Sir Humphrey Stafford, 1st Earl of Devon, 1st Baron Stafford of Southwick (ca. 143917 August 1469) was a dominant magnate in South West England in the mid-15th century, and a participant in the Wars of the Roses. A distant relative of the Earls of Stafford, Humphrey Stafford became the greatest landowner in the county of Dorset through fortunes of inheritance. Later, Stafford was one of several men promoted rapidly through the nobility by King Edward IV, to fill the power vacuum left by dead or forfeit Lancastrians. In the West Country it was particularly the forfeitures of the Lancastrian Courtenay family that benefited Stafford. In 1469 he received the Courtenay title of Earl of Devon.
Stafford held the comital title for only three months. In July he was sent north to quell a rebellion instigated by the discontented Earl of Warwick. Even though he escaped the disastrous Battle of Edgcote, he was lynched by a mob at Bridgwater on 17 August 1469. Considered an overambitious man by many, Stafford was nevertheless a capable administrator, who enjoyed the absolute confidence of the king.
Family background
The Staffords of Hooke in Dorset and Southwick in Wiltshire were a cadet branch of the Earls of Stafford and later Dukes of Buckingham. Stafford's grandfather was Sir Humphrey Stafford, called "of the silver hand" (d. 1442). His heir was a grandsonyet another Humphrey Staffordwho died childless in 1461. This left Stafford, the future Earl of Devon, heir to the family lands, the greatest part of which was in Dorset and the rest mostly in Somerset and Wiltshire (including Southwick Court). Stafford's father, William Stafford (d.1450), was already dead by this time, having fallen victim to Jack Cade's Rebellion on 18 June 1450. William's uncle, and Stafford's grand uncle, was John Stafford, Archbishop of Canterbury (1443–1452).
The inheritance of these family lands made Stafford the greatest landowner in the county of Dorset. Through his mother Katherine, he was also heir to the possessions of her father John Chidiock, another major south-western landowner. At some pointdefinitely after 21 June 1450he married Isabel, daughter of Sir John Barre of Herefordshire.
Service to the House of York
In the late 1450s, Stafford might have been in the service of his distant relative John Stafford, Earl of Wiltshire, son of Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. His association with James Touchet, Baron Audleyone of Wiltshire's menimplies so. If so, this represented a short episode of loyalty to the House of Lancaster over the House of York in the ongoing civil war. In 1460 the two were sent to Guînes to relieve the English garrison there. Bad weather forced them into the harbour of Calais, which was held by the Yorkist leader Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. Here they were both recruited for the Yorkist cause.
Stafford took part in the Battle of Mortimer's Cross, where the Yorkist forces under Edward, Earl of March, won a major victory on 2 February 1461. After the Battle of Towton on 29 March that year, Stafford was knighted by Edward, who had by now been pronounced King Edward IV after the deposition of Henry VI. Later that same year, on 26 July, he received a summons to Parliament for the first time, as Lord Stafford of Southwick. Over the course of the following years, the king granted him numerous lands and offices. In 1461 he was appointed steward of the Duchy of Cornwall and constable of Bristol, and in 1462 he received the greater part of the Devon estates of Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who had been captured at Towton and executed. In 1464 he was made keeper of Dartmoor, and in 1467 he was granted more of the Courtenay manors.
Stafford repaid the king's generosity by serving him faithfully as a local commissioner, in a part of the country that had up until that point been fiercely Lancastrian. Throughout the 1460s he presided at Quarter Sessions and other courts all over the West Country. His activities were not limited to legal commissions; in 1461–2 he performed military service against the Scots, and in 1468 he conducted diplomacy with Brittany. In 1469 he was admitted to the Royal Council, and served on the commission that convicted Henry Courtenay, Thomas Courtenay's brother, for treason. According to the chronicler John Warkworth, Henry's downfall was due to the machinations of Stafford, who was rewarded with further land and created Earl of Devon on 17 May 1469. However, the king himself took great interest in the trial against Courtenay, and it is more reasonable to see the decision as a result of Edward's need for a loyal agent in the region.