Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 53.djvu/468

 published in six volumes, under the direction of the master of the rolls, in 1867–73.

Among the manuscripts thus bequeathed to Stafford was the original of the ‘Pacata Hibernia,’ written, we are given by him to understand, by Carew himself, but ‘out of his retyred Modestie, the rather by him held backe from the Stage of Publication, lest himselfe being a principall Actor in many of the particulars, might be perhaps thought under the Narration of publicke proceedings, to giue vent and utterance to his private merit and services, howsoever justly memorable.’ After having submitted it ‘to the view and censure of divers learned and judicious persons,’ the work was published by Stafford, under the following title, sufficiently descriptive of its contents, ‘Pacata Hibernia: Ireland appeased and redvced; or, an Historie of the Late Warres of Ireland, especially within the Province of Mounster, under the government of Sir George Carew, Knight, then Lord President of that Province … Wherein the Seidge of Kinsale, the Defeat of the Earle of Tyrone, and his Armie; the Expulsion and sending home of Don Juan de Aguila, the Spanish Generall, with his forces; And many other remarkable Passages of that time are related. Illustrated, with Seventeene severall Mappes, for the better understanding of the Storie. London, Printed by A. M. 1633. And part of the Impression made over, to be vended for the benefit of the Children of John Mynshew, deceased.’ The book, now exceedingly rare, was reprinted by the Hibernia Press Company, Dublin, in 1810, and a new edition was edited in 1896 (2 vols.) by Mr. Standish O'Grady. It is an impartial if not very interesting account of the struggle it records.

[Hardy and Brewer's Report on the Carte and Carew Papers, London, 1864, p. 11; Cal. Carew MSS. pp. lviii, lxiii–iv; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 449.]

 STAFFORD, WILLIAM (1554–1612), alleged author of the ‘Compendious Examination of Certain Ordinary Complaints,’ born at Rochford, Essex, on 1 March 1553–4, was second son of Sir William Stafford, by his second wife and relative, Dorothy, daughter of Henry Stafford, first baron Stafford [q. v.] Sir Edward Stafford (1552?–1605) [q. v.] was his elder brother. Sir William had acquired Rochford through his first wife, Mary Boleyn, sister of Anne Boleyn, who, after being Henry VIII's mistress, married first Sir William Cary, and, after his death in 1528, Sir William Stafford. William was educated at Winchester, where he was admitted scholar in 1564 (, p. 139), and at New College, Oxford, matriculating in 1571, and being elected fellow in 1573 (Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. ix. 375; Reg. Univ. Oxon. . ii. 54). In 1575, however, he was deprived of his fellowship for absenting himself from college beyond his prescribed leave, and he seems to have become a hanger-on at court, where his mother was mistress of the robes to Queen Elizabeth. There he suffered some slight from the Earl of Leicester, and developed into a ‘lewd, miscontented young person’ (Hatfield MSS. ii. 224). In June 1585 he suddenly and secretly left London for Dieppe, probably with the intention of joining his brother Sir Edward, then ambassador in Paris. He was back again in 1586, and on 26 Dec. in that year he sought an interview with the French ambassador, Châteauneuf, at his house in Bishopsgate Street, asking his aid to escape to France on the pretext of being unable to tolerate Leicester's scorn. According to Stafford's own account, the French ambassador then inveigled him into a plot for assassinating Queen Elizabeth, and securing the succession to the throne of Mary Queen of Scots. The ambassador's secretary, De Trappes, and a prisoner in Newgate named Moody were also in the plot. In the following January Stafford revealed it to Walsingham. De Trappes was arrested at Dover and Châteauneuf was summoned before the council. There he acknowledged that he had been privy to the plot, but swore that Stafford had suggested it, that he endeavoured to dissuade him, and that he would have revealed it at once had it not been for the respect in which he held Stafford's mother and brother. After some demur Châteauneuf's statements were accepted and Stafford was imprisoned in the Tower, where he remained until August 1588 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1581–90, p. 531). The plot was probably concocted by Stafford in order that his services in revealing it might win him favour at court.

After his release Stafford married, in 1593, Anne, daughter of Thomas Gryme of Antingham, Norfolk, where he resided quietly for the rest of his life. He presented various books to Winchester College, and died on 16 Nov. 1612. He left a daughter Dorothy, who married Thomas Tyndale of Eastwood Park, Gloucestershire, and a son William (1593–1684) [q. v.]

Apparently on the strength of his initials, and of an allusion in the dedication to Queen Elizabeth to ‘his late undutiful behaviour,’ Wood assigned to Stafford the authorship of ‘A compendious or briefe examination of certayne ordinary complaints, of divers of our countrymen in these our dayes