Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/262

232 have been as glad to prove a guilty connection with the conspiracy as they were similarly to implicate Captain Hugh Owen. 'Sir William Stanley,' Winter states, 'was not returned from Spain, so as he (Faukes) uttered the matter only to Owen, who seemed well pleased with the business, but told him that surely Sir William would not be acquainted with any plot, as having business now afoot in the Court of England, but he himself would be always ready to tell it him and send him away as soon as it were done.' It has not transpired that Stanley became acquainted with the Plot before news of its detection reached the Continent. This Sir William Stanley passed a career made up of such extraordinary vicissitudes that some account of him is worthy of mention here.

Sir William Stanley was the head of the ancient family of the Stanleys, of which, until the death of the last of Sir William's descendants in the male line, the noble house of Derby formed only the junior branch. Born in 1549, Stanley was brought up from childhood as a devout Roman Catholic. From 1567 till 1570, he fought under Alva in the Netherlands, and then volunteered for service under Elizabeth in Ireland, where he remained, on and off, for fifteen years, greatly distinguishing himself by his military genius and valour. Whilst in Ireland his faith seems to have offered no scruples in