cr. 12 Sept. 1640 Bar. STAFFORD; cr. 11 Nov. 1640 Visct. STAFFORD
First sat 12 Jan. 1641; first sat after 1660, 15 May 1660
b. 30 Nov. 1612, 5th but 2nd surv. s. of Thomas Howard†, earl of Arundel and Aletheia, 3rd da. and coh. of Gilbert Talbot†, 7th earl of Shrewsbury; uncle of Thomas Howard, 5th duke of Norfolk, and of Henry Howard, 6th duke of Norfolk; and gt.-uncle of Henry Howard, (later 7th duke of Norfolk). educ. privately (Samuel Harsnett) 1620–3; St John’s, Camb. 1624. m. 22 Oct. 1637,1 Mary, da. of Edward Stafford†, Bar. Stafford, 3s. 6da. KB 1626. Executed 29 Dec. 1680.
Commr. ecclesiastical jurisdiction, 1633.
Associated with: Stafford House, Staffs. and Tart Hall, Westminster.
Likenesses: miniature, watercolour on vellum, by unknown artist, NPG 2015.
Marriage and money
William Howard entered early into public life, serving on Charles I’s Commission of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and accompanying his father in his embassy to Germany in 1636 and Holland in 1637. As a younger son his expectations should have been limited but he nevertheless managed to rack up debts of either £6,000–£7,000 (by his own reckoning) or £2,300 (according to his nephews) by the time he was 25 years old.2 The death of the young Henry Stafford†, 5th Baron Stafford, on 4 Aug. 1637 provided an answer to his financial problems. Henry Stafford’s sister Mary inherited the Stafford estates. Like her brother she was a ward of William Howard’s father, who was thus ideally placed to secure the Stafford estates for his son by arranging for him to marry the heiress. William Howard later claimed that his marriage settlement included a promise from his father to pay his debts, as well as to provide him with an annuity of £520 a year.3 This unfulfilled promise later provided the background to bitter disputes within the family.
Although brought up a Protestant, William Howard had become a Catholic, presumably through the influence of his mother. Against Arundel’s wishes, but by the connivance of Lady Arundel, Mary and William were married by a Catholic priest.4 Not content with the Stafford estates, Arundel was also determined to obtain the barony for his son. The heir male was a distant and impoverished cousin, Roger Stafford, but Arundel claimed that William Howard was entitled to the barony in right of his wife. The contesting claims were submitted to the king on 1 Dec. 1637, when Stafford undertook to abide by the king’s decision. In referring the matter to a commission, Charles I specifically drew attention to Stafford’s unfitness for a peerage by virtue of his ‘very mean and obscure condition’ and in September 1639 he instructed Stafford to surrender the barony, which was accordingly effected by fine early in Hilary term 1640.5 Roger Stafford seems to have died shortly after, so that the legality of the submission was never tested by the House. In September 1640 Howard and his wife were created Baron and Baroness Stafford by letters patent, with a controversial proviso that they were to enjoy the precedency of the ancient barony. When it became clear that the precedency of the barony would be challenged, the king removed any cause for debate by promoting Stafford to a viscountcy.6 As a result of his marriage and his Howard inheritances, Stafford held substantial estates in Staffordshire, Gloucestershire, and Bedfordshire, but they were so heavily encumbered with debt that it is difficult to be sure either of their capital value or of his income from them.
Civil wars and Interregnum
Stafford’s movements during the period of the civil wars and Interregnum are difficult to reconstruct. He was probably still in England in May 1642 for he mentioned the conciliatory speech in Parliament of John Digby†, earl of Bristol, in a letter to his mother.7 However, he was living in Antwerp by August 1642. Various orders of the House suggest that in the period 1646–7 he was regularly travelling between England and mainland Europe.8 Although he was later said to have been bitterly disappointed at the restored king’s failure to reward him for his sufferings, it is unlikely that he ever took up arms in favour of the royalist cause; when his estates suffered sequestration in 1649 it was for recusancy rather than for delinquency.9
By the autumn of 1652 he was in Germany, where he was arrested on a charge relating to immorality by order of the Elector Palatine and imprisoned at Heidelberg. The nature of the charge remains obscure but Evelyn’s choice of words – ‘a vice that need not be named’ – mimics the legal description of sodomy, suggesting that the particular immorality of which he was accused was unlikely to have been a heterosexual one.10 Lady Arundel ranked the accusation alongside the deaths of her husband and eldest son and the brain damage suffered by her grandson as one of the four great tragedies of her life. It cost her some £3,000 to secure Stafford’s freedom, and ‘Notwithstanding she could not but know the cause of his restraint … she would never confess or seem to believe it.’11
After his release Stafford went to live with his mother in Amsterdam. He was outlawed for failing to respond to an action by one of his creditors in October 1654.12 He later contested this, claiming that he had then been resident in Westminster for several years, but it is clear that he was with his mother when she died in Amsterdam in May 1654 and had been living with her for some time.13 Whether he did or did not use undue influence in order to persuade her, when virtually comatose, to leave him the bulk of her goods or whether he simply fabricated the whole tale were questions that were to be fought through several courts over many years and which became inextricably mixed with Stafford’s resentments over his father’s disposition of his estate. The quarrels and Stafford’s refusal to abide by negotiated settlements left a lasting legacy of enmity between him and his nephews, Henry (the future 6th duke of Norfolk) and Charles. In the course of the dispute Sir Edward Walker, one of the few witnesses who seems to have been genuinely independent, remarked that Lady Arundel considered Stafford to be of ‘careless and expensive disposition’ and that she had commented on ‘his disaffection to business’. Accordingly, she employed her young grandson Charles Howard to manage her estates in preference to Stafford.14
Part of Stafford’s strategy during the dispute with his nephews was to demand that their older brother, the severely brain-damaged Thomas Howard (earl of Arundel and the future 5th duke of Norfolk), be returned to England from Italy. The way he went about this suggests more than a little double dealing. In a letter to his wife written in the summer of 1654 Stafford wrote that ‘I hope, and doubt not, but that so much discretion will be used, as no occasion will be given to have it made appear more publicly to the world what a condition he is in.’15 That this remark was a threat rather than conciliatory became apparent a year later when he not only challenged the legality of the commission that had declared Arundel to be a lunatic but also made several serious allegations about the way in which he was cared for. Stafford claimed that his nephew Henry Howard was ‘a man of a violent passion and whose hand is already dipped in blood’ who was interested only in gaining and keeping control of the vast Norfolk family estates. To this end he kept Arundel ‘in a dungeon and sometimes in chains’, in what amounted to a condition of ‘slavery’.16 Stafford made a further attempt to have Arundel returned to England in 1659.17 His allegations seem to have been decisively refuted by a report from a committee of the Lords on 13 Nov. 1660 to the effect that Arundel was kept in the best house in Padua, attended by a physician and 12 servants ‘and all things fitting for his quality’. Descriptions of Arundel’s condition preserved among the family papers leave no doubt that the young man had suffered catastrophic brain damage and was severely mentally incapacitated.18
House of Lords workhorse, 1660–78
Stafford’s confession in 1680 includes the information that early in 1660 he waited on Charles II at Breda in hopes of securing an indulgence for Catholics, an issue that would remain close to his heart for the rest of his life.19 He was probably back in England by March for that was when the arbitrators met to try and settle the disputes between Stafford and his nephews over Countess Alatheia’s will.20 Although he did not take his seat in the Convention until 15 May he attended Parliament on 3 May in connection with his dispute with Henry Howard over the detention of Arundel in Padua, when the House referred the matter to the committee for privileges. He took his seat on 15 May 1660. From the outset he was clearly a prominent and energetic member of the House. Yet, while it is easy to build up a catalogue of his extensive parliamentary activities, it is difficult to be sure that his contributions were valued. Very little survives in terms of his own family papers and he is rarely mentioned in the correspondence of other peers. As would become apparent at his trial in 1680, he was a relatively isolated figure whose social and political circle was probably restricted to fellow members of the elite Catholic community.
Once he had taken his seat Stafford was present on over 92 per cent of the remaining sitting days of the session. On 30 June 1660 he obtained an order from the House for the restoration of his goods and on 2 July was added to the subcommittee for petitions. During the course of the session he was named to 14 select committees. On 10 Sept. he complained of a breach of privilege of peerage arising from the actions of William Foster and John Walker in taking possession of lands in the manors of Wyboston and Soke in Bedfordshire. This related to a long-running dispute over security for a debt contracted as far back as 1639.21 On 17 Nov. he was added to the subcommittee for the Journal. On 8 Dec. he dissented to the second reading of the bill to vacate the fines of Sir Edward Powell and protested against its third reading on 13 December. Although he was not recorded as being named to the committee to consider the Piedmont Collection bill, he reported from it on 15 Dec. and entered a lone protest against the passing of the bill to abolish the court of wards on 20 December.
During the 1661–2 session of the Cavalier Parliament, Stafford was present nearly every day. He was added to the sessional committees for privileges, petitions, and the Journal as well as to 44 select committees, including that for his future son-in-law John Paulet, 5th marquess of Winchester. On 25 June he again claimed privilege in connection with his Bedfordshire lands. In July he was expected to vote against the claim of Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, to the lord chamberlaincy. He chaired two meetings of the committee for privileges on 15 July,22 while on 17 July he again protested at the bill to vacate Sir Edward Powell’s fines. On 19 July he was the only member of the house to dissent to the passing of John Orlibeare’s bill.
He chaired a further meeting of the committee for privileges on 26 July and the following day became the only member of the House to dissent to the passage of the act for restoring ecclesiastical jurisdiction. He also protested, on 6 Feb. 1662, at the decision to allow Derby’s bill to pass into law. The following day he chaired a single meeting of the committee for the tenants of Clitheroe bill. During March 1662 he chaired a meeting of the committee for privileges and two meetings of the committee on the Protestants of Piedmont bill on 10 and 11 Mar. from which he reported to the House on 12 March.23 He also made a further complaint of privilege on 28 Apr. concerning incursions on his lands in Bedfordshire in defiance of the House’s previous order. On 19 May he entered a protest against accepting the Commons’ rejection of provisos concerning the repair of two bridges in the Highways bill because it implied accepting the Commons’ claim to have sole rights of taxation.
During the 1663 session Stafford was present on nearly 90 per cent of sitting days. He held the proxy of his fellow Catholic William Stourton, 11th baron Stourton, from 20 Feb. 1663 to the end of the session. The pattern of his activity in previous sessions was repeated. He was named to the sessional committees as well as to 20 select committees dealing with subjects that varied from the registration of descents to glass bottles, from congestion in the streets to naturalization, from family settlements to the observation of the Sabbath, from the herring fishery to the Bedford Level, and which took in the grant of revenues to James, duke of York, on the way. On 14 Mar. 1663 he complained of breach of privilege in connection with a suit affecting his title to lands in the manor of Brockton in Shropshire. According to Wharton he was expected to vote in favour of the attempt to impeach Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon.
In January 1664 Stafford petitioned the crown for the restoration of his wife to the earldom of Stafford but without success. In the course of 1663 he had managed to win the support of the king in his dispute over his parents’ estate but that support was now withdrawn.24 Stafford’s attendance during the brief spring 1664 session fell to 75 per cent. He was appointed to the sessional committees and to five select committees.
Stafford was present every day of the 1664–5 session and was again added to the sessional committees as well as to 15 select committees. He was clearly an active committee member: he chaired several sessions of four of these committees.25 He did not attend the brief session of October 1665 and although he was present for the prorogation day on 23 Apr. he was also absent for the 1666–7 session, probably because he was abroad. He travelled to the Hague in August 1666 and by November 1667 was at Louvain in what is now Belgium, from whence he wrote to his son Henry Howard, (later Stafford-Howard, earl of Stafford), encouraging him to attend Parliament ‘for it will be advantageous to you, especially this sessions, which as I hear is like to have much business, and I pray send me a particular account, in particular of what concerns my Lord Clarendon’.26 At a call of the House on 17 Feb. 1668 it was noted that he had left a proxy. The entry presumably meant that Stafford intended to send his proxy for it was not until 13 Mar. that Stafford’s future son-in-law, Winchester, reported receiving the proxy and asked the House for its opinion as to whether a peer outside the realm could assign a proxy or not. The matter was referred to the committee for privileges; the proxy was never registered.
Stafford was next present on the prorogation day, 1 Mar. 1669. In April his links to the Catholic and royalist community were reinforced by the marriage of his 25-year-old daughter Isabella to Winchester, a man who was some 14 years older than her own father. Stafford resumed his regular attendance when the new session commenced on 19 Oct., missing only two days of the short session. He was again appointed to the sessional committees and was named to four select committees. He held Stourton’s proxy from 26 Oct. and another from Winchester (6 Nov.) to the end of the session. On 22 Nov. he was one of four peers who entered a dissent at the passage of the bill concerning privilege and judicature in Parliament.
He was present every day of the 1670–1 session, reporting with some satisfaction in mid-February that ‘the old royal and loyal party are so firmly united that they bear all before them’.27 He was again appointed to the sessional committees, and to over 40 select committees on bills before the House, chairing two of them (Stroude and the dowager countess of Southampton’s bill and Lord Irwin’s bill).28 As in previous sessions they covered a wide variety of subjects but it is clear that he had a personal interest in at least some of them. The bill for Thomas Leigh, Baron Leigh, for example, concerned the lands of a Staffordshire neighbour; another bill was promoted by a kinsman, Sir Philip Howard‡. His nephew, the future 6th duke of Norfolk, was involved in two bills, as a trustee for Charles Talbot, 12th earl (later duke) of Shrewsbury, and for the development of Arundel House, though given the difficult relationship between the two men, his appointment to these committees may have been obstructive rather than facilitative.
On 17 Mar. 1670 Stafford entered a dissent to the passage of the Roos divorce. He held Winchester’s proxy from 19 March. During the autumn he was involved in trying to secure an act to confirm an agreement settling the customs of his manors in Gloucestershire; he was not only named to the committee for the bill on 9 Nov. 1670 but also appeared as a witness before it.29 On 24 Nov. he reported from the committee for privileges in a privilege dispute involving Charles Fane, 3rd earl of Westmorland. On 16 Mar. 1671, in a case that concerned the validity of appeals from the court of claims in Ireland to the House of Lords at Westminster, Stafford entered a dissent to the resolution to suspend judgment against John Cusack for two months. Although no reasons were given, the implication is that the dissenting peers believed that such a jurisdiction did exist.
Stafford was present on every day of the first 1673 session and again held Winchester’s proxy. He was appointed to the sessional committees and to ten select committees. On the final day of the session he stood supporter at the introduction of Thomas Osborne, (later duke of Leeds) as Viscount Latimer and of Robert Paston, as Viscount Yarmouth. He was then present every day of the brief sessions in autumn 1673 and spring 1674 and was again added to the sessional committees and to several select committees. On 29 Jan. 1674 he was appointed as one of the mediators in the privilege dispute between the dowager marchioness of Worcester and William Hall. From 2 Feb. he held Winchester’s proxy.
Early in April 1675 Danby (as Latimer had since become) listed Stafford as a potential supporter of the non-resisting test. Stafford was again present on every day of the first session of 1675, and his pattern of activity was very similar to that of previous sessions. He was appointed to the sessional committees and named to eight select committees. On 5 May he entered a lone dissent to the passage of the act for the explanation of an act for preventing dangers which may happen by popish recusants. On 27 May he entered another lone protest against the decision of the House to agree to a conference arising from Sir Nicholas Stoughton’s appeal against Richard Onslow‡. The following day he joined with Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, in a protest against the dismissal of the appeal of Sir Nicholas Crispe and others against the dowager Lady Cranborne.
Stafford was absent for the entirety of the second session of 1675. At a call of the House on 10 Nov. he was said to be abroad, but according to evidence given at his trial he returned to England at Christmas. He was at Bath the following summer.30 He resumed his parliamentary attendance on 15 Feb. 1677, the first day of the 1677–8 session, and was then present on all but three days of the session. Once again he was named to the sessional committees; he was also named to 50 select committees. On 22 Feb. 1677 he reported from the committee considering the bill of William Maynard, 2nd Baron Maynard. On 7 Mar. he entered a lone dissent to the third reading of the bill to explain the Act concerning popish recusants. Six days later he joined the small group of peers who protested against engrossing the bill for further securing the Protestant religion and entered another protest on 15 Mar. when the bill passed its third reading. On 30 Mar. he delivered the answer of John Manners, 8th earl of Rutland, to the petition of Sir Scroope How requesting a waiver of privilege. On the same day he entered a lone protest against the third reading of the bill for more the effectual conviction of popish recusants. On 3 Apr. he was appointed one of the mediators to settle the dispute between Thomas Leigh, 2nd Baron Leigh, and his wife. On 14 Apr. he was named as a mediator in the dispute between Rutland and How. He also entered another lone dissent to the passage of the fire in Southwark judicature bill. Unsurprisingly, in May Shaftesbury dubbed him as either a doubly or triply vile papist.
On trial: Stafford and the Popish Plot 1678–80
In August 1677, in the midst of a long period when Parliament was not sitting, Andrew Marvell‡ reported that Stafford had been to see the imprisoned Shaftesbury, apparently on behalf of James, duke of York, and had suggested that the only way for him to secure his freedom was to turn Catholic.31 On 28 Jan. 1678 he was a supporter at the introduction of his great-nephew, Henry Howard, under a writ of acceleration as Baron Mowbray. On 14 Feb. he entered a protest against the dismissal of the appeal of Dacre Barrett. During February he complained of a breach of privilege by John Cox, who had pastured nearly 40 beasts on Stafford’s property at Thornbury in Gloucestershire; Cox was discharged on making submission on 22 February. On 13 Mar. he entered another lone protest, this time against the poll bill, which was designed to raise money for the war against France, and on 27 Mar. he reported on Sir John Rivers’ bill. On 4 Apr. he voted Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke, guilty of manslaughter.
Stafford was again present on every sitting day of the 1678 session that began in May. As usual he was added to the sessional committees, and named to a wide variety of select committees, 20 in all. On 3 July the House learned of a quarrel between Stafford and York’s ally, Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, and instructed them ‘not to resent any thing as passed between them this day’. On 10 July, together with Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey. he entered a dissent at the resolution of the House to order relief to Louis Durfort de Duras, earl of Feversham.
Stafford arrived on 21 Oct. 1678 for the beginning of the new session. Despite the unfolding revelations of a popish plot he was again added to the sessional committees and on 23 Oct. was named (along with everyone in the chamber) to the committee to investigate Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey’s death. On 25 Oct. he informed the House that there was a warrant for his arrest as one of five Catholic peers accused of treason by Titus Oates, and he voluntarily surrendered himself into custody. Initially detained in the king’s bench prison, he was removed at the end of the month to the Tower, by request of the House.32 Articles of impeachment were delivered to the House on 7 Apr. 1679; counsel were assigned on 9 and 12 April. On 16 Apr. Stafford, like the other accused peers, entered a plea objecting to the generality of the charges against him and on 26 Apr. he entered a formal plea of not guilty. His trial was scheduled for May but it was delayed by squabbles over the impeachment of Danby. On 15 May 1679 the House ordered a search of his house at Tart Hall and on 21 May it assigned him additional counsel.
Squabbles over the procedures for impeachment, particularly those relating to the trial of Danby, meant that the trials of the Catholic peers were repeatedly postponed. To some this smacked of favouritism and suggested an intimacy with prominent figures at court: as proof of this, John Verney‡, later Viscount Fermanagh [I], told his father that Stafford knew of the prorogation in autumn 1679 long before most members of the Privy Council, but he was almost certainly wrong for there is little indication that Stafford had any communication with the court.33 In May 1680 Stafford himself pushed matters further forward when he applied to the king’s bench for a writ of habeas corpus. Bidding for the moral high ground he cited the words of Magna Carta ‘that justice and right should not be denied or deferred to any man’. He argued, with some justification, that impeachments could not be held over from one session to another and that his request was for ‘no more than the known law, which was as much due unto every cobbler as unto me, and that what I demanded was no more than what was due to every subject who were every one as much concerned in their freedom as myself’. He also claimed that his prolonged imprisonment had damaged his estate and health ‘having almost lost the sight of one of my eyes’. The application was refused. Stafford was at pains to correct the report in the Gazette which stated that the judges said they could not grant the writ. According to him they had said that it was ‘not fit’ for them to grant it because Parliament was scheduled to meet on 1 July and had recommended that he apply to the king for his liberty instead.34
Early in November, when Stafford learned that he was at last to be tried, he petitioned the House about the behaviour of the lieutenant of the Tower. The complaint seems to have been largely based on a perception that he was being treated with a lack of respect. The lieutenant had told him that he could not talk to the other imprisoned Catholic peers and moved him to a warder’s house. This was a matter both of honour and of practicality. Stafford insisted that he had ‘never heard that persons of our quality before were lodged in warders’ houses’ and that as a result he was no longer able to eat with his daughter, who was also lodged in the Tower. When he asked for permission to consult the relevant records, it was refused on the grounds that his counsel could do it, even though ‘I said my counsel could not come so often being employed at the other end of the town’.35 His petition was read on 18 Nov. and the House deputed his kinsmen Charles Howard, earl of Carlisle, and William Howard, 3rd Baron Howard of Escrick, to enquire further into the matter. Two days later Howard of Escrick reported that he could find no evidence of any incivility to Stafford. In his memoirs James II insisted that Howard of Escrick was fishing for information to bolster the case for exclusion but there is no evidence to suggest that this was anything other than the product of James’s own paranoia.36
Stafford was tried by the House of Lords sitting as the court of the lord high steward. Although to modern eyes much of the evidence against Stafford seems poor, there is little doubt that his contemporaries thought that the prosecution case against him was a strong one. To be successful a prosecution for treason required two witnesses; in Stafford’s case there were three. According to Colonel Cooke, ‘most think it will go hard with him, and that no other expedient (confession excepted) can save his lordship’.37 The trial opened on 30 Nov. 1680. The evidence against Stafford consisted of various allegations of his having said and written that Catholicism was about ‘to come in’, an allegation by Oates that Stafford was to be paymaster general of the invading popish army, and an accusation by Stephen Dugdale that Stafford had offered him £500 to kill the king.
Although the recent acquittal of Sir George Wakeman suggested that the Popish Plot allegations might be running out of steam, Stafford virtually assured his own conviction by putting up an astonishingly poor defence. He began by pointing out that the prosecution had outlined a plot by Catholics but had advanced no proof that Stafford was one of them; that the peers knew him to be a Catholic was not pertinent. He returned to this point at the end of the trial, claiming that since he had been imprisoned after the passage of the Test Act his failure to take the oaths could not be used against him. He also demanded copies of affidavits so that he could compare the various versions of evidence given by the prosecution witnesses in order to detect inconsistencies and perjuries. It is clear from notes in Stafford’s possession that identifying inconsistencies in this way was a major part of his defence strategy, which makes it all the more remarkable that he had not obtained such copies before the trial. The prosecution was entirely justified in complaining that the most rational explanation for Stafford’s failure to obtain copies earlier was because he was using it as a time-wasting tactic. Even more foolishly, Stafford then went on to argue that the charge against him should fail because the delay in bringing him to trial meant that it was out of time. For some reason Stafford had concluded that he was charged under the statute for the safety of the king’s person, which required a charge to be brought within six months of the relevant event, rather than the main statute against treason of 25 Edward III. Such an insistence suggests that he was very poorly advised. To those who heard him make it, it almost certainly produced an impression of guilt, which was not dispelled by his examination of the witnesses against him.
The most telling evidence against Stafford was that of Stephen Dugdale, who claimed that Stafford had been present at a Jesuit ‘consult’ to discuss the assassination of the king at the house of his Staffordshire neighbour, Walter Aston, Lord Aston [S], at Tixall in late August or early September 1678, and that he had offered Dugdale money to kill the king at a meeting on 21 Sept. 1678. Stafford could prove that Dugdale had been dismissed by Aston and had threatened revenge against him but this scarcely provided a motive for Dugdale to lie about Stafford. Stafford could also prove that he was not at Tixall in August and did not arrive there until 12 Sept. but he could not deny that he had indeed had a private meeting with Dugdale on 21 September. All he could do was to deny the purpose of the meeting. His denials were almost certainly perceived to have been tainted because his fellow peers knew that he was an outspoken Catholic with a record of opposition to measures to prevent the growth of popery. It is a measure of his isolation that in calling witnesses to testify to discrepancies between the testimony given by Dugdale in his own case and in that given at Wakeman’s trial, Stafford was forced to rely on his daughter, Lady Winchester, and another kinswoman. He also made a fool of himself in challenging the evidence of Edward Turberville. Stafford insisted that an error in Turberville’s affidavit of 9 Nov. 1680 meant that he was perjured, even though Sir William Pulteney‡ testified that Turberville had voluntarily acknowledged the error and corrected it less than a day later. Stafford also accused him of being a coward and deserting his colours, even though Turberville was able to produce an honourable discharge.
Stafford’s most fluent and scathing attack came during his cross-examination of Oates. He insisted that Oates’s pretended Catholicism meant that his testimony was unreliable because ‘he pretends and dissembles with God almighty’ and ‘he was no Christian but a devil and a witness for the devil’. Stafford seems to have been completely unaware that the assembled Protestant peers were unlikely to share his outrage at the way in which Oates had trifled with Catholic sacraments. Stafford’s attempt to undermine Dugdale’s credibility also backfired on him. He was so badly prepared that he used witnesses whom he had never seen to attack Dugdale’s character and was then completely taken aback when the prosecution produced, among others, Charles Gerard, earl of Macclesfield, and Stephen College to refute their allegations.
To undermine Turberville’s evidence Stafford picked on a circumstantial detail: Turberville’s description of Stafford as having been lame with gout and having put his foot up on a cushion. Stafford first claimed that he had not been lame for many years then admitted that he had been lame ‘with weariness’ but insisted that he had never put his foot on a cushion or a stool. Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford, and John Lovelace, 3rd Baron Lovelace, both testified that they had seen Stafford lame. It was almost unnecessary for Sir William Jones‡ to point out that a lame man was highly likely to put his foot up occasionally. In summing up his case, Stafford argued that the prosecution had not met the legal requirement for two witnesses to an overt act of treason. The witnesses had testified to different acts; offering rather than actually giving money as an inducement to kill the king could not be considered an overt act. He also argued that impeachments could not be held over from one Parliament to another.
There were a few who thought that Stafford’s defence, poor as it was, might result in an acquittal because of doubts about the credibility of the witnesses and the definition of an overt act. It was even reported that ‘many believe the better of my lord for his weak management, for never was a poorer defence made’.38 Rather more agreed with Lady Manchester that it ‘was so well proved, that I believe not many was unsatisfied, except those, that out of favour to some of the party might wish it other ways’.39
On 7 Dec. Stafford was found guilty by a vote of 55 to 31. York attributed the vote to malice against Stafford and the government but he was far away and those closer to the spot noted that Stafford had been found guilty by all but one of the gentlemen of the king’s bedchamber.40 Stafford and York both drew parallels between his fate and that of the earl of Strafford in 1641 and the subsequent descent into civil war, but it seems that the king was genuinely convinced of Stafford’s guilt.41 Predictions that Stafford would barter for his life by revealing full details of the plot proved ill-founded. His ‘confession’ simply confirmed what everyone already knew: that he had actively campaigned for the introduction of Catholicism and that he had done so in alliance with York. When he added that he had also conspired with Shaftesbury to bring about a toleration through the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament, Shaftesbury declared ‘that it was evident my Lord Stafford trifled with their lordships, for instead of making a discovery he justified his own innocency and abused their lordships’ and successfully moved that he be heard no more.42 The standard sentence of being hanged, drawn, and quartered was commuted to one of beheading in respect of his noble status.43
There is little doubt that, despite his record of attendance and commitment to the work of the House, Stafford was, in life, a deeply unpopular man.44 In death he was rapidly transformed into a sacrificial figure. In his memoirs James II declared that ‘it was his misfortune to play his game worst when he had the best cards, or rather the will of god to shorten his life a few days, to crown him with the blessing of dying for his religion’.45 Stafford himself seems to have regarded his imminent demise as a form of martyrdom for the faith: shortly before his death he commissioned a portrait in which he was to be depicted with ‘un rayon de gloire’.46 A letter written to him shortly before his execution also glorified his coming martyrdom: ‘you are called from an abyss of misery to the top of felicity … it is palpably manifest you die for your religion’.47 Dressed in white satin, he was beheaded on 29 Dec. 1680 before a crowd of some 20,000 people. Before dying he made a speech protesting his innocence and declaring his loyalty to the crown. Whether the speech was his own was doubted by at least one reporter, who declared it to be ‘drawn up in matter and style above his capacity’ and who attributed it instead to the priests who attended him to the scaffold.48 Friends and enemies alike declared that he faced his execution ‘with great courage’. He died, wrote Edmund Verney, ‘like a Roman’.49 Many of the Catholics who gathered to witness his death dabbed their handkerchiefs into his blood. Protestants, on the other hand, were offended to learn that he had been buried later under the rails of the communion table in the chapel of the Tower.50
Stafford’s honours were extinguished by his conviction and execution. At Turberville’s death in 1681 it was reported that he had confessed to perjuring himself at Stafford’s trial, but an attempt to reverse the attainder in May 1685 failed, apparently because the preamble seemed to favour the Catholic religion.51 Stafford’s lands were restored to his widow in November 1681. She was given the rank and precedence of countess of Stafford by James II in 1688. By the same letters patent their eldest son and heir, Henry Howard, who now assumed the surname of Stafford-Howard, was created earl of Stafford and ‘all forfeitures whatsoever accrued or to accrue from the attainder of the Viscount Stafford’ were remitted as far as lay in the power of the king to do so.52 By 1690 Stafford’s widow and his eldest son had conveyed Stafford castle and other lands in England to the use of the Catholic Church for the celebration of masses for the martyred viscount and to begin the process of canonization.53 William Howard, Viscount Stafford, was declared Venerable by Pope Leo XIII in 1886; he was beatified by Pius XI in 1929.
R.P.- 1 Add. 15390, f. 458.
- 2 Staffs. RO, D641/2/C/3/1/5; TNA, DEL 1/7, 785, 818–19.
- 3 Staffs. RO, D641/2/C/3/1/5.
- 4 Add. 15390, ff. 410, 458.
- 5 Staffs. RO, D461/2/B/1A/9; Rymer, xx. 180.
- 6 LJ, iv. 84, 86; HMC Buccleuch iii. 388, 390.
- 7 WDA, B 29, Stafford to countess of Arundel, April ?1642.
- 8 LJ, viii. 446, 553; ix. 327.
- 9 WDA, B 29, Sequestration order, 14 Apr. 1649.
- 10 Evelyn Diary, iv. 234.
- 11 TNA, DEL 1/7, 892, 895.
- 12 Staffs. RO, D641/2/C/3/5/1/24, D641/2/C/3/5/4/1.
- 13 TNA, DEL 1/7, 726–38.
- 14 TNA, DEL 1/7, 886.
- 15 WDA, B 29, packet 1, 18.
- 16 Staffs. RO, D461/2/C/3/2/9.
- 17 CSP Dom. 1659–60, pp. 201, 219, 228; CJ, vii. 779, 788.
- 18 Arundel, C, iv. 385–6.
- 19 HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 529.
- 20 Staffs. RO, D461/2/C/3/2/19.
- 21 Staffs. RO, D641/2/C/3/5/1/27, 29.
- 22 PA, HL/PO/DC/CP/1/1.
- 23 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1; HL/PO/DC/CP/1/1.
- 24 CSP Dom. 1663–4, pp. 446, 470.
- 25 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1.
- 26 CSP Dom. 1666–7, p. 52; WDA, B 29, packet 1, 38.
- 27 NAS, GD406/1/9825.
- 28 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2.
- 29 HMC 8th Rep. i. 139b, 148a; PA, HL/PO/CO/1/, 357.
- 30 WDA, B 29, packet 1, 39.
- 31 HMC Portland, iii. 355–6.
- 32 CSP Dom. 1677–8, p. 495.
- 33 HMC 7th Rep. 478a.
- 34 WDA, B 29, packet 7, Stafford to his son, 21 May 1680; HMC Portland, iii. 365.
- 35 WDA, B 29, packet 8, Lord Stafford’s account of the behaviour of the lieutenant of the Tower.
- 36 Life of James II, i. 639.
- 37 HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 505–6.
- 38 HMC Ormonde,n.s. v: 519, 521-2.
- 39 Add 29569, f.251.
- 40 HMC Dartmouth, i. 54; HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 521.
- 41 Haley, Shaftesbury, 607; HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 505–6.
- 42 HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 529.
- 43 HMC Finch, ii. 94.
- 44 Evelyn Diary, iv. 234.
- 45 Life of James II, i. 635–7.
- 46 Sloane 1030, ff. 146–7.
- 47 Arundel, G 2/13.
- 48 HMC 11th Rep. vii. 123–4; CSP Dom. 1680–1, p. 111.
- 49 HMC Finch, ii. 102; CSP Dom. 1680–1, p. 111; Verney ms mic. M636/35, E. Verney to T. Woods, 30 Dec. 1680.
- 50 Sloane 1030, ff. 146–7; HMC 11th Rep. vii. 123–4; CSP Dom. 1680–1, p. 111.
- 51 CSP Dom. 1680–1, p. 636; HMC 10th Rep. iv. 174; 11th Rep. ii. 292–3.
- 52 Staffs. RO, D461/2/H/3/1; CSP Dom. June 1687–Feb. 1689, p. 1445.
- 53 CTB, 1693-5, p. 591.