Note 1 — CONTENTS
Reading edition
Sir William Stanley was a Roman Catholic and a very extraordinary man. I think the following account from the Dictionary of National Biography will be of interest.
Sir W. Stanley, Adventurer, one of the Cheshire Stanleys. He served in the Netherlands under Alva. He quitted the Spanish service in 1570 and served in Ireland under Elizabeth, and later on was appointed Sheriff of Cork. He was very severe on the rebels and he reported he had hanged 300 of them and so terrified the rest that "a man might now travel the whole country and no one molest him." He thought he was not properly rewarded, and later on was guilty of treachery. He was, of course, Roman Catholic and greatly in the confidence of the Jesuits. He actually went to Spain to advise the best method of conquering England. He recommended that Ireland should be made the basis of operations, and that troops should disembark at Milford Haven rather than at Portsmouth. When Elizabeth died Stanley sent no less a person than Guy Fawkes, his subaltern officer, with an emissary of Catesby to Spain, to warn Philip against James. There is no evidence that he was concerned in the Gunpowder Plot, but he was placed under arrest at Brussels on suspicion of being concerned in it.
He spent the latter part of his life in complete obscurity. In 1616 he contributed largely to a Jesuit College of Liége, and was Governor of Mechlin. He sought in vain for permission to return to England, and died at Ghent in 1630, and was honoured with a magnificent public funeral. He married Elizabeth, daughter of John Egerton of Egerton, who was buried in Mechlin Cathedral, in 1614. The male line of the Stanleys of Horton became extinct by the death of the twelfth baronet Sir John Stanley-Errington in 1883.