William Stafford (1500-1565)

Sir William Stafford, of Chebsey, in Staffordshire (c.1500–5 May 1556) was an Essex landowner and the second husband of Mary Boleyn, who was the sister of Anne Boleyn and one-time mistress of King Henry VIII of England.

Stafford was the second son of Sir Humphrey Stafford (d. 22 September 1545) of Cottered and Rushden, Hertfordshire, by his first wife, Margaret Fogge, daughter of Sir John Fogge of Ashford, Kent. His family was distantly related to the mighty Staffords who controlled the dukedom of Buckingham and the earldom of Wiltshire until 1521. Nonetheless, William Stafford was a commoner, and only a second son, and thus served Henry VIII as a soldier.

In 1532, Stafford was listed as one of the two hundred people who accompanied Henry VIII to France. The purpose of the journey was for Henry and his fiancée, Anne Boleyn, to meet with Francis I so that he might show his public support and approval for the annulment of Henry's first marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Among the other travellers was Anne Boleyn's sister, Mary, the eldest daughter of Thomas Boleyn, who was by then the Earl of both Wiltshire and Ormonde. With her connections, Mary had excellent marriage prospects. Nonetheless, Mary and Stafford married in secret in 1534. When the marriage was discovered after Mary became pregnant, the couple were banished from court.

The couple initially lived at Chebsey in Staffordshire, but later moved to the Boleyn family home, Rochford Hall at Rochford, in Essex. They lived in relative obscurity until Mary died in 1543, after which Stafford served in Scotland. He was knighted there in 1545 - during the reign of Henry VIII - and, two years later, became an MP for Hastings. Also in 1545, Stafford remarried, this time to his second cousin, Dorothy Stafford, the youngest daughter of Henry Stafford, 1st Baron Stafford and Ursula Pole (d.1570).