Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/265

Rh success of such schemes, and, indeed, of his own position. He had hoped that the English Roman Catholics, aided by Philip, would rise and proclaim as Elizabeth's successor some one, such as Lady Arabella Stewart, who might prove to be a mere tool in the hands of the Roman party. He speedily recognized, however, the stability of the new King's Government, and seems vainly to have been trying to obtain a pardon from James at the very time when his old friends, Winter, Faukes, and Wright, were preparing the Gunpowder Plot.

After the discovery of the Plot, Sir William Stanley plainly recognized that the Roman Catholic cause had become completely discredited, and that no hope of help could be entertained any longer from Spain. He spent the rest of his life in wandering about the Continent, consoling himself with special devotion to his religion, after having again been refused a pardon by the British Government. With his fast friends, the Jesuits, he appears to have fallen out towards the last, and to have become somewhat disgusted with their politics. At the great age of eighty-one, Stanley died at Ghent (1630), and was buried at Mechlin. He was the father of two sons and three daughters. His grandson, William Stanley, recovered the family estate of Hooton, Cheshire, and was the father of Sir William Stanley, of Hooton, Baronet.

That an Englishman of such noble birth and