It is noticeable that some intimacy must have sprung up between his father's family and himself, for although Sir Humphrey does not mention him in his will, yet his second wife Elizabeth D'Aumarle does so in hers. This intercourse probably ripened toward the end of his life, for his legally-born half-brother, Sir Humphrey "with the Silver Hand," who died ten years before the Archbishop, bequeaths him some silver plate, and constitutes him one of his executors. This acknowledgment would be quite in accordance with the ordinary ways of the world, Sir Humphrey doubtless properly felt that the honour of the friendship had now passed to the side of his presumed half-brother,—the stray off-shoot of the Stafford blood, had outgrown and overshadowed in position and fame, all the other branches of the family tree, and consequent on this, as a matter of course, his kinship was not disowned, and the Archbishop became the "frater meo" of the Knight "with the Silver Hand."
But, strange irony of this world's remembrance,—in death, if not in life their memory was to be avenged,—not a fragment of a memorial, nor the trace of an inscription remains to any direct member of the influential family of Stafford of Suthwyke and Hooke. Eschewing the humble precincts of the churches of the parishes in which their homes in Wilts and Dorset were situate as a place of burial, they caused their dust to be carried many miles away to the grand Abbey Church of Abbotsbury, and deposited in a Chantry they had founded therein, with its attendant priest to supplicate unceasingly for the welfare of their souls. Not very long after the last member of their race was laid within it, ruthless hands razed the great fabric to the ground, when all the memorials to the dead it contained were destroyed, and with such completeness, that even the position of their sepulchres may not at present be discerned, so that now, the tomb of the mother of the Archbishop alone remains in these western parts, to bear indirect witness of their former existence.
The Archbishop appears to have died at Maidstone on the sixth of July, 1452, and was buried in the "Transept of the Martyrdom" in Canterbury Cathedral.
He lies under an immense (Purbeck?) marble stone, perhaps the very largest in the cathedral, eleven feet five inches in length, by four feet six inches in breadth. On this was originally a magnificent brass, almost entirely filling the stone, but only the indent, now also much frayed, remains.
The outline shews us the effigy of the Archbishop in pontificalibus, with mitre and pastoral staff. He stands under a rich canopy with pinnacles and finials, supported on long buttresses that extend down to the base of the composition. Below his feet there was evidently a square panel which probably contained the "confabulatorie epitaph" seen and copied by Weever. Around the edge of the stone is a ledger-line, that probably had the emblems of the Evangelists at the angles.
The Archbishop's gravestone has shared the common fate accorded to all the brass-inlaid stones, that doubtless formerly thickly adorned the pavement of the cathedral, but of which not a single undespoiled example now remains.
On a boss in the vaulting immediately above, are the prelate's arms, being those of the See of Canterbury, impaling, Or, on a chevron gules, a mitre argent, within a bordure engrailed sable (Stafford of Suthwyke, with difference).
Weever,[34] thus speaks of the Archbishop.—
"Here (Canterbury Cathedral) lies interred in the Martyrdome an Archbishop, very noble, and no lesse learned, one of the honourable familie of the Staffords; sonne (saith the Catalogue of Bishops) vnto the Earle of Stafford, but I finde no such thing in all the Catalogues of Honour; a man much favoured by King Henry the fifth, who preferred him first to the Deanrie of Wells, gave him a Prebend in the Church of Salisbury, and made him one of his privie Councell, and in the end Treasurer of England. And then although this renowned King was taken away by vntimely death, ye hee still went forward in the way of promotion, and obtained the Bishopricke of Bath and Welles, which with great wisedome hee governed eighteene yeares, from whence he was removed to this of Canterbury, in which he sate almost nine yeares; and in the meanetime was made Lord Chancellour of England, which office hee held eighteene years (which you shall hardly finde any other man to have done) vntill wearie of so painfull a place, he voluntarily resigned it over into the King's hands. And about three yeares after that died at Maidstone July 6. Ann: 1452. Vpon a flat marble stone over him I find this confabulatorie Epitaph:—
Quis fuit enuclees quem celas saxea moles?
Stafford Antistes fuerat dictusque Johannes.
Qua sedit sede marmor queso simul ede?
Pridem Bathonie. Regni totius et inde
Primas egregius. Pro presule funde precatus
Aureolam gratus huic det de Virgine natus."