lain and knight of the Garter, and was confirmed in possession of his Welsh estates.
Stanley's fall ten years after came no doubt as a surprise to most people, but Henry long before entertained suspicions of the man who had in turn betrayed Lancaster and York (Brewer, Letters and Papers, iii. 490). It is a curious coincidence, if no more, that the informer who denounced him at the end of 1494 as an accomplice of Perkin Warbeck should have been Sir Robert Clifford, uncle of the young lord whose property at Skipton he had for a time usurped (Dugdale, i. 342). How deeply he involved himself with Warbeck we do not know; he must surely have done more than declare that ‘if he knew certainly that the young man [Warbeck] was the undoubted heir of King Edward IV, he would never fight or bear armour against him.’ On 6 Feb. 1495 he was ‘found guilty of treason by a quest of divers knights and worshipful gentlemen,’ and on the 16th beheaded on Tower Hill (Cott. MS. Vitellius, A. xvi. 152–3; Fabyan, p. 685; Polydore Vergil; Hall, p. 469; Busch, p. 95). The more cruel part of an execution for treason was dispensed with. Henry defrayed the cost of his burial at Sion (Excerpta Historica, pp. 101–2). It was afterwards believed that forty thousand marks in ready money, plate, and jewels were found in Holt Castle, and Bacon, in his ‘Life of Henry VII,’ estimates Stanley's income at three thousand a year.
Stanley was at least twice married. In 1465 he married Joan, daughter of the first Viscount Beaumont, and widow of John, lord Lovel (Rot. Parl. v. 582; Complete Peerage, v. 165). He subsequently (after 1470) married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Hopton of Hopton, Shropshire, who had already survived two husbands, Sir Roger Corbet of Moreton-Corbet, Shropshire, and John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester [q. v.] (ib. vii. 402). The pedigrees following Sir Peter Leycester are in error respecting his marriage (cf. Baines, Hist. of Lancashire, iv. 10; Ormerod, i. 442). Stanley left three children—a son and two daughters. The son, Sir William Stanley, married Joan, heiress of the Masseys of Tatton in Cheshire, and died in or about 1498; one daughter, Joan, married Sir John Warburton of Arley, and the other, Catherine, Thomas Cocat of Holt.
A three-quarter-length portrait of Stanley in richly ornamented armour is preserved at Wentworth House, Yorkshire, and was engraved in Baines's ‘Lancashire’ (iv. 19). He is represented with a thinnish face and short beard.
[See Rot. Parl.; Hall and Fabyan's Chronicles, ed. Ellis; Polydore Vergil, Warkworth's Chronicle and Arrival of Edward IV (Camden Soc.); Bentley's Excerpta Historica, 1831; Stanley Papers (Chetham Soc. vol. xxix.); Ormerod's Hist. of Cheshire, 1876; Dugdale's Baronage; Complete Peerage by G. E. C[okayne]; Gairdner's Richard III; Ramsay's Lancaster and York; Busch's England under the Tudors, Engl. tr.; other authorities in the text. Stanley is one of the heroes of the contemporary ‘Song of Lady Bessy’ (Elizabeth of York) written by a Stanley retainer, Humphrey Brereton, and edited by Halliwell for the Percy Society in 1847.]
STANLEY, Sir WILLIAM (1548–1630), adventurer, was eldest son of Sir Rowland Stanley of Hooton and Storeton, Cheshire, the head of the senior branch of the house of Stanley. Sir Rowland for many years took a prominent place in his native county, of which he was sheriff in 1576; he died in 1612, aged 96, the oldest knight in England. William Stanley, born in 1548, in all probability at Hooton, was brought up as a Roman catholic. At the age of twelve he was married to Ann Dutton, a bride of ten, but the union was dissolved in 1565 (Furnivall, Child Marriages in the Diocese of Chester, pp. 47–9). After this marriage the youth was sent to school with ‘Dr. Standish at Lathom,’ whence he entered the ‘service’ of his kinsman, Edward Stanley, third earl of Derby [q. v.] Soon afterwards he crossed to the Netherlands and embarked on his adventurous career. He took service as a volunteer under Alva, the Spanish general, in 1567. Stanley quitted the Spanish service about 1570, and joined Elizabeth's forces in Ireland, where he served for fifteen years (cf. Cal. Hatfield MSS. i. 567). In 1579, as one of Sir William Drury's captains in the campaign against the followers of the Earl of Desmond, he assisted in an inroad into Limerick, and for his gallantry was knighted by Drury at Waterford. He took part in the battle of Monasternenagh, and distinguished himself in the defence of Adare. In 1580 he was sent to England to enlist troops, which he led to Munster; but he was speedily recalled by Lord-deputy Grey to assist in putting down the rebellion which had broken out in the Pale [see Grey, Arthur, fourteenth Lord Grey de Wilton]. Through the greater part of 1581 he was engaged in Wicklow, doing great execution against the O'Tooles and the Kavanaghs. Stanley received a commission from Grey, 30 Aug. 1581, to follow the latter, and his ‘courage and toilsome travail’ throughout the whole campaign won the highest commendation (ib. ii. 427). On the
