HENRY (1501-1563), the son of the last duke, was granted by the Crown some of his father's manors for his support, and, espousing the Protestant cause (though married to a daughter of Margaret, countess of Salisbury and sister of Cardinal Pole), was restored in blood on Edward VI.'s accession and declared Lord Stafford, as a new creation, by act of parliament. His second surviving son, Thomas, eventually assumed the royal arms, sailed from Dieppe with two ships in April 1557, landed at Scarborough, seized the castle, and proclaimed himself protector. He was cap tured and executed for high treason. His father's new barony, in 1637, passed to a cadet in humble circumstances, who was called on, as a pauper, to surrender it to the king, which he did (illegally, it is now held) in 1639. The king thereupon bestowed it on Mary Stafford (the heir general of the line) and her husband, William Howard, in whose descendants it is now vested. Roger, who had
surrendered the title, died in 1640, the last heir male, apparently, of the main line of this historic house.
See Dugdale, Baronage (1675), vol. i.; G. E. C(okayne), Complete Peerage; Wrottesley, History of the Family of Bagot (1908) and Crecy and Calais (1898). The important Stafford mss. in Lord Bagot's possession are calendared in the 4th Report on Historical mss., and the Salt Arch. Soc.'s collections for the history of Staffordshire are valuable for early records. Harcourt's His Grace the Steward and the Trial of Peers (1907) should also be consulted. The bishop of Exeter's Register was edited by Hingeston-Randolph in i886. Papers relating to the two Baronies of Stafford (1807), and Campbell's The Stafford Peerage (1818) are useful for the pedigree, and there are collections for a history of the family in Add. mss. (Brit. Mus.).