DURING the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the
Staffords, though never Lords of the Manor of
Eyam, owned the greater part of that and the
neighbouring townships, besides other lands in the counties
of Derby, Buckingham and Hertford. Several genealogists have
attempted to construct a pedigree of the family, and have
evidently found it an extremely difficult task. More than one
have made suggestions and statements as curious as they are
impossible; no statements should ever be made in a family history
without evidence. A careful study of this, now collected and
published for the first time, will prove many of these suggestions
to be untrue. What has been written in The Reliquary[1] and
other publications has for the most part been derived from
the Wolley manuscripts[2], which are erroneous in many
important points. The Wolley charters, however, which, being
originals, are, of course, trustworthy, have been extensively
used in this article, as have also the transcripts from the
Haddon charters made by the late Mr. Wm. Carrington, of
Bakewell, who most kindly put them at the disposal of the
writer. The references to these will be found in the footnotes.
But it is upon the writer's own family[3] deeds that he has
mainly relied. These deeds, together with many of the lands
[Page 262]
to which they refer, descend straight from the Staffords and
Lynfords to the Bradshaws, through whom the deeds were
transmitted to their present owner, and that they now form the main
body of evidence for this history, which may thus be fairly
assumed to be unassailable in its main points. These latter
references are all specially numbered with Roman numerals in
the footnotes.
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[Created 5 Mar 2001. Last updated 30 Dec 2007 - 13:41 by Rosemary Lockie]