059 



STAFFORD, VISCOUNT. 



STAHL, GEORGE ERNEST. 



CGO 



During all this time the accused lords had lain in the Tower; and 

 meanwhile the plot had been propped up by the testimony of Bedloe, 

 Dangerfield, Turberville, Denis, and other new witnesses. At last, on 

 Tuesday, the 30th of November (his birthday), Lord Stafford 

 selected, according to Sir John Reresby, as being " deemed to be 

 weaker than the other lords in the Tower "was brought to the bar 

 of the House of Lords, assembled as a court of justice in Westminster 

 Hall, to take his trial, the lord chancellor, Lord Finch (afterwards 

 carl 'of Nottingham), presiding as lord high steward. Reresby and 

 Evelyn were both present, and have both given us an account of the 

 scene. A singular circumstance mentioned by Evelyn is, that Stafford's 

 two daughters the Marchioness of Winchester _ being one of them 

 were with him in his box, aa well as the lieutenant of the Tower, the 

 axe-bearer and the guards. He remarks also that just forty years 

 before, when Lord Strafford was tried in the same place, the lord 

 steward was the present prisoner's father (the late Earl of Arundel). 

 Reresby says it was the deepest solemnity he ever saw. Besides Gates 

 and Dugdale, who repeated their former evidence with additions or 

 variations, Turberville swore that Stafford had also offered him a 

 reward to kill the king. The trial lasted seven days. Reresby says 

 that the prisoner so far deceived those who counted on a poor defence, 

 " as to plead his cause to a miracle." Burnet also, who, as we have 

 seen, had no high opinion of Stafford's strength of mind, admits that 

 he " behaved himself during the whole time, and at the receiving his 

 sentence, with much more constancy than was expected from him." 

 When the votes of their lordships were taken, on Tuesday, the 7th of 

 December, 31 voted 'not guilty,' and 55 'guilty.' ('State Trials, vii., 

 1293-1576.) Four of the Howards, his relations namely, the earls of 

 Carlisle, Berkshire, and Suffolk, and Lord Howard of Escrick con- 

 demned him ; the only one of his own family who voted for his 

 acquittal was Lord Arundel (sitting as Lord Mowbray), the son of the 

 Duke of Norfolk. 



Within two days after his condemnation he sent for Burnet and the 

 Bishop of London, to whom he made the most solemn protestations 

 of his innocence. " I pressed him in several points of religion," says 

 Burnet, " and urged Several things which he said he had never heard 

 before. He said these things on another occasion would have made 

 some impression upon him ; but he had now little time, therefore he 

 would lose none in controversy : so I let that discourse fall. I talked 

 to him of those preparations for death in which all Christians agree ; 

 he entertained these very seriously, much above what I expected from 

 him." However, he was desirous of saving his life, if it could be 

 done ; and he told Burnet, that if that would obtain his pardon, he 

 could and would discover "many other things that were more material 

 than anything that was yet known, and for which the duke [of York] 

 would never forgive hitu." Upon this being reported to the House of 

 Lords, he was immediately sent for, when " he began," says Burnet;, 

 " with a long relation of their [the Roman Catholics'] first consultations 

 about the methods of bringing in their religion, which they all agreed 

 could only be brought about by a toleration. He told them of the 

 Earl of Bristol's project; and went on to tell who had undertaken to 

 procure the toleration for them; and then he named the Earl of 

 Shaftesbury. When he named him he was ordered to withdraw, and 

 the Lords would hear no more from him." It is pretty evident from 

 all this that he really had nothing of any consequence to tell. " He 

 was sent back," continues Burnet, " to the Tower ; and there he com- 

 posed himself in the best way he could to suffer, which he did with a 

 constant and undisturbed mind. He supped and slept well the night 

 before his execution, and died without any show of fear or disorder. 

 He denied all that the witnesses had sworn against him." He was 

 executed on Tower Hill, on the morning of Wednesday, the 29th of 

 December. When his majesty's writ was found to remit all the rest 

 of the sentence except the beheading, the two republican sheriffs, 

 Bethel and Cornish, professed to feel scruples as to whether they were 

 warranted in acting upon it; but the Commons at last stepped in and 

 settled the matter by resolving " That this House is content that the 

 sheriffs of London and Middlesex do execute William, late Viscount 

 Stafford, by severing his head from his body only." Lord Russell is 

 stated to have " stickled for tho severer mode of executing the sen- 

 tence ; " and it is said that when Charles, three years after, granted a 

 similar commutation of punishment when his lordship was sent to the 

 scaffold, his majesty observed, " He shall find that I have the privilege 

 which he was pleased to deny in the case of Lord Stafford." 



A bill to reverse the attainder of Lord Stafford passed the Lords in 

 1685, but did not obtain the assent of the Commons. In 1688 his 

 widow was created by James II. countess of Stafford for life, and her 

 eldest son Henry carl of Stafford, with remainder to his brothers John 

 and Francis, and their heirs male ; but the earldom became extinct by 

 the death of John Paul, the fourth earl, in 1762. In 1800 certain 

 proceedings were instituted on behalf of Sir William Jerningham and 

 the Lady Anastasia Stafford Howard, daughter of William, second 

 earl of Stafford, and great-granddaughter of the attainted lord (who 

 died a nun at Paris in 1&07, at the ago of eighty-five), as conjoint heirs, 

 with a view of establishing the existence of the barony of Stafford, on 

 the ground that (aa above stated) it had been conferred not only 

 upon Sir William Howard, but also upon his wife, and that therefore 

 it descended to her heirs, notwithstanding the forfeiture of her hus- 

 band. But this claim was not prosecuted. At length however, on 



the 17th of June 1824, an act of parliament was passed reversing tho 

 viscount's attainder ; and tho following year Sir George William 

 Jerningham, Bart., was admitted to have established his claim as heir 

 to the barony (which had been granted with remainder to the heirs 

 of Sir William Howard and his wife), tbrough their granddaughter 

 Mary, who married Francis Plowden of Plowden, Esq., in the county 

 of Salop, and was the maternal grandmother of Sir William 

 Jerningham. 



STAGNELIUS, ERIK JOHAN, a poet, who may be described as 

 bhe Swedish Shelley, was born on the 14th of October 1793, in the 

 island of Gland, where his father, who afterwards became bishop of 

 Calmar, was at that time parish priest of Gardslosa and Bredslitra. 

 " From his tenderest years," says his father, in a letter written after 

 his death, " he showed much genius, and, in particular, a great incli- 

 nation to poetry. His principal occupation in his earlier years was 

 to turn over the books in my small library. He was almost self- 

 taught, and possessed, young as he was, in some matters the know- 

 ledge of a teacher, though where he got it from I could not imagine." 

 When he went to the university of Lund, from which, in 1812, he 

 transferred himself to that of Upsal, he had what his father terms an 

 amazing stock of learning, and was as remarkable for his strong 

 memory as for his powers of thought and imagination. At the uni- 

 versities he made few acquaintances, and throughout his life continued 

 strikingly averse to society. " He had the advantage," says Mellin, 

 " over many of the Swedish poets, of not being crushed by poverty, 

 but he was crushed by the still more painful consciousness of his own 

 personal ugliness." He was in 1815 introduced as a ' Cancellist/ or 

 clerk, into the Swedish office for ecclesiastical affairs, of which Kils von 

 Rosenstein, known in Swedish literature as a partisan of the classical 

 school, was then at the head. In 1817 appeared his first poem, ' \\ lu'li- 

 mir den Store ' (' Wladimir the Great '), an epic poem on the conver.-ion 

 of the Russians to Christianity. His next volume of poetry, which was 

 published in 1821, was entitled ' Liljor i Saron,' or ' Lilies of Sharon,' a 

 collection of short pieces. The poetical beauty of this collection is so 

 great that it surpasses that of any other in the Swedish language ; but 

 the philosophy that pervades the volume is of so startling a character, 

 that there is no room for surprise that the poems did not become 

 popular. Stagnelius had framed for himself a system which amalga- 

 mated with the doctrines of Schelling the views of Gnosticism, or 

 that philosophy which sees in the course of nature and the general 

 scheme of the universe the traces of a malevolent as well as a bene- 

 volent power. With these views, which had taken complete possession of 

 the poet, nearly all his lyric poetry is imbued, and his life became more 

 and more unhappy. He is said to have ruined his health by excesses 

 of different kinds, one of which, that of an immoderate indulgence in 

 brandy, has been the bane of several Swedish poets. The result was a 

 state which occasionally approached to frenzy. " What is stated by 

 Hammarskold," says Stagnelius's father, the bishop, " respecting an 

 unfortunate attachment as the cause of my sou's unhappy melancholy 

 is entirely groundless. The cause lay wholly and solely in a defective 

 interior organisation, of which I am fully convinced." Staguelius 

 still continued in his office in the ecclesiastical department and had 

 even received some promotion not long before, when on the morning of 

 the 3rd of April 1823, he was unexpectedly found dead in his bed. 



Stagnelius, though considered as a rising poet, and though in 1818 

 he had received a gold medal from the Swedish academy for his poem 

 of ' Woman in the North," had not attracted much notice during hia 

 life-time, and little of his poetry had seen the light. But when, in 

 1824, soon after his death, his friend Hammarskold published his 

 ' Samlade Skrifter,' or 'Collected Writings,' taken from his manu- 

 scripts, his reputation suddenly rose, and like that of Shelley has 

 since continued to increase. For a Swedish poet Stagnelius is singu- 

 larly prolific, though he is said to have destroyed a great quantity of 

 his compositions, which he was in the habit of throwing into the fire 

 if they did not meet his approbation on re-perusal. His poems fill 

 three volumes. The first of these is occupied with his epics or narra- 

 tive poems, ' Wladimir,' ' Blenda,' and ' Gunlog ; ' the second by a 

 series of dramas, of which ' The Bacchanals/ a tragedy on the story 

 of Orpheus, ' Sigurd Ring,' and ' Wisbur,' two tragedies on old northern 

 traditions, ' The Knight's Tower,' a mediseval drama of incest, and 

 ' The Martyrs,' a dramatic poem on the story of Vivia Perpetua, are 

 the principal. ' The Lilies of Sharon,' and a number of other smaller 

 poems occupy the third volume, which is the most interesting of the 

 three. Great fluency of language and beauty of style are the charac- 

 teristics of all Stagnelius's poems, which are said by the best Swedish 

 critics to exhibit the Swedish language in its most attractive form. 

 In his dramatic poems the principles of his philosophy are of course 

 not prominent, and in ' The Martyrs ' the spirit of early Christianity 

 is beautifully represented. Stagnelius's works have been more than 

 once reprinted, and have been inserted in the best collection of the 

 Swedish classics. A complete translation of his works into German 

 by Kannegiesser, in six volumes, was published in 1851. An English 

 translation of a few of his poems may be found in the first number of 

 the ' Foreign Review,' and in the Hewitts' ' History of Scandinavian 

 Literature.' 



STAHL, GEORGE ERNEST, one of the most celebrated physicians 

 of the last century, was born at Anspach in 1660. He studied medi- 

 cine at Jena, took his degree of doctor there in 1683, and at once 



