William Stafford, conspirator, who about 1593 married Anne Gryme, daughter of Thomas Gryme of Antingham, Norfolk, by whom he had a daughter, Dorothy Stafford, and a son, William Stafford.
Sir John Stafford of Marlwood Park, Thornbury, Gloucestershire, who married firstly, Bridget Clopton, the daughter of William Clopton of Kentwell Hall, by whom he had a son, and secondly, on 29 January 1580, Millicent Gresham, the daughter of Edmund Gresham and Joan Hynde, by whom he had no issue.
Elizabeth Stafford's parents were staunch Protestants, and on 29 March 1555, during the reign of the Catholic Mary I, they took their two children, Elizabeth and Edward, in the company of a cousin, Elizabeth Sandys, into exile. In 1556 they were in Geneva, where on 4 January 1556 the Protestant reformer, John Calvin, stood as godfather to their youngest son, John Stafford, and where Sir William Stafford died, and was buried on 5 May of that year. After Sir William Stafford's death a dispute ensued with Calvin over the custody of his godson, John Stafford, and Dorothy Stafford 'managed to escape' with her children, in the company of Elizabeth Sandys, to Basel, where the Stafford family were neighbours of the Protestant reformer John Knox. In November 1558 Queen Mary died and Elizabeth I acceded to the throne, and on 14 January 1559 Dorothy Stafford and her children left Basel for England. The family took up residence for a time at Waltham, Essex. Elizabeth Stafford joined her mother, Dorothy, in Queen Elizabeth's privy chamber on 28 November 1568. In 1578, during a progress through East Anglia, the Queen stayed at the manor house Hawstead Place at Hawstead which Elizabeth Stafford's husband, Sir Sir William Drury, had recently rebuilt. According to Thomas Churchyard, ‘a costly and delicat dinner’ was put on for the occasion, and tradition has it that during the visit the Queen dropped a silver-handled fan into the moat. Both Lady Drury and her husband exchanged New Year's gifts with the Queen in 1579, Sir William's gift being a pair of black velvet mittens, while Lady Drury's gift was an embroidered forepart of cloth of silver. In 1587 Sir William Drury was appointed a receiver for the Exchequer in Essex, Hertfordshire and Middlesex, but fled to the continent in July of that year owing the Exchequer £5000. How Drury incurred the debt is unclear. By 1588, through the influence of Lord Willoughby, then in command of English forces in the Low Countries, Drury was appointed Governor of Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands, but was replaced by Thomas Morgan. Drury was then sent as colonel over 1000 men under Lord Willoughby to the assistance of Henry IV of France. En route he quarrelled with Sir John Borough over precedence, and a duel ensued in which Drury sustained an injury to his arm, and first lost his hand to gangrene and then his arm by amputation. He died soon afterwards. Drury's body was brought back to England, and he was buried in the chancel of Hawstead church. After his death, Dame Elizabeth Drury received a comforting letter from the Queen, in which the Queen referred to her as 'my Bess'. Dame Elizabeth Drury continued to serve the Queen as a Lady of the Bedchamber until her death in 1599.
Marriages and issue
Elizabeth Stafford married firstly Sir William Drury, the eldest son of Robert Drury, esquire, and Audrey Rich, the daughter of Richard Rich, 1st Baron Rich, Lord Chancellor of England, by whom she had two sons and four daughters:
