Historical Collections: Or, a Brief Account of the most Remarkable Transactions of the Two Last Parliaments Held and Dissolved at Westminster and Oxford. With Exact Lists of the Members of each Parliament by [HOWARD William, Viscount Stafford] - 1685

London: Printed for S. N. and Sold by W. Freeman near Temple-bar in Fleetstreet, 1685. Second edition. original brown roan, morocco gilt lettered label, decorated/stained (?) edges. Front cover detaching, worn at edges and spine ends, interior fine. Octavo. 302 pp. Elaborate frontispiece illustration of the trial and execution of William Howard William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford, FRS (30 November 1614 – 29 December 1680) was the youngest son of Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, and his wife, the former Alethea Talbot. A Fellow of the Royal Society from 1665, he was a Royalist supporter before being falsely implicated by Titus Oates in the later discredited "Popish Plot", and executed for treason. He was beatified as a Catholic martyr in 1929.The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy concocted by Titus Oates that between 1678 and 1681 gripped the Kingdoms of England and Scotland in anti-Catholic hysteria. Oates alleged that there existed an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II, accusations that led to the executions of at least 22 men and precipitated the Exclusion Bill Crisis. Eventually Oates' intricate web of accusations fell apart, leading to his arrest and conviction for perjury.The main evidence against Stafford came from Titus Oates, who said he had seen a document from the Pope naming Stafford as a conspirator; and from Stephen Dugdale, who testified that Stafford had tried to persuade him to kill the King when Stafford was visiting Dugdale's employers, the Astons, at their country house, Tixall, Staffordshire. A third and most dangerous witness, Edward Turberville (a professional soldier, and thus plausible enough as an assassin) said that he had visited Stafford in Paris in 1676, where Stafford had tried to bribe him to kill Charles II (there were several inconsistencies in his story, especially concerning the relevant dates, but Stafford, lacking expert legal assistance, failed to exploit them properly).Stafford, like all those who were charged with treason until the passage of the Treason Act 1695, was denied defence counsel and forced to conduct his own defence, bringing forward witnesses to counter the evidence against him. One such witness would have been Richard Gerard of Hilderstone who had come to London to testify on Stafford's behalf, but was imprisoned on the word of Stephen Dugdale; Gerard died in jail before the trial. Although the Lord High Steward, Heneage Finch, conducted the trial with great fairness, this was not enough to secure Stafford's acquittal: while Stafford maintained his innocence with vigour, John Evelyn, a spectator, thought his speeches "very confused and without method". He failed, where a good defence counsel might have succeeded, in exposing the inconsistencies in the evidence of Turberville, or to discredit the unsavoury Oates, whose public standing had declined notably over the preceding year. As Evelyn also noted Stafford was "not a man beloved by his own family", and seven out of eight peers of the Howard dynasty who sat on the Court voted him Guilty.Stafford was convicted by a majority of 55 votes of Guilty to 31 of Not Guilty and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, the punishment of traitors, which was commuted by the King to beheading. The King, even though he is not thought to have had much personal regard for the unpopular Stafford, later said that he had signed the death warrant "with tears in his eyes", but in the current state of public opinion a reprieve was impossible. Charles added that Stafford's accusers had his blood on their hands, just as he later told Lord Essex that the blood of Oliver Plunkett was on his head -wikipedia.