DURING the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Staffords, though never Lords of the Manor of Eyam, owned the greater part of that and the neighbouring townships, besides other lands in the counties of Derby, Buckingham and Hertford. Several genealogists have attempted to construct a pedigree of the family, and have evidently found it an extremely difficult task. More than one have made suggestions and statements as curious as they are impossible; no statements should ever be made in a family history without evidence. A careful study of this, now collected and published for the first time, will prove many of these suggestions to be untrue. What has been written in The Reliquary_[1] and other publications has for the most part been derived from the Wolley manuscripts_[2], which are erroneous in many important points. The Wolley charters, however, which, being originals, are, of course, trustworthy, have been extensively used in this article, as have also the transcripts from the Haddon charters made by the late Mr. Wm. Carrington, of Bakewell, who most kindly put them at the disposal of the writer. The references to these will be found in the footnotes. But it is upon the writer's own family^[3] deeds that he has mainly relied. These deeds, together with many of the lands [Page 262] to which they refer, descend straight from the Staffords and Lynfords to the Bradshaws, through whom the deeds were transmitted to their present owner, and that they now form the main body of evidence for this history, which may thus be fairly assumed to be unassailable in its main points. These latter references are all specially numbered with Roman numerals in the footnotes.

Editor's Note: The article continues with an account for successive generations of the family, namely those listed above, in the Contents.