William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford (30 November 1614-29 December 1680) was an English Catholic nobleman who wsa executed for treason for his alleged involvement in the fictitious "Popish Plot."
Biography[]
William Howard was born in Stafford, Staffordshire, England in 1614 to a nominally Anglican family that practiced Catholicism in private. He left Cambridge without a degree, and his family was exiled to Antwerp during the English Civil War. He traveled extensively through Western Europe, occasionally being imprisoned for his father's debts. He returned to England on the Restoration in 1660, by which time he had become an open Catholic. He promoted the removal of the anti-Catholic penal laws with King Charles II of England and James, Duke of York, but he remained obscure until Titus Oates falsely implicated him in the "Popish Plot" in 1679. He was convicted of treason on 7 December 1680 and executed on Tower Hill in 1680.