037 



STAFFORD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 



STAFFORD, VISCOUNT. 



During her residence at Coppet, Madame de Stael, who had been 

 many years a widow, became acquainted with M. de Rocca, of an old 

 family of Geneva, whom sho married privately. He was also an 

 author, and published a book on the French war in Spain. 



In 1814, after Napoleon's abdication, Madame de Stael returned to 

 Paris, where she, Benjamin Constant, and her other old friends 

 belonged to what was called the Constitutional party, which supported 

 the charter of Louis XVIII. and a bona fide representative govern- 

 ment, in opposition to the Bonapartists, who were conspiring for 

 Napoleon, to the old revolutionists, who still dreamt of a republic, 

 and to the ultra-royalists, who wished to restore the absolutism of the 

 ancient monarchy. The return of Napoleon from Elba decided the 

 question for the moment. Madame de Stael remained at Paris, and, as 

 well as Benjamin Constant, appeared to be reconciled to Napoleon, 

 thinking that he must now accommodate himself to a constitutional 

 system of government. After his second fall, she returned to Switzer- 

 land, and seemed to have weaned herself from active politics. She 

 occupied herself with preparing her lust work for the press, ' Con- 

 side'rations sur la Revolution Francois,' published after her death, 

 which took place July 14, 1817. She was buried in the family tomb 

 at Coppet. Her son, the Baron de Stael, who died in 1827, made 

 himself known in France, under the Restoration, by his philanthropy, 

 his attachment to constitutional liberty, and by some works of unpre- 

 tending merit; among others, his ' Lettres sur 1'Angleterre,' published 

 in 1825. 



Madame de Stael's book on the French revolution is one among the 

 crowd of works on that all important subject which deserves to go to 

 posterity. The authoress, being the daughter of Necker, and personally 

 acquainted in early youth with the principal characters of that great 

 drama, was well qualified to record in her after-life the reminiscences 

 of that singular period. In her work she lays bare without bias the 

 springs of action of the different individuals, and exposes the whole 

 internal working of the political machinery, which people from the 

 outside could not accurately understand. She had been, in fact, 

 " behind the scenes," and she was afterwards raised by experience 

 .above the vulgar admiration of the crude experiments of the pretended 

 republicans of France. Still her work is not comprehensive ; it wants 

 unity of purpose ; it is rather a commentary, a book of remarks on the 

 French revolution, than a history of that great event. Her principal 

 object, and it is on her part an amiable one, though somewhat egotis- 

 tical, was to justify the political conduct of her father, M. Necker, an 

 honest but certainly not a first-rate statesman, and one who was 

 totally unfit for the exigencies of the times. Yet in other respects 

 her work has much merit; it is written in a temperate and impartial 

 tone, it bends to none of the short-lived powers of the times, and ifc 

 exhibits philosophical as well as political acuteness. "If she had," 

 says her friend Benjamin Constant, " painted individuals more fre- 

 quently and more in detail, her work, though it might have ranked 

 lower as a literary composition, would have gained in interest." Some 

 of her characters, especially of the earlier period of the revolution, 

 such as Calonne, Brienne, Mirabeau, Pethion, are most graphically 

 sketched. 



Madame de Stael wrote several other works. That 'On the Influence 

 of the Passions,' published in 1796, although it contains many acute 

 remarks, partakes of the unsettled morality of the times, being written 

 just after the period of the reign of terror. In it she reflects upon the 

 fearful vision that had just passed, and this work ought to be read as 

 an appendage to her later work on the French revolution. She wrote 

 also ' Reflexions sur le Suicide ;' ' Essai sur les Fictions ;' and several 

 tales and other minor compositions. She contributed a few articles 

 to the ' Biographic Universelle,' among which is that on ' Aspasia.' 

 Her works have been collected and published in 17 vols. 8vo, Paris, 

 1830. As a literary person she was the most distinguished woman of 

 her age. She was open to the weaknesses of ambition, but she was 

 always independent, honest, and sincere. 



STAFFORD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. [BUCKINGHAM, vol. i., 

 col. 992.] 



STAFFORD, WILLIAM HOWARD, VISCOUNT, was the second 

 surviving son of Thomas, twentieth earl of Aruudel (the collector of the 

 Arundelian Marbles), by his wife the Lady Alathea Talbot, daughter 

 of Gilbert, seventh earl of Shrewsbury ; he was born on the 30th of 

 November, 1612. He was thus uncle to Thomas, the twenty-second 

 earl of Arundel, who was restored, after the return of Charles II., to 

 the dukedom of Norfolk, which had been forfeited by his great-great- 

 grandfather. 



Burnet, who*knew Lord Stafford in his last days, says, " He was a 

 weak but a fair-conditioned man ; he was on ill terms with his nephew's 

 family ; and had been guilty of great vices in his youth, which had 

 almost proved fatal to him." While he was known as Sir William 

 Howard, K.B., he married Mary, sister of Henry, thirteenth Baron 

 Stafford; which Henry died, unmarried, in 1637, when his barony 

 descended to his distant relation Roger Stafford, a person who appears 

 to have sunk to the lowest class of the people, though the great 

 grandson of the famous Edward Stafford, third duke of Buckingham, 

 and also of Margaret Plantagenet, the unfortunate Countess of Salis- 

 bury, and niece of King Edward IV. Roger's sister was married to a 

 joiner at Newport, in Shropshire, and they had a son who lived in 

 that town, following the trade of a cobbler. Nor had the elder 



BTOG. DIV. VOL. V. 



branch of the family, in which the title remained for several generations, 

 been always much more honourably matched ; Roger's uncle, Edward, 

 the eleventh lord, indeed married a daughter of the Earl of Derby; 

 but his son, Edward, the twelfth lord, chose to share his title with 

 his mother's chambermaid ; and from her, through a son, who died 

 during the life of his father, were sprung the thirteenth baron, Henry, 

 already mentioned, and his sister, who became the wife of Sir 

 William Howard. 



Upon the death of his brother-in-law, Sir William Howard imme- 

 diately assumed, or at least claimed, the title of Baron Stafford, in 

 right of his wife, a claim which, in any circumstances, certainly could 

 not have been sustained at that day. But it was soon discovered, and 

 admitted on all hands, that the true heir to the barony survived in 

 the person of Roger Stafford, although he had hitherto gone by the 

 name of Fludd or Floyd. Roger however was induced, no doubt for 

 a consideration, to submit his title to the dignity, on the 5th of 

 December 1637, to the decision of the king, " upon which sub- 

 mission," it is stated, " his majesty declared his royal pleasure that 

 the said Roger Stafford, having no part of the inheritance of the said 

 Lord Stafford, nor any other lands or means whatsoever, should make 

 a resignation of all claims to the title of Lord Stafford, for his majesty 

 to dispose of as he should see fit." A deed of surrender was accord- 

 ingly enrolled on the 7th of December 1639; and although such a 

 resignation of a peerage has since been decided to be illegal, the king 

 now considered himself at liberty to dispose of the dignity. On the 

 12th of September 1640, Sir William Howard was created Baron, and 

 his wife Baroness Stafford; and on the llth of November following 

 Lord Stafford was made a viscount, that being found the only way of 

 giving him as high a precedency as the former barons. Roger is 

 supposed to have died unmarried in the course of the same year. 



Lord Stafford had been bred a strict Roman Catholic, and during 

 the civil war had adhered to the royal side. After the Restoration, 

 accordiug to Burnet, " he thought the king had not rewarded him fop 

 his former services as he had deserved ; so he often voted against the 

 court, and made great applications always to the Earl of Shaftesbury. 

 He was on no good terms with the Duke [of York] ; for the great 

 consideration the court had of his nephew's family made him to be the 

 most [more ?] neglected." He docs not however appear to have ever 

 made any figure in parliament down to the time when all the Roman 

 Catholic peers, twenty-one in number (besides three who conformed), 

 were excluded from the House by the act of the 30th of Charles II., 

 st. 2, to which the royal assent was given on the 30th of November 

 1678. ' 



Lord Stafford is only remembered in history as the last and most 

 distinguished of the numerous victims whose lives were sacrificed in 

 the tragedy of the Popish Plot. [GATES, TITUS.] In his first examina- 

 tion before the Commons, on the 23rd of October 1678, Gates men- 

 tioned Stafford as the person who had been appointed by the general 

 of the Jesuits to the office of paymaster of the army. Two days after, 

 Stafford rose in his place in the House of Lords, and stated that he 

 was informed there was a warrant issued out from the lord chief 

 justice of England to apprehend him, and submitted himself to their 

 lordships' judgment. Burnet says, " When Gates deposed first against 

 him, he happened to be out of the way, and he kept out a day longer ; 

 but the day after he came in and delivered himself, which, considering 

 the feebleness of his temper and the heat of that time, was thought a 

 sign of innocence." Before the House rose he intimated that he should 

 surrender to the warrant; and after being consigned in the first 

 instance to the prison of the King's Bench, he was ultimately, on 

 the 30th, committed to the Tower, along with the other accused 

 noblemen, the Earl of Powis, and the Lords Petre, Arundel, and 



On the 5th of December, a message was brought from the Commons 

 by Sir Scrope How, who informed their lordships that he was com- 

 manded to impeach Lord Stafford of high treason and other high 

 crimes and misdemeanors. Three days after the Earl of Essex laid 

 before the House an information which had been sworn on the 24th 

 before two magistrates of the county of Stafford by "Stephen Dugdale, 

 gent., late servant of the Lord Aston, of Tixhall," who asserted therein 

 that in the beginning of September in the preceding year, he had 

 been promised a large reward by Lord Stafford and a Jesuit of the 

 name of Vrie or Evers, if he would join in a conspiracy to take the 

 king's life. The prorogation of the parliament at the end of the 

 mouth, and its dissolution a few weeks after, prevented any further 

 proceedings being taken until after the assembling of the new parlia- 

 ment in the beginning of March 1679. On the 18th of that month the 

 Lords' committee of privileges, to whom the question had been 

 referred, reported their opinion " that in all cases of appeals and writs 

 of error, they continue and are to be proceeded on ' in statu quo,' as 

 they stood at the commencement of the last parliament, without be- 

 ginning ' de novo ;'" and on the following day the House, after debate, 

 agreed to this report. The Commons sent up their articles of im- 

 peachment against the five Lords on the 7th of April; and on the 

 16th Lord Stafford put in his answer, in which he protested his entire 

 innocence of the crimes laid to his charge. Another prorogation 

 followed by a dissolution, took place in the end of May; and the 

 new parliament did not meet for the despatch of business till 

 October 1680. 



