Sir Robert Staunford in the reign of Elizabeth I

"Robert Staunford wanted to keep out of the limelight in view of his father's strong Catholic allegiances, and the Lancastrian north was more Catholic in outlook than the Protestant south. So Handsworth provided the family with a political safe haven providing they did nothing to disturb the rustic peace ..."

Elizabeth herself was only twenty-five when she succeeded her half-sister to the throne, and few sovereigns could have had a more hazardous inheritance. Yet [she] not only survived, but bound the country together to the common cause and invoked an extraordinary loyalty between her subjects on both sides of the religious divide....

Sir William Staunford's family were, however, staunchly Catholic, and consequently were out of favour although deeply loyal to the throne. When Sir William died in 1558, [his son] Robert had not yet reached the age of maturity, but found himself the inheritor of considerable wealth, with property at Hadley and in Staffordshire at Perry Barr and Handsworth, which his father had bought from Lord Paget....

Some time before Sir William Staunford's death in 1558, his family were using Perry Hall as their main place of residence for longer and longer periods of the year. When Lady Alice remarried, the old family house at Hadley was sold to the newly-weds, and the Staunfords moved back to Staffordshire permanently. This was probably a wise move politically. Robert Staunford, now just twenty-one, wanted to keep out of the limelight in view of his father's strong Catholic allegiances, and the Lancastrian north was more Catholic in outlook than the Protestant south. So Perry Hall and Handsworth provided the family with a political safe haven providing that they did nothing to disturb their rustic peace.

Lady Alice's marriage to young Roger Carew in 1560 coincided with the return of Mary Queen of Scots from France to her native country, her husband, the young Francis II of France, having died that same year. Mary's return upset the delicate balance between the religious factions in Scotland, which were made infinitely worse by her two disastrous marriages, firstly to her weak and conceited cousin, Lord Darnley, then to her husband's murderer, the Earl of Bothwell. Civil war broke out and, after a brief imprisonment, Mary escaped to seek refuge with Elizabeth in England.

Mary now became the focus of plots by northern Catholics to assassinate Elizabeth, but Cecil's spy-master, Francis Walsingham, unmasked the traitors, and a rising in the north in 1569 petered out before the rebels could take any decisive action.

Mary was confined in a succession of castles in the midlands for the next nineteen years under comfortable conditions of house-arrest, and treated with all the ceremony due to a queen. But her want of liberty merely whetted her desire for revenge and gave her an insatiable ambition to seize Elizabeth's throne. Three attempts were made to rescue her, and each one was thwarted by Walsingham's vigilance, until, finally, he devised a method of tapping Mary's correspondence, which, in 1586, revealed conclusively that Mary was actively plotting to assassinate Elizabeth. Walsingham now had the proof he needed to bring Mary to trial.

It was unfortunate that the chief instigator of the plot was a young Catholic gentleman called Anthony Babington who bore the same name as Anthony Babington of Tinmore, the husband of Joyce Stanford, William Stanford of Rowley's youngest sister, who had died at Lichfield twenty years earlier. The Stanfords of Rowley had lived under a faint cloud of suspicion ever since Mary Queen of Scots had fled to England. Indeed, William himself had moved to Handsworth at the time of the failure of the northern rebellion in 1569 to avoid being implicated, and had taken up residence in a house on his young cousin's large estate. His half brother, Roger Stanford, Thomas' illegitimate son, followed him to Handsworth at about the same time for the same reason....

It is interesting to speculate why Handsworth should have been thought to be a safe haven during this troubled period. The answer probably lies in the marriage between Robert Staunford, the heir to the great Catholic judge's vast estates, and Anne Leveson, the daughter of Sir Richard Leveson of Lilleshall, Co. Salop, Kt. and sister of Sir Walter Leveson, the father of another Sir Richard Leveson, a staunch Protestant loyalist who, in 1604, became Vice-Admiral of the English fleet. Under Anne's influence, Robert Staunford softened his Catholic views and became a firm supporter of the Protestant Queen, no doubt providing the exchequer with substantial sums of money. Robert also had powerful friends at Court. His sister, Margaret, was married to Richard Astley, Master of the Queen's Jewel House; and his cousin Edward Stanford's wife, Jane, had an uncle who was coferer to the Queen herself. Undoubtedly Robert Staunford was considered by Walsingham to be 'sound', although Catholic at heart, untainted by rebel associations and, despite his cousin's wrongful identification with the traitor Babington, his extended family at Handsworth could be trusted. So as the Rowley estates contracted and eventually were given up when William Stanford's grandson, William, the surviving son of Edward and Jane Stanford, married and moved to Packington, what was left of Rowley was transferred by Edward, the Earl of Stafford, to Robert Staunford just before the latter's death in 1607....

Robert Staunford, himself, in his latter years divided his time between his country house at Perry Barr and London. On the accession of James I, Elizabeth's nephew, he was one of the three hundred knights dubbed at Whitehall after the Coronation ceremonies on 23rd July 1603....

Not Found Wanting, pp.96-99, abridged

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