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 POLITICAL HISTORY Ferrers family forfeited their estates after Evesham, the male line of the Earls of Chester came to an end with John Scot the last earl, and the Paynels in 1194 handed on their estates through a woman. In England, as a whole, between 1290 and the opening of the Wars of the Roses, many more great houses of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had vanished ; and those wars exterminated so many noble families that by the time of Henry VII their power and wealth were concentrated in a few hands. Stafford, Nevill, Percy, Howard, and Berkeley, were the chief of these. Edward Stafford, the third Duke of Buckingham, had received back his father's lands on the accession of Henry VII, with whom he was high in favour, and this royal favour he retained at the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. He accompanied Henry to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, 'fitting himself 212 with more splendour than any other nobleman.' The state he maintained was almost regal. But he was too great a man by descent, wealth, wide estates, and connexions to be allowed to live by his king. He was brother-in-law of the Earl of Northumberland ; his three daughters had married the Earl of Surrey afterwards Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Westmorland, and Lord Aber- gavenny, and his son had married Ursula, sister of Cardinal Pole, grandson of George Duke of Clarence. He was the mouthpiece of the old nobility for expressing their hatred of the upstart Wolsey, and it was to Wolsey he was betrayed. The charges against him when brought to trial were that he had listened to prophecies of the king's death and his own succession, and had expressed an intention to assassinate the king, a frivolous accusation, and probably untrue, but sufficient to get so dangerous a subject out of the way, and he was beheaded on Tower Hill, 17 May, 1521. On hearing of his death Charles V is said to have exclaimed, ' A butcher's dog has killed the finest buck in England.' 213 The history of this illustrious house had of late been marked by a long list of calamities, the last four heads of the house had all met violent deaths as well as the eldest son of the first duke, and with the third duke the magnificence of the house departed for ever. His son Henry received back some of the family estates in Staffordshire and elsewhere, and in 1531 he was granted the castle and manor of Stafford. 21 * In Edward VI's first Parliament he was member with Richard Forssett for the borough of Stafford, 215 and by that Parliament he was restored in blood and made Baron Stafford. This barony devolved at last upon Roger, who sold the dignity to Charles I for 8oo. 215a New names were now arising in Staffordshire, as all over England, and old ones springing into greater prominence, and from the family of Dudley came men who had a decided influence on the history of their country, an influence which does not redound to their credit. Edmund Dudley, who with Empson is notorious for filling the coffers of Henry VII, was a representative of a younger branch of the Suttons of Dudley Castle, and was rewarded by Henry VIII for the vast stores of 112 Dugdale, Baronage (ed. 1675), i, 170. 11 Ibid. ; Burke, Extinct Peerage, Stafford ; Rupert Simms, Bibliotheca StaforJiensis ; Diet. Nat. Biog. 114 Dugdale, Baronage (ed. 1675), i, 170. " 5 Part. Accts. and Papers, Ixii (i), 376. I15a G.E.C. Peerage, vii, 214. 247