| Notes |
- At the time of Ralph's birth, on 24 September 1301, the Staffords exercised considerable influence in the west midlands, but had yet to assume the prominent role in national affairs that fell to them as a result of his own success as a soldier, administrator, and courtier. The bulk of their estates lay in Staffordshire and Warwickshire, with a few additional holdings in Oxfordshire and Lincolnshire, and generated an annual income of about £200 net. This was not enough to support a senior member of the English baronage, although Edmund de Stafford had sufficiently distinguished himself in the Scottish wars of Edward I to merit a personal summons to parliament. The path of advancement through military service was followed with distinction by his son, whose lasting achievement was to elevate his family to the ranks of the higher nobility.
Having lost his father as a child, Ralph Stafford had come of age and entered his estates by December 1323. He spent his youth in the society of his mother's Staffordshire relatives and of her second husband, a local landowner named Thomas Pipe. Stafford's first known experience of royal service occurred in 1325, when he, his younger brothers, and their stepfather joined the retinue of his maternal uncle, Ralph, second Lord Basset of Drayton. Soon, however, he grew more independent. He was made a knight-banneret in January 1327, being recruited to fight against the Scots shortly afterwards. His support for the plot to free the young Edward III from the control of his mother's lover, Roger Mortimer, earned him the king's lasting gratitude, and marked the beginning of what was to become a close personal relationship. Mortimer's arrest at Nottingham Castle during the parliament of October 1330 enabled Edward to seize the reins of power himself.
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1301 - 1372 (70 years)
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