John Giffard (died 1613)

John Giffard (1534–1613) was a Staffordshire landowner and Member of the English Parliament, notable as a leader of Roman Catholic Recusancy in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I.

John Giffard's father was Sir Thomas Giffard of Caverswall Castle. The Giffard's had their seat at Chillington Hall, near Brewood, from the late 12th century. Sir Thomas, like his father, Sir John Giffard, had considerably expanded the family estates until they were the wealthiest landed gentry family in Staffordshire. Sir John was still alive when his grandson John was born, so Thomas Giffard was living at Caverswall, which he had acquired through his first wife, the heiress Dorothy Montgomery. Both Sir John and Sir Thomas were MPs of religiously conservative disposition, although both had generally acquiesced in the legislation that carried through the English Reformation.

John Giffard's mother was Ursula Throckmorton, daughter of Robert Throckmorton of Coughton Court, Warwickshire, and Elizabeth Baynham. She was Thomas Giffard's second wife: Dorothy had died by 1529, leaving Thomas with a daughter, but no surviving sons. He married Ursula in 1529. She was part of a wealthy landowning family, generally of a similar religious conservative outlook to the Giffards. Her brother, George Throckmorton, was MP for Warwickshire in the English Reformation Parliament, elected in 1529. His sympathies were strongly Catholic and he was arrested in 1537, in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace, with which he was thought to sympathise. He made a rambling and confused confession of his part in the Catholic opposition, narrowly escaping with his life.

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