Elizabeth Stafford - Career

Career

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 at Hawstead which Elizabeth Stafford's husband, 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, Lady Drury received a comforting letter from the Queen, in which the Queen referred to her as 'my Bess'. Lady Drury continued to serve the Queen as a Lady of the Bedchamber until her death in 1599.