The Chetwynd murders in Rugeley: but did Dorothy strangle her husband, and was she burned at the stake?

Brocton Hall, between Rugeley and Stafford … home to generations of the Chetwynd family of Rugeley

Patrick Comerford

In my visits to Rugeley and Brereton in Staffordshire over the past week or two I heard again the stories of a number of murders or supposed murders in the area from the 16th to the 19th centuries, including a murder on the canal, the murderous spree of a local doctor who became known as the ‘Poisoner of Rugeley’, and the story of two sisters said to have been buried alive by Cromwell.

I came across these stories of intrigue and plotting, murder and supposed murder, once again in the churchyards of old Saint Augustine’s, the ‘Old Chancel’, and the new Saint Augustine’s, its 19th century successor.

But a story that truly caught my imagination is one that has tangential links with the Comberford family, a drama with links with two women called Dorothy Chetwynd – one the granddaughter of William Comberford of the Moat House, Tamworth, the other a young 16th century teenage ‘beauty’ who, according to local lore, was burned at the stake for murdering a husband three times her age, although all the historic evidence denies there was ever such a murder or such a grizzly execution.

I first became aware of this gruesome story through links provided by Dorothy Comberford, a daughter of William Comberford (1551-1625) of Comberford Hall, who entertained Charles I, as Prince Charles at the Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth, in 1619. She married Walter Coleman of Cannock, a partner with the Comberford family in iron ore and mining interests in Wednesbury.

And so, I came across some family links with Rugeley: Dorothy’s youngest half-sister, Anne Comberford, was born in 1609, and in 1634, she married Benjamin Rugeley, who was closely related to the Rugeley family of Hawkesyard in Armitage.

Dorothy (Comberford) and Walter Coleman were the parents of two sons and two daughters, and their elder daughter Dorothy married Thomas Chetwynd (died 1633) of Rugeley, ancestor of the Chetwynd baronets. It was this marriage that introduced me to the supposed story of the Chetwynd murder.

Before all this, there was an earlier murder in the Chetwynd family: Thomas Chetwynd’s immediate ancestor, William Chetwynd of Ingestre, a courtier and one-time Master of the Guild at Lichfield, was murdered in 1494. A rival courtier, Sir Humphrey Stanley of Elford, the Sheriff of Stafford, had set the trap and was clearly responsible but was never brought to trial or punished.

William Chetwynd’s son, another William Chetwynd (d 1546), married Elizabeth Ferrers, a daughter of Sir John Ferrers of Tamworth Castle, and they were the parents of Thomas Chetwynd (d 1555) of Ingestre, who was 16 when he married Jane Salter. They, in turn, were the parents of three sons and three daughters.

The eldest of these six children, John Chetwynd (d 1592), was the Sheriff of Staffordshire. His first wife was Mary Meverell, the daughter of Ludovic Meverell of Bold; his second wife was Margery Middlemore of Edgbaston, Warwickshire. It was John’s son, Thomas Chetwynd of Rugeley, who married Dorothy Coleman, a granddaughter of William Comberford of the Moat House in Tamworth.

The youngest of William Chetwynd’s six children was Dorothy Chetwynd, an aunt of Thomas Chetwynd who married Dorothy Coleman. And it is this aunt who is said in many accounts to have murdered her husband, Sir Walter Smyth (1501-1526), and to have been burned at the stake for the murder 27 years later on Wolvey Heath on 15 May 1553.

Dorothy Chetwynd was not the first nor was she the second wife of Sir Walter Smyth of Elford, six miles from Comberford in Staffordshire. In 1505, Smyth married his first wife Anne Staunton. They were the parents of one daughter, Margery, who married her step-brother, Richard Huddleston, the younger son of Walter’s second wife, Lady Isabel Neville.

Lady Isabel Neville was a daughter of John Neville, Marquess of Montagu, and a niece of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the ‘Kingmaker’. She was twice married: her first husband was William Huddleston of Millom, Cumberland, and they were the parents of two sons, Sir John Huddleston and Richard Huddleston.

Isabel then married Sir Walter Smyth of Elford in what was the second marriage for both partners. When Isabel died in 1516, she was buried at Elford, and Walter soon married his third wife, Dorothy Chetwynd. In what may have been a source of gossip in the day, Dorothy was only 16 or 17 when she married Walter Smyth, and he was 50 – although Dugdale says that at 50 he was an aged man, he was certainly more than three times her age and 33 or 34 years older than her.

Walter Smyth first met young Dorothy when he was trying to arrange a marriage for his son and heir, Richard. He approached Thomas Chetwynd of Ingestre, who was willing to endow Dorothy with a dowry of £500. But when old Walter set eyes on young Dorothy, he was captivated by her beauty and became a suitor himself. The odd couple were quickly married, and young Richard had to seek another bride.

Dorothy was regarded as one of the beauties of her day. But Dorothy and Walter did not live happily ever after. It is said that soon after the marriage her affections wandered after younger men, especially William Robinson, a 22-year-old from Drayton Basset, and began plotting to get rid of her husband. She induced her housemaid and a stable groom to help her and Robinson in a scheme to strangle Walter in bed.

On the night of the planned murder in 1525, Robinson failed to show up, but Dorothy went ahead with her plans. She waited until her husband was asleep, and then let the maid and the groom into the room. Dorothy tied a long towel about the sleeping man’s neck, got the groom to lie on him to keep him from struggling, and then she and the maid strangled Walter until he stopped breathing. As he was being strangled, Walter woke and cried out his last words, ‘Help, Doll, help!’

Once he was dead, they carried Walter into another room and sat him upright on a stool before the maid and groom tip-toed out of. Only then did Dorothy raise the alarm, wringing her hands, pulling her hair out, and weeping and wailing. She told the others in the house that she had noticed Walter was not in bed and when she went looking for him she found him dead and sitting up.

Sir Walter Smyth was buried in Saint Peter’s Church, Elford, with his first two wives, Annie Staunton and Lady Isabella Neville. But his third wife, Dorothy Chetwynd, is not named on the elaborate alabaster monument, nor is she buried there.

The effigies in Elford of Sir Walter Smyth and his first two wives, Anne Staunton and Lady Isabella Neville, in Elford … but what happened to his third wife? (Photograph Mike Searle, 2015, CCL licence)

Some years after the supposed murder, the former groom told the story to Walter’s son, Richard Smyth. The groom was taken prisoner to Warwick, where he was joined by the housemaid and William Robinson. They confessed to the deadly deed and were executed in Warwick.

Eventually, it is said, Dorothy was arrested, convicted, sentenced to death and burnt at the stake on Wolvey Heath, five miles from Nuneaton – according to local lore retold as historical fact by the historian William Dugdale. It was 1555, 30 years after her husband’s death or murder and the same year her father Thomas Chetwynd died.

Dugdale says the source for his account of the murder of Sir Walter Smyth was a letter from Sir John Smyth, a grandson of Sir Walter Smyth, and a son of Richard Smyth, Dorothy’s first intended husband. But the contents of the letter amount to little more than a detailed but second-hand account of the groom’s confession to Richard Smyth, and all this was denied by the groom and the maid at their trial in Warwick.

The story later provided the plot for an historical novel by the Revd BW Gibsone, a former Vicar of Wolvey. But Gibsone admitted that Dugdale’s story is mostly apocryphal, and he suggested that Dorothy was burnt – if, at all, she was burnt to death – for heresy rather than murder.

Sir William Dugdale (1605-1686) wrote his History of Warwickshire in 1656, a full century after Dorothy’s supposed trial and execution. There are no primary sources or contemporary records of her trial or for her execution.

If the Smyths had set up a charge of heresy when they were unable to substantiate the accusation of murder, there is no record of that either in the several lists that became sources for Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Foxe makes no mention of the case and there is no contemporary evidence for the charges against her, her trial and conviction, or of her being burned to death at the stake.

Perhaps the story of Dorothy Chetwynd’s crime and conviction was the one final and successful revenge by Richard Smyth wreaked on his young beautiful step-mother who had spurned him for his twice-widowed ageing father.

The descendants of the Chetwynd family continued to live in the Rugeley and Lichfield area for many generations after and derived their wealth chiefly derived from the iron industry. Dorothy’s nephew Thomas Chetwynd and his wife Dorothy, granddaughter of William Comberford, were the parents of William Chetwynd (1628-1691) of Rugeley, MP for Stafford from 1661 and wrongly described as a ‘burgess for Lichfield’.

Dorothy and Thomas Chetwynd were also the great-grandparents of Walter Chetwynd (1680-1732) of Rugeley, MP for Lichfield, who was impoverished when he died before taking up an appointment as the Governor of Barbados. Other descendants of this branch of the Chetwynd family (and descendants of the Comberford family too), the Chetwynd baronets, lived for generations at Brocton Hall, half-way between Rugeley and Stafford, until 1923.

A second branch of the Chetwynd family in the Rugeley area lived at Ingestre Hall

A second branch of the Chetwynd family in the area lived at Ingestre Hall, between Stafford and Rugeley, and they derived their wealth from coalmining and the collieries they owned in Rugeley, Brereton and Cannock. Ingestre Hall also gave them one of their titles.

Their wealth and estates eventually passed by marriage to the Talbot or Chetwynd-Talbot family, who held the title of Earl Talbot and eventually succeeded as Earls of Shrewsbury.

They were the heirs and successors of the Chetwynd family, they provided the site for both Saint Michael’s Church and the Red Lion pub in Brereton, and they gave their name to a pub in Rugeley that has been known variously as the Talbot Arms, the Shrewsbury Arms and more recently ‘The Shrew’. It had to change its name because of the embarrassing associations with a more infamous and actual 19th century murderer, the ‘Rugeley Poisoner’, Dr William Palmer.

But more in the days to come, perhaps, about Walter Chetwynd, who never became Governor of Barbados and who was pursued even after his death by gruesome debt collectors. And more too of Dr Palmer and some of those other murders and supposed murders.

Saint Michael’s Church, Brereton … the site was provided by Earl Talbot almost 200 years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Bedlam in Lichfield: how Comberford descendants continued for generations in the Heveningham family

Pipe Hall near Lichfield … once home of the Heveningham family (Photograph © Pipe Green Trust)

Patrick Comerford

I was writing at the weekend about William Stanley (1474-1552) of Comberford Hall, between Lichfield and Tamworth, and how I came across his will in the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford, where it is part of the Weld Family Papers, including papers of the Stanley, Heveningham, Simeon, Weld and Eyre families, dating from 1293 to 1809.

William Stanley was the second son of Sir Humphrey Stanley of Pipe Hall and Dame Ellen Lee. He came to live at Comberford Hall when he married the much younger Margaret Comberford (1494-1568), daughter of Thomas Comberford of Comberford and Dorothy FitzHerbert. She was a sister of Humphrey Comberford of Comberford Hall and Master of the Guild of Saint Mary and Saint John the Baptist in 1530; Richard Comberford, the putative ancestor of the Comerfords of Kilkenny and Wexford; Henry Comberford, Precentor of Lichfield Cathedral; and John Comberford of Wednesbury.

William and Margaret had probably married late in life, when he was in his late 50s and she was in her 30s, and they were the parents of an only daughter Dorothy Stanley (1530-1587), who married her cousin Christopher Heveningham (1540-1574) of Pipe Hall. Yet, despite this late marriage and having only one child, the descendants of William Stanley and Margaret Comberford continued to live in the Lichfield area for many generations and for centuries long after they died.

The lines of descent from William and Margaret are tangled, confusing and difficult to unravel. But they tell tales of failed court battles to recover family estates at Pipe, near Lichfield; the intrigues of a schemer who had his wife’s cousins locked up in the Bethlehem Asylum, the original Bedlam in London; illegitimate children written out of their aunt’s will; and the spiralling decline into poverty of descendants of a once landed family who became leather workers and tailors in Lichfield, and fell into oblivion in subsequent generations, eventually employed as low-paid housemaids in the Cathedral Close.

These are stories of recusancy in the Elizabethan and Jacobean era, of royalists who lost their estates, of a soldier’s lost children brought from Ireland to live in Lichfield, and of young men who went into exile in the West Indies, Jamaica and Virginia. These are stories of downward social mobility, but they also show how the descendants of the Comberford family in the Stanley, Heveningham and Wakelin families, persisted in living in the Lichfield area for 350 years or more after the death of William Stanley of Comberford Hall.

Comberford Hall, east of Lichfield and north of Tamworth … William Stanley was living at Comberford when he made his will in 1552 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

William Stanley and Margaret Comberford had probably married late in life, when he was in his late 50s and she was in her 30s, and they were the parents of an only daughter Dorothy.

Dorothy Stanley (1530-1587) married her cousin Christopher Heveningham (1540-1574), daughter of Mary Moyle and Erasmus Heveningham. Dorothy and Christopher were the parents of Dorothy Heveningham and Sir Walter Heveningham, of Aston and Pipe, and the descendants of these lines of the Stanley and Comberford families continued to live in the Lichfield area for many generations.

The Heveningham family in Staffordshire is traced back to Erasmus Heveningham of the manor of Aston in Staffordshire and his wife Mary Moyle. Erasmus came to Staffordshire from Ketteringham in Norfolk and he inherited by marriage the Staffordshire estates of Sir John Stanley of Pipe, her maternal grandfather.

Their only child was:

Christopher Heveningham, acquired in 1565 from John Stanley and Jane his wife, a 300-acre estate at Clifton Camvile. He died in 1574, but made no will. He married Dororthy, daughter and only child of William Stanley of Comberford Hall. William Stanley was a brother of John Stanley, father of Isabel, whose daughter Mary Moyle married Erasmus Heveningham – meaning Christopher married his grandmother’s first cousin.

Dorothy’s mother, Margaret Comberford , wife of William Stanley, was a daughter of Thomas Comberford of Comberford and his wife Dorothy, daughter of Ralph Fitzherbert of Norbury, Derbyshire.

Dorothy was named in 1581 as one of ‘the most obstinate and dangerous recusants’ in Staffordshire. She paid a fine of £10 a year for herself and her ‘servant’ Katherine Comberford in 1586, when they faced legal penalties for their recusancy. Katherine Comberford was a close family relation, for Dorothy’s mother (Margaret, wife of William Stanley) was a daughter of Thomas Comberford of Comberford and Dorothy (Fitzherbert) of Norbury.

John Comberford of Wednesbury, in his will dated 23 April 1559, left to ‘Cristall Hennyngham’ a black damask gown and left monetary bequests to his sister Margaret Stanley and his niece Dorothy Heveningham.

Dorothy and Christopher Heveningham were the parents of:

1, Walter Heveningham, of whom next.
2, William Heveningham.
3, Erasmus Heveningham.
4, Mary, married Anthony Fitzherbert, strengthening the links with the Comberford family.
5, Dorothy married (as his second wife) Sir Henry Townsend of Count, Shropshire.

The eldest son of Dorothy and Christopher Heveningham:

Sir Walter Heveningham (ca 1552-1636), of Pipe, was about 11 when his father died. He was the High Sheriff of Staffordshire (1609). He married Anne Fitzherbert of Norbury, strengthening the ties of kinship with the Comberford family. He died in 1636. They were the parents of an only son and three daughters:

1, Nicholas Heveningham, only son, of whom next.
2, Mary, who married (1) Richard Brereton of Malpas, Cheshire; and (2) Sylvester Plunket.
3, Margaret, born 1591, married Christopher Horton of Catton, Derbyshire, in Lichfield Cathedral in 1610.
4, Elizabeth.

The only son of Sir Walter Heveningham and Anne Fitzherbert was:

Nicholas Heveningham (ca 1583-1627). He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and died on 20 December 1627. He married Elizabeth Bowes, a descendant of the Stanley family of Elford, and they were the parents of three sons:

1, Walter Heveningham (1609-1691), born at Pipe Hall near Lichfield in 1609. He was a Roman Catholic, and was a royalist during the Civil War. He died in Aston, November 1691. He married Mary Middlemore of Edgbaston, also from a Royalist and Recusant family. They had no sons as male heirs, but had two daughters:

• 1a, Mary (1646-1694) married Walter Fowler, and had no children.
• 2a, Bridget, the eventual sole heiress, married Sir James Simeon, who retained Pipe Hall and the Heveningham estates near Lichfield in the face of bitter legal disputes that eventually brought about the financial and social ruin of the Heveningham family. Bridget and James Simeon were the parents of three children: Sir Edward Simeon, 2nd Baronet; Sir James Simeon, 3rd Baronet; and Margaret, who married Humphrey Weld of Lulworth Castle, Dorset. The estates of Aston and Pipe Hall then passed to the Weld family.
2, Simon Heveningham (ca 1617-1699), of whom next.
3, Christopher Heveningham, of Pipe, educated at Trinity College, Oxford (BA 1632, MA 1635). He fought as a royalist during the civil war, and died unmarried.

The ‘Site of the First Bethlehem Hospital 1247-1676’ near Liverpool Street Station, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The second son of Elizabeth (Bowes) and Nicholas Heveningham:

Simon Heveningham (ca 1617-1699) was born ca 1617. Unlike the Puritan and Whig Heveninghams of Suffolk, the Staffordshire branch were Cavaliers, and mostly ‘Recusants’. Pipe Hall was plundered by Roundhead soldiers about the time that Heveningham Church was desecrated by Puritan fanatics. Simon married Katherine Alport and they were the parents of three sons and a daughter:

1, John Heveningham, born after 1658; died 1689-1691 in the Bethlehem Asylum (Bedlam), London.
2, Henry Heveningham, born after 1658; died 25 November 1701 in the Bethlehem Asylum (Bedlam), London.
3, Christopher Heveningham (1658-1737), of whom next.
4, Dorothy, living unmarried in 1691.

The three brothers, John, Henry and Christopher, were educated abroad as Roman Catholics. When they returned to England, Sir James Simeon, who had married their first cousin Bridget, had John and Henry committed to the Bethlehem Asylum or Bedlam, London, to prevent them claiming the Heveningham estate that his wife had inherited. John died within a few weeks and Henry died 10 or 12 years later. Simeon also sent the third brother Christopher to the West Indies, where he remained many years and was said to be dead.

However, Christopher returned to England and conformed to the Church of England. This third son of Simon Heveningham was:

Christopher Heveningham (1658-1737). He was born in Lichfield ca 1658, and along with his two older brothers, was educated abroad as a Roman Catholic. After returning to England, he settled in Lichfield and his name is found in the poll-books of Lichfield down to 1718. He married Mary Brooke, only daughter and heir of William Brooke of Elford in Meryvale Church, near Atherstone, on 28 November 1692. She too was descended from the Stanley family of Elford.

Christopher Heveningham dissipated his wife’s fortune in his legal attempts to recover the Heveningham estates from the Simeon family. Shortly before their marriage, on 11 and 12 November 1692, Mary Brooke mortgaged The Holms and other lands attached to Elford Mills, to Samuel White of Middleton, Warwickshire, as security for repaying £63 on 13 November 1694.

Within five years, in a deed dated 15 April 1699, Samuel White’s interest was transferred to William Lovelace of Clifton Campville. In this deed, Christopher Heveningham is described as late of Elford, now of Burton upon Trent, and Mary his wife as daughter and heir of the late William Brooke, late of Haselour, Staffordshire, nephew and heir of John Brooke of Harleston, Staffordshire.

In a final deed, dated 10 May 1700, Isaac Hawkins of Burton upon Trent and William Lovelace assign their interest in the property mortgaged by Christopher and Mary Heveningham, including the Holms, Elford Mills and other lands in Elford, to John Goldsmith of Lichfield, milliner, and Ellinor his wife. By then, Christopher Heveningham was living in Lichfield.

The Johnson memorial in Saint Michael’s, Lichfield … Christopher Heveningham was a juror at the trial of Michael Johnson in 1718 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Christopher and his son Henry were on the panel from which the jury was selected in 1718 for the trial in Lichfield of Michael Johnson, father of Samuel Johnson, although only Christopher was selected.

He has been described as ‘a rolling stone’ who wasted his wife’s inheritance in unprofitable litigation, and as consequence his children and their descendants lived in more humble circumstances. He seems to be the ancestor of many Heveningham, Henningham and Wakelin families who continued to live for generations in Lichfield, Wolverhampton and the South Staffordshire and Birmingham areas.

Towards the end of his life, Christopher Heveningham moved to Tenford, near Cheadle, Staffordshire, where he bought a house from Edward Hale. He made his will on 23 November 1737 and it was proved in the Lichfield Diocesan Court on 3 March 1738. The inventory totals £25 6s 11d. His wife Mary had died in 1721 and was buried from Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield, on 4 April 1721.

Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield, at night … many members of the Heveningham family were baptised and buried from here (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Mary and Christopher Heveningham were the parents of five sons and a daughter:

1, Ann Heveningham (1692-1692), born in Elford, and died in infancy in Elford.
2, Henry Heveningham (1693-1748), of Spade Green on Abnall’s Lane, Lichfield, of whom next.
3, Walter Heveningham (1694-1734), fellmonger (leather trade), of Lichfield, born 1695, baptised in Elford 11 January 1695. He died in 1734 and was buried at Saint Michael’s, Lichfield, on 19 June 1734. His will is dated 7 April 1734 and was proved in Lichfield on 7 February 1735.
4, Christopher Heveningham (1698-1748), of whom after his brother Henry.
5, Brooke Heveningham (1700-1703), baptised at Saint Mary’s, Lichfield, on 11 January 1700, buried in June 1703.
6, Henrietta Maria, born Lichfield 170, baptised in Saint Chad’s 11 January 1701. She married (1) John Rumbold of Eccleshall, near Stafford,12 April 1722; (2) William Picken of Eccleshall, 2 July 1732.
7, Brooke Heveningham (1703-1773), of Lichfield and Tenford, near Cheadle. He was born in Lichfield in 1703, and baptised on 1 June 1703 in Saint Mary’s. He was left his father’s personal estate, including the messuage at Tenford. He died in 1773 and was buried on 25 April 1773 at Saint Mary’s.

Elford Hall, the ancestral home of Mary Brooke who married Christopher Heveningham, was demolished in 1964 (Photograph © Lost Heritage/Staffordshire Past Track)

The eldest son of Mary and Christopher Heveningham:

Henry Heveningham (1693-1748) was baptised at Elford on 8 February 1693. He was married three times: (1), Mary Ledward, married in Saint Mary’s, Lichfield, on 13 February 1715, died 1716, buried 23 June 1716 at Saint Michael’s, Lichfield; (2), Dorothy (‘Dorillio’) Walters in Saint Michael’s, Lichfield, on 16 February 1717, died 1734, buried at Saint Michael’s, 20 June 1734; (3), Mary Perry (1693-1768), ca 1730.

At the end of his days, Henry Heveningham was living in Woodhouses, west of Lichfield. Woodhouses, with neighbouring Burntwood and Ediall, was part of Saint Michael’s Parish Lichfield, and Pipe Hall manor house is in Woodhouses. Henry died in 1748 and was buried at Hammerwich on 4 February 1748.

His widow Mary later moved to Highgate, near London, and in her will, dated 7 January 1763, she left all her property to her daughter Mary Heveningham, including seven acres in Saint Michael’s Parish, Lichfield.

Henry’s children seem to have included:

1, John Heveningham.
2, Charles Heveningham (1737-1782), mercer and draper, of Dam Street, Lichfield, of whom later.
3, Thomas Heveningham (ca 1743-1823), mercer and draper, of North Street, Wolverhampton. He was twice married: (1) Elizabeth Reeve in Saint Michael’s, Lichfield, on 11 April 1774; (2) Sara Fleeming in Kingswinford, Staffordshire, on 31 March 1791. He died in Wolverhampton on 23 April 1823, and his widow Sara died in 1833. In all, he was the father of 19 children, and their descendants are scattered widely.

Other sources say Henry was also the father of:

1, Edward Heveningham, who died in 1758 and was buried in Saint Chad’s, Lichfield, 26 August 1758; his only son, also Edward Heveningham, had no children; his daughter Mary was buried at Saint Chad’s on 2 May 1753.
2, John Heveningham, living in 1764, and identified with the father of John Heveingham of Chesterfield County, Virginia, who made his will on 18 December 1809.

The second named son of Mary and Henry Heveningham was:

Charles Heveningham (1737-1782), mercer and draper, of Dam Street, Lichfield. He was born in Lichfield in 1737, and it is said he spent part of his childhood in Pipe Hall. He was a Roman Catholic. He married Mary Robinson in Appleby, Leicestershire, on 6 June 1771. He died in Lichfield and was buried at Saint Michael’s on 6 May 1782; his wife Mary died in 1820, and was buried at Saint Michael’s on 25 October 1820.

Mary (Robinson) and Charles Heveningham were the parents of:

1, Charles Heveningham (1772-1800), born in Lichfield 9 July 1772, died in Jamaica 1800, in the same year as his mother.
2, Elizabeth Heveningham (1774-1823), born in Lichfield 18 August 1774, died 1823. She married in Saint Philip’s Church, Birmingham, ca 1800 to William Warner (1762-1835) of Birmingham and Kitwell Hall, Worcestershire. Their daughter Margaret (1806-1883) was married three times: (1) Robert Jones Parry of Aston; (2) Samuel Banks of Rugeley; (3) Sir John Judkin-Fitzgerald (1787-1860), 2nd Baronet, of Lisheen, Co Tipperary.
3, Henry Heveningham (1776-1807), born Lichfield 7 June 1776, died unmarried in Manchester 1807, buried at Bridgewater Street Wesleyan Chapel on 5 July 1807.
4, Mary Heveningham (1777-1849).
5, John Heveningham ( 1778-1785), buried 10 April 1785 at Saint Michael’s, Lichfield.
6, George Heveningham (1782-1782), died an infant, buried 29 September 1782 in the same grave as his father.

Saint Michael’s Church, Greenhill, Lichfield … many members of the Heveningham family are buried in the churchyard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The third son of Mary and Christopher Heveningham was:

Christopher Heveningham (1698-1748), currier in the leather trade, of Lichfield. He was born in Elford and was baptised on 6 December 1698. He married Mary Saxelby (1694-1744) of Abbot’s Bromley. He lived in Lichfield and his name appears in the poll books in Lichfield in 1721 and 1727.

Mary died in Lichfield in 1744 and was buried at Saint Michael’s on 22 April 1744; Christopher Heveningham died in Lichfield in 1748 and was buried on 28 February 1748 at Saint Michael’s. They seem to have been the parents of three sons and two daughters:

1, Edward Heveningham (1721-1760), born in Lichfield in 1721, and baptised in Saint Mary’s 21 April 1721. He joined the army and some accounts say he moved to America in 1747 and may have descendants living in the US. Other accounts say he married Mary …, and settled with her and their sons Edward and John in the hamlet of Woodhouses west of Lichfield in 1759, a daughter Anne having died in Lichfield in 1758. Edward died in 1760, and was buried at Saint Chad’s on 30 June 1760.
2, Thomas Heveningham, apprenticed to his father Christopher, a currier, and was living after 1754.
3, Joseph Heveningham (1729-1765) of Lichfield, possibly Joseph Henningham who married Mrs Mary Harris in Saint Martin’s Church, Birmingham, on 7 June 1789.
4, Mary (1727-1806), born in Lichfield in 1727 and baptised on 1 March 1727 in Saint Mary’s. She and her sister Arabella later went to live with the Weld family at Lulworth Castle, Dorset. She married the Revd Daniel William Remington, later a canon of Lichfield Cathedral, in Hall Green Chapel, Yardley, Birmingham, on 15 March 1754. She died in Lichfield on 21 February 1806. Her husband was the Vicar of Saint Mary’s, Lichfield, and Sub-Chanter of Lichfield Cathedral.
5, Arabella Heveningham (d 1820) of the Cathedral Close, Lichfield. In her will dated 7 September 1814, she mentions her niece Mary White, and Mary White’s son, Thomas Henry White.

The third child and second son of Mary and Christopher Heveningham was:

Joseph Heveningham (1729-1765), born in Lichfield 1729 and baptised in Saint Mary’s 20 December 1729. Joseph may have followed his elder brother, Edward into the army. He died in Lichfield in 1765. A pencilled note or marginal entry in a Heveningham pedigree in the William Salt Library, Stafford, says he was the father of Arabella Heveningham. Her mother’s name is unknown, no marriage has been found for Joseph, and the 1851 census shows that Arabella was born in Ireland.

Arabella Heveningham (1765-1854), of The Close, Lichfield. She was born in Ireland ca 1764/1765. Both Arabella Heveningham (d 1820) and Canon Edward Remington (d 1832) of Lichfield left legacies to Arabella and her children.

In her will, the elder Arabella Heveningham, who died in 1820, left an annuity for life of £20 16s 0d, paying an income of 8 shillings a week, to Arabella Wakelin (formerly Arabella Heveningham) of Lichfield, widow, and left legacies to her three daughters Mary, Ann and Susanna, and bequests to her sons by Thomas Wakelin.

Bore Street, Lichfield, at night … Arabella and Thomas Wakelin lived on Bore Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The younger Arabella Heveningham married Thomas Wakelin (1770-1802) in 1788, when the Revd Edward Remington officiated at their wedding. Thomas was the son of George Wakelin of Wolverhampton and Susanna White of Stowe, Lichfield. He was a tailor, breeches maker and glover and lived in Bore Street, Lichfield.

Arabella and Thomas Wakelin were the parents of seven children, three sons who received bequests of £5 each and four daughters, of whom three received bequests of £10 each in the will of her aunt Arabella Heveningham:

1, Mary Wakelin, born in Lichfield 1789, baptised Saint Mary’s, 25 October 1789; she married John Burgess in Saint Mary’s, Lichfield, on 18 January 1809.
2, Elizabeth Wakelin, born Lichfield 1791, baptised Saint Mary’s, 3 October 1791, believed to have died young.
3, Francis Thomas Wakelin (1793-1853) of Lichfield, of whom next.
4, Ann Wakelin, born Lichfield 1795, baptised Saint Mary’s, 11 November 1795, she married Philip Thompson in Saint Mary’s, Lichfield, on 24 July 1814.
5,Thomas Wakelin (1798-post 1861), tailor, of Lichfield. Born in Lichfield in 1798, baptised Saint Mary’s 8 April 1798. He was admitted a freeman of Lichfield before William Morgan, Senior Bailiff, Thomas Bown, Master, and John Larkin, Warden, on 13 July 1826. He later lived in Birmingham. He married Sarah Hughes of Tamworth in Saint Martin’s, Birmingham, in 1822, and they were the parents of five daughters and five sons.
6, Susanna Wakelin, born Lichfield 1800, baptised Saint Mary’s, 27 July 1800.
7, Samuel Wakelin born Lichfield 1802, baptised Saint Mary’s, 16 May 1802.

After her husband Thomas Wakelin died in 1802, Arabella (Heveningham) Wakelin was the mother of three further children born between 1806 and 1811. Although their father’s name is not known, she gave them the Wakelin name when they were baptised:

8, Charles Augustus Wakelin, born Lichfield 1806, baptised Saint Michael’s, 18 February, 1806. He may have married Sara Wright.
9, Caroline Wakelin, born Lichfield ca 1808-1811, baptised, Saint Michael’s, 29 August 1811, with her brother Louis.
10, Louis Wakelin (1811-1863) born Lichfield 1811, baptised Saint Michael’s, 29 August 1811, with his sister Caroline. He was married twice: (1) Ann Smith, in Saint George’s, Birmingham, 29 July 1832; (2) Mary Smith, in Birmingham, 27 December 1847. He was living on Stowe Street, Lichfield, in 1851, with his mother.

When Arabella was about 70, she married Sampson Robinson (1776-1850) of the Swan (now Swan Cottage), Blithbury, as his second wife in Mavesyn Ridware, Staffordshire, on 30 June 1835. After he died, she was living with her son Louis and his family in Stowe Street, Lichfield, at the time of the 1851 census, when she says she was born in Ireland. When Arabella died on 4 March 1854, she is described as an Inn Keeper, although it is not known at which inn Arabella was the inn keeper.

The Guildhall, Lichfield … Francis Thomas Wakelin was admitted a Freeman in 1817 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The eldest son of Arabella (Heveningham) and Thomas Wakelin was:

Francis Thomas Wakelin (1793-1853), tailor, of Lichfield. He was born in Lichfield in 1793 and was baptised in Saint Mary’s, Lichfield, on 29 April 1793. Francis inherited £5 from his great aunt, Arabella Heveningham, in 1820, and he inherited £50 from the Revd Edward Remington in 1832.

He an apprentice to Thomas Worrall of Lichfield, a tailor and a freeman of the Company of Tailors, for seven years. He was admitted to the Taylor’s Company, Lichfield, on 24 July 1817, before George Dodson and Dr Francis Sachaverell Darwin, Bailliffs of Lichfield, and Stephen Simpson, Town Clerk. He was a journeyman tailor and lodging at 89 Stowe Street, Lichfield, in 1851. He died in 1853. He married Ann Taylor (1795-1844) in Aston Juxta, Birmingham, on 26 December 1815, and they were the parents of three sons eight daughters, including:

1, Susanna Wakelin (1820-1854), a lady’s maid with the Mott family in the Close, Lichfield. John Mott (1787-1869), who rebuilt No 20 on the Cathedral Close, was Sheriff of Lichfield in 1836 and Mayor of Lichfield in 1850.
2, Francis Wakelin (1822-1889), baptised in Lichfield 6 January 1822, died in Walsall 1889. He married Jane Withnall and they were the parents of Elizabeth (Whitehead), Bertha (Pople) and Herbert Wakelin.
3, Arthur Wakelin (1824-1895), born in Lichfield, 23 September 1824, died 22 August 1895 aged 70 in West Bromwich. He married Mary Ann Wheelwright in Lichfield on 23 September 1848, and they were the parents of Evangeline Maria (Wakelin) Bowerman.
4, Sarah Wakelin (born Lichfield 1831), was a housemaid with the Mott family in the Close, Lichfield.

I am quite sure that through these families there are descendants of the Comberford family who continue to live in the Lichfield area.

The Cathedral Close in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Sources and references include:

The Visitations of Staffordshire and Warwickshire.
Michael Greenslade, Catholic Staffordshire 1500-1850 (Gracewing, 2006).

The Heveningham family tree on Geni (last accessed 21 July 2025).
‘The Heveningham Family of Staffordshire’ (last accessed 21 July 2025).
The St. Leger-May Family Home Page (last accessed 21 July 2025).
‘Townships: Wall with Pipehill’, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14, Lichfield, ed MW Greenslade (London, 1990), pp 283-294. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol14/pp283-294 (last accessed 21 July 2025).
‘Burntwood: Manors, local government and public services’, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14, Lichfield, ed MW Greenslade (London, 1990), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol14/pp205-220 (last accessed 21 July 2025).

Last updates: 14 May 2025 (typographical corrections

A will in the Bodleian in Oxford links Comberford Hall with the Battle of Bosworth Field and Stanley family intrigues

Comberford Hall, east of Lichfield and north of Tamworth … William Stanley was living at Comberford when he made his will in 1552 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I have been in Oxford three times in the space of six or seven weeks for medical tests, surgical procedures and hospital visits, with one overnight stay, and time too for walks by the river, Choral Evensong in Pusey House and browsing in the bookshops.

During some of those visits, I began thinking about the potential for resources in the Bodleian Archives and Manuscripts that might be important sources for my continuing research in genealogy and family history when I came across the will of William Stanley (1474-1552) of Comberford, Staffordshire, made in 1552.

William Stanley’s kinship with King Henry VII, although there was a 20-year age gap, is analagous to that of a third cousin: his father, Sir Humphrey Stanley of Pipe, near Lichfield, was a second cousin of Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby, who married the king’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. William Stanley’s will is held the Bodleian Libraries as part of the Weld Family Papers, including deeds relating to the manors in Staffordshire held by the Stanley, Heveningham, Simeon, Weld and Eyre families, dating from 1293 to 1809.

This collection of papers in Oxford includes deeds, family papers, court rolls, list of charges and even an indulgence granted to Sir John Stanley by Michael Laskeis (?Laskaris), in return for a florin given to Laskeis to help him liberate his family at Constantinople in 1468. Among the wills in this collection in the Bodleian are two wills of Dame Ellen Stanley, widow of Sir Humphrey Stanley of Pipe, near Lichfield, dated 1516 and 1518, and the will of her son William Stanley of Comberford, between Lichfield and Tamworth, made in 1552.

The Bodleian Library, Oxford … a collection includes the wills of Dame Ellen Stanley, widow of Sir Humphrey Stanley of Pipe, near Lichfield, and her son William Stanley of Comberford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I wondered why William Stanley was living at Comberford Hall, and how he was related to one of the most powerful political families in Staffordshire, who were among the kingmakers during the wars of succession now known as the ‘Wars of the Roses’.

The Stanley family rose to political prominence first in Lancashire and Cheshire through Sir John Stanley (I) (ca 1350-1414), a younger son of Sir William de Stanley of Stourton.

John Stanley married Isabel Lathom, despite the opposition of John of Gaunt, and as heiress she brought him great wealth. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on three occasions (1386-1388, 1399-1401, 1413-1414), and was granted the Lordship of Mann or the Isle of Man by Henry IV in 1406, becoming titular King of Mann. He died on 6 June 1414 at Ardee, Co Louth, and was brought back to England and buried in Burscough Priory, Lancashire.

John Stanley and Isabel Lathom were the parents of both Sir John Stanley II (1386-1437), ancestor of the Earls of Derby, and Thomas Stanley (1392-1463), ancestor of the Stanleys of Elford and of William Stanley of Comberford Hall.

The Stanley coat-of-arms (left) in a stained glass window in the Chapter House, Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The eldest son, Sir John Stanley II (1386-1437), was also titular King of Mann. He died on 27 November 1437 in Anglesey, Wales, and was buried in Saint Oswald Churchyard, Winwick, Cheshire. He married Elizabeth Harrington and they were the parents of three sons and two daughters, including: Thomas Stanley (ca 1405-1459), 1st Baron Stanley; Richard Stanley, Archdeacon of Chester (1425–1433); and Edward Stanley, Archdeacon of Chester (1454-1462) – at the time, Chester was part of the Diocese of Lichfield or Coventry and Lichfield.

The eldest son of Sir John Stanley II, Sir Thomas Stanley (1405-1459), was the titular King of Mann, 1st Baron Stanley (1456) and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1431-1436). He died at Knowsley, Lancashire, on 20 February 1459 . John Stanley and Joan Goushill were the parents of three daughters and four sons, including: Thomas Stanley (1435-1504), 1st Earl of Derby; and James Stanley (1478-1485), who was also Archdeacon of Chester when it was still part of the Diocese of Lichfield.

The eldest surviving son, Thomas Stanley (1435-1504), was the 1st Earl of Derby and became the stepfather of King Henry VII. He was the last of the Stanleys to style himself King of Mann. His first wife, Lady Eleanor Neville, was a daughter of Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, a descendant of Edward III and a sister of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (‘Warwick the Kingmaker’), creating a powerful alliance with the House of York. In 1472, when the House of York was back on the throne, he married his second wife, the widowed Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443-1509), whose son, Henry Tudor, later became Henry VII.

Lady Margaret Beaufort married Thomas Stanley in 1472 and founded Christ’s College and Saint John’s College, Cambridge … her coat of arms at the gatehouse of Christ’s College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

After the death of her second husband Sir Henry Stafford, Lady Margaret Beaufort married Thomas Stanley in 1472. She founded both Christ’s College and Saint John’s College in Cambridge, and gives her name to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She was a daughter of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, and had previously married Edmund Tudor (1430-1456), 1st Earl of Richmond and half-brother of Henry VI, and then Sir Henry Stafford (1433-1471), son of the Duke of Buckingham.

Haselour Hall, one of the homes of the Stanley family in Staffordshire, became one of her homes too, and the house played a role in the War of the Roses. The house is within the boundaries of Lichfield District Council, 4.6 km from Comberford and from Comberford Hall, 12 km east of Lichfield and 8.3 km north of Tamworth. Haselour Hall is the house where Thomas Stanley’s son, the future Henry VII, is said to have spent the night before his decisive victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

Henry Tudor, then Earl of Richmond, is said to have spent a night at Haselour Hall, after slipping away from his march from Lichfield to the Battle of Bosworth Field with a small band of his guards before his decisive victory in 1485. While he was visiting his mother, Henry entreated Stanley, his step-father, to join him in battle against Richard III. Stanley, however, refused to choose sides, opting instead to remain neutral for a while longer before making clear his allegiance. This neutrality was so important to the Stanleys, that when Richard kidnapped one of Stanley’s sons to force him to join his ranks, Stanley replied laconically: ‘I have other sons.’

The Battle of Bosworth Field was the last significant battle in the War of the Roses. On the day of the battle, it is said that Stanley watched it unfold from afar, and when Henry defeated Richard III, Stanley rode down the hill from which he was watching, took the defeated king’s crown from his head and used it to crown Henry VII, only then pledging his allegiance to the new king. It was a decisive intervention that brought an end to the War of Roses and put the first of the Tudors on the throne of England.

Thomas Stanley died on 29 July 1504, and was buried in the family chapel in Burscough Priory. His descendants included the subsequent Earls of Derby. When Lady Margaret died on 29 June 1509, she was buried in Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey.

Haselour Hall, one of the homes of the Stanley family in Staffordshire, played a role in the War of the Roses

Meanwhile, the second surviving son of Sir John Stanley who died in 1414 was Thomas Stanley (1392-1463) of Elford. He was Sheriff of Worcestershire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire, and MP for Staffordshire, and he was the ancestor of the Elford branch of the Stanley family, which continued until 1508.

Thomas Stanley acquired the Elford estates through his marriage to Matilda Arderne (1396-1423) of Elford. The most famous member of her family was Sir Thomas Arderne, who fought with the Black Prince at Crecy and Poitiers. Matilda and Thomas Stanley were the parents of a daughter and two sons: Anne Gresley, Sir John Stanley and George Stanley.

The younger son, George Stanley (ca 1440-1509) of Hammerwich, near Lichfield, High Sheriff of Staffordshire (1473), has been identified recently with the Stanley effigy in the South Choir Aisle in Lichfield Cathedral, despite its Victorian inscription.

Elford Hall, home of the Stanley family and their descendants, was demolished in 1964 (Photograph © Lost Heritage/Staffordshire Past Track)

The elder son, Sir John Stanley (1423-1474) of Elford, was married three times. He was first married in 1428 at the age of five and with a special church dispensation to Cecile de Arderne of Harden, and eventually the were the parents of a son, Sir John Stanley (1447-1508).

His second wife was Isabel Vernon (1427-1471), daughter of Sir Richard Vernon of Haddon, Speaker of the House of Commons, and they were the parents of three daughters and a son, Sir Humphrey Stanley (1452-1505) of Pipe. His third wife was Dulcia Leigh, and they were parents of a further son, Roger Stanley. When this Sir Thomas Stanley died in 1474, he was buried in Saint Peter’s Church, Elford, and his eldest son, also Sir John Stanley, succeeded to the Elford estates.

This eldest son, John Stanley (1447-1508) of Elford, is said to have joined his first cousin’s son Thomas Stanley (Lord Stanley) and Henry Tudor, the future Henry VII, at Haselour Hall on 21 August 1484 ahead of the Battle of Bosworth Field. Lord Stanley’s decisive intervention in the Battle of Bosworth the next day brought the first of the Tudor monarchs to the throne.

Local legend says John Stanley was the father of John Stanley, the last male heir of the Elford Stanleys, who was fatally injured ca 1460 by a tennis ball that severed his jugular vein. He is depicted in a monument in Saint Peter’s Church, Elford, that was completely restored in the Victorian period. The ‘Stanley boy’ has short hair and a simple robe, his left hand holds a round object, and his right touches the side of the face, while a Latin inscription on the plinth reads Ubi dolor ibi digitus (‘Where the pain is, there is the finger’).

The legend is retold by many local historians, including Sampson Erdeswicke (1603), William Wyrley and Thomas Pennant (1781). However, Sophie Oosterwijk has examined all the historical evidence and concludes the effigy is a post-mediaeval forgery and the unusual hand gestures may have been introduced by a 17th or 18th century forger to illustrate the legend even more convincingly.

Putting legends aside, John Stanley was the father of three daughters who eventually became co-heiresses to the Elford estates: Maud married Sir John Ferrers (1438-1484) of Tamworth Castle; Anne married Christopher Savage of Worcestershire; and Margery married William Staunton. Elford passed through the female line to William Staunton then to Richard Huddlestone, then to William Smythe and finally to Sir John Bowes.

This line of descent then continued in the Bowes, Howard and Paget families until the end of the 1930s. Henry Bowes Howard (1687-1757), 11th Earl of Suffolk and 4th Earl of Berkshire, built a new hall on the site of the old Elford Hall, ca 1720-1730. Elford Hall was finally demolished in 1964.

Pipe Hall near Lichfield … once home of the branch of the Stanley family that included William Stanley of Comberford Hall (Photograph © Pipe Green Trust)

Sir John Stanley (1423-1474) of Elford and his second wife Isabel Vernon (1427-1471) were also the parents of Sir Humphrey Stanley (ca 1452-1504), of Pipe Hall near Lichfield.

Sir Humphrey Stanley of Pipe Hall married Dame Ellen Lee, daughter of Sir James Lee of Stone, and they were the parents of four sons, John, William, Humphrey and George, and two daughters, Maud (Wolverston) and Alice (Swinnerton).

Sir Humphrey Stanley died on 12 March 1504 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. But antiquarians in the 18th century mistakenly identified him with the Stanley effigy in the south choir aisle in Lichfield Cathedral. His widow, as Dame Ellen Stanley, widow of made two wills, dated 1516 and 1518, that are in the collection of papers in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, that includes the will of her son William Stanley (1474-1552), who lived at Comberford Hall.

Their eldest son, Sir John Stanley of the Pipe Hall near Lichfield, married Margaret Gerard, daughter of Sir Thomas Gerard, and they were the parents of two daughter and co-heiresses: Isabel, who married Walter Moyle of Kent, and was the mother of an only daughter Mary, who married Erasmus Heveningham; and Elizabeth, who married Sir John Hercy of Grove, Nottinghamshire.

The Stanley effigy in the south choir aisle in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A brass plate in the niche above the Stanley effigy in the South Choir Aisle in Lichfield Cathedral has long identified it as the tomb of John Stanley, son of Sir Humphrey Stanley of Pipe. But this appears to be a Victorian addition and so is not conclusive evidence of the effigy’s subject.

William Stanley (1474-1552), who lived at Comberford Hall, was the second son of Sir Humphrey Stanley of Pipe Hall and Dame Ellen Lee. He was born in Morpeth, Northumberland, in 1474, and he married the much younger Margaret Comberford (1494-1568), daughter of Thomas Comberford of Comberford and Dorothy FitzHerbert. She was a sister of Humphrey Comberford, of Comberford Hall and Master of the Guild of Saint Mary and Saint John the Baptist in 1530; Richard Comberford, putative ancestor of the Comerfords of Kilkenny and Wexford; Henry Comberford, Precentor of Lichfield Cathedral; and John Comberford of Wednesbury.

How did William Stanley come to live at Comberford Hall in the 1550s? He was then in his mid-70s and I can only speculate that this is because his eldest brother-in-law was living at on the Northamptonshire estates at Watford, Stoke Bruerne and Shutlanger inherited from the Parles family; the next brother, Canon Henry Comberford, was heavily involved in Church life; Richard may have died by then; and John was living on the family’s estates in Wednesbury.

William Stanley and Margaret Comberford had probably married late in life, when he was in his late 50s and she was in her 30s. They were the parents of an only daughter Dorothy.

Dorothy Stanley (1530-1587), who married her cousin Christopher Heveningham (1540-1574), daughter of Mary Moyle and Erasmus Heveningham. Dorothy and Christopher were the parents of Dorothy Heveningham and Sir Walter Heveningham, of Aston and Pipe, and the descendants of these lines of the Stanley and Comberford families continued to live in the Lichfield area for many generations.

But this is a story that involves continuous litigation, lost fortunes, and economic decline. And that is, indeed, a story for another day.

As an aside that brings me back to those recent visits to Oxford, the crest in the Stanley coat of arms gave rise to the popularity of the Eagle and Child as the name for public houses in England, often in former manors once held by the Stanley family. They include the Eagle and Child on St Giles in Oxford, currently undergoing extensive refurbishment. It is known for its literary associations and is affectionately dubbed ‘the Bird and Baby’.

The Eagle and Child on St Giles in Oxford, currently undergoing extensive refurbishment (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

How the identity of the Stanley effigy in Lichfield Cathedral has long confused many historians

The Stanley effigy in the south choir aisle in Lichfield Cathedral has been identified in recent decades as George Stanley of West Bromwich and Wednesbury (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

The Stanley effigy is in a niche in the south choir aisle of Lichfield Cathedral, close to the entrance to Saint Chad’s Chapel and the vestry, and opposite the monument to Bishop John Hackett.

The Stanley effigy has been described as ‘the most curious monument in the cathedral.’ Historians have acknowledged that identifying this tomb presents ‘many difficulties,’ and several historians believed they had managed to clear up any questions about its identity.

When I was in Lichfield Cathedral a few weeks ago, visiting the ‘Library and Legacy’ exhibition in the Chapter House, I also photographed the stained glass windows in the Chapter House.

The image of the Stanley family arms in one of those windows reminded me to return to the Stanley effigy and to explore the conflicting claims to identifying the person represented on this 16th century, pre-Reformation tomb.

My search also reminded me of some interesting genealogical connections between the Stanley family and the Comberford family.

The Latin inscription in a plaque in the niche identified the effigy as John Stanley, son of Sir Humphrey Stanley of Pipe (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The Stanley effigy in the south choir aisle depicts a knight naked to the waist. The lower part of the figure was clothed with a deep skirt painted with the arms of the Stanley family, the legs were in armour, while under the head was a buck’s horn, with a similar horn beneath the feet.

However, the effigy was severely mutilated by Cromwell’s Puritan Parliamentarians during the sieges of Lichfield in the English Civil War in the mid-17th century, making it difficult for historians in later generations to identify this member of the Stanley family with certainty.

A brass plate in the niche above the effigy identifies this as the tomb of John Stanley, son of Sir Humphrey Stanley of Pipe. But this appears to be a Victorian addition, and so is not conclusive evidence of the effigy’s subject.

More recently, however, despite the Victorian inscription, historians have identified this as George Stanley (ca1440-1509) of Hammerwich, near Lichfield, High Sheriff of Staffordshire (1473) and a younger son of Thomas Stanley of Elford.

Yet, antiquarians in the 18th century identified the effigy with Sir Humphrey Stanley (ca 1455-1504) of Pipe, and, since the mid-19th century, the monument has been ascribed to Sir Humphrey Stanley’s son, John Stanley of Pipe, who died in 1515.

However, prior to any of these claims, the monument was long identified simply as ‘Captain Stanley,’ who for some unknown offence had been excommunicated, and who, after penitence, had been buried in the cathedral on condition that the evidence of his punishment should appear on the effigy on his burial place.

During the Siege of Lichfield and the English Civil War in the mid-17th century, the Roundheads defaced and mutilated the Stanley monument to such an degree that many later doubted the story of a Stanley who was buried depicted in such a humiliating state of punishment.

A drawing of the effigy published by the Revd Stebbing Shaw in his History and Antiquities of Staffordshire (Image © Staffordshire Past Track)

Shortly before the Civil War, Sir William Dugdale (1605-1686) made a coloured drawing of the effigy for Sir Christopher Hatton (1605-1670). Dugdale had many links with south Staffordshire and was also the father-in-law of the Lichfield-born antiquarian Elias Ashmole (1617-1692).

According to Dugdale, Hatton foresaw the Civil War and the destruction of churches, and commissioned Dugdale in 1641 to make exact drawings the monuments in Westminster Abbey and the principal churches in England. Dugdale’s drawing of the effigy in Lichfield Cathedral shows the stone figure of Stanley bareheaded and bare-chested, flanked by two bucks’ horns, wearing a skirt decorated with heraldic arms and armour on his legs.

But Dugdale’s depiction of the monument was long-lost, nor did he not offer a definitive identification of a Stanley family member.

The Revd William Stukeley (1687-1765) was an important antiquarian in the early 18th century, pioneering the scholarly investigation of the prehistoric sites at Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire. He published over 20 books on archaeology and other scholarly topics.

Stukeley included the Stanley tomb among the ‘remarkable subjects’ things he had seen in Lichfield Cathedral during a visit in 1715. He recalled: ‘ As you walk down the south isle the first figure in the walk at a the wall of the choir lieth one Capt. Stanley, said to be of the house of Derby, he was a stout and valiant man and is said to have challenged any may to fight with him, not excepting the king, for which insolency the king commanded him to be stripp’d naked from the waist upwards, and to go so till he should repent of that rash challenge; but tho’ the king took pity on him to see him go naked and order’d him to wear cloaths again, yet he refused and went so as long as he lived, and so is he figured on the tomb naked from the waist upwards.’

However, once again, Stukeley does not definitively identify this Captain Stanley, and he places him in the Derby branch rather than the Elford or Pipe branches of the Stanley family.

At the end of the 18th century, the Welsh antiquarian Thomas Pennant (1726-1798), in his Journey from Chester to London (1792), identified this tomb with Sir Humphrey Stanley (ca 1455-1504) of Pipe.

Pennant, in his description of the tomb, wrote: ‘I find a Sir Humphrey Stanley of Pipe, who died in the reign of Henry VII, who had a squabble with the chapter about conveying water through his lands to the close … so probably this might be the gentleman who incurred the censure of the church for his impiety.’

Sir Humphrey Stanley of Pipe was a grandson of Sir Thomas Stanley (died 1463) of Elford. Sir Humphrey was knighted by Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, and was three times sheriff and several times MP for Staffordshire. However, when he died in 1504, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, and not in Lichfield Cathedral.

His son and heir John Stanley, who also lived at Pipe, married Margaret Gerard and died in 1514, leaving two infant daughters and coheirs, Elizabeth and Isabel. From there, the genealogy of the Stanley family is confusing, and there are confusing and conflicting accounts of intermarriage with the Heveningham family, who eventually inherited Pipe Manor.

The Revd Stebbing Shaw, in his History and Antiquities of Staffordshire (1798), said the arms on the base of the tomb show ‘the arms of Stanley impaling or, three chevronels gules (Clare).’ This would mean that the person in the effigy married a woman from the Clare family. However, Sir Humphrey Stanley married Ellen Lee from Stone and was buried in Westminster Abbey, not in Lichfield Cathedral. In addition, the sketch of Stanley’s body in Shaw (vol 1, plate XXIV, after p 246), does not match Dugdale’s drawing.

Hewitt’s reproduction of Dugdale’s sketch of the Stanley effigy in Lichfield Cathedral

Dugdale’s drawing was found in the 19th century among papers belonging to the Earl of Winchelsea. It showed the figure’s skin was bare, and that the skirt had the Stanley coat-of-arms. However, this discovery did not clear up the difficulty about identifying the subject of this effigy.

J Hewitt wrote in the Archaeological Journal (volume 24, 1867, pp 222-225) that further investigation showed that the arms of Clare are also the arms of Gerard, and he linked the effigy instead with Sir Humphrey Stanley’s son, Sir John Stanley (died 1514) of Pipe, who married Margaret Gerard, daughter of Sir Thomas Gerard.

Hewitt noted that the monument had long been identified as ‘Captain Stanley,’ who for some unrecorded offence had been excommunicated, and who, ‘after atonement, had been buried in holy ground on condition that the evidence of his punishment should appear on the effigy on his burial place.’

In reality, John Stanley of Pipe, elder son of Sir Humphrey Stanley, died in July 1515 and had never been knighted. However, in the same edition of the Archaeological Journal, a Dr Rock wrote that ‘this Stanley, of knightly rank, had drawn upon himself the greater excommunication through the spilling of blood in Lichfield Cathedral on some occasion … He lies bareheaded and naked as far down as the girdle. His upraised hands, according to the representation given by Pennant, and copied in Shaw’s History of Staffordshire, held a scroll which must have been the document … signifying under the bishop’s hand that, having undergone the canonical penance, the offender was again admitted to all Christian privileges.’

This John Stanley of Pipe, who died in 1515, was an elder brother of William Stanley of Elford, who married Margaret Comberford, a daughter of Thomas Comberford (1472-1532), of Comberford, Tamworth and Lichfield. Margaret’s brother, Humphrey Comberford (ca 1496/1498-1555), married the heiress of Wednesbury, Dorothy Beaumont, whose father was a half-brother of John Stanley (1470-1534), son of George Stanley who now seems, definitively, to be the person represented in the effigy in Lichfield Cathedral.

This George Stanley (ca 1440-1509), who has been identified convincingly in recent decades with the monument, was a younger son of Thomas Stanley of Elford and an uncle of Sir Humphrey Stanley of Pipe.

Dr Nigel J Tringham of Keele University, the Victoria County History of Staffordshire, and other sources, as well as sites such as ‘Find a Grave’, now identify this effigy with George Stanley. Dr Tringham presented his conclusions in ‘An early eighteenth-century description of Lichfield Cathedral’ (Transactions of the South Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society, 1986-1987, vol 28, 1988, pp 55-63).

This more recent identification is also the conclusion of P Montague-Smith in his paper ‘The mystery of the Stanley Memorial, Lichfield Cathedral, and its heraldic solution’ (The Coat of Arms, Heraldry Society, Vol V (new series), no. 128, Winter 1983/1984).

This George Stanley was High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1473, and Escheator of Staffordshire. He married Eleanor Sutton, a daughter of Sir John Sutton of Dudley and widow of Sir Henry Beaumont of Wednesbury, who died in 1471. Eleanor and her first husband, Sir Henry Beaumont of Wednesbury, were the parents of Sir John Beaumont, whose daughter and co-heiress, Dorothy Beaumont, married Humphrey Comberford of Comberford and Tamworth.

Indeed, this Humphrey Comberford was a brother of Dorothy Comberford, who married William Stanley, a brother of John Stanley, identified by many with the Stanley effigy in Lichfield Cathedral. He was also a brother of Canon Henry Comberford, Precentor of Lichfield Cathedral, and Richard Comberford, often (albeit mistakenly) identified as the ancestor of the Comerfords of Co Kilkenny and Co Wexford.

George Stanley and Eleanor Sutton (Beaumont) were the parents of one son and one daughter, John Stanley and Anne, the wife of Sir John Wolseley.

George Stanley died in 1509 and was buried in this tomb in Lichfield Cathedral. However, why he is apparently depicted in a state of penitence and his sin both remain unknown, and the plaque above the effigy continues to identify this effigy as John Stanley, son of Sir Humphrey Stanley.

The Stanley coat-of-arms (left) in a stained glass window in the Chapter House, Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Three Howard families in Lichfield and their links with Comberford Hall

Dean Henry Howard’s tomb in the south choir aisle in Lichfield Cathedral … the work of Sir George Gilbert Scott and HH Armstead (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

While I was in Lichfield Cathedral last week, I was struck by the number of monuments to members of various Howard families, and wondered whether they were related to the Howard family who owned Comberford Hall in the 19th century. As today (1 May) is also Staffordshire, I thought it might be interesting to try to disentangle the three branches of the three Howard families in and near Lichfield and Tamworth, and to ask whether they were related.

Charles Howard (1707-1771) was a school friend of Dr Samuel Johnson. He was a proctor in the consistory court of Lichfield, and lived at No 19 in the Cathedral Close, now Bistro 19. There he improved the garden behind the house with a grotto of shells and fossils.

Charles Howard and his wife Penelope (née Foley) were the parents of Mary ‘Polly’ Howard who married Erasmus Darwin in Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield, in 1757. Polly died on 30 June 1770 and her funeral took place in Lichfield Cathedral. Her grandson was the naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882).

Charles Howard’s monument can be seen in the south choir aisle in Lichfield Cathedral.

Charles Howard’s monument in the south choir aisle in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The Very Revd Henry Edward John Howard (1795-1868) was the Dean of Lichfield from 1833 to 1868. He had a prominent role in the restoration of Lichfield Cathedral by the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878) and laid the foundations for Lichfield Theological College.

Dean Howard’s tomb is also in the south choir aisle in Lichfield Cathedral. This tomb includes a white marble recumbent effigy with an ornate Gothic canopy behind. It was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and is the work of the sculptor HH Armstead (1828-1905) in 1872. A figure at one end of the canopy holds a chalice. On the side of the tomb chest are carved symbols of the Passion, including spears, sponges dipped in vinegar, the crown of thorns, the garment and dice, and the cross and a ladder.

Charles Howard improved the garden behind No 19 in the Cathedral Close in Lichfield with a grotto of shells and fossils (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

I have found it difficult to trace the origins of Charles Howard and his family in Lichfield, tracing his branch back only two or three generations to a George Howard who died in 1734.

On the other hand, Dean Henry Howard was a member of the Howard family who owned Castle Howard for generations. He was descended through his father, Frederick Howard (1748-1825), 5th Earl of Carlisle, from the Dukes of Norfolk. His brother, George William Frederick Howard (1802-1864), 7th Earl of Carlisle, was Chief Secretary of Ireland (1835-1841) and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1855-1858), while another brother, the Revd William George Howard (1808-1889), 8th Earl of Carlisle, was also a priest in the Church of England. George James Howard (1843-1911), 9th Earl of Carlisle, was a Pre-Raphaelite artist, and a trustee of the National Gallery.

Their ancestor, Charles Howard (1629-1683), 1st Earl of Carlisle, was a distant (third cousin) of Craven Howard (1649-1700), of Elford Hall, east of Lichfield and north of Tamworth, who was the direct ancestor of the Howard family who came to own Comberford Hall in the early 19th century.

Elford Hall was owned by the Howard family and their descendants from 1684 until 1935

Craven Howard was descended from a branch of the Howard family who held the titles of Earl of Suffolk and Earl of Berkshire, but his imprudence and litigiousness led him to squander many of his advantages. His first wife, Anne Ogle, was a maid of honour to Queen Catherine of Braganza, but was described as an ‘ancient maid’ of ‘no fortune.’

Craven Howard’s second wife, Mary Bowes, inherited of Elford Hall when her brother Richard Bowes died in 1661. When she married Craven Howard in 1684, he immediately became the Master of Elford Hall, and when he died on 7 June 1700 he was buried at Elford. Elford Hall remained in various branches of his family until 1935.

Craven Howard’s son, Henry Bowes Howard (1687-1757), succeeded as 4th Earl of Berkshire in 1706 and as 11th Earl of Suffolk in 1745. For a brief period, he was the Recorder of Lichfield (1755-1757).

Henry’s son, William Howard (1714-1756), was known as Viscount Wendover, and married Lady Mary Finch. Elford Hall was eventually inherited by their daughter, the Hon Frances Howard, who married Richard Bagot (1733-1819), who changed his name to Richard Howard. He was a son of Sir Walter Wagstaffe Bagot (1702-1768) of Blithfield, and Lady Barbara Legge, daughter of William Legge, 1st Earl of Dartmouth.

Richard Howard (1733-1819) became the proprietor of Comberford Hall in 1808 (Staffordshire County Buildings Picture Collection)

Richard Bagot or Richard Howard (1733-1819), trained as a lawyer, but in 1761-63 went on a diplomatic mission to Italy with his friend the Earl of Northampton, to go to Italy, and they took with him the 16-year-old aspiring architect James Wyatt, whose family came from Weeford near Lichfield. Richard was 50 in 1783 when he married the heiress Frances Howard in 1783. Her vast inheritance Elford Hall, near Lichfield and Tamworth, as well as Ashtead Park, Surrey, Levens Hall, and Castle Rising, Norfolk.

Richard Howard and in 1808 he added to this portfolio in 1808 when he acquired the Fisherwick estate in Staffordshire, which adjoined Elford.

But, how did Richard Howard come to acquire Comberford Hall?

Richard Howard acquired Comberford Hall in 1808-1809

Viscount Weymouth – who was soon to become the 1st Marquis of Bath – and his son, the Hon Thomas Thynne, sold the Manors of Comberford and Wigginton, including lands in Hopwas and Coton, to Arthur Chichester (1739-1799), 5th Earl of Donegall and later 1st Marquess of Donegall, on 1 August 1789.

Within a year, Lord Donegall had raised £20,000 from the banker Henry Hoare, using the Manors and Lands of Comberford and Wigginton as collateral security. Lord Donegall is said to have rebuilt Comberford Hall. Eventually, however, the Chichester family, crippled by the gambling debts of a profligate son, found it impossible to pay off this loan, and was forced to sell Comberford Hall and the manorial rights and lands that went with it.

When Lord Donegall died in 1799, Comberford Hall and his other heavily mortgaged estates in Staffordshire, including Fisherwick, passed to a younger son, Lord Spencer Stanley Chichester, who also inherited Dunbrody Abbey, Co Wexford, along with a townhouse in Saint James’s Square, London, 20,000 acres on the Inishowen Peninsula in Co Donegal, lands in Belfast, and the family’s Gainsborough portraits.

But Lord Spencer Stanley Chichester was a heavily-indebted gambler. On 28 September 1808, John Forster, trustee for Lord Spencer Chichester, assigned two mortgages secured on his property in Comberford and Wigginton to William Bagot, 1st Lord Bagot, trustee for his brother Richard Howard (1733-1819).

The Chichester or Donegall family had owned Comberford Hall for less than 20 years, from 1789 to 1808. Richard Howard became the next proprietor of Comberford Hall, along with land, cloth and corn mills at Comberford, and fishing rights in the River Tame. The witnesses to this assignment in 1808 included Peter Gybon, bailiff of Burton. A year later, in 1809, the mortgages on Comberford Hall and the other Staffordshire estates acquired by the Chichester family were foreclosed by Sir Robert Peel, and the estates of Comberford and Wigginton were sold to Richard Howard.

Richard Howard may have been living at Comberford Hall when he died on 18 February 1819. His vast estates descended to his only daughter, Mary Howard (1785-1877), whose inheritance totalled almost 15,000 acres. She married Colonel Fulk Greville Upton (1773-1846), who also changed his surname to Howard.

Fulke Greville Howard was born in Geneva, the younger son of Clotworthy Upton (1721-1785), 1st Baron Templetown, an Irish peer and former MP for Co Antrim. As a career army officer, he fought in the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland during the French Revolutionary Wars in 1799, and he lost the sight of one eye in the Helder Expedition. When he retired, he was MP for Castle Rising, Norfolk (1808-1832), a constituency long controlled by the Howard family.

Mary and Fulke Howard held the titles to the Manors of Comberford and Wigginton and one-third of the Manor of Packington between 1808 and 1844. They lived most of their lives at Elford Hall.

Colonel Fulke Howard died on 4 March 1846, but Mary Howard lived on for over 30 years. In 1873, as Lady of the Manor of Comberford, Mary Howard appointed Daniel Sell of Fisherwick as the gamekeeper of her manors. A court roll for the Manor of Comberford survives from December 1873.

Mary Howard died at the age of 92 on 19 October 1877. Mary and Fulke Howard had no children and before she died Mary Howard divided her estates among different cousins. Comberford Hall passed from the trustees of the Hon Mary Greville Howard to her distant cousin, Howard Francis Paget (1858-1935) of Elford Hall, son of the Revd Francis Edward Paget (1806-1882), Rector of Elford.

The Revd Francis Edward Paget was an early follower of the Oxford Movement, and was known as a writer of Tractarian fiction. In 1894, Mary Howard’s trustees and Howard Francis Paget appointed Augustus Frederick Coe, solicitor, as Steward of the Manors of Comberford, Wigginton, Coton and Hopwas and Elford and Oakley, and Coe in turn appointed Arthur Williams of Hopwas as Bailiff of the Manor.

The Paget family sold Comberford Weir to the Mayor, Aldermen, Burgesses and Rural District Council of Tamworth in 1906, and the Paget family proposed selling the Manor of Comberford and Wigginton in 1906-1907.

Howard Francis Paget donated land for building the Church of Saint Mary and Saint George in Comberford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Howard Francis Paget donated land to the Lichfield Diocesan Trust in 1914 for building a mission church in Comberford. The first stone was laid at a special ceremony in 1914 and the building was completed in 1915. Sadly, the small, picturesque Church of Saint Mary and Saint George closed ten years ago after the last service on 13 October 2013.

The tenants of the Howard and Paget families at Comberford Hall included Thomas Bradley Paget (1758-1817), a Tamworth banker, his daughter Sara Elizabeth (1789-1811), who was buried in Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, and her husband Henry Alford.

William Tongue was Howard’s tenant at Comberford Hall ca 1818-1849. His first daughter, Sydney Tongue (1825-1866), married John Dudley Oliver (1809-1870), son of the Revd John Oliver (1763-1832), of Cherrymount, Rathdrum, Co Wicklow, and Rector of Swepstone, Leicestershire. William Tongue’s second daughter, Elizabeth Tongue of Comberford Hall, married into the Allsopp brewing family of Burton-on-Trent.

Mary Howard’s later tenants at Comberford Hall included Richard Haines in 1860, and Edward Farmer (ca 1797-1871), who lived there in 1867-1871. He was succeeded as Comberford by his nephew, Charles Haywood, later Charles Haywood-Farmer (1829-1885), who lived at Comberford Hall until 1874 or 1875.

Sydney Fisher (1857-1927), a Tamworth paper manufacturer, was living at Comberford Hall in 1888-1896. He married Annie Louise Van Notten-Pole, a sister of Sir Cecil Pery van Notten-Pole (1863-1948). Frederick Arthur Morris was living at Comberford Hall in 1896, and was followed by William Felton Peel, who was living there when James Comerford visited Comberford Hall, and later by Algernon Francis Ardwick Mawson.

When Howard Francis Paget died in 1935, his son handed over the Elford estate to Birmingham City Council, along with many of the papers associated with the ownership of Comberford Hall. Later, Comberford Hall passed to the Arden, Pickin and Coltman families.

Elford Hall was demolished in 1965. But the Howard or Paget family interest in the area continued for generations. Howard Paget’s daughter, Charlotte Gabrielle Howard Paget, married Joseph Harold Hodgetts, and died in Lichfield in 1979. Their son, the late Harold Patrick Hodgetts, lived nearby at Model Farm in Elford, and Pat Hodgetts was proud that his grandparents had given the church to Comberford village.

Dean Henry Howard depicted on his tomb in the south choir aisle in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)