Humphrey Stafford (died 1413)

Sir Humphrey Stafford,(c. 1341 – 31 October 1413), of Southwick, Wiltshire; Hooke, Dorset; and Bramshall, Staffordshire, was a member of the fifteenth-century English gentry.

He held royal offices firstly in the county of his birth, and later in the west country, particularly Devon and Dorset,[2] and has been called 'one of the wealthiest commoners in England' of the period.

[5] Prior to his long parliamentary career, he was primarily a soldier of the crown, generally retained in the armies of the Earls of Stafford, campaigning in France (in 1359), Ireland (1361), and Flanders (1373).

It was at this time – in a possibly related incident – that members of the Cornish gentry conspired to assassinate him, eventually managing to shoot him 'with a certain engine called a "gunne" so that his life was despaired of.

Stafford also left an illegitimate son, John, by one Emma, of North Bradley; he was the subject of a Papal dispensation in 1408, rose through the ranks of the Roman Catholic Church, and eventually became Bishop of Bath and Wells, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Chancellor of England.