"This _Isabell_, the daughter and heire of Sir _John Barry_, knight, was, when the said _Thomas_ married her, the widow of _Humfrey_ Lord _Stafford_, of Southwike, sonne of _William Stafford_ of _Hooke_, Esquire, created Earle of Devon, by King _Edward_ the fourth; to whom the King gave all honours, manors, Castles, &c., which were _Thomas Courtneys_, the fourteenth Earle of Devon: who neverthelesse, grew ingratefull to King _Edward_ his advancer, in revolting from him at the battaile of Banbury, for which cowardise (hee being apprehended) was without processe executed at Bridgewater, the seventeenth of August, _anno. 1469_, having been Earle but three moneths." At his death the ill-gotten estates of the Courtenays that he possessed, were again forfeited, and Edward IV. gave a considerable portion of them to another eminent west-countryman John, Lord Dinham, and to other grantees, but the succession failed in nearly all the recipients, and Henry VII., in the first year of his reign, made void all these grants by Edward IV., and restored both the title and the estates to their rightful owners. Here, before we finally dismiss our thoughts on the signal catastrophe that ended the dynasty of Stafford of Suthwyke, we dwell awhile on the singular parallelism of characters and incidents that are presented to us in each of our little narratives relative to the distinguished but unfortunate house of Stafford. Both the prominent factors of our unpretending histories fell victims to the vengeance of the White Rose, the result of defection doubtless, though of differing kind. Each experienced the same unhappy fate, Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devon, was sent to the scaffold at Bridgwater, by the peremptory mandate of Edward IV., Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, suffered in similar summary manner at Salisbury, by the relentless order of Richard III. Two eminent ecclesiastics of the highest dignity are also associated with their relations. John Stafford, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Chancellor to Henry VI., finds place in the one, and John Morton, Cardinal-Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Chancellor to Henry VII., appears in the other. Both were west-countrymen also, having been born in neighbouring counties, the one at a village in north Wilts, the other in a little country town in central Dorset. Stafford saw the beginning of the internecine strife of the Roses, but was called away as their rival pretensions began to assert themselves, and the deadly conflict to thicken.