A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE 



In the retinue of Richard Earl of Warwick were Humphrey Stafford, 

 William Burmyngham, Richard Curson, Humphry and Edmund Lowe, 

 Thomas and Edmund Swynarton, men-at-arms. 



With Sir William Bourchier were Sir Roger Aston and John Hampton 

 of Stourton ; with Lord Talbot was Robert Erdeswick ; and William 

 Trussell served with the Duke of Gloucester. 



In 1421 Humphrey, then Earl of Stafford, was retained by indenture 

 to serve the king in France, on the rupture of the Treaty of Troyes, with 

 nine men-at-arms besides himself, and thirty mounted archers, taking for 

 himself 6s. %d. per day, for the rest of his men-at-arms twelve pence, 

 and for his archers sixpence, 176 and supposing his men-at-arms were esquires, 

 the scale of pay was the same as in the year of Crecy. In addition to their 

 pay they were to have all prisoners they might take, except kings and 

 kings' sons. In 1435 the number of his followers was more in accordance 

 with his power and wealth ; he was retained to serve the king with 80 

 knights and 523 archers. 



In 1453 the English were finally expelled from Southern France, and 

 in this year the quota of archers demanded from Staffordshire was 173, 

 Derbyshire sending 141, and Gloucestershire 424. 



Commissioners were to be sent into every shire, except Cheshire, to 

 assign the number of these soldiers which each hundred, city, borough, 

 township, village, and hamlet should be charged with, whose inhabitants were 

 to be compelled by distress, if necessary, to provide them. The archers were 

 to be ' ready sufficiently and defensibly arrayed as belongeth to an archer,' 

 to take sixpence a day as pay, and to serve six months from the time of their 

 appearance. 177 



In the Wars of the Roses, which we have now reached, the main 

 strength of the Yorkists lay in the south and east, while the north was 

 Lancastrian. To a great extent the wars were merely a series of faction 

 fights, fought out by the heads of the great families and their retainers, during 

 which the greater part of the commonalty went on with their daily business, 

 but the great mass of the people were in favour of the Yorkists for 

 the plain reason that the triumph of that party would give them the order 

 and settled government under which that daily business might be carried on. 



Staffordshire was mainly Lancastrian. The Duchy of Lancaster had 

 been merged in the crown on the accession of Henry IV, and Henry VI 

 had granted it to Margaret of Anjou as part of her dower. Tutbury was 

 the chief seat of the duchy, and most of the manors in the northern and 

 eastern parts of the county were held under it. Moreover, the greatest 

 landowner in the county, and perhaps in England, Humphrey, first Duke of 

 Buckingham, was at first a Lancastrian, and so were the gentry who held 

 under him ; but there were several of the great families on the Yorkist 

 side, Wrottesley, Audley, Blount, Stanley, Sutton, Wolseley. 



The Duke of Buckingham was the son of Edmund Earl of Stafford who 

 was killed at Shrewsbury, and Anne the daughter, and eventually sole heiress, 

 of Thomas Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of Edward III. When only 

 twenty-eight he was, in 1430, made constable of France, and in 1440 was 

 created Duke of Buckingham. 



176 Dugdale, Baronage (ed. 1675), i, 165. m Rot. Par!. (Rec. Com.), v, 232. 



242 



