HOWARD
504
HROSWITHA
Howard, William, Venerable, Viscount Staf-
ford, martyr; b. 30 Xovcmber, 1614; beheaded Tower-
Hill, 2!) Dec, 1680. He was grandson of the Vener-
able Philip Howard, Earl 6f Arundel, mentioned above,
fifth son of Earl Thomas (the first great art-collector of
England), and uncle of Thomas Philip, Cardinal
Howard. Brought up as a Catholic, he was made a
knight of the Bath, at the coronation of Charles I,
1 February, 1626, and married Mary, sister of the
last Baron Stafford, October, 16.37; the title was
revived for him 12 September, 1640, and he was
immediately afterwards created a viscount. He is
said to have Joined the royal armjr during the Civil
War, but perhaps erroneously, for in 1642 he was in
Holland, attending the exiled royal family and his
mother and father. He was also employed by the
Emperor Ferdinand in missions to Flanders and
Switzerland. After his father's death, 4 October,
1646, many painful quarrels with his nearest relatives
ensued. The Howard properties in England having
been sequestrated by Parliament, the family was
much impoverished, and William's eldest surviving
brother. Earl Henry Frederick, was induced to com-
mence a series of imjust and vexatious suits against
his mother, and practically robbed her of her dowry
(Tierney, below, pp. 501-10). William, as her repre-
sentative, was involved in these painful and prolonged
quarrels, and even after both motlier and brother had
passed away, his cousins and their agents continued
against him a quasi-persecutaon for several years.
The details of those transactions are obscure, Ijut it would seem that the viscount was, under foreign law, twice actually arrested, at Heidelberg, July toSeptem- ber, 1653, and at Utrecht in January, 1656; in the latter case ho was acquitted with honour, though the charges, of which the particulars are not now known, wore insulting and vexatious (Stafford Papers, 15 January, 1656, see below). In these troubles his most dangerous opponents were perhaps Junius and other literary adherents of his father, who were claiming MSS. and rarities from the Arundel Collections in payment of their debts, while Lord William success- fully proved that those collections were not liable to such charges. Thoiigh they lost, they continued to write bitterly of him, and these complaints have found a permanent record in the diai-ies and other writings of Evelyn, Burnet, Dugdalc, etc. After the Restoration, 16(i0, his rights were firmly established, and his life within his large family circle must have been extremely hap])y. ^Phe brightest hours were perhaps those spent in conducting his nephew Philip to receive the cardinal's hat in Rome (1675).
Three years later Oates (c^. v.) and his abetters included Lord Stafford in their list of Catholic lords to be proscribed, and eventually he was put first upon the list. It has Ijoen supposed that this was done because his age, simplicity, and the previous differences with other meml^crs of his family sug- gested that he would prove comparatively easy prey. On 25 October, 1678, he was committed to the Tower, and it was more than a year before it was decided to try him. Then the resolution was taken so suddenly that he had little time to prepare. The trial, before the House of Lords, lasted from 30 November to 7 December, and was conducted with great solemnity. But no attempt was made to appraise the jierjuries of Oates, Dugdale, and Tuber- ville, and the viscount was of course condemned by 55 votes to 31. It is sad to read that all his kinsmen but one (that one, however, the Lord Mowbray with whom he had had many of the legal conflicts above noticed) voted against him. His last letters and speeches arc marked by a quiet dignity and a simple heroism, which give us a high idea of his character and his piety. His fellow- prisoner and confessor, Father Corker, O.S.B., says: "He was ever held to be of a generous dis-
position, very charitable, devout, addicted to so-
briety, inoffensive in words, a lover of justice."
A portrait of him by Van Dyck belongs to the Mar-
quess of Bute.
Stafford Papers, MSS. at Costessey Park (Norwich): Corker, Stafford's Memoirs (London, 1681): Tierney, Castle and An- tiquities of Arundel (London, 1834) ; Barker in Diet. Nat. Biofj., B.V.: G. E. C(nKAYNE), Peerage (London, 1887-96), VH. 215; Pollen, Calh. Rec. Soe., IV. 24:i-6; Hamilton, English Canon- esses of Louvain (1904): besides Lingard, Burnet, Pepys, Reresby, and other historians of Oates 's Plot. etc.
J. H. Pollen.
Howley, Michael Francis. See St. John 's. Arch- diocese OF.
Hroswitha, a celebrated nun-poetess of the tenth century, whose name has been given in various forms, Ro.swiTHA, Hrot.switha, Hrosvitha, and Hrot.suit; b. probably between 930 and 940; d. about 1002. 'The interpretation of the name as clamor viiliiliix contains no doubt a reference to the bearer herself; this accounts for her being also called "the mighty voice", and sometimes even the "Nightingale of Gandersheim ". In all proba- bility she was of aristocratic birth; her name ap- pears on an old wood engraving as " Helena von Rossow". She seems to have been still in her ear- liest youth when she entered the convent of (lan- dersheim, then highly famed for its asceticism and learned pursuits. Her extraordinary talents found here wise and judicious cultivation, first under guid- ance of her teacher Rikkardis, then under the special care and direction of Gcrberg, a niece of Otto I and the mo.st acconiplishe<l woman of her time, who was later to l)ocome her abbess (959-1001). The latter took particular interest in the de\elopment of her muse, by the training of which she hoped "to contribute something to the glory of Cod".
This is about all that is known of the external life of the first German poetess. Hroswitha shares the lot in this respect of all the poets of olden time: we are far better acquainted with her works than with her personality. Furthermore, the Latin
Eoems of this unassuming nun have had a curious istory. After centuries of neglect, they were re- discovered, as is well known, by the poet laureate Conrad Celtes in the Benedictine monastery of St. Emmcram at Ratisbon, and were published in 1501 to the great delight of all lovers of poetry. The poetic work of the cliildlike, pious religious took at first the epic form; there appeared two Biblical poems and six legends. For these she drew upon Latin sources, and used her poetic freedom in the psychological treatment of her characters and their actions. The material of her " Lcben Mariens " (859 hexameters) was taken from Holy Writ, and from the apocryphal Gospel of St. James. This hfe of Mary was nithcr closely connected with her poem "Von dor Ilimmelfahrt des Herrn " (150 hexameters). On the other hand the (hemes of her six legends are quite varied: "The Martyrdom of St. Gangolf " (582 distichs), a Burgundian prince; "The youthful St. Pelagius" of Cordoba, whose recent martyrdom she relates in 414 verses in accordance with reports gathered from eyewitnesses, was a contemporary of hers, hence the realism and imprcs-siveness of the picture; the legend of "Theophilus" (455 verses) IS the earliest poetical treatment of the medieval legend of Faust; of a similar tenor is the legend of St. Basil (259 verses), in which an unhappy youth is savcfl from a dialiolical pact; the list closes with the martyrdom of St. Dionysius (266 verses) and that of St. Agnes (459 verses). This last poem, which is based on the biography of the saint ascribed to St. Ambrose, is written with great fervour. The language is simple but smooth, and frequently even melodious.
But her poetical reputation rests, properly speak- ing, on her dramatic works. As regards her motives
