I. - RICHARD DE STAFFORD is the first member of this
family on record. It has not hitherto been found possible to connect
him with the great baronial family, ancestors of the Dukes of
Buckingham, who took their name from the important capital and
castle of the neighbouring county, in which their chief possessions
were situated. Considering the date at which apparently he
suddenly springs into existence, he would, if related in any
degree, be either a son or a very near relation of Nicholas,
second Baron de Stafford. But although there is evidence of
some armorial identification, it is quite possible that the two
families were distinct. The Staffords of Botham, near Glossop,
County Derby, however, who bore the same arms as the Staffords
of Eyam, with a mullet for a difference, almost certainly
sprung from the Baronial stock. Judde Stafford, of Botham,
the first in the Visit. of 1662, formed one of the Jury in
a Bradshaw suit, 1499.[4] The document on which is based
the existence of Richard de Stafford as a landowner of
Eyam is without date, but was probably executed soon after
his death, early in the reign of Henry III. That which
warrants the assertion that he was the progenitor of a long
line of landed proprietors, whose acres grew by means of their
marriages, was printed in the Derbyshire Archaeological
Journal for 1901, vol. xxiii., under the title, "Proceedings
taken in Winster Church regarding the consanguinity of the
parties to the marriage of two of the Staffords of Eyam, 1308".
The original, in the possession of the writer, a fac-simile of which
forms the frontispiece of that volume, has proved most valuable
to the genealogist, as it supplies a pedigree of no less than five
[Page 263]
generations, dating from the time of King John. As the
proceedings in Winster Church took place in 1308, a rough
calculation, giving an allowance of thirty years to each generation,
would warrant the supposition that the said Richard de Stafford
was living in Eyam about the year 1200. Who he was, from
whence he came, as well as when he died, are still matters for
conjecture. That he had two sons, Richard and Ingram, by his
wife, Matilda, is ascertained from the manuscript[5] before
alluded to, from which the following pedigree is obtained:-
Thus we see that Richard was the heir, and that Ingram, the
second son, had issue (i.) one son, Richard, whose daughter
married and was the mother of one Eustace de Leam; and (ii.) a
daughter, Lecia, who married John de Eyam, and whose son,
Richard de Eyam, was father of Isabella, and that it was her
marriage with Richard de Stafford, jun., which was the subject
of the proceedings of 1308.
Top
[Created 5 Mar 2001. Last updated 30 Dec 2007 - 13:43 by Rosemary Lockie]