Cornelisz [q. v.] under Henry VIII, as one of a series representing constables of Queenborough (cf. Walpole, Letters, ed. Cunningham, ii. 302). Probably more trustworthy is the head on the tomb of Richard Beauchamp (d. 1454) at Warwick, engraved in Doyle's ‘Official Baronage.’
Buckingham married Anne, daughter of Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland [q. v.] She was godmother of the unfortunate Prince Edward (Henry VI's son), and did not die until 20 Sept. 1480, surviving a second husband, Walter Blount, lord Mountjoy (Rot. Parl. vi. 128; English Chron. ed. Davies, p. 109; Testamenta Vetusta, p. 356). By her Buckingham had seven sons (four of whom died young) and five daughters. Of the sons who reached manhood, Humphrey was ‘gretly hurt’ in the battle of St. Albans (1455), and died not long after (Paston Letters, i. 333; Rot. Parl. v. 308), leaving by his wife Margaret, daughter of Edmund Beaufort, second duke of Somerset [q. v.], a son, Henry Stafford, second duke of Buckingham [q. v.] Henry, apparently the second son of the first duke, married, before 1464, the better known Margaret Beaufort, daughter of John, first duke of Somerset, and mother of Henry VII by her first husband, Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond; he died in 1481 (Stafford MSS. vol. i. f. 346b; Test. Vet. p. 324; cf. State Papers, Venetian, i. 103). The first duke's third surviving son was John, K.G. and earl of Wiltshire, who died 8 May 1473.
The five daughters were: 1. Anne, who married, first, Aubrey de Vere, heir-apparent of the Lancastrian earl of Oxford, who was executed with his father in 1462; secondly, Sir Thomas Cobham of Sterborough (d. 1471); she died in 1472. 2. Joanna, married, before 1461, to William, viscount Beaumont, from whom she was separated before 1477, and married, secondly, Sir William Knyvet of Buckenham in Norfolk; she was living in 1480. 3. Elizabeth. 4. Margaret. 5. Catherine, married, before 1467, to John Talbot, third earl of Shrewsbury (d. 1473); she died 26 Dec. 1476.
About 1450 there was some talk of marrying one of Buckingham's daughters, probably the eldest, to the dauphin, afterwards Louis XI (Beaucourt, Hist. de Charles VII, v. 137).
[Many details of the Stafford family history are contained in Lord Bagot's Stafford MSS. described in Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. App. pp. 325 et seq. See also Rotuli Parliamentorum; Proceedings and Ordinances of Privy Council, ed. Nicolas; Inquisitiones post mortem (Record Comm.) and Rymer's Fœdera (orig. ed.); Issue Roll of the Exchequer, ed. Devon; Gesta Henrici V (English Hist. Soc.); Chron. of London and Fabyan's Chron., ed. Ellis; Wavrin's Chron. and Stevenson's Wars in France (Rolls Ser.); English Chron., ed. Davies (Camden Soc.); Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris and Paris pendant la Domination Anglaise, publ. by the Société de l'Histoire de Paris; Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner; Nicolas's Testamenta Vetusta; Dugdale's Baronage; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage.]
STAFFORD, HUMPHREY, Earl of Devon (1439–1469), born in 1439, was only son of William Stafford of Hooke, Dorset, and Southwick, Hampshire, by his wife Catherine (d. 1480), daughter of Sir John Chediock. The family came originally from Staffordshire, and was a branch of that to which the Dukes of Buckingham and Barons Stafford belonged. Humphrey's great-grandfather, Sir Humphrey Stafford (d. 1413), of Hooke and Southwick, was father of Humphrey's grandfather, also Sir Humphrey Stafford, called ‘of the silver hand,’ and also of John Stafford, archbishop of Canterbury. But the latter's legitimacy has been questioned, although he is usually described as the earl of Devon's great-uncle (see pedigree in Hutchins's Dorset, ii. 179). On his father's death, 28 Oct. 1449, he succeeded to his estates, being then ten years old, and in 1461 he succeeded to those of his cousin Humphrey, son of Sir John Stafford. He early adopted the Yorkist cause, and fought at the battle of Towton on 29 March 1461, being knighted by Edward IV on the field.
