Humphrey Stafford

Sir Humphrey Stafford (c. 1379 – 27 May 1442) "With the Silver Hand", of Hooke in Dorset and of Southwick in the parish of North Bradley in Wiltshire was a member of the English gentry in the south west of England, where he was a Member of Parliament multiple times and an important royal official. Early life and marriage Son and heir of Sir Humphrey Stafford (died 1413), he had been knighted by 1397. Some time before then he had married Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of Sir John Maltravers of Hooke, Dorset. Elizabeth's mother, also called Elizabeth, had already wed Humphrey's father, and the younger Elizabeth was intended to marry John, Lord Lovell, but the king, Richard II, forbade the match. The newly-weds received the manor of Perton, Staffordshire as a residence from Humphrey's father, where they lived until 1413 (when both Humphrey's father and Elizabeth's mother died within a fortnight of each other). As his grandmother was a daughter of the first earl of Stafford, he was cousin to the current duke of Buckingham, Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham. Within a few years, Stafford the younger had become involved in an old property dispute with the Erdswick family; by 1406 he was elected M.P. for Staffordshire; and a year later he participated in that county's parliamentary elections. Military career and the 'silver hand' At some point – Professor J. S. Roskell has suggested due to "a bellicose engagement" – Stafford lost a hand and used a prosthesis; the antiquarian William Dugdale later called him "Humphrey Stafford with the Silver Hand." Although the date of this occurrence is unknown, he was an active soldier at the turn of the fifteenth century; there were, therefore, plenty of opportunities for him to have lost a limb. He served as a Lancer for the Earl of Stafford, and in January 1400 he joined his uncle Ralph Stafford in suppressing the Epiphany Rising against the new king, King Henry IV. He took part in the English invasion of Scotland later that summer, and by 1403 had been retained by the Prince of Wales. Present at the Battle of Shrewsbury, he fought with the Prince in a party of 'four esquires and 100 archers.' Possibly as a result of this service, he was granted an annuity by Henry in 1406, and Humphrey continued serving Henry in Wales in the long campaign against Owain Glyndŵr's rebellion, for instance taking part in the siege of Aberystwyth in 1407.