The Stafford Family Collection

Records of the Stafford Family, Earls of Stafford, Dukes of Buckingham; Jerningham and Fitzherbert Families, Barons Stafford

Major collection with substantial medieval content, including accounts and manor court rolls for manors in Staffs.,Glos., Hants and Wilts., 14th-16th century, Household accounts, 14th-16th century

The documents

The Reverend Frith sorted the information he had extracted about the different rolls and bundles of documents under the family concern. Two large loose leaf binders and various card indexes reflect this work. When the documents themselves were received, their order did not reflect the classification by the Reverend Frith, though of course they may have been "muddled up" in the years 1940 - 60. In addition, particularly for the medieval Stafford part of the collection but also for some other documents as well he made extensive typed extracts which have been used successfuly by non-Latinists among readers.

However in some sections of the catalogue, particularly Sulyard and Fitzherbert he did not finish numbering and describing the contents of the bundles and to make matters worse in some places where the bundles had been numbered and described he had started to rearrange the contents, but left the work unfinished.

On receipt in the County Record Office the documents were arranged under families, making extensive use of the Reverend Frith's notes to assist this, as outlined in the tabulation below. Undoubtedly wrong attributions were made and some of these errors may have escaped detection when the collection was listed in detail, as the various sections have been listed by different archivists over a period of over twenty years. The nature of the documents during a given period has meant that the date which separates two different families predominance in the collection is not always reflected precisely in the division between the different sections of the catalogue.

D641/1 The medieval Staffords, Earls Stafford, Dukes of Buckingham to c.1560 - 80.

D641/2 The Stafford-Howards, 1640 - 1762 but containing 16th and early 17th century documents which though found loose, when sorted came together in small groups and many of these may have been assembled for legal/administrative purposes at a later date after 1640.

D641/3 Stafford-Jerningham; in addition to papers relating to the period when the Stafford-Jerninghams owned the Stafford family estates, there is a collection of family papers relating to the Jerningham family from the middle ages.

D641/4 Sulyard; a group of family papers from the medieval period until the later 18th century when Frances Sulyard married Sir George Jerningham.

D641/5 Fitzherbert; the earlier records of this family who succeeded to the barony in 1913; there are no documents relating to the Stafford family estate among their records.

D641/6 Unattributable documents

The general framework and nature of the various sections of the catalogue is as follows:

D641/1 Medieval Stafford family; there are no surviving original deeds, but very large numbers of records of estate administration, both financial and manorial together with some household records. As mentioned above this section comes to an end c.1560-80.

D641/2 Stafford-Howard; this is a scrappy section and the documents sparse in comparison with the other papers in this catalogue. Unlike the documents in D641/1 there were few series of accounts and court rolls; the individual papers were nearly all found loose and, as mentioned above, where there were papers before the Stafford-Howard family succeeded to the properties and titles of the Stafford family in 1640, a noticeable proportion of these would seem to have been assembled with later documents in connection with legal disputes.

The Howard family appear to have brought property in Shifnal which was added to the property in the vicinity of Stafford and remained with it into the days of Stafford-Jerningham ownership.

The Thornbury property of the former Stafford family was sold in 1727.

D641/3 Jerningham; this is a normal family collection with personal papers as well as documents of estate administration from the medieval period onwards.

D641/4 Sulyard; this is a normal family collection, like that of the Jerninghams, with deeds and documents of estate administration.

D641/5 Fitzherbert; a family collection but the survivals are very patchy. There are few good runs of estate administration papers and very little of the medieval period even for deeds, but the family correspondence is nevertheless quite substantial.

Deposited by the Rt. Hon. The Lord Stafford

Swynnerton

1961

The pre-history of the collection

All the papers were transferred from the Fitzherbert family home at Swynnerton Hall direct to the County Record Office.

By 1960 the documents were kept in the estate office in five or six large wooden chests in an empty room on the first floor of the estate office; few items came from the files of the estate office proper.

Early work on the documents

The Anglican vicar of Swynnerton for much of the period 1920 - 40 was the Reverend J. B. Frith. His extensive work on and sorting of documents produced a large group of antiquarian papers now in the William Salt Library (D1850). He identified, "classified", listed, numbered, but did not sort into any coherent order, a large proportion of the documents in the collection. The documents remained more or less as he left them in 1938 or so until their deposit in the County Record Office some twenty years later.

It is curious that in all his notes that he made on the documents, he does not seem to have written anything about how they were arranged when he found them nor anything about the earlier history of the documents themselves.

The shape of the collection

There are introductions to the individual sections of the catalogue (q.v.).

The discontinuity of the collection as a whole reflects a discontinuity in the make-up of the estates which produced them due to:

1 The widespread loss of property following the fall of the 3rd Duke of Buckingham in 1521

2 The failure of male heirs on three occasions (c.1640, c.1762, c.1913), combined as this was with descent of the barony of Stafford through the female line (by heirs general). The barony of Stafford is grounded in title by "summons" (technically in 1299) to Parliament and not by creation as is normal with English titles (but see below, where due to forfeiture the title had, in fact, to be recreated on several occasions).

These have meant that the estate has had in the end only one thread of continuity, the ownership by the then head of the family of the Stafford/Castle Church/Bradley estate. The accession of new owners to this property combined with their "loss" of it when the barony of Stafford went to heirs general, at a time when the property of the family itself and any of their titles went to heirs male, has led to the Castle Church etc. property being attached to a wide variety of estates temporarily.

The main periods of family ownership are as follows:

11th cent. - c.1200 Toeni, de Stafford; the heiress married Harvey Bagot but the de Stafford name continued in use (as might be expected at this period).

c.1200 - c.1640 The Stafford family, later Earls Stafford, Dukes of Buckingham (until 1521). descendants of Harvey Bagot and Millicent Stafford.

c.1640 - 1762 (Stafford - ) Howard; the Stafford heiress married William Howard son of the Earl of Arundel.

1762 - 1913 (Stafford - ) Jerningham; Sir George Jerningham married Mary Plowden whose mother, also Mary, had been sister of John Paul, 4th Earl of Stafford.

1913 - to date Emily Stafford Jerningham, only surviving sister of the 4th and 5th Stafford- Jerninghams, Barons Stafford, married Basil Fitzherbert and their son Admiral Edward Fitzherbert succeeded to the title on the death of the 5th Baron.

The descent of the title itself is further complicated by the various attainders which led to the forfeiture of it together with lands belonging to the family particularly those associated with the execution of the 3rd Duke of Buckingham in 1521 and of William Viscount Stafford in 1680. The revival and the terms of revival of the various titles held by the family, complicated as these are by the descent through heirs general, are best studied in the appropriate article in Complete Peerage.

In addition the "rightful" heir male in 1637 was "deemed insufficient" by the Crown and the heir general, married to Sir William Howard, son of the Earl of Arundel, was deemed to be the heir of the title and estate. However the slighted last member of the medieval Stafford family died in 1640 before the issue came to a head.