William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford

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For other people named William Stafford, see William Stafford (disambiguation).
William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford
Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel
MotherAlethea Talbot

William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford,

Pius XI
in 1929.

Early life

William grew up in a nominally Anglican household, his father having converted to the Church of England in 1616.[1] William was undoubtedly exposed to Roman Catholic influences, as almost all of the Howard family remained loyal in private to that faith, even if they conformed outwardly to the Established Church.[2]

His grandfather,

Ecclesiastical Commissioner.[1]

Blessed

William Howard
Roman Catholic Church
Beatified15 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI
Feast29 December
Attributesmartyr's palm, rapier

Marriage and children

He married Mary, daughter of Edward Stafford (died 1621) and Ann Wilford, and sister of Henry Stafford, 5th Baron Stafford (died 1637) by a licence granted 11 October 1637.[4] The Staffords were Catholics and the marriage was conducted by a Catholic, not an Anglican, priest, to the reported embarrassment of the groom's father. Following Henry Stafford's death, and the forced (and probably illegal) surrender of the barony, on the ground of his poverty, by the next heir, Mary's distant cousin Roger Stafford, 6th Baron Stafford in 1637, the Howard family secured the title for William, he and Mary being created Baron and Baroness Stafford on 12 September 1640. Two months later, William was created Viscount Stafford. The couple had 3 sons and 6 daughters, of whom at least 8 are known:[5]

Exile and return

William and his family left England in August 1641, moving to

lawsuits against William and his mother for money allegedly due to them.[2]

Stafford's principal character flaw seems to have been his quarrelsome nature. During the Popish Plot, he pointed out the absurdity of linking him with Lord Arundell as a co-conspirator, since it was well known that they had not been on speaking terms for 25 years. Over the years he quarrelled with many of his Howard relations, including Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk, the head of the family, which was to prove unfortunate for him in 1680 when several of his Howard cousins sat as his judges to try him for treason. According to John Evelyn, an eye-witness, of his close relatives in the House of Lords who sat in judgement, only the Earl of Arundel voted Not Guilty, showing, as Evelyn rightly remarked, that Stafford was a man "not beloved by his family".[6]

He returned to England at the

religious toleration in his speeches in the House of Lords, but could not remember this in any detail. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society from 1665 onwards, becoming a council member in 1672.[1]

His relative obscurity was held against him during the Plot; informers like Stephen Dugdale cunningly invented quite plausible speeches in which he lamented the King's ingratitude and the lack of reward the Howards had received for their loyalty. In fact, Stafford, like his fellow Plot victim

Catholic Mass was regularly celebrated at his London townhouse, but no action was taken against him as a result.[8] He was frequently abroad: his visits to Paris in the late 1670s, though apparently quite innocent, were later to have fatal results, when he was accused by the informer Edward Turberville of going to Paris to hire a killer to assassinate Charles II.[9]
Stafford for his part denied that he had ever seen Turberville in his life.

Popish Plot

Main article: Popish Plot

In 1678, he was implicated in

royal pardon if he would confess; but he later altered his opinion. Scepticism about the plot grew and it was thought that the imprisoned peers might be released, but anti-Catholic feelings revived in 1680 and Stafford was put on trial in November for treason. As a peer he claimed the privilege of peerage to be tried before the House of Lords, presided over by the Lord High Steward. As events would show, however, a peer could not take the sympathy of his fellow peers, even those peers who were his blood relations, for granted.[10]

Trial

Trial began on 30 November 1680 (O.S.) at Westminster Hall, and the evidence and arguments closed on 6 December.

the Pope naming Stafford as a conspirator; and from Stephen Dugdale, who testified that Stafford had tried to persuade him to kill the King when Stafford was visiting Dugdale's employers, the Astons, at their country house, Tixall, Staffordshire. A third and particularly dangerous witness, Edward Turberville (a professional soldier, and thus a plausible choice as an assassin) said that he had visited Stafford in Paris
in 1676, where Stafford had tried to bribe him to kill Charles II. There were several inconsistencies in his story, especially concerning the relevant dates, but Stafford, lacking expert legal assistance, failed to exploit them properly.

Stafford, like all those who were charged with treason until the passage of the

defence counsel and forced to conduct his own defence,[12] bringing forward witnesses to counter the evidence against him. One such witness would have been Richard Gerard of Hilderstone, who had come to London to testify on Stafford's behalf but was imprisoned on the word of Stephen Dugdale; Gerard died in jail before the trial.[13] Although the Lord High Steward, Heneage Finch, conducted the trial with exemplary fairness, this was not enough to secure Stafford's acquittal: while Stafford maintained his innocence with vigour, John Evelyn, a spectator, thought his speeches "very confused and without method". He failed, where a good defence counsel might have succeeded, in exposing the inconsistencies in the evidence of Turberville, or to discredit the unsavoury Oates, whose public standing had declined notably over the preceding year. As Evelyn also noted Stafford was "not a man beloved by his own family", and seven out of eight peers of the Howard dynasty who sat on the Court voted him Guilty. Some contemporaries, however, felt that Stafford defended himself well, under the circumstances: "yet did the prisoner, under all these disadvantages, make a better defence than was expected, either by his friends or his enemies" [14]

A vote was taken of the peers in a roll call on 7 December 1680 (O.S., 17 December 1680 N.S.) [11]. Stafford was convicted by a majority of 55 votes of Guilty to 31 of Not Guilty and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, the punishment of traitors, which was commuted by the King to beheading. The King, even though he is not thought to have had much personal regard for the unpopular Stafford, later said that he had signed the death warrant "with tears in his eyes", but in the current state of public opinion, a reprieve was impossible.[15] Charles added that Stafford's accusers had his blood on their hands, just as he later told the Earl of Essex that the blood of Oliver Plunkett was on his head.[16]

Execution

Stafford was executed on Tower Hill on 29 December 1680.[1] Gilbert Burnet wrote that he was quickly forgotten, but others thought that the publication of a version of his final words, addressed to his daughter Delphina (who was a nun at Leuven), in which he spoke eloquently of his innocence – "My good child, I pray God bless you. ...Your poor old father hath this comfort, that he is totally innocent" – helped to turn public opinion against the Plot.[17] The early deaths of Dugdale and Turberville, the principal informers against him, were seen by some as proof of the innocence of Stafford and other victims of the plot: Stafford himself was said to have prophesied (correctly) that Turberville would follow him to the grave within the year. To the surprise of many, Turberville to the very last maintained the truth of his charges against Stafford: Gilbert Burnet thought Stafford's innocence or guilt a mystery beyond solution.[18]

Attainder

Stafford was attainted and the family lost the title. The well-intentioned efforts of King James II in 1685 to have the attainder reversed failed, due to deadlock between the two Houses of Parliament on the issue, and later to the King's unwillingness to recall his increasingly obstructive Parliament. The title of

Earl of Stafford.[19]

Legacy

William Howard was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929.

There is a stained glass window of Howard in Our Lady of Lourdes in Harpenden, Hertfordshire.[20]

Blessed William Howard Catholic School in Stafford, Staffordshire, England is named after him in his honour.

Ancestry

Notes

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 18 February 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  2. ^ a b Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Ven. William Howard" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  3. ^ "Howard, William, dominus (HWRT624W)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  4. ^ "William Howard, 1st Baron and Viscount Stafford", The British Museum
  5. ^ Burke, John (1831). A general and heraldic dictionary of the peerages of England, Ireland, and Scotland, extinct, dormant, and in abeyance. England. H. Colburn & R. Bentley.
  6. ^ Evelyn "Diary" 7 December 1680
  7. ^ Kenyon, J. P. The Popish Plot Phoenix Press reissue 2000 p.46
  8. ^ Kenyon p.33
  9. ^ Kenyon pp.231–2
  10. ^ Kenyon p.231
  11. ^ a b John Hatsell, Precedents of Proceedings in the House of Commons: Relating to conference and impeachment (L. Hansard and Sons, 1818) p.228-229
  12. ^ 7 Howell's State Trials, 1293, 1339 (House of Lords, 1 December 1680; he could not have counsel with him while evidence was being presented against him). A very detailed transcript of the proceedings is available from Google books.
  13. John Kenyon
    , The Popish Plot (1972), pp. 51, 164.
  14. ^ http://www.executedtoday.com/2017/12/29/1680-william-howard-viscount-stafford/. Retrieved 29 November 2022.
  15. ^ Kenyon p.232
  16. ^ Kenyon p.234
  17. ^ Fraser, Antonia King Charles II Mandarin edition 1993 p.400
  18. ^ Kenyon p.279
  19. ^ Kenyon p.296
  20. ^ david.robarts (26 June 2014), William Howard & John Fisher, A. A. Orr and F.D. Humphreys 1935, retrieved 30 July 2022

References

External links

Peerage of England
New creation Viscount Stafford
1640–1680 		Forfeit
Baron Stafford
5th creation
1640–1680 		Forfeit
title restored to George Stafford-Jerningham in 1824
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