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William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford, was born on 30 November 1614, the youngest son of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, a prominent courtier and art collector, and Alethea Talbot, daughter of Gilbert Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. The Howards were among the greatest noble families of England and had a long, complicated history of Catholic recusancy under the penal laws, even when political necessity led some members toward outward conformity with the Church of England. In 1637 he married Mary Stafford, sister of Henry Stafford, 5th Baron Stafford. Through that marriage the ancient Stafford dignity, which had been in abeyance, was revived for him. In 1640 Charles I created him Baron Stafford and, later the same year, Viscount Stafford.

Stafford was a committed Royalist during the English Civil War. After the defeat of the king's cause he lived for years in exile on the Continent, principally in the Spanish Netherlands and France, as did many other Catholic and Cavalier families. Following the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 he returned to England. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, an indication of some engagement with the scientific culture of the Restoration court, though he never became a major political figure. His estates had been damaged by sequestration and war, and he continued to face financial strain.

In 1678 the fabricated Popish Plot, promoted by Titus Oates, alleged a Jesuit conspiracy to assassinate Charles II and place the Catholic Duke of York on the throne. Several Catholic peers were accused of high treason and sent to the Tower of London. Stafford, regarded as the least powerful of those lords, was chosen to be tried first. In late 1680 he was brought before the House of Lords in Westminster Hall. Despite serious weaknesses and contradictions in the evidence of Oates and other informers, a majority of his peers found him guilty of treason. Charles II, privately doubtful of the plot, did not feel able to issue a pardon amid the Exclusion Crisis.

On 29 December 1680 Stafford was beheaded on Tower Hill. On the scaffold he protested his innocence of any conspiracy, affirmed his loyalty to the king, and died professing the Catholic faith. English and Continental Catholics regarded him as a martyr who had suffered for religion rather than for any genuine political crime. He was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929. He and Mary Stafford had several children; their son Henry Stafford-Howard was later created Earl of Stafford. His trial and death remain a well-documented episode in the history of the Popish Plot and of recusant suffering in seventeenth-century England.

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