Thomas Stafford (Author)

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Sir Thomas Stafford (December 1577 , † before February 20, 1655 ) was an English nobleman, military man and politician. He was also the author of the work Hibernia Pacata , published in London in 1633, which tells the story of Sir George Carew's campaign in southern Ireland from 1601 to 1603 against the Spaniards and insurgent Irish under Hugh O'Neill .

origin

Thomas Stafford was likely an illegitimate son of the politician and military officer George Carew. All that is known of his mother is that she came from the Cavannagh family and was the widow of a man named Stafford. George Carew had only one daughter from his marriage who died before him. Stafford probably grew up in the household of his alleged father and followed him to Ireland when he served there as a military and senior civil servant in the 1580s.

Service as military and courtier

As early as 1593, the young Stafford was elected MP for the Borough of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in the English general election. He probably owed this choice to Walter Raleigh , an influential friend of his father's. In the House of Commons , however, Stafford is mentioned only once as a participant in a conference on March 1, 1593. When his alleged father became Lord President of Munster , Ireland during the Nine Years War from 1600 , Stafford served as captain of a cavalry unit until 1604. After 1603 Carew returned to England, was ennobled and received offices in the household of Queen Anna . This enabled him to accommodate Stafford as a gentleman usher of the Privy Chamber in the Queen's entourage. Stafford was knighted on October 6, 1611 and became Comptroller of the Queen's Household in 1618 until she died in 1619.

Political activity

On the recommendation of his friend Sir Robert Killigrew , whose widow he later married, Stafford was elected in the general election in 1621 as MP for the Borough of Helston in Cornwall . In the House of Commons, however, he again hardly appeared. In 1623 he was commissioned with Sir Francis Godolphin to review the mining activities of the politician Hugh Myddelton in Cardiganshire . In the general election in 1624, Stafford was elected as a member of Parliament for Bodmin through the mediation of Killigrew , but again he hardly participated in the committee work. After the parliamentary session in 1625 had been adjourned, the old, but still influential Carew procured him again a command as captain in Ireland in January 1625, whereupon Stafford translated to Ireland on April 10th. A little later he returned to England to attend the funeral of King James I on May 24, 1625 instead of the sick Carew . In the general elections in 1625 and 1626, however, he no longer ran, so that he could not support his father when his activities as a friend of the unpopular Duke of Buckingham were examined by the House of Commons in 1626. After Carew's death in 1629, he inherited an annual pension of £ 500, Carew's London home, and estates in Essex , Devon and Cornwall. To this end he took over the duties of Master of the Ordnance from Carew until 1634 , although this office was never officially assigned to him because of his illegitimate birth. To this end, he founded a company for draining the Fens in Lincolnshire with his stepson Sir William Killigrew and his friend Francis Godolphin in the 1630s .

George Carew's grave in Stratford-upon-Avon, where Stafford was also buried

Another courtier service, last years and death

Since 1627 at the latest, Stafford had been part of Queen Henrietta Maria's entourage . After King Charles I's attempt to arrest five unpopular members of parliament in January 1642 , Stafford accompanied the Queen into exile in the Netherlands before June 8, 1642 . There he served as the queen's treasurer, which was a great burden for him. Presumably he returned to England with the Queen in 1643, but was no longer given any offices or duties because of his age. Following Parliament's victory in the English Civil War , he was to pay a £ 1000 fine as a supporter of the King, which was finally waived in January 1651.

Stafford had married Mary, the widow of Sir Robert Killigrew and daughter of Sir Henry Woodhouse, after February 4, 1636. The marriage remained childless. He made his will on August 25, 1653, which was opened to his widow on February 20, 1655. He was buried in the grave of his alleged father in the parish church of Stratford-on-Avon . He bequeathed his London house, which he had inherited from Carew, to his wife and his step-daughter, Elizabeth Killigrew, his estate in Ireland.

The Battle of Kinsale 1601. Illustration from Hibernia Pacata 1633

Writing activity

Carew had left all the records and books to Stafford when he died in 1629. The record, known as Carew MSS (Carew Manuscripts), consisted of 72 tomes, which included printed books and several maps. On the basis of these papers, Stafford wrote the chronological work Pacata Hibernia on the Nine Years War in Ireland, which was published in 1633. Today 39 volumes are in the Lambeth Palace Library , while four volumes are in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

The full title of Stafford's work Hibernia Pacata read:

Pacata Hibernia. : Ireland appeased and reduced. Or, an historie of the late vvarres of Ireland, especially within the province of Mounster, vnder the government of Sir George Carew, Knight, then Lord President of that province, and afterwards Lord Carevv of Clopton, and Earle of Totnes, & c. VVherein the siedge of Kinsale, the defeat of the Earle of Tyrone, and his armie; the expulsion and sending home of Don Iuan de Aguila, the Spanish general, with his forces; and many other remarkeable passages of that time are related. Illustrated with seventeene severall mappes, for the better understanding of the storie.

The imprint read: London: Printed by Aug: Mathevves for Robert Milbourne, at the signe of the Gray-hound in Pauls Church-yard, 1633.

The work was later reprinted several times, including an edition of the Irish writer, journalist and historian Standish James O'Grady (1846-1926) in 1896 . With the new edition of this work, O'Grady underlines his thesis that the Irish would have liked to join the troops of Sir George Carew and the viceroy Lord Mountjoy, appointed by Queen Elizabeth I , in order to drive out the hated clan chiefs.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ MR James: The Carew Manuscripts. In: The English Historical Review. Vol. 42, no. 166, April 1927, pp. 261-267, JSTOR 551681 .
  2. ^ Robert Welch, Bruce Stewart: The Oxford companion to Irish literature. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1996, ISBN 0-19-866158-4 , p. 464.
personal data
SURNAME Stafford, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stafford, Sir Thomas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English nobleman, military man and politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 1577
DATE OF DEATH before February 20, 1655