Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham

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Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, by an unknown artist, 1520, at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham (3 February 1478 – 17 May 1521) was an English nobleman. He was the son of the 2nd Duke of Buckingham and the former Lady Catherine Woodville, daughter of the 1st Earl Rivers and sister-in-law of King Edward IV.

Stafford was born at Brecknock Castle in Wales. His father was attainted and executed for rebelling against King Richard III when Stafford was five. When King Henry VII ascended the throne, the attainder was reversed and the wardship of the young Duke of Buckingham was given to the King's mother, the Countess of Richmond and Derby. (A reason for the reverse of the attainder may be that Buckingham was a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth, the King's wife.) As a young man, Buckingham was made a Knight of the Garter (1495), and had various ceremonial roles at the Royal Court. This continued in an even grander way with the accession of King Henry VIII: Buckingham was Lord High Steward at the King's coronation in 1509, where he also carried the King's crown, and in 1514 he became Lord High Constable.^[1]

Buckingham fell out dramatically with the King in 1510, when he discovered that the King was having an affair with the Countess of Huntingdon, the Duke's sister and wife of the 1st Earl of Huntingdon. She was taken to a convent sixty miles away. There are some suggestions that the affair continued until 1513.

Yet the real power in King Henry VIII's court was not with the great nobles but with low-born men such as Cardinal Wolsey. Buckingham, with his royal blood and numerous connections by descent or marriage with the rest of the aristocracy, became a leader of the disaffected nobles. The ever-suspicious King personally examined various witnesses, and had Buckingham arrested in 1521. The charges, such as that Buckingham had listened to prophecies regarding when the King would die, are generally considered to be trumped-up. It was once maintained that Wolsey was behind the matter, but there is no hard evidence for this.

Buckingham was tried before a panel of 17 peers, but with the King's mind already decided, conviction was certain, and he was executed on Tower Hill. He was posthumously attainted by Act of Parliament on 31 July 1523.

Buckingham married Lady Alianore (Eleanor) Percy, daughter of the 4th Earl of Northumberland. They had four children:

1. Henry Stafford, 1st Baron Stafford, who later recovered some of the forfeited estates.
2. Elizabeth, who married the 3rd Duke of Norfolk
3. Catherine, who married the 4th Earl of Westmorland
4. Mary, who married the 5th Baron Bergavenny

[edit] In Fiction

• In the Showtime series The Tudors (2007), he is portrayed by Steven Waddington.

[edit] References