POLITICAL HISTORY 



Ferrers family forfeited their estates after Evesham, the male line of the Earls 

 of Chester came to an end with John Scot the last earl, and the Paynels in 

 1194 handed on their estates through a woman. In England, as a whole, 

 between 1290 and the opening of the Wars of the Roses, many more great 

 houses of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had vanished ; and those wars 

 exterminated so many noble families that by the time of Henry VII their 

 power and wealth were concentrated in a few hands. Stafford, Nevill, Percy, 

 Howard, and Berkeley, were the chief of these. Edward Stafford, the third 

 Duke of Buckingham, had received back his father's lands on the accession of 

 Henry VII, with whom he was high in favour, and this royal favour he 

 retained at the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. He accompanied 

 Henry to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, 'fitting himself 212 with more 

 splendour than any other nobleman.' The state he maintained was almost 

 regal. But he was too great a man by descent, wealth, wide estates, and 

 connexions to be allowed to live by his king. He was brother-in-law of the 

 Earl of Northumberland ; his three daughters had married the Earl of Surrey 

 afterwards Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Westmorland, and Lord Aber- 

 gavenny, and his son had married Ursula, sister of Cardinal Pole, grandson of 

 George Duke of Clarence. 



He was the mouthpiece of the old nobility for expressing their hatred 

 of the upstart Wolsey, and it was to Wolsey he was betrayed. The charges 

 against him when brought to trial were that he had listened to prophecies of 

 the king's death and his own succession, and had expressed an intention 

 to assassinate the king, a frivolous accusation, and probably untrue, but 

 sufficient to get so dangerous a subject out of the way, and he was 

 beheaded on Tower Hill, 17 May, 1521. On hearing of his death 

 Charles V is said to have exclaimed, ' A butcher's dog has killed the finest 

 buck in England.' 213 



The history of this illustrious house had of late been marked by a long 

 list of calamities, the last four heads of the house had all met violent deaths 

 as well as the eldest son of the first duke, and with the third duke the 

 magnificence of the house departed for ever. His son Henry received back 

 some of the family estates in Staffordshire and elsewhere, and in 1531 he 

 was granted the castle and manor of Stafford. 21 * In Edward VI's first 

 Parliament he was member with Richard Forssett for the borough of 

 Stafford, 215 and by that Parliament he was restored in blood and made Baron 

 Stafford. This barony devolved at last upon Roger, who sold the dignity to 

 Charles I for 8oo. 215a 



New names were now arising in Staffordshire, as all over England, and 

 old ones springing into greater prominence, and from the family of Dudley 

 came men who had a decided influence on the history of their country, an 

 influence which does not redound to their credit. 



Edmund Dudley, who with Empson is notorious for filling the coffers of 

 Henry VII, was a representative of a younger branch of the Suttons of 

 Dudley Castle, and was rewarded by Henry VIII for the vast stores of 



112 Dugdale, Baronage (ed. 1675), i, 170. 

 11 Ibid. ; Burke, Extinct Peerage, Stafford ; Rupert Simms, Bibliotheca StaforJiensis ; Diet. Nat. Biog. 



114 Dugdale, Baronage (ed. 1675), i, 170. 

 " 5 Part. Accts. and Papers, Ixii (i), 376. 

 I15a G.E.C. Peerage, vii, 214. 



247 



