PLOWLAND HOUSE, HOLDERNESS, E.R. YORKSHIRE.

THE GUNPOWDER PLOT

AND

LORD MOUNTEAGLE’S LETTER;
 
 
BEING A PROOF, WITH MORAL CERTITUDE, OF
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE DOCUMENT:

TOGETHER WITH

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE WHOLE THIRTEEN
GUNPOWDER CONSPIRATORS,
INCLUDING
GUY FAWKES.

vii

The book which your characteristic generosity has permitted me to dedicate to you wears a two-fold aspect. For it is as to one portion — and predominantly — an Inquiry taking the form of a discourse with questions and proofs, propositions and demonstrations. While as to another portion — but subordinately — it is a History taking the form of a narrative of events, a relation of mental occurrences, a statement of concrete facts. Now these twain aspects will be found duly to play their respective parts in the course of the subsequent pages, in accordance with a selected order and method.

With most of the allegations of fact and the inferences therefrom, and with many of the assumptions and conclusions which this work contains, your Lordship will agree. From others you will disagree. Whilst in the case of a third class, it may be that you will deem a suspension of judgment to be the part which wisdom and justice alike enjoin.

Speaking for myself, both as a man and as a native of our great County of Yorkshire — whose sons are atviii once speculative and practical, imaginative and concrete — necessity, in the form of an imperative sense of duty, has been laid upon me, to declare, with unmistakable emphasis and straightforward directness, what I hold to be the Truth governing the subject-matter wherewith I have sought to deal. For Truth is that which is, and its contradictory is error. This line of action I have pursued with the greater determination, inasmuch as daily observation of external events — and, if less frequent, still actual reflection thereupon — has strongly convinced me, even against my will, that much of the “forcible feebleness” and most of the “stable instability” of modern British Statesmen and Politicians have their origin and rise in nothing else than this: — lack of clarity of thought and want of knowledge of those, fixed fundamental intellectual, moral, and political principles which ought to be the sure inheritance of the human Race. And pre-eminently of that portion of the Race which is conscious of a lofty imperial mission. “For evil is wrought by want of thought as well as by want of heart.”

The ancient Stagyrite ranked Poetry above History, because the former bequeaths to Man universal principles of action, whereas the latter bestows upon Man only a relation of individual facts.

But the History of the Gunpowder Treason Plot rises to a higher unity. Because for a man to have read and mastered an impartial record of that deliberate andix appalling scheme of “sacrilegious murder,” which happily Destiny first frustrated, and afterwards, through Nemesis, her unerring executioner, signally avenged in the sight of all men, is to have witnessed, with the eye of the historic imagination, a drama that is a poem in action.

Nay, more; it is to have had a personal, experimental realization, through the historic feeling, of what is meant, in the realm of Moral actualities, by the infliction of Retribution, the working out of Expiation, the regaining of Justness, the restoration of Equality between outraged Right and outraging Wrong, and the attaining by the tempestuous, passionate human heart of final tranquillity, rest, and peace.

For one of the greatest recorded Tragedies in the world is the History of the Gunpowder Treason Plot, regard being had to the intellectual and moral ends effected by that history’s recital.

The man who has truly, if indeed but commemoratively, through force of the medium of language merely, taken his part in this great Action, even at a distance of well-nigh three hundred years, will have had his soul cleansed and purified by cleansed and purified pity and terror. Then will he have had that soul soothed and healed. He will have been first abased and then exalted.

For so to act is to weep with a Humanity that weeps. Then with that same Humanity to join in a triumphant pæan of victory that has for its universal and glorious theme this reality of realities which cannot bex broken, namely, that Universe — whereof Man, though not the measure, constitutes so large a part — is primevally founded and everlastingly established in Goodness, Being, and Truth.

Trusting that your Lordship will crown your gracious kindness by pardoning the great length of this Introductory Letter,

xi

xiii

PREFACE.

The writer of the following work desires respectfully to put forward a modest contribution to the solution of one of the greatest problems known to History.

The problem referred to arises out of that stupendous and far-reaching movement against the Government of King James I. known as the Gunpowder Treason Plot.

This enterprise of cold-blooded, though grievously provoked, massacre was, of a truth, “barbarous and savage beyond the examples of all former ages.” But because the movement had a profoundly — in the Aristotelian sense — political causa causans, therefore it is of perennial interest to governors and governed.

The causa causans, or originating cause, of the Gunpowder Treason Plot, in its ultimate analysis, will be found to involve that problem of problems for Princes, Statesmen, and Peoples all the world over: — How to allow freedom of human action, and yet faithfully to maintain Absolute Truth concerning the Infinite and the Eternal — or that which is believed to be Absolute Truth.

To the intent that the mind of the reader may ever and anon find relief from the stress and strain occasioned by the dry discussion of Evidence and the severe reasoningxiv from necessary or probable philosophical assumptions, the writer has designedly interspersed, both in the Text and in the Notes, matter of a Biographical and Topographical nature, especially such as hath relation to the author’s honoured native County — Yorkshire — and his beloved native City — York.

The writer has thought out his thesis, and has treated the same without fear or favour — limited and conditioned only by a regard for what he knew or supposed, and therefore believed, to be the truth governing the subject-matter under consideration. Nobody can say more, not even the most advanced or emancipated thinker living.[A]

If it be demanded of the author why a member of the lower branch of the legal profession hath essayed the unveiling of a mystery that has baffled the learning and ingenuity of men from the days of King James I. — the British Solomon — down to the days of Dr. Samuel Rawson Gardiner, the renowned historian of the early English Stuarts, the author’s answer and plea must be — for it can only be — that by the decrees of Fate, his eyes first saw the light of the sun in a County whose history is an epitome of the history of the English people; and in a City which is an England in miniature.

In conclusion, the writer would be fain to be pardoned in saying that he has not had the advantagexv of frequenting any British or Foreign University, or other seat of learning — all the education that he can make his humble boast of having been received in Yorkshire Protestant Schools.

The writer’s guide, during the past eighteen months, wherein he hath “voyaged through strange seas of thought alone,”[A] has been “the high white star of Truth. There he has gazed, and THERE aspired.”[B]

Saturday, 26th October, 1901.

xvii

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

xxxiv

ERRATA.

The author regrets to have to request his indulgent readers to be kind enough to make the following corrections [Transcriber’s Note: These have been applied.]: —

xxxv

PRELUDE.

In order that the problem of the Gunpowder Plot may be understood, it is necessary for the reader to bear in mind that there were three movements — distinct though connected — against the Government on the part of the oppressed Roman Catholic recusants in the year 1605. The first of these movements was a general wave of insurrectionary feeling, of which there is evidence in Yorkshire as far back as 1596; in Lancashire about 1600; and in Herefordshire, at a later date, much more markedly. Then there was the Gunpowder Plot itself. And, lastly, there was the rebellion that was planned to take place in the Midlands, which, to a very limited extent, did take place, and in the course of which four of the conspirators were slain. That Salisbury’s spies and decoys — who were, like Walsingham’s, usually not Protestants but “bad Catholics” — had something to do with stirring up the general revolutionary feeling is more than probable; but that either he or they planned, either jointly or severally, the particular enterprise known as the Gunpowder Treason Plot — which was as insane as it was infamous — I do not for a moment believe.

All students of English History, however, are greatly indebted to the Rev. John Gerard, S.J., for his threexxxvi recent critical works on this subject; but still that the main outlines of the Plot are as they have come down to us by tradition, to my mind, Dr. Samuel Rawson Gardiner abundantly proves in his book in reply to the Rev. John Gerard.

The names of the works to which I refer are: — “What was the Gunpowder Plot?” the Rev. J. Gerard, S.J. (Osgood, McIlvaine & Co.); “The Gunpowder Plot and Plotters” (Harper Bros.); “Thomas Winter’s Confession and the Gunpowder Plot” (Harper Bros.); and “What Gunpowder Plot was,” S. R. Gardiner, D.C.L., LL.D. (Longmans).

The Articles in “The Dictionary of National Biography” dealing with the chief actors in this notable tragedy are all worthy of careful perusal.

“The History of the Jesuits in England, 1580-1773,” by the Rev. Ethelred L. Taunton, with twelve illustrations (Methuen & Co., 1901), contains a chapter on the Gunpowder Plot; and the Plot is referred to in Major Hume’s recent work, entitled, “Treason and Plot” (Nisbet, 1901).

1

CHAPTER I.

One of the unsolved problems of English History is the question: “Who wrote the Letter to the Lord Mounteagle?” surely, one of the most momentous documents ever penned by the hand of man, which discovered the Gunpowder Treason, and so saved a King of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland — to say nothing of France — his Royal Consort, his Counsellors, and Senators, from a bloody, cruel, and untimely death.

In every conspiracy there is a knave or a fool, and sometimes, happily, “a repentant sinner.”

Now it is well known that the contrivers of the Gunpowder Treason themselves suspected Francis Tresham — a subordinate conspirator and brother-in-law to Lord Mounteagle — and many historians have rashly jumped to the conclusion that, therefore, Tresham must have been the author.

But, when charged at Barnet by Catesby and Thomas Winter, two of his infuriated fellow-plotters, with having sent the Letter, Tresham so stoutly and energetically denied the charge that his denial saved him from the point of their poniards.

Moreover, the suspected man when a prisoner in the Tower of London, and even when in the act of throwing himself on the King’s mercy, never gave the faintest hint that the Letter was attributable to him. But, on the contrary, actually stated first that he had intended to reveal the treason, and secondly that he had been guilty of concealment.

2

Now, as a rule, “all that a man hath will he give for his life.” Therefore it is impossible, in the face of this direct testimony of Tresham, to maintain that to him the discovery of the Plot is due: and the force of the argument grounded on Tresham’s being the brother-in-law to Mounteagle, and that the accused man showed an evident desire that the Plot should be postponed, if not altogether abandoned, melts away like snow before the sun.[1][2][A]

To whatever decision the Historical Inquirer into this hitherto inscrutable mystery is destined to come after reviewing and weighing the Evidence now available — which to-day is more abundant from a variety of accidental circumstances, than when Lingard and Mackintosh, and even Gardiner and Green, wrote their histories — it is manifest that the Inquirer’s decision in the matter cannot be as certain as a mathematical conclusion. But, it may be morally certain, because of the many degrees of probability that the information now ready to our hand will inevitably give that are favourable to the conclusion which the following pages will seek, by the evidence of facts, to sustain. And, as the ancient historian tersely says: “Ubi res adsunt, quid opus est verbis?” — “Where facts are at hand, what need is there for words?”

The Evidence to be relied on is mainly the evidence known as Circumstantial,[B] and consists of two classes of acts. One of these classes leads up to the performance of the transaction — namely, in the one case, the dictating of the Letter by the primary Author; in the other case, the penning of the Document by the secondary Scribe. Whilst the other class of acts tends to3 demonstrate that the Author of the Letter and the Penman respectively were conscious, subsequent to the commission of the transaction — in the former case, of having incurred the responsibility of being the originating Cause of the Document; in the latter case, of being the Agent for its physical production.

Before we begin to collect our Evidence, and, à fortiori, before we begin to consider the inferences from the same, we ought to bear in mind certain fixities of thought, or, in other words, certain self-evident fundamentals which are grounded in logic and daily experience. These fixities of thought or self-evident fundamentals will be points from which the reason of the Historical Inquirer can take swing. And not only so; but — like the cords of the rocket life-saving apparatus of the eager mariner — they will be lines of attachment and rules of thought, whereby first to secure to ourselves the available Evidence; and secondly, to prove to the intellect the truth of a theory which, if allowed, shall redound, in respect of courage and integrity, to the praise and honour of Man.

4

CHAPTER II.

Now, to my mind, it is a proposition so plain as not to require arguing, that there must have been at least two persons engaged in the two-fold transaction of dictating the Letter and of being the penman of the same. For although it is, of course, physically possible that the work may have been accomplished by one and the same person, yet that there was a division of labour in the two-fold transaction is infinitely the more likely supposal: because of the terrible risk to the revealing conspirator of his handwriting being detected by the Government authorities, and, through them, by his co-partners in guilt, should he have rashly adventured to be his own scribe; and this though he feigned his penmanship never so cunningly.

Now if such were the case, it follows that there must have been some second person — some entirely trustworthy friend — in the conspirator’s confidence. Nay, if the exigencies of the nature and posture of affairs demanded it, a third person, or even a fourth, might have been also taken into confidence. But only if absolutely necessary. For the risk of detection would be proportioned to the number of persons in the secret: — it being a rule of common prudence in such cases that confidences must not be unnecessarily multiplied.

Therefore it follows that, supposing there was a second person in the confidence of the “discovering” or revealing conspirator to pen the Letter; and supposing5 there was a third person in the confidence of that conspirator, with or without the knowledge and consent of the second person, to act as a go-between, an “interpres,” between the conspirator and Lord Mounteagle, these two persons must have been very trustworthy persons indeed.

Now a man trusts his fellow-man in proportion as he has had knowledge of him either directly or indirectly; directly by personal contact, indirectly through the recommendation of some competent authority.

Experientia docet. Experience teaches. A man has knowledge of his fellow-man as the resultant of the experience gained from relationship of some kind or another. And relationship is created by kinship, friendship, or business — intending the word “business” to embrace activity resulting from thought, word, and deed extending to the widest range of human interests conceivable. Relationship creates bonds, ties, obligations between the several persons united by it.

Hence, the practical conclusion is to be drawn that if “the discovering” or disclosing Gunpowder conspirator, with a view to revealing the intended massacre, had recourse to one or more confidants, they must have been one or more person or persons who were united to him by kinship, friendship, or business, in the sense predicated, possibly in all three, and that they must have been persons bound to him by bonds, which if “light as air were strong as iron.”

Let us now turn to the Evidence to-day available bearing upon the momentous document under consideration. We will begin by saying a few words respecting the Lord Mounteagle, whose name, at least, the Gunpowder Treason will have for ever enshrined in the remembrance of the British people.

6

CHAPTER III.

William Parker,[3] the son and heir of Lord Morley, whose barony had been created by King Edward I. in 1299, was called to the House of Lords as the fourth Baron Mounteagle, in right of his mother the Honourable Elizabeth Stanley, the only child and heiress of the third Baron Mounteagle, whose wife was a Leybourne of Westmoreland.

At the time of the Plot (1605) the fourth Lord Mounteagle was thirty years of age. His principal country residence appears to have been at Great Hallingbury, near Bishop Stortford, in the County of Essex. His chief town-house seems to have been in the Strand. He married before he was eighteen years of age, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Tresham of Rushton, Northamptonshire, a high-minded, scholarly Roman Catholic gentleman of great wealth, who had been knighted at Kenilworth by Queen Elizabeth in 1577.

Mounteagle was connected through his mother alone, to say nothing of his father, with some of the noblest families in the land. Besides the then well-nigh princely Lancashire House, the Stanleys Earls of Derby, to whom he was related in both the paternal and maternal lines, through his mother Elizabeth Stanley, Mounteagle was related, as cousin once removed, to those twain gracious, beautiful souls, Anne Dacres Countess of Arundel and Surrey, widow of the sainted Philip Howard Earl of Arundel and Surrey, and to her sister the Lady Elizabeth Howard, wife of “Belted Will Howard”[4] of7 Naworth Castle, the ancient home of the Lords Dacres of Gilsland, near Carlisle, commonly called the Lords Dacres of the North, in contradistinction to the Lords Dacres of the South, of Hurstmonceaux Castle in the County of Sussex.

Mounteagle was, therefore, through his mother, a near kinsman to the remarkable Thomas Howard Earl of Arundel, who married Aletheia, the only child and heiress of Gilbert, seventh Earl of Shrewsbury, and god-daughter of Queen Elizabeth.

This Earl of Arundel eventually became the well-known patron of the fine arts. But in the year 1605 the young peer had not yet quite attained his majority.

Mounteagle, again, through his mother’s relationship with the gifted Thomas Howard Earl of Arundel just mentioned, would be also connected with a nobleman who at that epoch was counted a very model of “the pomp, pride, and circumstance of ancient nobility,” with John Lord Lumley[5] of Lumley Castle in the County Palatine of Durham, whose wife was Jane, daughter of Henry Fitzalan Earl of Arundel, a nobleman “exceeding magnifical,” who indeed in his day had even cherished aspirations to the hand of the last representative of the Royal House of Tudor herself.

Lord Mounteagle consorted much with English Roman Catholics, and, in some sense, prior to the year 1605, was of that religion himself. He had been present with his wife’s brother Francis Tresham a little after the Midsummer of 1605 at Fremland in Essex, on the occasion of the celebrated meeting when Father Henry Garnet, the head of the Jesuits in England, took occasion to have special warning speech with Catesby respecting a general question propounded by Catesby to Garnet about a month or six weeks previously (i.e., the beginning of Trinity Term,8 1605), and from the answer to which general question Catesby shamefully drew that particular conclusion which the promptings of his evil will desired, in order that the enormity he had purposed might be made acceptable to the wavering conscience of any dubious fellow-plotter against whose resurgent sense of right and wrong he thought he might have to strive.

Lord Mounteagle is a difficult man accurately to reckon up, either intellectually, morally, or religiously. For he seems in all three aspects to have been a slightly ambiguous person.[A] Yet certainly he was no mere titled fool, with a head-piece like a windmill. Far from it: he was probably a man of sufficient, though not, I think, of the very highest intelligence, good-natured, easy-going, and of very engaging manners.[B]

By his contemporaries, it is evident that even prior to 1605 Mounteagle was made much of and greatly courted. But less, I opine, on account of the intellectual and moral qualities wherewith he was endowed, than on account of the exalted station of his kith and kin and the general excellency and eminency of his own external graces and gifts of fortune.

So much, then, for the present, concerning the now famous William Parker fourth Baron Mounteagle, whom History has crowned with a wreath of immortals.

9

CHAPTER IV.

On Saturday, the 26th of October, ten days before the intended meeting of Parliament,[A] Lord Mounteagle, we are told, unexpectedly and without any apparent reason or previous notice, directed a supper to be prepared at his mansion at Hoxton, where he had not been for more than a twelve-month before that date.

It will be well, however, to relate the history of what occurred in the exact words provided for us in a work published by King James’s printer, and put forth as “the authorised version” of the facts that it recorded. The work bears the title — “A Discourse of the late intended Treason,” anno 1605. “The Discourse” says: — “The Lord Mounteagle, sonne and heire to the Lord Morley, being in his own lodging ready to go to supper at seven of the clock at night one of his footmen whom he had sent of an errand over the streete was met by an unknown man of a reasonable tall personage[6] who delivered him a Letter charging him to put it in my Lord his Master’s hands, which my Lord no sooner received but that having broken it up and perceiving the same to be of an unknown and somewhat unlegible hand, and without either date or subscription, did call10 one of his men unto him for helping him to read it. But no sooner did he conceive the strange contents thereof, although he was somewhat perplexed what construction to make of it ... yet did he as a most dutifull and loyall subject conclude not to conceal it, whatever might come of it. Whereupon notwithstanding the latenesse and darknesse of the night in that season of the year, he presently repaired to his Majesties palace at Whitehall and there delivered the same to the Earle of Salisbury his majesties principall secretarie.”

The Letter was as follows: —

“My lord out of the loue i beare yowe to some of youere frends i haue a caer of youer preseruacion therfor i would aduyse yowe as yowe tender youer lyf to deuys some exscuse to shift of youer attendance at this parleament for god and man hath concurred to punishe the wickednes of this tyme and thinke not slightlye of this aduertisment but retyere youre self into youre contri wheare yowe maye expect the euent in safti for thowghe[7] theare be no apparance of anni stir yet i saye they shall receyue a terrible blowe this parleament and yet they shall not sei who hurts them this councel is not to be contemned because it maye do yowe good and can do yowe no harme for the dangere is passed as soon as yowe have burnt the letter and i hope god will give yowe the grace to mak good use of it to whose holy proteccion i comend yowe.”

(Addressed on the back) to “the ryght honorable the lord mouteagle.”

The full name of the member of Lord Mounteagle’s household who read the Letter to Lord Mounteagle, we learn, was Thomas Ward.[8]

Ward was acquainted with Thomas Winter, one of the11 principal Gunpowder plotters; for Winter himself had formerly been in Mounteagle’s service, and at the time of the Plot was almost certainly on amicable terms with the young nobleman.

On the 27th of October, the day following the delivery of the Letter, Thomas Ward came to Thomas Winter (being Sunday at night) and told him that a Letter had been given to Lord Mounteagle, which the latter presently had carried to Robert Cecil Earl of Salisbury. — “Winter’s Confession.”

Winter, thereupon, the next day, Monday, the 28th October, went to a house called White Webbs, not far from Lord Salisbury’s mansion Theobalds.

White Webbs was a lone and (then) half-timbered dwelling, “with many trap doors and passages,” surrounded by woods, near Enfield Chase, ten miles north of Westminster.

At this secluded spot Thomas Winter had speech with Catesby, the arch-conspirator, “assuring him withal that the matter was disclosed and wishing him in anywise to forsake his country.” — “Winter’s Confession.”

Catesby told Winter, “he would see further as yet and resolved to send Mr. Fawkes to try the uttermost protesting if the part belonged to himself he would try the same adventure.” — “Winter’s Confession.”

On Wednesday, the 30th October, from White Webbs, “Mr. Fawkes,” as Thomas Winter styles him, went to the cellar under the House of Lords, where thirty-six barrels of powder, wood, and coal were stored in readiness for the bloody slaughter purposed for November the Fifth.

Fawkes returned to White Webbs at night, at which the conspirators “were very glad.” Fawkes had found in the cellar his “private marks” all undisturbed.

12

“The next day after the delivery of the Letter,” says Stowe (though as a fact it was probably five days after the delivery of the momentous document, namely, on the following Thursday), this self-same “Thomas Winter told Christopher Wright” — a subordinate conspirator, — “that he (Winter) understood an obscure letter had been delivered to Lord Mounteagle, who had conveyed it to Salisbury.”[9]

Hence, most probably, either Thomas Winter went in search of Christopher Wright to afford him this piece of information; or Wright went in search of Winter to obtain it.

At about five o’clock in the morning of Tuesday, November, the Fifth, about five hours after Fawkes’ apprehension by Sir Thomas Knevet and his men,[10] the said Christopher Wright went to the chamber of the said Thomas Winter and told him that a nobleman (i.e., the Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse) “had called (i.e., summoned) the Lord Mounteagle, saying, ‘Rise and come along to Essex House,[11] for I am going to call up my Lord of Northumberland,’ saying withal, ‘the matter is discovered.’” — “Winter’s Confession.”

Of this conspirator, Christopher Wright, it is said,[12] that “he was the first to ascertain that the Plot was discovered.” Probably this refers to the information he (Christopher Wright) obtained as the upshot of his interview with Winter on (probably) Thursday, the 31st October.

Christopher Wright was, likewise, the first to announce the apprehension of Fawkes on the morning of the 5th of November.

It is also further said of Christopher Wright by one[13] who wrote during the last century, that “He advised that each of the conspirators should betake13 himself to flight in a different direction from his companions. Had this been followed several of them would have probably succeeded in making their escape to the continent. The conspirators, however, adopted another course, which issued in their discomfiture in Staffordshire, where Christopher Wright was also killed.”

14

CHAPTER V.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and during the earlier part of the reign of King James I., almost all those castellated castles, moated halls, and gabled manor-houses which to-day, still standing more or less perfect, “amidst their tall ancestral trees o’er all the pleasant land,” go to constitute that “old England” which her sons and daughters (and their brethren and kinsfolk beyond the seas) know and love so well; during the reign of Elizabeth and during the earlier part of the reign of James I., these now time-honoured, ivy-clad abodes and dwellings of English men and English women, over whom the grave has long since closed, but who in their day and generation were assuredly among the heroic and the supremely excellent of the earth, were the sheltering, romantic roof-trees of those who clung tenaciously to the ancient religious Faith of the English race.

This Faith was indeed that faith which had been taken and embraced by their “rude forefathers” of long ages ago, in the simple hope and with the pathetic trust that it might “do them good.”[A] And this their hope, they believed and knew, had been not in vain, neither had been their trust betrayed.

15

In the days of the second Henry Tudor — fons et origo malorum — the fountain-head and well-spring of almost all of England’s many present-day religious and social woes — the men and women of England and Wales knew full well, whether they were of Cymric, Saxon, Scandinavian, or Norman race (or a mixture of all four), that to that assemblage of ideas and emotions, laws and rules, habits and customs, which had come to them from men of foreign blood and alien name, dwelling on the banks of the far-off “yellow Tiber” and under sunny, blue Italian skies — these men and women, I repeat, knew full well that to their religious Faith they owed almost everything that was best and truest and most enduring, either in themselves or their kith and kin.[A]

Now regard being had to the indisputable fact that for well-nigh a thousand years England had been known abroad as “the Dowry of Mary and the Island of Saints,” by reason of the signal manifestations she had displayed in the way of cathedrals and churches, abbeys and priories, convents and nunneries, hospitals and schools (which arose up and down the length and breadth of the land to Northward and Southward, to East and West,16 thereby, by the aid of art, adding even to England’s rare natural beauty), it was never at all likely that the bulk of the English people would, all on a sudden, cast off their cherished beliefs and hallowed affections respecting the deepest central questions of human life.[14]

Moreover, it may be taken as a general rule, to be remembered and applied by princes and statesmen, all the world over and for all time, that Man is a creature “full of religious instincts:” — “too superstitious,” should it be thought more accurate and desirable so to describe this undoubted habit and bent of the human mind.

Thence it follows that it is the merest fatuous folly for princes and statesmen if and when they have got themselves entangled in a false position, from some external cause or causes having little or no relation to the Invisible and the Eternal, to bid their subjects and denizens, “right about turn,” at a moment’s notice: however “bright and blissful” such mental evolutions may be deemed to be by those who have unwisely taken it into their foolish head to issue the irrational command.[A]

17

Now, in the days of Queen Elizabeth[A] those whom religious loyalty prompted to worship supremely “the God of their fathers” after a manner that those eager for change counted “idolatry,” were marked by different mental characteristics. This was so throughout England; but especially was it so in those five northern counties which comprised what was then by Catholics proudly styled “the faithful North.”

Some of these English “leile and feile,” that is loyal and faithful, servants of Rome were, on the subjective side, retained in their allegiance to the Visible Head of Christendom by bonds formed by mere natural piety and conservative feeling — dutiful affections of Nature which are the promise and the pledge of much that is best in the Teutonic race.

Others were mainly ruled by an overmastering sense of that lofty humility which foes call pride, but friends dignity.

Whilst a third class were persuaded, by intense intellectual, moral, and spiritual conviction that — “in and by the power of divine grace” — come what might,18 nothing should separate them from those hereditary beliefs which were dearer to them far than not merely earthly goods, lands, and personal liberty, but even than their very life.

This last-mentioned class, from and after the year 1580, “the year of the Lord’s controversy with Sion,” as the old English Catholics regarded it, who loved to recall that “good time” when Campion and Parsons “poured out their soul in words,” especially Campion, who was remembered in the north for three generations: this last-mentioned class, I say, were oftentimes, though certainly not always, found to be greatly attached to the then new Society of Jesus, which, in England, was in the glow and purity of its first fervour.

This last-mentioned class — I mean the Jesuitically-affected class of English Catholics — were also again sub-divided into three sub-divisions. One sub-division was composed of Mystics; another of Politicians; and a third of those who, realising a higher unity, were at once Mystics and Politicians — or, in other phraseology, they were Men of Thought and Men of Action.

Now, the Gunpowder conspirators belonged to the last-mentioned class, and to the second division of that class. That is to say, they were mere Politicians, speaking broadly and speaking generally.

19

CHAPTER VI.

It hath been truly observed by one of the most knowing and candid of modern students of Elizabethan biographical literature, that Sir William Catesby, the father of the arch-gunpowder conspirator, Robert Catesby, in common with the great majority of the country gentry throughout England, who were resident upon their own estates, and unconnected with the oligarchy which ruled in the Queen’s name (i.e., Queen Elizabeth’s) at Court, threw in his lot with the Catholic party, and suffered in consequence of his conscientious adherence to the old creed.[A]

While Sir Thomas Tresham (the brother-in-law of the last-mentioned Sir William Catesby and father of Francis Tresham, one of the subordinate conspirators), was so attached to the ancient faith of the English people that, we are told, he not only regularly paid — by way of fines — for more than twenty years, the sum of £260 per annum, about £2,080 a year in our money, into the Treasury rather than not maintain what (to him) was “a conscience void of offence,” but he also spent at least twenty-one years of his life in prison, after being Star-Chambered in the year 1581 along with Lord Vaux of Harrowden and his brother-in-law, Sir William Catesby, on a charge of harbouring Campion.

20

The Fleet prison in London, Banbury Castle and Ely — his “familiar prison,” as Sir Thomas Tresham pleasantly styled the last-named place of incarceration — were the habitations wherein he was enabled to make it his boast in a letter to Lord Henry Howard, afterwards the Earl of Northampton, writ in the year 1603, “that he had now completed his triple apprenticeship in direst adversity, and that he should be content to serve a like long apprenticeship to prevent the foregoing of his beloved, beautiful, and graceful Rachel; for it seemed to him but a few days for the love he had to her.”[A]

Well may the spiritual descendants to-day of these grand old Elizabethan Catholics exclaim: — “Their very memory is pure and bright, and our sad thoughts doth cheer!”

21

CHAPTER VII.

The men known to history as the Gunpowder Plotters were thirteen in number.

They were at first Robert Catesby, already mentioned, Thomas Winter, Thomas Percy, John Wright, and Guy (or Guido) Fawkes.

Subsequently, there were added to these five — Robert Keyes, Christopher Wright (a younger brother of John Wright), and lastly Robert Winter (an elder brother of Thomas Winter),[A] Ambrose Rookwood, John Grant, Sir Everard Digby, Francis Tresham, and Thomas Bates.

Of these thirteen conspirators, all, with the exception of Thomas Bates, a serving-man of Robert Catesby, were, as Fawkes said, “gentlemen of name and blood.”

Thomas Percy was the eldest of the conspirators and in 1605 was about forty-five years of age.

Sir Everard Digby was the youngest, being twenty-four years of age, whilst the ages of the others ranged betwixt and between.[15]

Thomas Percy, a native of Beverley, an ancient and historic town in the East Riding of Yorkshire, was therefore a Yorkshireman by birth. He was the son of Edward22 Percy and Elizabeth his wife. Though not the ringleader of the band of conspirators, Thomas Percy must have cut the greatest figure in the eyes of the public at large. For he was a “kinsman” of Henry, ninth Earl of Northumberland, according to the testimony of the Earl himself,[16] and through this nobleman Thomas Percy had been made Captain of the Pensioners-in-Ordinary — Gentlemen of Honour — in attendance at Court. At the time of the Plot, too, Thomas Percy — the Constable of Alnwick and Warkworth Castles — acted as officer or agent for his noble kinsman’s large northern estates, at Alnwick, Warkworth, Topcliffe, Spofforth, and elsewhere.

Robert Catesby, the arch-conspirator, was — as we have seen already — the son and heir of Sir William Catesby, whose wife was a daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton of Coughton in Warwickshire.

Sir William Catesby was a gentleman of ancient, historic and distinguished lineage, who had large possessions in Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, and Warwickshire, yielding him about £3,000 a year, or probably from £24,000 to £30,000 a year in our money.

These large estates his ill-fated son Robert Catesby succeeded to in expectancy in 1598.[17]

Catesby, the younger, diminished his annual revenue very considerably by involving himself in the rising of the brilliant Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex (1601), who had given to Catesby a promise of toleration for Catholic recusants, who chafed greatly under a system of politico-theological persecution, at once galling, cruel and despicable.

But this promise of toleration was conditioned by the very vital condition precedent that the insurrectionary movement of the gallant but rash Essex against the Government of Elizabeth had a successful issue.

23

The movement, however, was emphatically not smiled on by Fortune, that fickle goddess, with the result that Catesby found himself locked up in prison, and was only ransomed by payment of a sum of £3,000.

This heavy fine, together with the fact that in the year 1605 his mother, the Dowager Lady Catesby, was living at Ashby St. Legers in Northamptonshire, and owned for life all rents of the estates, except Chastleton near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, seems to have been the cause that, at the time of the Gunpowder Plot, Catesby had not any very great amount of ready money in hand.

Besides this, until some four or five years prior to 1603, the year of the death of Queen Elizabeth, when he began to practise the religion which in 1580 his father, Sir William Catesby, had embraced or re-embraced, and for which the latter had suffered imprisonment and heavy fines, Robert Catesby “was very wild; and as he kept company with the best noblemen of the land, so he spent much above his rate, and so wasted also good part of his living.”

“He was of person above two yards[18] high, and though slender, yet as well proportioned to his height as any man one should see.” He was, moreover, reputed to be “very wise and of great judgment, though his utterance was not so good. Besides, he was so liberal, and apt to help all sorts, as it got him much love.”

At the time of the Plot Catesby was about thirty-five years of age. He had married Catherine Leigh, a daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh, of Stoneleigh, a Protestant gentleman of wealth and influence in Warwickshire. The Parish Register of Chastleton has the following entry: — “Robert Catesbie, son of Robert Catesbie, was baptised the 11th day of November, 1595.”[19] He had only this one surviving child, who is said to have married the only child of Thomas Percy.

24

Catesby had the misfortune to lose his wife by death before the year 1602, and at the time of the Plot his home seems to have been with his mother, the Dowager Lady Catesby, at Ashby St. Legers in the County of Northampton, the family ancestral seat. For in 1602 he had sold his residence, Chastleton, in Oxfordshire.

Now, as Robert Catesby, it seems by many circumstances, was the first inventor and chiefest furtherer of the Plot, it is worth while thus lingering on a description of what manner of man he was.

It, however, may be asked how came it to pass that this one person gained such prodigious ascendency over twelve other persons so as to make them, in the event, as mischievously, nay fatally, deluded as himself?

The answer is manifold: for besides the wrongs which these ruthless plotters sought to avenge, they evidently came under a potent psychological spell when they came under the influence of this wayward, yet fascinating, son of the brilliant age of Elizabeth — an age in which men’s intellectual and physical powers too often attained a complete mastery over their moral powers.[20]

For a proof of Catesby’s immense influence over others, it may be mentioned that Ambrose Rookwood, one of those whose blood afterwards stained the scaffold at the early age of twenty-seven for his share in the wicked scheme, says of Catesby that “he (Rookwood) loved and respected him as his own life.”[21]

Four things seem to have caused those who came in contact with Robert Catesby to have been carried captive at his will, if from the first they were at all well affected towards him — his personal appearance, his generosity, his zeal, and his skill in the use of arms.

We are told that Tesimond (alias Greenway), another contemporary of Catesby, says that “his countenance25 was exceedingly noble and expressive. That his conversation and manners were peculiarly attractive and imposing, and that by the dignity of his character he exercised an irresistible influence over the minds of those who associated with him.”[22]

His zeal was of that kind which is contagious and kindles responsive fire.

As for his martial prowess, it was sufficiently attested by his behaviour at the time of the Essex rising, when Father Gerard, his contemporary, tells us that “Mr. Catesby did then show such valour and fought so long and stoutly as divers afterwards of those swordsmen did exceedingly esteem him and follow him in regard thereof.”[23]

26

CHAPTER VIII.

Thomas Winter came of a Worcestershire family. His father, George Winter (or Wintour), had married Jane Ingleby, the daughter of Sir William Ingleby, a Yorkshire knight of historic name, whose ancestral seat was Ripley Castle, near Knaresbrough[24] in Nidderdale, one of the most romantic valleys of Yorkshire.

Jane Winter’s brother, Francis Ingleby,[25] a barrister, and afterwards a Roman Catholic priest, was hanged, drawn and quartered at York, on the 2nd of June, 1586, for exercising his priesthood in York and his native County.

He was a man of rare parts, and the heroic story of his life and death must have often thrilled the hearts of his sister’s children.

Would that they had taken him as their model. For of all those many Roman Catholic Yorkshiremen[A] who, of divers ranks and degrees, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, preferred “death” to (what to them) was “dishonour,” none has left nobler memories than this self-sacrificing, exalted soul.[26]

27

Thomas Winter, the ill-fated nephew of him just mentioned, was a courageous man and an accomplished linguist.

He had seen military service in Flanders, in behalf of the Estates-General against Spain, and in France, and possibly against the Turk.

We are told by a contemporary that “he was of such a wit and so fine a carriage, that he was of so pleasing conversation, desired much of the better sort, but an inseparable friend of Mr. Robert Catesby. He was of mean stature, but strong and comely and very valiant, about thirty-three years old, or somewhat more. His means were not great, but he lived in good sort, and with the best.”[27] He seems to have been unmarried.

Sir Everard Digby was a tall, handsome, singularly generous, charming young fellow, and like Ambrose Rookwood, previously mentioned, had won the loving favour of all who knew him. Digby had two estates in the County of Rutlandshire (Tilton and Drystoke), also property in the County of Leicestershire; and through his amiable and beautiful young wife, Mary Mulsho, a wealthy heiress, he was the owner of Gothurst[A] (now Gayhurst) in the parish of Tyringham, near Newport Pagnell, in the County of Buckinghamshire, still one of England’s stately homes.[28]

Francis Tresham was married to a Throckmorton, and was connected with many English families of historic name, high rank, and great fortune.

28

He was a first cousin to Robert Catesby through his mother — a Throckmorton. Tresham and the Winters were also akin.

Francis Tresham, like his cousin, Robert Catesby, had been involved in the Essex rising, and his father, Sir Thomas Tresham, had to pay a ransom of at least £2,000 to effect his son’s escape from arraignment and certain execution. Powerful interest had been exerted in the son’s favour with Queen Elizabeth by Lady Catherine Howard, the daughter of Lord Thomas Howard, Lieutenant of the Tower, and afterwards Earl of Suffolk.[29]

John Grant was a Warwickshire Squire, who had married Robert and Thomas Winter’s sister Dorothy. Grant’s home was at Norbrook, near Snitterfield, a walled and moated mansion-house between the towns of Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon.[30] Grant was a taciturn but accomplished man, who had been likewise fined for his share in the Essex rising.

John Wright and Christopher Wright were younger sons of Robert Wright, Esquire, of Plowland (or Plewland) Hall, Welwick, Holderness, in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

They were related to the Inglebies of Ripley, through the Mallories of Studley Royal near Ripon. Hence were they related to Thomas Winter, Robert Winter, and Dorothy Grant.

Robert Keyes, of Drayton in Northamptonshire, was the son of a Protestant clergyman and probably grandson of one of the Key or Kay family of Woodsome, Almondbury, near Huddersfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Through his Roman Catholic mother, Keyes was related to Lady Ursula Babthorpe, the daughter of Sir William Tyrwhitt[31] of Kettleby, near Brigg, Lincolnshire, and wife of Sir William Babthorpe, of Babthorpe and29 Osgodby, near Selby, in the East Riding of Yorkshire Sir William Babthorpe was “the very soul of honour,” one of the most valiant-hearted gentlemen in Yorkshire, and himself, likewise, related to the Mallories, the Inglebies, the Wrights, and the Winters. His sister was Lady Catherine Palmes, the wife of Sir George Palmes, of Naburn, near the City of York.

Ambrose Rookwood, of Coldham Hall — an ivy-clad, mullion-windowed mansion still standing — in the parish of Stanningfield, near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, was of an honourable and wealthy Suffolk family, who had suffered fines and penalties for the profession of their hereditary faith.

His wife was a Tyrwhitt and sister to Lady Ursula Babthorpe. At the time of the Plot he was twenty-seven years of age.[A]

Of the engaging Ambrose Rookwood a contemporary says, “I knew him well and loved him tenderly. He was beloved by all who knew him. He left behind him his lady, who was a very beautiful person and of a high family, and two or three little children, all of whom — together with everything he had in this world — he cast aside to follow the fortunes of this rash and desperate conspiracy.”[32]

Guy Fawkes was also a Yorkshireman, being born in the year 1570, in the City of York.

His baptismal register, dated the 16th day of April, 1570, is still to be seen in the Church of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, hard-by the glorious Minster.

30

Probably that one of four traditions is true which says that the son of Edward Fawkes, Notary and Advocate of the Consistory Court of York, and Edith, his wife, was born in a house situated in High Petergate. In fact, in the angle formed by the street known as High Petergate and the ancient alley called Minster Gates, leading into the Minster Yard, opposite the South Transept of the Minster, and at the top of the mediæval street called Stonegate.[A]

Though the property Guy Fawkes inherited was small, his descent and upbringing had made him the equal and companion of the gentry of his native County.

In the thirty-third year of Elizabeth (1592), in a legal document dealing with his property, Guy Fawkes is described as of Scotton, a picturesque village in the ancient Parish of Farnham, between Knaresbrough and Ripley, in Nidderdale.

Fawkes was a tall athletic man, with brown hair and an auburn beard. He was modest, self-controlled, and very valiant. He left England for Flanders most likely in 1593 or 1594. At the time of the conspiracy he was about thirty-five years of age. He was unmarried.

Fawkes was highly intelligent, direct of purpose, simple of heart, well-read, and, as a soldier of fortune in the Netherlands, not only “skilful in the wars,” but, apart from his fanaticism, which seems to have grown by degrees into a positive monomania, possessed of many attractive, and even endearing, moral qualities.

31

Fawkes held a post of command in the Spanish Army when Spain took Calais in 1596, and gave promise of becoming, like his friend and patron, Sir William Stanley, an ideal “happy warrior,” and one of England’s greatest generals.[A]

It is said by an old writer, “Winter and Fawxe are men of excellent good natural parts, very resolute and universally learned.”[33] In the days of their joyous youth these two gifted men may have many a time and oft played and sported together in Nidderdale, with its purple moors, its rock-crowned fells, its leafy woods, its musical streams, its flowery ghylls, its winding river.

Guy Fawkes was a son of destiny, a product of his environment, a creature of circumstances — always saving his free-will and moral responsibility.

But, dying, he must have remembered his dear York and sweet Scotton.

32

CHAPTER IX.

Let us deal with the inferences from the Evidence, and ascertain to what further suggestions those inferences give rise.

Now, among the first things that must strike the reader of the list of actors in the Gunpowder tragedy is the large number that were, directly or indirectly, connected with the far-stretching, prolific province of Yorkshire. Of the whole thirteen conspirators, four first drew the breath of life in that grandest and fairest of English Counties, namely: Thomas Percy, John Wright, Christopher Wright, and Guy (or Guido) Fawkes. While five of the other intending perpetrators of an action which, if consummated, would have indeed “damned them to everlasting fame,” indirectly had relations with it.

Nay, more; of the four members of the clerical profession whom the Government sought to charge with complicity in this nefarious designment, namely: Fathers Garnet, Tesimond, Gerard, and (subsequently) Oldcorne — two out of the four, Oswald Tesimond and Edward Oldcorne, were likewise Yorkshiremen.[A]

Edward Oldcorne was certainly a native of the City of York, and it is very likely indeed that Oswald Tesimond was a native also.[34]

33

Moreover, Oswald Tesimond, John Wright, Christopher Wright, and Guy Fawkes were all educated at the Royal School of Philip and Mary in the Horse Fayre, at the left-hand side going down Gillygate, York, where Union Terrace is now situated, just outside Bootham Bar, and not far from the King’s Manor, where Henry Hastings Earl of Huntingdon, or his preceding or succeeding Lords President of the North, presided in State over the Council of the North and the Court of High Commission.[A]

It is more than probable that Edward Oldcorne also quaffed his first draught of classical knowledge at the same “Pierian spring;” for we are told that his parents “in his young years kept him to school, so that he was a good grammar scholar when he first went over beyond the seas.”[35]

Before going to Rheims and Rome Edward Oldcorne had studied medicine.

Who among these unparalleled conspirators is then the most likely, either through fear or remorse or both feelings, to have first put into motion the stupendous machinery whereby the Gunpowder conspiracy was revealed? Only34 an energy practically superhuman would be, or could be, sufficient for the accomplishment of such an end, as — well-nigh at the eleventh hour — speedily to swing round on its axis a project so diabolical and prodigious as the Gunpowder Plot.

For the passion — the concentrated, suppressed, yet volcanic passion — that had purposed so awful a catastrophe was deep as hell and high as heaven.

And well might it be, regard being had to the indisputable facts of English History from the year 1569 — the year of the Rising of the North, which was stamped out with such cruel severity — down to the year 1605. Truly, the measure of the Gunpowder conspirators’ personal guilt was the measure of their representative wrongs. Yet this, in itself, for these wrong-doers was no ground of pardon or release: for, by a steadfast decree of the universe, “The guilty suffer.”

35

CHAPTER X.

Now, according to the laws which govern human nature, a subordinate conspirator, introduced late into the conspiracy, whose early training was such as to lead him, on reflection, to regard as morally unlawful the taking of a secret oath, such as the Gunpowder conspirators had taken: a conspirator in whose heart emotions, not only of compassion but also of compunction, were likely to be awakened by the remembrance of that training, as the day was about to dawn and as the hour was about to strike when would be consummated one of the bloodiest tragedies that had ever stained an evil world: a conspirator answering to this, I say, was the most likely to be the conspirator who revealed this purposed appalling massacre, the bare thought of which causes strong men to shudder, even to this day.

Still more likely would be a conspirator who, fulfilling the description just mentioned, adds to that the following, namely — that he possessed an entirely trustworthy friend who would act as penman of any document he might wish to use as a means of communicating a secret yet warning note to a representative of the intended victims.

And yet still more likely would be a conspirator who, to the descriptions of the two preceding paragraphs, added a third, namely — that he possessed a second entirely trustworthy friend who would act as an “interpres” — a go-between — to drive home the full36 intended effect of the document penned by the hand of the first; and this with the express knowledge and consent of that first.

Hence, such go-between would be the agent common to both the revealing conspirator and his scribe, and would be informed, directed and controlled by them.

Regard being had to the fixities of thought or self-evident fundamentals which in the introduction to this Inquiry were enunciated, these two friends, these two confidants must have been bound to the revealing conspirator by bonds, ties, obligations, “light,” indeed, “as air, yet strong as iron,” which were the outcome of kinship, friendship, or business (in a superlatively wide sense), possibly of all three.

Now the inference that I draw, from a reviewing and weighing of the Evidence to-day available in relation to this matter, is this, that Christopher Wright was the conspirator who revealed the Plot, and that his worthy aiders and honourable abettors were, first, Thomas Ward, the gentleman-servant (and almost certainly kinsman) of Lord Mounteagle himself, amicus secundum carnem; and, secondly, Edward Oldcorne, Priest and Jesuit, amicus secundum spiritum: — friends according to the flesh and to the spirit respectively.

37

CHAPTER XI.

Let us proceed to support these statements with Evidence and with Argument.

(1) Now was Christopher Wright a subordinate conspirator, introduced late into the conspiracy? It is plain that he was, from “Thomas Winter’s Confession,” where he says: “About Candlemas we brought over in a boat the powder which we had provided at Lambeth and layd it in Mr. Percy’s house, because we were willing to have all our danger in one place. We wrought also another fortnight in the mine against the stone wall which was very hard to beat through, at which time we called in Kit Wright (sometime in February, 1605), and near to Easter as we wrought the third time, opportunity was given to hire the cellar in which we resolved to lay the powder and leave the mine.”

Again, in the published “Confession” of Guy Fawkes (17th November, 1605), Fawkes says, that a practice “in general was first broken unto me against his majestie, for releife of the Catholique cause, and not invented or propounded by myself. And this was first propounded unto me about Easter last was twelve-month,[36] beyond the seas, in the Low Countries of the Archdukes’ obeyance by Thomas Wynter.”

Fawkes says, in his “Confession” further on: “Thomas Percy hired a howse at Westminster ... neare adjoyning the Parlt. howse, and there wee beganne to make a myne about the XI. of December, 1604. The38 Fyve that entered into the woorck were Thomas Percye, Robert Catesby, Thomas Wynter, John Wright, and myself, and soon after[37] we tooke another unto us, Christopher Wright, having sworn him also, and taken the sacrament for secrecie.”[38]

Therefore Christopher Wright must have become a confederate about ten months after Fawkes himself and the other prime movers in the nefarious scheme, and his services were requisitioned — as the modern phrase goes — primarily for the purpose of adding to the amount of manual labour available for the digging of the mine, which was afterwards abandoned for the cellar as the receptacle for the gunpowder that was to effect the explosion purposed.

(2) Now, was Christopher Wright a conspirator whose early training was such as to lead him, on reflection, to regard as morally unlawful the taking of a secret oath such as the Gunpowder conspirators had bound themselves by, and one in whose heart emotions, not only of compassion but also of compunction, were likely to be awakened by the remembrance of that training as the day was about to dawn and the hour was about to strike when the awful tragedy would be consummated?

If a man’s character may be presumptively known by his friends, still more may it be presumptively known by his progenitors; and in the light of this principle I therefore answer the foregoing question emphatically in the affirmative.

But what was the form of the oath taken by all these conspirators save one, namely, Sir Everard Digby, who was specially “sworn in” on the hilt of a poniard?

It was this: — “You shall swear by the Blessed Trinity and by the Sacrament you now propose to receive,39 never to disclose, directly or indirectly, by word or circumstance, the matter that shall be proposed to you, to keep secret nor desist from the execution thereof until the rest shall give you leave.”

This oath was administered to the conspirators by each other in the most solemn manner — “kneeling down upon their knees with their hands laid upon a primer.”[39]

Immediately after the oath had been taken,[40] we are told, Catesby explained to Percy, and Winter and John Wright to Fawkes, that the project intended was to blow up the Parliament House with gunpowder when the King went to the House of Lords.[41] This would include the Queen, the Commons, Ambassadors, and spectators who would be present during the King’s Speech.

From Fawkes’ “Confession,” already quoted, it would seem probable that all five prime conspirators imparted their prodigious designment of sacrilegious, cold-blooded murder to the conspirator Christopher Wright.

40

CHAPTER XII.

Who and what then, with more particularity, was Christopher Wright?

He was the third son of Robert Wright and Ursula his wife, who was the daughter of Nicholas Rudston, Esquire (of the Rudstons, Lords of Hayton,[A] near Pocklington, in the East Riding of the County of York, since the reign of King John). Ursula Rudston’s mother was Jane, the daughter of Sir William Mallory, of Studley Royal, near Ripon.[42]

Christopher Wright was born about the year 1570, the year after the Rising of the North[43] under “the Blessed” Thomas Percy Earl of Northumberland, and Charles Neville Earl of Westmoreland, in which movement many of Christopher Wright’s mother’s relatives and connections (notably “old Richard Norton,” his sons, and the Markenfields) were implicated.[44]

Plowland (or Plewland) Hall, in the Parish of Welwick, in Holderness, was doubtless where Christopher Wright first beheld the light of the sun. Plowland Hall, or Great Plowland as it is sometimes called, is situated on the left of, and a little distance from, the high-road, on slightly rising ground, between the ancient town of41 Patrington and the pretty village of Welwick. When Robert Wright and Ursula, his wife, and their sons, John and Christopher, and their daughters, Ursula and Martha, knew the place, now so historic, Plowland Hall was a fortified dwelling, surrounded by a deep moat and approached by a drawbridge, much after the fashion of Markenfield Hall, in the Parish of Ripon, the ancestral seat of the Markenfields, heroes of Flodden and kinsmen of the Wrights, Wards, Nortons, Mallories, and numberless others amongst the ancient and wealthy Yorkshire gentry.

Christopher Wright and his elder brother John were educated, along with Guy Fawkes and Oswald Tesimond, at the Royal Grammar School (as we have already stated) in the Horse Fayre, Gillygate, in the City of York.

Their master was the Reverend John Pulleyn, who probably belonged to the ancient and honourable West Riding family of the Pulleyns (or Pulleines), of Killinghall, near Bilton-cum-Harrogate, and of Scotton, in the Parish of Farnham, near Knaresbrough.

The two Wrights’ parents were stanch Roman Catholics, and their mother had suffered imprisonment “for the Faith” in York for the “space of fourteen years together,” during the time when Henry Hastings Earl of Huntingdon was Lord President of the North, i.e., between the years 1572 and 1599. (Henry third Earl of Huntingdon was one of the few members of the ancient nobility who accepted whole-heartedly the Calvinistic Protestantism then gradually taking root in England.)

One of Christopher Wright’s sisters, Ursula, was married to Marmaduke Ward, Gentleman, of Mulwith, in the Parish of Ripon; another, named Martha, was married to Thomas Percy, Gentleman, the Gunpowder conspirator.

42

It is said of John Wright, Christopher Wright’s brother, and of his brother-in-law, Thomas Percy, that they were formerly Protestant, and became Catholic about the time of the rebellion of the Earl of Essex. But it is certain John Wright and Thomas Percy[45] must have been both brought up Roman Catholics in the days of their childhood; although they probably ceased to practise their duties as such until about the year 1600. For it is incredible that the son and son-in-law of Robert Wright and Ursula, his wife, should have been brought up as children and youths anything other than rigid Catholics, whatever else for a season they might, in the days of their early manhood, have become, either from conscientious conviction or reckless negligence, whereof the latter alternative is doubtless the more probable.

From the account of the Gunpowder conspirators given by Father John Gerard, the friend of Sir Everard Digby, and, it is highly probable, the friend of the Wrights also, it would seem that Christopher Wright was a taller man than his brother John,[A] fatter in the43 face and of a lighter-coloured hair. “Yet,” says Gerard, “was he very like to the other in conditions and qualities and both esteemed and tried to be as stout a man as England had, and withal a zealous Catholic and trusty and secret in any business as could be wished.”[46]

Christopher Wright was married. His wife’s name, we know, was Margaret.[A][47] I strongly suspect that Mrs. Christopher Wright was a sister of both Marmaduke Ward and Thomas Ward, of Mulwith, in the Parish of Ripon; yet of this there is only, perhaps, slight evidence, so that no positive argument can be grounded upon it, considered by itself; though the evidence of Mistress Robinson, Christopher Wright’s landlady in London, indirectly tends to confirm such a suspicion. — See Evidence of Dorathie Robinson, postea, where she says that Wright had “a brother” in London.

When Guy Fawkes was examined in the Tower of London, in the forenoon of the 6th of November, he said, in answer to a question — “You would have me discover my friends; the giving warning to one overthrew us all.”

Now, if Guy Fawkes eventually revealed the conspiracy by reason of the agony caused by the physical pains of the rack, when after the first racking he was told he “must come to it againe and againe, from daye to daye, till he should have delivered his whole knowledge,” is it, I ask, a thing incredible that the son of a Yorkshire Catholic mother that had spent fourteen years of her life in “durance” for her profession of her forefathers’ ancient Faith, should have revealed the conspiracy itself, by reason of the agony caused by the moral pains of a pricking conscience, goading him to madness for having committed in act (in the case of the unlawful oath), in desire (in44 the case of the intended murder) most horrible crimes against the offended Majesty of Heaven?

I think not.

Therefore I conclude that it is antecedently probable that in the heart of Christopher Wright, emotions, not only of compassion but also of compunction, were awakened by the remembrance of the early training he had received at his mother’s knee: emotions which were potent enough, under the wisdom and skill of one whose special duty it was to “work good unto all men,” speedily to swing right round on its axis, though well-nigh at the eleventh hour, the diabolical designment known to History as the Gunpowder Treason Plot.

Had Christopher Wright any entirely trustworthy friend, one who not only would prove a healing minister to a mind diseased with the leprosy of crime, but also be an able and ready helper for giving effect to an all but too late repentance? Was there anyone to whom he could have recourse, who was at once wise of head, sympathetic of heart, and skilful of hand?

There was.

45

CHAPTER XIII.

For at Hindlip Hall, near the City of Worcester, there had dwelt for the past sixteen years one who was not only the trusted spiritual guide of Thomas Abington, Esquire, and the Honourable Mary (Parker), his wife, daughter of the Lord Morley and sister to the Lord Mounteagle, but who by reason of his remarkably zealous labours in that part of the country had come to be accepted as a very Apostle of Worcestershire.

This was Edward Oldcorne, a Priest and a Jesuit.

He was the son of John Oldcorne, Tiler, a schismatic Catholic, of St. Sampson’s Parish, in the City of York. His mother was Elizabeth Oldcorne, a rigid Catholic recusant, who had suffered imprisonment “for the Faith.” He was born about the year 1560, and proceeded to the English College at Rome in 1582, aged twenty-one, for the higher studies. He was most probably at the Royal School in the Horse Fayre, in York, and he may have been there at the same time as Oswald Tesimond,[48] John Wright,[49] Christopher Wright, and Guy Fawkes, though about ten years the senior of the three latter. As already has been stated, before going beyond the seas he had studied medicine. He was a man remarkable alike for mental acumen, tranquillity of spirit, gentleness of nature, and strength of will. He was one of those Jesuits who, realising a higher unity, were at once Mystics and Politicians. His equipoise of mind shows him to have been a very great man — indeed, on account of his46 combination of mental gifts and graces, I think the greatest, in reality, of all the early English Jesuits. For “he saw life steadily and saw it whole.”[A]

“All the chiefest gentlemen,” says Father Gerard, Oldcorne’s contemporary, “and best Catholics of the county where he remained and the counties adjoining depended upon his advice and counsel, and he was indefatigable in his journeys.”[50] Again, a MS. Memoir[51] says, “so profuse was his liberality in aiding others that he supplied the necessities of life to very many Catholics. It was very evident his residence was well selected in the midst of the Catholics of that district of the Society of Jesus, so great and so promiscuous was the concourse of people flocking thereto for his sermons, for his advice, and the sacraments.”[52][B]

Now, Father Oldcorne was the spiritual adviser of Robert Winter, another subordinate plotter, and also of Catesby, according to the statement of one Humphrey Littleton, who knew Oldcorne well. And as John Wright was a tenant of Catesby’s Mansion House, at Lapworth, in Warwickshire, about twenty miles distant from Hindlip, Christopher Wright must have not only heard of Father Oldcorne’s fame as a “counsellor of the doubtful” and a “friend in need,” but it is at least possible he may have been among those divers Catholics and Schismatics[53] in the country thereabouts who flocked to him for conference and to have his exhortations.[54][C]

47

Again, Christopher Wright appears to have been especially friendly with two other conspirators, namely, Thomas Winter and Ambrose Rookwood. And it is worthy of notice that Huddington Hall, in Worcestershire, the seat of Robert Winter (of which place Thomas Winter is also described), and Clopton Hall, in Warwickshire, near Stratford-on-Avon (whither Ambrose Rookwood removed soon after Michaelmas, 1605), were easily accessible to and from Hindlip Hall, where Father Oldcorne was, in general, to be found when not engaged at some other missionary station, such as Worcester City or Grafton Manor, the seat of John Talbot, Esquire, then heir presumptive to the Earldom of Shrewsbury and father-in-law to Robert Winter, who had married Miss Gertrude Talbot.[A]

48

CHAPTER XIV.

Let us now examine the Letter itself.

The first thing to be noted is that no reprint that I have seen of the famous Letter, whether in ancient or modern continuous Relations of the Gunpowder Plot, is strictly correct. For they all omit the pronoun “yowe” after the words “my lord out of the loue i beare.” This pronoun “yowe” is indeed crossed out in the original Letter with a blurred net-work of lines.[55] But, this notwithstanding, it can be still detected in the original document, happily, even to this day, to be seen in the Record Office, London.

Now the fact that this word “yowe” is crossed out in this mysterious fashion, coupled with the fact that the words used at the end of the Letter are as follow: “and i hope god will give yowe the grace to mak good[56] use of it to whose holy proteccion i comend yowe,” makes it clear (to my mind) that an universal temporal salvation of the destined victims was intended by the revealing conspirator and by his penman, and not merely the particular salvation of the recipient of the Letter.

Again, the meaning of the words “for the danger is passed as soon as yowe have burnt the letter,” is in one sense fairly clear. For as Wilson says, in his “Life of James I.” (1653), p. 30, “the writer’s desire was to have the letter burned, and then the danger would be past both to the writer and the receiver, if he had grace to make use of the warning.”[57]49

This must be the, at least, ostensible meaning. For it is obvious that neither Wright nor Oldcorne (ex hypothesi) would, for different but most potent reasons, wish the penman of the Letter to be known to the then public, either Catholic or Protestant.

Now it was in accordance with universal right reason and moral fitness that Father Oldcorne should — so far as was consistent with his being satisfied that warning of the Plot had been given through trustworthy channels to the King’s principal Secretary of State — keep in the background and not himself in person adventure upon the theatre of action, even for the purpose of compassing an object which he was bound by his vocation, alike in Justice and Charity, to compass. For by the Act 27 Elizabeth, he was “a traitor,” being a Priest and remaining in England for more than forty days. While the fact that he was a Jesuit into the bargain would be, of course, counted an aggravation of his statutory offence.[58]

Again, Father Oldcorne had to remember, besides the ideal standard that his vocation imposed upon him, the practical standard which was the unwritten law that guided the conscience of the best of the average Catholics in that period of their intolerable sufferings.[A] For it is a fact of human nature that every man seeks to instruct his conscience by some objective rule or50 standard of Truth and Right; but that instincts and emotions oftentimes finally rule men rather than reason and argumentative proof.

It was, furthermore, incumbent upon Oldcorne to recollect that more harm than good is frequently occasioned in this entangled world by an unseasonable, indiscriminate, “heroic” application of abstract principles (faultless in themselves) to the varied and perplexing circumstances of man’s terrestrial life.

To illustrate my propositions: It is worth while remembering that even so lofty a soul as Mrs. Ambrose Rookwood evidently regarded her husband, primarily, as a sufferer for conscience sake, and only secondarily, if at all, as a repentant sacrilegious traitor and murderer in desire, who was suffering condign punishment and paying the just penalty of his ruthless crimes.

No doubt special allowances have to be made for this poor woman, inasmuch as her husband and children were all the world to her. But still the following recorded statement proves that the tendency was for even the best of the average English Catholics of that day, of whom Mrs. Rookwood is a fair type and specimen, to centre their sympathies on the wrong-doers rather than on the wronged.

This was natural enough; for man’s disposition is to be led by his unconscious instincts and emotional51 sympathies rather than by drawn-out reason and cool argument, as has been mentioned above.

It was the bounden duty of Oldcorne to hold that disposition strictly in check and to keep himself absolutely master of the tendency. But, on this being assured, he was bound likewise to remember that the tendency existed, and that he lived in a world not of angels, nor of machines, but of men — of men indeed who were not totally depraved, nor utterly corrupt, yet who were sorely wounded and weakened in intellect, heart, and will.

The crying want of the present day — as of Oldcorne’s day — is not only for men but for men who are statesmen. And no man can be a statesman unless he has a wide and profound knowledge of human nature, and who, while he pities human nature and loves it, never makes the mistake of expecting too much from it. In other words, we require men who are humanists and humorists, as I cannot but think was the character of Edward Oldcorne.

Now, no man in England knew better nor recognised more fully (for he knew the virtually omnipotent transforming power of the precedent conditions of person, time, and circumstance) the truth of the propositions I have just enunciated than did Father Oldcorne. But this notwithstanding, I hold it was not the truth of the foregoing propositions ALONE — indisputable doubtless as he regarded them — that finally controlled the motives that ruled the action — in substance and in form — at the most critical moment of the existence of this acute, disciplined, high-minded Yorkshireman, when by Fate he was called upon to contemplate, after the fateful November the Fifth, the bloody, prodigious Gunpowder Plot, and the mighty feat which Destiny had imposed upon him for helping to spin the same right round on its axis, even though well-nigh at the eleventh hour.[59]52

What finally controlled the motives, the positive not negative motives, that ruled that beneficent and never-to-be-forgotten action of this Yorkshire Priest and Jesuit in that supreme moment — the Plot having then become, through his instrumentality, as a mere bubble-burst — will be discovered in due course of this Inquiry.

The remark of Mrs. Rookwood to which I have referred is given in Gerard’s “Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot,” p. 219. Thomas Winter, Rookwood, Keyes, and Fawkes were drawn on their hurdles from the Tower to the Yard of the old Palace of Westminster over against the Parliament House.

“As they were drawn upon the Strand, Mr. Rookwood had provided that he should be admonished when he came over against the lodging where his wife lay: and being come unto the place, he opened his eyes (which before he kept shut to attend better to his prayers), and seeing her stand in a window to see him pass by, he raised himself as well as he could up from the hurdle, and said aloud unto her: ‘Pray for me, pray for me,’ She answered him also aloud: ‘I will; and be of good courage and offer thyself wholly to God. I for my part do as freely restore thee to God as he gave thee to me,’”

This was Friday, the 31st day of January, 1605-6.

On the previous day in St. Paul’s Churchyard had been likewise hanged, cut down alive, drawn, and quartered, Sir Everard Digby, Robert Winter, John Grant, and Thomas Bates.

Catesby, John Wright, and Christopher Wright had been slain at Holbeach on the 8th of November previously.

Thomas Percy died of wounds there received the next day.

53

Father Tesimond had proceeded to Huddington, doubtless mainly in the hope, let us trust, of stirring up in the hearts of these desperate creatures sorrow — that great natural sacrament — for their awful crimes that, not in vain, had cried to Heaven for vengeance! For truly the guilty suffer and the blood-guilty man shall not live out half his days.

54

CHAPTER XV.

Now there is a sentence in the Letter whose wording is peculiar, but which, I submit, is pre-eminently a wording likely to be used by two natives of Yorkshire.

I mean the sentence, “I would aduyse yowe as yowe tender your lyf to deuys some excuse to shift off youer attendance at this parleament,” meaning thereby, “I would advise you as you have a care for your life to devise some excuse to put off[60] your attendance at this parliament.”

Once more, a comparison of the Letter sent to Lord Mounteagle with a Declaration not only signed by Father Oldcorne but entirely in his handwriting, dated the 12th of March, 1605-6,[61] reveals this remarkable fact that there is, first, a general similarity between the penmanship of both documents; and, secondly, there is a particular similarity in the case of the following letters: — the small c/s, l/s, i/s, b/s, w/s, r/s, long s/s (as initials), and short s/s (as terminals); also the m/s and n/s are not inconsistent with being written by one and the same hand. The handwriting in the Letter is, for the most part, not in round hand, but in roman character. The letters do not all lean at the same angle to the horizontal. Evidently the writer had endeavoured “painfully” to disguise his handwriting, but conscientious carefulness and a disciplined will emphatically characterise both documents.[62] See Appendix.

Now Thomas Ward, the gentleman-servant of Lord Mounteagle, was, I maintain, the intermediary — the diplomatic intermediary — through whom Christopher55 Wright (ex hypothesi) acted in communication with Mounteagle. And this, with the express knowledge and consent of Father Edward Oldcorne, who was, almost certainly, well acquainted with Thomas Ward.[63]

In short, the revelation was a curvilinear triangular movement.

56

CHAPTER XVI.

Mounteagle, we are told, knew there was a Letter to be sent to him before it came.[64]

Lingard says the conspirators suspected that Tresham had sent the Letter, and that there was a “secret understanding between him and Lord Mounteagle,[A] or at least the gentleman who was employed to read the Letter at the table.” (The italics are mine.)

In a letter dated 19th November, 1605, of a certain Sir Edward Hoby to Sir Thomas Edmondes, the King’s Ambassador at Brussels, after giving an account of the discovery of the Plot, Hoby says: — “Such as are apt to interpret all things to the worst will not believe other but that Mounteagle might in a policy cause this letter to be sent, fearing the discovery already of the letter, the rather that one Thomas Ward, a principal man about him, is suspected to be accessory to the conspiracy.”

Now there is evidence which creates a moral certainty that Christopher Wright and a certain Thomas Ward (or Warde, for the name was spelt either way at that time) were closely allied by virtue of at least one marriage (if not indeed more than one) subsisting between certain (virtually undoubted) relatives of theirs then living.

57

Christopher Wright’s sister, Ursula, was (as has been already mentioned) the wife of one Marmaduke Ward (or Warde), of Mulwith, in the Parish of Ripon, in the County of York.

A lady of high family named Winefrid Wigmore, the daughter of Sir William Wigmore, of Lucton, in the County of Herefordshire, says, in her “Life of Mary Ward,” the gifted daughter of Marmaduke Ward and Ursula, his wife: “Mary Ward was the eldest daughter of Mr. Marmaduke Ward, of Givendale, in the County of York. Mulwith and Newby were Manor-houses of his.”[65]

Now in the Parish Register, which was published in the year 1899, belonging to the Church of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, in the City of York, is to be found the following remarkable entry: “Weddinges 1579. — Thomas Warde of Mulwaith in the p’ishe of Rippon, and M’rgery Slater, S’vant to Mr. Cotterell, maried xxixth day of May.”[66]

But for only eleven years (lacking nine days) were Thomas Warde and Margery his wife destined to be united in the bonds of wedlock. For the Register of Ripon Minster records “the burial,” under date “May the 20th, 1590, of Marjory wife of Thomas Warde of Mulwaith.”[67]

They do not seem to have been blessed with offspring. At any rate there are no names of any children of these two spouses entered in the Register of Christenings still kept at Ripon Minster. Although, of course, there may have been such baptized at home[A]58 “secretly,” or even at some other church than at the chapel of the Skelton Chapelry, or than in Ripon Minster, the mother church of the great Parish of Ripon.

59

CHAPTER XVII.

Now we know that Marmaduke Warde was of Mulwaith (or Mulwith) in the year 1585. For the “Life” of his daughter Mary expressly states that she was born at Mulwith in that year. And if a Thomas Warde was of Mulwaith (or Mulwith) only six years prior to 1585, and again of Mulwith in 1590, when he lost his wife, the inevitable inference is that the said Marmaduke Warde and the said Thomas Warde belonged to one and the same family, and that, in all probability, they were akin to each other as brothers.[68]

Again, the Register of Ripon Minster records on the 6th day of October, 1589, the baptism of Edward,[A] the son of a certain Christopher Wright, of Bondgate, Ripon.

On the 23rd day of July, 1594, of Eliza, daughter of Christopher Wright, of Newbie.[69]60

The baptism on the 12th day of July, 1596, of Francis, son of Christopher Wright, of Newbie.

And furthermore, on the 3rd day of February, 1601, the baptism of Marmaduke, the son of Christopher Wright, of Skelton.

Now, when we recollect that a Marmaduke Warde was certainly brother-in-law to a Christopher Wright; and when we recollect that we have proof that a Thomas Warde and a Marmaduke Warde were, respectively, of Mulwaith (or Mulwith) in the Parish of Ripon, and that a Christopher Wright was of Bondgate, Newbie, and Skelton, all likewise in the Parish of Ripon; and when we further recollect that these three gentlemen were of these several places in the closing decades of the years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, only one conclusion is forced upon the mind of even the most sceptical, namely, that the said three gentlemen must have known, and been known to, one another personally, without the shadow of any reasonable doubt.

And again; that between those years, 1589 and 1590 inclusive, the said Thomas Warde and the said Christopher Wright had known each other intimately, by meeting within the bounds of the Parish of Ripon, — nay even within the chapelry of Skelton — is surely one of the likeliest things in the world.

Furthermore, it is possible that the Thomas Warde, of Mulwaith (or Mulwith), was in the diplomatic service of Queen Elizabeth in the Netherlands, along with Queen Elizabeth’s well-known diplomatist and Treasurer of the Chamber, Sir Thomas Heneage, the step-father of Lord Southampton, Lord Mounteagle’s friend, as well as Shakespeare’s patron.

For I find that the great Sir Francis Walsingham, in a letter dated from “the Court,” the 24th of March,61 1585 — six years after the marriage of Thomas Warde, of Mulwaith, to Marjory Slater, and five years before her lamented death — that the great Sir Francis Walsingham, in a letter to the Earl of Leicester, “Lord Lieutenant-General of Her Majesty’s Forces in the Low Countries,” speaks of a “Mr. Warde.”[A]

Now we know for certain from Winwood’s Memorials[B] that a Mr. Walter Hawkesworth, of the Hawkesworths of Hawkesworth Hall, in the Parish of Otley, in the County of York, was in the diplomatic service of King James I., and that, according to Foster’s “Pedigrees of Yorkshire Families” he was poisoned at Madrid when on an embassy there.

Hence, is it quite within the bounds of possibility that his remote kinsman, Thomas Warde, of Mulwith, may have been in the diplomatic service of Queen Elizabeth. The Hawkesworths and the Wardes had, in days long gone by, twice formed alliances by marriage, so that the families were distantly akin. Indeed it was from Sir Simon Warde, of Esholt, in the Parish of Otley, and of Givendale, in the Parish of Ripon, that the Hawkesworths of Hawkesworth had by marriage alliance gained the Hawkesworth Estate. — See Foster’s “Pedigrees of Yorkshire Families.”

But is there any evidence that links Thomas Ward (or Warde), of Mulwaith (or Mulwith), and the Ward (or Warde) family in general, of Givendale, Newby and Mulwith, with the Lord Mounteagle?[C]

62

And, first of all, is there any evidence to show that Marmaduke Ward ever had a brother in London, who lived at Court?

There is.

63

CHAPTER XVIII.

For in Foley’s “Records”[70] we are told that Father George Ward, alias Ingleby, was a son of Marmaduke Ward, Esquire, of Newby, near Ripon, by his wife Ursula Wright.[A] And in a note at the foot of the self-same page, it is stated that William Ward entered the English64 College at Rome in the name William Ingleby vere Ward, 4th October, 1614, at the age of twenty-three; that the family was of distinction in the county, and his uncle lived at Court. (The italics are mine.)

Moreover, there is evidence tending to prove, with absolute certitude, that the “Ward” or “Warde” family, of Givendale, Newby, and Mulwith were connected with the family of Mounteagle, both on his mother’s side through the Mounteagles, and on his father’s side through the Barons Morley.[71]

Also is there evidence tending to prove, with moral certitude, that either through the Stanleys or the Morleys, or some other family or families, the Wards (or Wardes) were connected by marriage and actually related to Lord Mounteagle by blood.

The proof is this: — In the “Life of Mary Ward,” [72] by Mary Catherine Elizabeth Chambers, it is stated that Mary Ward was in some way related to the before-mentioned lady of high family, Winefrid Wigmore, of Lucton, Herefordshire, who was an accomplished woman, speaking five languages fluently.

Now it is known that Winefrid Wigmore’s father, Sir William Wigmore, had married Anne Throckmorton, one of the daughters of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. Now Lady Wigmore, through the Throckmortons and the Treshams, “was connected with the families of Lord Mounteagle, Morley, Berkeley, and Vaux.”[73]

Hence it follows that, through the Wigmores,[A] the Throckmortons, and the Treshams, there was a connection of some kind or another between Mary Ward’s family65 and the families of Mounteagle, Morley, Berkeley, and Vaux.[74]

Again, Mary Ward was related to Mary Poyntz (pronounced Poynes), a lady whose ancient family had come over with William the Conqueror.[75] Mary Poyntz, herself a lovely woman, was the daughter of Edward Poyntz, Esquire, of Iron Acton and Tobington Park, in the County of Gloucester.[76]

Sir Nicholas Poyntz, who was living in 1580, the father of Edward Poyntz, had married Margaret Stanley, the daughter of Edward Earl of Derby. This lady was the mother of Edward Poyntz, the father of Mary Poyntz, the relative of Mary Ward.

Now I find (from Burke’s “Extinct Peerages”) that Henry Parker Lord Morley, the grandfather of William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle, had married Elizabeth Stanley, daughter of Edward Earl of Derby.

Hence the Poyntz and the Mounteagles were cousins. Again, the Wards were in some way or other related to the Poyntz family. Hence it follows that through the Poyntz the Wards were related in some sort with Lord Mounteagle, by means of the Stanleys, Mounteagle’s father’s ancestors and mother’s ancestors.[77]

For it is obvious that families connected with or related to the same family are connected with or related to each other.

Again, there was certainly a further marriage connection and a probably blood relationship between the Morleys, Mounteagles, and Wards through the great House of Neville.

(We may be sure that a young nobleman like the fourth Lord Mounteagle would be glad to recognise the Wards of Mulwith, Newby, and Givendale as “Cousins” if such were the fact, and to treat them in every respect as being on an equality with him.)

66

Therefore the combined Evidence so far gives us this conclusion: —

That a Christopher Wright was the brother-in-law of Marmaduke Ward, of Mulwith, in the Parish of Ripon.

That Marmaduke Ward was of the same place — Mulwith (or Mulwaith) — as a person named Thomas Warde, who was married in a church in York in the year 1579, and whose wife died in the year 1590, and whose burial is recorded to this day at Ripon Minster.

That a Christopher Wright, most probably the brother-in-law of Marmaduke Ward, and thus most probably the connection of Thomas Warde, was residing at Newby, near Mulwith,[78] in the Parish of Ripon, between the years 1594 and 1596 inclusive, and in the neighbourhood of the City of Ripon, and within the boundary of its parish, from the year 1589 to 1601.

That Marmaduke Ward’s son, William, had an uncle who lived at Court.[A]

That the Wardes were connected with, and related to Lord Mounteagle by common family ties.[79]

67

Hence, from the foregoing evidence, the conclusions are inevitable, first, that Thomas Warde, of Mulwith, who married Marjory (or Margery) Slater[A] in 1579, was almost certainly a connection and relative of Lord Mounteagle, in whose household Warde held an honoured and honourable position; or, as doubtless we should say nowadays, was the young peer’s private secretary: and, secondly, that, through the said Thomas Warde, Christopher Wright likewise was almost certainly by affinity connected with, if not related by blood to, the same highly-favoured English nobleman.

68

CHAPTER XIX.

But again, seeing that we know that a certain Thomas Ward lived at Court, by reason of his being a member of the household of Lord Mounteagle, who had been admitted to Court ever since the accession to the throne of James the First, by this point also I know not how to escape from these several probable conclusions: that the Thomas Warde (or Ward), the gentleman-servant of Lord Mounteagle, was the brother of Marmaduke Warde (or Ward); that, by consequence, he was the connection of Christopher Wright; and that by remoter consequence, Christopher Wright himself was a connection of Lord Mounteagle likewise.

Now, granting the family connection between Thomas Warde and Wright, there is no antecedent improbability, but the contrary, in the supposal that Christopher Wright, if and when stricken with remorse at the thought of his sworn part and lot in the iniquitous Gunpowder Plot, had recourse to this Thomas Warde, who was his connection, for trustworthy and effectual help in saving from a sudden and cruel death, haply himself and his confederates, but certainly his Sovereign and the Senators of his Fatherland, along with Heaven alone knows whom else beside!

Furthermore, if there were any antecedent improbability in such a supposal as that Christopher Wright should have recourse to this particular Yorkshireman, Thomas Warde, in the hour of his need, it should69 be had in continual remembrance — as a self-evident proposition from the constitution of human nature — that the person or persons to whom a Yorkshireman like Christopher Wright (supposing him to have been the revealing plotter) almost certainly would have recourse would be, if possible, some tried and constant native of his own County, whose intellect, he would think, there was some guarantee for being shrewd and practical, his heart not devoid of fellow-feeling with a “brother in adversity,” and his will at once indomitable and energetic.[80] One who indeed laughs at alleged impossibilities and who cries: “It shall be done!”

70

CHAPTER XX.

Lastly, there is proof, indirect indeed but very telling, that Thomas Warde must have been closely akin to Marmaduke Warde, and that both must have been related to Lord Mounteagle.

This proof is contained in the following “Examination of Marmaduke Warde, Gentleman, in the County of Yorke, taken at Beauchamp Court before Sir Fulke Grevyll, Knight, and Bartholmewe Hales, Esq^re., on Wednesday, the 6th day of November, the day following the arrest of Fawkes and the flight of the others of the conspirators from London towards Dunchurch, in Warwickshire: —

Now, from the “Life of Mary Ward,” vol. i., p. 91, it is evident, first, that Marmaduke Warde got into no trouble of any kind, notwithstanding that for a fortnight he had been actually dwelling under the roof-tree of one of the principal conspirators, and when apprehended was even in the act of taking a horse from Lapworth to Huddington, the mansion of Robert Winter, one Gunpowder traitor and armed rebel, who was also the brother of another Gunpowder traitor and armed rebel — the latter, indeed, being among the very chiefest of the traitors and rebels.

It is evident, secondly, that on reaching London town the Master of Newbie, in the County of York, lodged in Baldwin’s Gardens, Holborn, apparently as a matter of course.

Moreover, the marvel of the whole thing is enhanced by the fact, first, that Marmaduke Ward’s name is bracketed along with Richard Yorke (a follower of Robert Winter) and Robert Key (doubtless Robert Keyes), the Gunpowder traitor, who was arrested in Warwickshire by himself and not in the company of the others (it is supposed he had been to Turvey, in Bedfordshire, to see his wife and children at Lord Mordaunt’s, and was making his way towards Holbeach); and by the fact,72 secondly, that the said Marmaduke Ward, Richard Yorke, and Robert Key are specially described as “suspected persons usually resorting to Mr. Winter, Mr. Grant, and Mr. Rookwood’s.”[A]

Now the inferences that I draw from these two truly astounding circumstances are these following: — That Marmaduke Warde must have had literally “a friend at Court,” or his lodging when he reached the great Metropolis, as a matter of course, would have been not — emphatically not — Baldwin’s Gardens, Holborn, but, of a surety, the Tower of London.

That this “friend” must have been very closely allied to him in some way or another.

And that this “friend” must have been a very powerful friend indeed, especially when one remembers the punishment that was inflicted after the Plot had become a mere bubble-burst by the Court of Star Chamber upon Marmaduke Warde’s own connection (through the Gascoignes), Henry Earl of Northumberland,[82] and upon the Lords Montague, Mordaunt, and Stourton, the latter of whom had married a daughter of good Sir Thomas Tresham; and the prosecution of Marmaduke Warde’s other connection, Sir John Yorke, of Gowthwaite Hall, in Nidderdale, as late as the year 1612, on a charge of complicity in the Plot.[83]

Now, from all these three inferences, surely the further inference is inevitable, that the probabilities are73 so high as to amount to moral certitude, that Thomas Warde and Marmaduke Warde were each allied, in blood, to William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle.

And “probability” that amounts to moral certitude is, as every-day experience, as well as philosophy, tells us, “the very guide of life.”

Therefore the historical Inquirer henceforward is warranted in reason in pursuing his inquiries into this matter on the following assumption, at the very least, namely, that Christopher Wright, Marmaduke Warde, Thomas Warde, and Lord Mounteagle had common family ties subsisting between them in the year 1605.

And, consequently, upon such an assumption the Inquirer may justifiably build his hypothesis respecting the revelation of the Gunpowder Treason Plot.[84]

74

CHAPTER XXI.

But, it may be asked, is there any Evidence, however remote, to show how it is possible that Mounteagle may have been brought into personal contact with his morally certain kinsman, Thomas Warde (or Ward)?

There is.

For it is to be remembered that although Mounteagle seems to have spent most of his time in London and Essex, his grandmother, Elizabeth Lady Morley, the wife of Henry Parker Lord Morley, was, as we have seen, of the then well-nigh princely house of the Stanleys Earls of Derby, she being, in fact, a daughter of Edward Stanley Earl of Derby, as was Margaret Lady Poyntz, the wife of Sir Nicholas Poyntz,[A] of Iron Acton, in the County of Gloucester, the father of Edward Poyntz, Esquire, the relative of the Wardes of Yorkshire.

Besides, as we have also seen, this was not William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle’s only relationship with75 England’s “North Countrie,” — that birthplace and home of so much that is most original and energetic in the English race. For this happily-circumstanced young peer was related doubly to the great Lancashire house of Derby, being, indeed, the heir and successor to the honours and estates of the Stanleys Lords Mounteagle, of Hornby Castle, near “time-honoured Lancaster.”

In fact, through his mother Elizabeth (Stanley) Lady Morley, William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle was the owner of Hornby Castle, situated in the Vale of the Lune, one of the grandest portions of North-east Lancashire.

Again, through his grandmother Anne (Leybourne) Lady Mounteagle, Lord Mounteagle was descended from two other families belonging to the ancient and wealthy Catholic gentry of the North, some of whom the Wards, of Mulwith, Newby, and Givendale, in the Parish of Ripon, in the County of York, must have known personally, and certainly all of whom they must have greatly honoured.

I refer to the Prestons, of Levens and Preston Patrick, in the County of Westmoreland, and of Furness and Holker, in Lancashire, “North of the Sands,” and to the Leybournes (or Labourns), of Cunswick, Skelsmergh, and Witherslack,[A] in the County of Westmoreland, and of Nateby-in-the-Fylde, in the west of the County of Lancaster.[85]

76

CHAPTER XXII.

Lastly, it should be remembered, in endeavouring to trace out by inevitable inference the nature of the tie or ties, manifestly very strong, that bound Mounteagle to Marmaduke Ward (and therefore to Thomas Ward), that the ancestors of both Mounteagle and the Wards had, in the year 1513, fought together at the great battle of Flodden Field, in Northumberland, in which the Scots were led by King James IV. of Scotland, who married Margaret Tudor, the daughter of King Henry VII. of England, and whom naught would content, like many a valiant Scot before and since, save “a soldier’s death or glory.”

In the memorable fight, the fifth son of Thomas Stanley first Earl of Derby, namely, Sir Edward Stanley (whose mother was a Neville),[A] turned the fortunes of the77 day in favour of the English by attacking with his archers the rear of the Scottish centre — which centre, led by King James himself in person, was assaulting, with some success, the English forces, whose vanguard was led by Lord Thomas Howard, in 1514 created the Earl of Surrey.

This Earl of Surrey was afterwards the second Duke of Norfolk, of the Howard line of the Dukes of Norfolk, and great great grandfather of Philip Howard Earl of Arundel, who died in the Tower of London in 1595.

The Mowbrays had been the holders of the coveted title Duke of Norfolk[A] from the year 1396 down to 1475, when John de Mowbray Earl of Warren and Surrey, the fourth of the Mowbray Dukes of Norfolk, died leaving no son but only a daughter, Anne, in her own right Baroness Mowbray and Segrave, and also in her own right Countess of Norfolk. This lady was contracted in marriage to Richard, afterwards created Duke of Norfolk, a son of King Edward IV., but they had no issue.

The second of the Howard Dukes of Norfolk, the hero of Flodden Field, was the father of Thomas third Duke of Norfolk, commonly called the “old Duke of Norfolk.”

78

He was that Duke of Norfolk, under Henry VIII., who opposed the insurgent Yorkshire and Lancashire “Pilgrims of Grace” (1536) led by the gallant Robert Aske,[A] of Aughton, on the banks of the Yorkshire Derwent, when in the event Aske was hanged from one of the towers of the ancient City of York — probably Clifford’s Tower — and many of his followers tasted of Tudor vengeance.

“The old Duke of Norfolk” was the father of that illustrious scion of the house of Howard who, under the name Earl of Surrey, has left a deathless memory alike as warrior, statesman, and poet.

The Earl of Surrey’s son was Thomas Howard fourth Duke of Norfolk, who is the common ancestor of the present Duke of Norfolk and the present Earl of Carlisle.

The fourth Duke of Norfolk’s head fell on the scaffold, by reason of the Duke’s aspiring to the Royal hand of Mary Queen of Scots.[B]

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The then Lord Dacres of the North, “who dwelt on the Border” at Naworth Castle,[A] near Carlisle, was likewise a sharer in the renowned laurels of Flodden Field.

This before-mentioned Sir Edward Stanley, the fifth son of Thomas Stanley first Earl of Derby, was created by Henry VIII. Baron Mounteagle, and he was the great-great-grandfather of William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle, who married Elizabeth Tresham.

The story of the battle of Flodden Field[86] and its famous English archers must have been familiar to Mounteagle from his earliest years. And he, doubtless, would have learned from maternal lips that, in consequence of his ancestor’s prowess in that historic fight, his mother’s family received from Henry VIII. the famous title whereby he himself had the good fortune to be known to his King and his fellow-subjects.

I find from Baines’ “History of Lancashire,” vol. iv., ed. 1836, that Hornby Castle, in the Vale of the Lune, in the Parish of Melling, did not pass out of the family of the Lords Morley and Mounteagle until the reign of Charles II. (1663), when it was sold to the Earl of Cardigan: that James I. confirmed to William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle certain ancient rights and privileges, such as court view of frankpledge, etc.: and that James stayed at the Castle in the year 1617, on his return from Scotland to London through Lancashire.80 Baines also says that Sir Edward Stanley first Lord Mounteagle (who married Anne Harrington, daughter of Sir John Harrington) successfully petitioned Henry VII. for the Hornby Estates, in consequence of the attainder of James Harrington, apparently his wife’s uncle.

81

CHAPTER XXIII.

The first Lord Mounteagle left Hornby Castle to his son Thomas second Lord Mounteagle.

William third Lord Mounteagle, the son and heir of Thomas the second Lord Mounteagle, died in 1584, and is buried in the Parish Church of St. Peter, Melling.

Lady Mary Brandon,[A] the eldest daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, was the first wife of Thomas second Lord Mounteagle, whose second wife was Ellen Leybourne (née Preston), the mother of Anne, the wife of William third Lord Mounteagle, who died in 1584.

Ellen Preston’s father was Sir Thomas Preston; her mother was a Thornborough, of Hampsfield Hall, Hampsfell, in the Parish of Cartmel, North Lancashire. The Thornboroughs (or Thornburghs) had held some of the following manors from the time of Edward III.: — Hampsfield Hall, Whitwell, Winfell, Fellside, Skelsmergh, Patton, Dallam Tower, Methop, Ulva, and Wilson House, all either in North Lancashire or Westmoreland.

In the parish church of Windermere, at Bowness, near Lake Windermere, there is a window containing, besides royal arms (possibly those of Henry V.), the82 arms of Harrington, Leybourne, Fleming de Rydal, Strickland, Middleton, and Redmayne, most of which houses of gentry of “the North Countrie” were more or less allied to the fourth Lord Mounteagle.

Sir Edward Stanley first Lord Mounteagle was in possession of Hornby Castle and its broad acres at the date of Flodden Field, 1513.[A] This is interestingly evidenced by the two following stanzas from the old “Ballad of Flodden Field”: —

Now, the fourth Lord Mounteagle would, almost certainly, know that among the many valiant knights that fought with his forbear, Sir Edward Stanley, was Sir Christopher Ward, who led the Yorkshire levies to the victorious field, and who came of the great family of Ward (or Warde), long famous in the annals of the West Hiding of Yorkshire about Guiseley, Esholt, and Ripon.

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For, as the grand old “Ballad of Flodden Field” again tells us, the English arms were reinforced

The honourable fact just mentioned concerning the valiant Yorkshire knight, Sir Christopher Ward, together with the fact of the relationship, whatever was its precise degree, between the families of Mounteagle and Ward, through the Nevilles and, almost certainly, other ancient houses besides, would tend to cement the bond of union betwixt William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle and his private secretary or gentleman-servant, who — as we have proved by evidence and inevitable inferences therefrom — it is all but absolutely certain must have been Thomas Warde,[A] of Mulwith, the brother of Marmaduke Ward, of Mulwith, Newby, and Givendale.[88]

With the consequence that both Lord Mounteagle and his older — almost certainly diplomatist-trained — Elizabethan kinsman would share the lofty traditions, memories and ways of looking at things common to both, which would characterize an historic race that had84 been of high “consideration” long before the sister Kingdom of “bonnie Scotland” gave to her ancient foe a King from her romantic and fascinating but ill-fated Stuart line.

85

CHAPTER XXIV.

Having then thus established the point that if Christopher Wright and his conjectured Penman of the Letter wished to put themselves into communication with the King’s Government, Christopher Wright himself had family connections in Mounteagle and Ward, who were pre-eminently well qualified — from their Janus-like respective aspects — for the performance of such a task, let us proceed with our Inquiry.

For there is Evidence to lead to the following conclusions: —

(1) That the revealing conspirator (whoever he was) had arranged beforehand that Mounteagle should be at Hoxton on the memorable Saturday evening, the 26th day of October, 1605, at about the hour of seven of the clock.

Moreover, my strong opinion is that this arrangement was made through the suggestion of Thomas Ward, the diplomatic intermediary, with the express consent of Mounteagle himself.

The suggestion, I think, may have been made by Thomas Ward at Bath,[A] a town which Ward possibly86 took on his leaving Lapworth, in Warwickshire, whither, I surmise, he repaired some time between the 11th of October and the 26th of that month.

(2) That Thomas Ward’s was the guiding mind, the dominant force, or, to vary the metaphor, the central pivot upon which the successful accomplishment of the entire revelation turned, inasmuch as, I submit, that Ward must have received from the conscience-stricken conspirator a complete disclosure of the whole guilty secret, with full power, moreover, to make known to Mounteagle so much of the particulars concerning the enterprise as in the exercise of his (Ward’s) uncontrolled diplomatic discretion it might be profitable to be made known to Mounteagle, in order that the supreme end in view might be attained, namely, the entire spinning round on its axis of the prodigious, diabolical Plot.

(3) That Thomas Ward (or Warde) was the diplomatic go-between, the trusty mentor, and the zealous prompter of his master throughout the whole of the very difficult, delicate, and momentous part that Destiny, at this awful crisis in England’s history, called upon this young nobleman to play.

If Ward (or Warde) were born about the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, in the year 1605 he would be well-nigh in the prime of life, namely, forty-six years of age; whereas Mounteagle, we know, was just about thirty. Hence was Warde, by his superior age and experience of men and things, well fitted to play “the guide, philosopher, and friend” to Mounteagle in the matter.[A]

87

CHAPTER XXV.

Now what is the Evidence to support the preceding paragraphs (1), (2), and (3)?

As to paragraph (1), the Evidence is direct.

There was a tradition extant that Mounteagle expected the Letter, told to a gentleman named Edmund Church his confidant. — See Gardiner’s “Gunpowder Plot,” p. 10.

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Moreover, the fact that the footman was in the street at about seven of the clock when the missive was given to him is strongly suggestive of the fact that he had been anxiously sent thither by some one, so that he might be ready at hand to receive the document immediately on its arrival.

As to paragraphs (2) and (3), the Evidence is indirect and inferential.

It is this: — Thomas Ward was manifestly on excellent terms with Mounteagle on the one hand and with the conspirators on the other.

For it is evident that no sooner had Mounteagle arrived back from his errand of mercy on that dark night of Saturday, the 26th day of October, 1605, than he divulged to his servant almost all, if not quite all, that had passed at Whitehall during his never-to-be-forgotten interview with Salisbury, the King’s principal Secretary of State.[A]

That Lord Mounteagle had imparted to Thomas Ward almost all, if not quite all, that had passed between Lord Salisbury and himself on the delivery to the latter of the peerless document to my mind is clear from the fact that the faithful Ward, the very next day (Sunday) repaired to Thomas Winter, one of the principal conspirators, and told Winter that the Letter was in the hands of Salisbury! — “Winter’s Confession.”

Assuming that Thomas Ward was a Ward of Mulwith, he would be a family connection of Thomas Winter as well as of Christopher Wright through Ursula Ward and Inglebies, of Ripley, in Nidderdale.

89

Now, what is proved by this very significant fact of Thomas Ward’s so unerringly darting off to Thomas Winter, one of the prime movers in this conspiracy of wholesale slaughter, when he (Ward) had all the adult male inhabitants of London and Westminster to make his selection from?

Plainly this: that the revealing conspirator (whoever he was) must have “primed” Thomas Ward by previously telling Thomas Ward that Thomas Winter was one of the chiefest of those involved in the conspiracy.

Again; as Winter had been formerly in Mounteagle’s service (a circumstance doubtless well known to the revealing conspirator), that revealing conspirator would naturally, nay inevitably, bid Ward put himself not only into speedy communication with Mounteagle, in order to reach Salisbury, the principal servant of the King, but, this done, also into speedy communication with Thomas Winter, one of the chief promoters of the baleful enterprise, in order that by dint of Winter’s powerful influence the general body of the latter’s co-conspirators might be warned, and not merely warned, but haply prevailed upon to take to their heels in instant flight.

Thus the great end aimed at by the curvilinear triangular movement — wherein (ex hypothesi) the Penman, Father Oldcorne, as well as the go-between, Thomas Ward, and the revealing Christopher Wright, was a party and responsible actor — would be, with clear-eyed, sure-footed, absolute certitude, secured and accomplished — nothing being left to the perilous contingencies of purblind, stumbling, limited chance.

90

CHAPTER XXVI.

Now, I maintain that there is Evidence, from a very unexpected quarter, that Thomas Ward had received from the revealing plotter a complete disclosure of every one of the material facts and particulars of the Plot, including the existence of the mine, the hiring of the cellar, the storing therein of the gunpowder, and even the names of the conspirators. And that, moreover, Thomas Ward had received the fullest power “to discover” to his master, Lord Mounteagle, all that had been told to him (Ward) by the revealing plotter, if, in the exercise of his (Ward’s) uncontrolled diplomatic discretion, he deemed it necessary in order to effect, primarily, the temporal salvation of the King and his Parliament, and, this done, in order to effect, secondarily, the escape of the conspirators themselves.

The Evidence to which I refer is deducible from the testimony of none other than Francis Tresham, Evidence which he gave to Thomas Winter in Lincoln’s Inn Walks on Saturday night, the 2nd day of November, just one week after the delivery of the Letter to Lord Mounteagle, and just one day after the Letter had been shown by Salisbury to the King.[89]

Thomas Winter, in his “Confession,” writes thus: “On Saturday night I met Mr. Tresham again in Lincoln’s Inn Walks, where he told such speeches that my Lord of Salisbury should use to the King, as I gave it lost the second time, and repeated the same to Mr.91 Catesby, who hereupon was resolved to be gone, but stayed to have Mr. Percy come up whose consent herein we wanted. On Sunday night came Mr. Percy and no ‘nay,’ but would abide the uttermost trial.”[90]

To what purport can these “speeches” have been, I should like to know, which so mightily wrought on the nerves of even the doughty Thomas Winter that they were potent enough to break down and sweep away the barriers formed by the strong affection which he naturally must have harboured for the pet scheme and the darling project that had cost himself and his companions the expenditure of so much “slippery time,”[91] so much sweat of the brow, and so much treasure of the pocket? Yea, indeed, to what purport can these “speeches” have been?

92

CHAPTER XXVII.

In the King’s Book, after describing Salisbury’s first visit to James in “the privie gallerie” of Whitehall Palace, it is stated that it was arranged that there should be another meeting on the following day, Saturday, the 2nd of November.

The precise words of the Royal Work are these: “It was agreed that he [i.e., Salisbury] should the next day repair to his Highness; which he did in the same privie gallerie, and renewed the memory thereof, the Lord Chamberlaine [i.e., Suffolk] being then present with the King. At what time it was determined that the said Lord Chamberlaine should, according to his custom and office, view all the Parliament Houses.”

This pre-arranged meeting with the King on the Saturday was duly held just one week after the delivery of the Letter, Salisbury and Suffolk the Lord Chamberlaine being present thereat; and I suggest that, most probably, Mounteagle himself was, if not then actually within ear-shot, yet not afar off.

Now it is evident from Lingard’s “History” that Tresham had told Winter that the Government had already intelligence of the existence of “the mine.”[92]

Tresham also told Winter that he (Tresham) knew not how the Government had obtained this knowledge (vol. ix., p. 72).

The inevitable inference, therefore, that reason demands should be drawn from these statements of Tresham93 is that Mounteagle must have either sent for his brother-in-law, or gone himself to see him, and that Mounteagle then must have told the terrified Tresham that he (Mounteagle) knew for a fact that a mine had been digged,[A] and that the same information probably that very day (Saturday) would be imparted to the King’s Government likewise.[93]

This explanation, moreover, stands unspeakably more to reason than the one which woodenly says that Tresham himself revealed the dread secret respecting the mine to Mounteagle, and that then, out of his own mouth, the unhappy man hazarded self-condemnation in the presence of the astute Winter only one day after his (Tresham’s) life had been in the gravest possible jeopardy at Barnet, near White Webbs, from the poniards of the infuriated Catesby and Winter.[94]

94

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Again, on Monday, the 4th instant, Mounteagle offered to accompany his distant connection, the Earl of Suffolk, to make the search in the cellar.

Whyneard, keeper of the King’s wardrobe, declared to the two noble searchers that Thomas Percy had hired the house and part of the cellar or vault under the same, and that “the wood and coale” therein were “the said gentleman’s own provision.”

Mounteagle, on hearing Percy named, let drop — probably in an unguarded moment — words to the effect that perhaps Thomas Percy had sent the Letter.

Now, guarded or unguarded, to my mind, the fact that Mounteagle, in any shape or form, mentioned Percy’s name on that momentous occasion tends to show that Mounteagle knew all the material facts and particulars of the Plot, including even the names of the conspirators.[95]

But Mounteagle, I hold, was resolved to do his duty to his King and his country on the one hand, and to his friends — his reprobate, insane, but (he full well knew) grievously provoked friends — on the other.

He was determined, spurred on, I suggest, by Thomas Ward, to save the King and Parliament from bloody destruction by gunpowder on the one hand, and to save his own kith and kin and boon companions on the other: of whose guilt, or otherwise, he did not constitute himself the judge, still less the executioner.

95

To this end the young peer watched and measured the relative value and effect of every move on the part of the Government like a vigilant commander, bent, indeed, on securing what he deemed to be the rights and interests of the wronged and the wrong-doers alike.

And, most probably, being driven into a corner at the last and compelled so to do by the imperious exigencies of his primary and supreme duty, namely, the saving of the King and Parliament from being rent and torn to pieces in a most hellish fashion, truly “barbarous and savage beyond the examples of former ages,” Mounteagle actually himself told Salisbury to inform Sir Thomas Knevet and his band of armed men to keep a sharp lookout for a certain tall, soldierly figure, “booted and spurred,” in the neighbourhood of the cellar, before the clock struck the hour of midnight of Monday, November the 4th. If this were so, it accounts for the efforts of Knevet, Doubleday, and others being so speedily crowned with success.

Fawkes was probably taken into custody in the court adjoining Percy’s house and the House of Lords’ cellar, and a few moments afterwards secured by being bound with such things in the nature of cords as Knevet and his men had with them. — See Gardiner’s “Gunpowder Plot,” pp. 132-136.

The dark lantern, now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, was left burning in the cellar by Fawkes.

96

CHAPTER XXIX.

Let me now make two quotations.

One is from the King’s Book, giving an account of the procedure followed by the Earl of Suffolk the Lord Chamberlain, and the Lord Mounteagle, the champion, protector, and hero of the England of his day, in whose honour the “rare” Ben Jonson[96] himself composed the epigram transcribed at the end of this Inquiry.

The other quotation, collected from the relation of a certain interview between Catesby, Tresham, Mounteagle, and Father Garnet, is one which plainly shows that Mounteagle was closely associated with Catesby, not merely as a passive listener but as an active sympathiser, as late as the month of July, 1605, in general treasonable internal projects, which indeed only just fell short of particular treasonable external acts.

But this, of course, does not prove any complicity of Mounteagle in the particular designment known as the Gunpowder Treason Plot, of which diabolical scheme, I have no reasonable doubt, the happy, debonair, pleasure-loving, but withal shrewd and generous, young nobleman was perfectly innocent.

These two quotations show, first, how zealously and faithfully Mounteagle of the Janus-face, looking both before and after — as henceforward we must regard him — kept his hand on the pulse of the Government at the most critical hour of his country’s annals, with a view to doing what both he and his mentor deemed to be97 justice in the rightful claims and demands, though diverse and conflicting, of each group of “clients.”

And, secondly, how wisely and prudently Christopher Wright and his counsellor or counsellors had acted in determining upon this favoured child of Fortune as their “vessel of election” for conveying that precious Instrument, which for all time is destined to be known as Lord Mounteagle’s Letter, to the Earl of Salisbury and, through him, to King James, his Privy Council and Government, on that Saturday night, the 26th day of October, 1605.

The King’s Book says: “At what time hee [i.e., the Earl of Suffolk,[97] the Lord Chamberlain] went to the Parliament House accompanied with my Lord Mounteagle, being in zeale to the King’s service, earnest and curious to see the event of that accident whereof he had the fortune to be the first discoverer: where having viewed all the lower roumes he found in the vault under the upper House great store and provision of Billets, Faggots, and Coales; and enquiring of Whyneard, keeper of the Wardrobe, to what use hee had put those lower roumes and cellars; he told them that Thomas Percy had hired both the house and part of the cellar or vault under the same, and that the wood and coale therein was the sayde gentleman’s owne provision. Whereupon the Lord Chamberlaine casting his eye aside perceived a fellow standing in a corner there, calling himself the said Percyes man and keeper of that house for him, but indeed was Guido Fawkes the owner of that hand which should have acted that monstrous tragedie.”[98]

The Discourse then goes on to say that the Lord Chamberlain reported to the King in the “privie gallerie,” in the presence of the Lord Treasurer, “the Lord Admirall,” “the Earles of Worcester, Northampton, and Salisbury,” what he had seen and observed, “noting Mounteagle had98 told him, that he no sooner heard Thomas Percy[A] named to be possessour of that house, but considering both his backwardnes in Religion and the old dearenesse in friendship between himself and the say’d Percy, hee did greatly suspect the matter, and that the Letter should come from him. The sayde Lord Chamberlaine also tolde, that he did not wonder a little at the extraordinarie great provision of wood and coale in that house, where Thomas Percy had so seldome occasion to remaine; as likewise it gaue him in his minde that his man looked like a very tall and desperate fellow.”[99]

99

CHAPTER XXX.

Shortly after Midsummer (i.e., July), 1605, Father Garnet was at the Jesuit house at Fremland, in Essex. Catesby came there with Lord Mounteagle and Tresham.

At this meeting, in answer to a question, “Were Catholics able to make their part good by arms against the King?” — Mounteagle replied, “If ever they were, they are able now;” and then that young nobleman added this reason for his opinion, “The King is so odious to all sorts.”

At this interview Tresham said, “We must expect [i.e., wait for] the end of Parliament, and see what laws are made against Catholics, and then seek for help of foreign princes.”

“No,” said Garnet, “assure yourself they will do nothing.”

“What!” said my Lord Mounteagle, “will not the Spaniard help us? It is a shame!”[A]

Then said Father Garnet, “You see we must all have patience.”[100]

It is also to be remembered that when Sir Edmund Baynham, a Gloucestershire Catholic gentleman of good100 family — but of whom Winter said “he was not a man fit for the business at home,” i.e., the purposed Gunpowder massacre — went to Flanders and Rome in the first week of September, 1605, Mounteagle appears to have written certain letters of introduction or of general recommendation, in Baynham’s behalf, to English Catholics residing in Flanders or in Rome. Jardine says that “it is not quite certain that Baynham was himself entrusted with the great secret of the Plot.”[101]

I think that it is morally certain he was not.

Sir Edmund Baynham[A] was intended by the prime conspirators to be at Rome to justify (if he could) to the Pope any action that the conspirators might have perpetrated on or after November the Fifth in behalf of their religion. But the prime conspirators were far too astute “to open their mouth” to let a chattering, hare-brained swashbuckler like Baynham “fill other people’s” in every wine-shop en route for “the Eternal City.”

Guy Fawkes probably was authorised to impart and possibly actually did, under the oath, impart some knowledge of the Plot to Captain Hugh Owen, a Welsh Roman Catholic soldier of fortune serving in Flanders under the Archdukes.[102] Owen’s name figures in the Earl of Salisbury’s instructions to Sir Edward Coke, the Attorney-General who prosecuted the surviving Gunpowder conspirators in the historic Westminster Hall.

101

Moreover, I have thought that at least some of the powder must have been purchased in Flanders through the good offices of the said Captain Owen. The powder and the mining tools and implements appear to have been stored at first in the house at Lambeth and placed under the charge of Robert Keyes and, eventually, of Christopher Wright. The powder was, I take it, packed in bags, and the bags themselves packed in padlocked hampers. Afterwards, I conclude, the powder bags were deposited in the barrels, and the barrels themselves carried by two of the conspirators, with aid of brewers’ slings, and deposited in the cellar, which apparently had at least two doors.

102

CHAPTER XXXI.

Now, when deep within the depths of the moral being of Christopher Wright there first arose that tender day-spring, a realization of guilt and shame: that crimsoned dawn, a sense of grief and sorrow for those two high crimes whereby his wretched conscious-self had been made darksome and deformed: acts, wondrous in the telling, in that soul had been indeed wrought out; regard being had to the overmastering power of Man’s conditioned yet free will.

Furthermore, the historical Inquirer cannot but seek, if possible, by the exercise of the philosophic faculty, to penetrate to what, on the human side, may have been the originating cause, the moving spring, of the limited yet responsible moral nature of a guilty creature, whose eyes for well-nigh three hundred years have been closed by a violent death; of a guilty creature who, in the awful tragedy of his end, verified in himself, in the sight of all men, the sublimely terrible words of the old Greek tragedy, “The guilty suffer.”

For wrong-doing, by a steadfast law of the universal reason, “till time shall be no more,” will ever entail temporal punishment; and, by nature, expiation and atonement must be wrought out in the criminal’s own keen consciousness.

Yet, by a compensating law of universal reason, as inexorable as its fellow, according as Man does work out that measure of punishment, expiating and atoning, which103 to him Destiny has allotted for his guerdon, in that proportion does his soul regain its forfeited harmoniousness and peace.

Now the originating cause, the moving spring, in the case of the, I hold, contrite Christopher Wright was, on the human side, the flooding of his soul by memories pure and bright of days long, long ago.

I need not labour this point; but in a note I will relate certain facts concerning her to whom Christopher Wright owed the gifts of life and nurture, which will sufficiently tell what manner of woman that Elizabethan Yorkshire mother was, in respect of courage, humanity, and devotedness to her ideals.[103]

I furthermore opine that, although it was the personal dawning consciousness of Christopher Wright himself that primarily prompted the happy step of recourse to Father Edward Oldcorne,[104] yet Christopher Wright, in my judgment, already had confided the just scruples of his conscience to the ear, not of a “superior” judicial Priest, but of an “equal” counselling Layman.

That Layman, I hold, was Thomas Ward, who, belike, heightened and strengthened his connection’s laudable resolve.[105]

Now, if such were the case, I do not doubt that Father Oldcorne, that skilled, tried “minister of a mind diseased,” the duties of whose vocation urged him, with persistent force, promiscuously “to work good unto all men,” voluntarily offered to pen the immortal Letter; provided he were released from the obligations of that solemn secrecy imposed by “the seal of the Confessional”: released by the Penitent himself, in whom alone resided the prerogative of granting or withholding such a release.

104

CHAPTER XXXII.

Again; I think that probably Thomas Ward had either at Hindlip, Evesham or elsewhere at least one interview with the great Jesuit himself — “the gradely Jesuit,” as the good, simple-hearted Lancashire Catholics would style him — in order that Father Oldcorne might receive from Ward in person satisfactory assurance that, with certainty, when the Letter had been prepared it would be delivered directly by Ward himself, or indirectly by him, through Mounteagle, to the Government authorities.

Nay, to make assurance doubly sure, it is even possible that Father Oldcorne may have insisted on a second Letter being penned and sent to another nobleman at the Court, the Earl of Northumberland, a man of ancient lineage and great name, with whom Ward, through the Gascoignes, would be distantly connected.[106]

It appears to me that the moral certitude is so strong that Thomas Ward was brother to Marmaduke Ward, of Mulwith, Newby, and Givendale, that it seems practically almost the mere extravagance of caution to express a doubt of it.[A]

105

Now, the suggestion that Thomas Ward was probably in the Midland counties of Warwickshire and Worcestershire sometime about the 11th of October, 1605,[107] is, I maintain, to some very slight extent supported by the fact that we know for certain that Marmaduke Ward came up from Yorkshire to Lapworth about thirteen days afterwards, and that he was bracketed with those who were said to have been at the houses of John Wright, Ambrose Rookwood, and John Grant at that time.[A]

Now, if about the 11th of October Thomas Ward found at Lapworth, Clopton, and Norbrook every inchoate evidential sign of a heady, hopeless, armed rebellion, what was there more natural than that he should have despatched some trusty horseman, fleet of foot, “from the heart of England” down into Yorkshire, bearing an urgent missive adjuring Marmaduke Ward, by the love that he bore to his kith and kin, to come up to Lapworth with all speed possible? To the end that he might use his counsels and entreaties to induce his late wife’s combative brother, John Wright,[108] the close-natured Christopher Wright, the gallant Ambrose Rookwood, and the strong-willed John Grant, to abandon all designment of insurrectionary stirs.

For Thomas Ward, from the experience of a man at Court aged forty-six, who knew from the daily observation106 of his own senses, how firmly James’s Executive was certainly established, must have clearly perceived that, at that time Catholic stirs against the Government could be fated to have only one unhappy issue and disgraceful termination, namely, the utter, bloody, irretrievable ruin of all that were so thrice wretchedly bewitched as to have become entangled in them.[A]

And this the rather, when it is remembered that, the names of John and Christopher Wright were already unfavourably known to the Government; since during Elizabeth’s reign, in the year 1596, they, together with Catesby, Tresham, and others, had been put under arrest by the Crown authorities, who feared that on the death of Elizabeth these “young bloods” would, at what they deemed to be “the psychological moment” for the execution of their revolutionary designs, lead, sword in hand, the oppressed recusants in some wild, fierce dash for liberty.[109]

107

CHAPTER XXXIII.

We have now considered the Evidence leading up to the commission of the respective acts that this Inquiry, at an earlier part, has attributed severally to Christopher Wright and Father Oldcorne, who stand, as it were, at the angular points in the base of that triangular movement of revelation, at whose vertex is Thomas Ward (or Warde), the entirely trustworthy friend and diplomatic intermediary common to both the repentant conspirator and the beneficent Priest of the Society of Jesus.

But before proceeding with the Evidence and the deductions and suggestions therefrom, which tend to prove that, subsequent to the dictating of the Letter by Christopher Wright and the penning of the same by Father Oldcorne, these two Yorkshiremen were conscious of having performed the several parts attributed unto them, let us deal with certain objections that may be put forward as preliminary objections fatal to the contentions of this Inquiry.

Now, there is an objection which, with a primâ facie plausibleness, may be advanced against the hypothesis that Christopher Wright was the dictating, repentant, revealing conspirator, through whom primarily the Plot was frustrated and overthrown.

And there is also a second objection that may be urged against the hypothesis, with even still greater primâ facie plausibleness, that Father Edward Oldcorne,108 Priest and Jesuit, was the meritorious Penman of the dictated Letter.

Each objection must be dealt with separately.

Let us take the objection in the case of Christopher Wright first, and, having laid that one, proceed to the objection in the case of Edward Oldcorne.

Now, a certain William Handy, servant to Sir Everard Digby, on the 27th day of November, 1605, before (among others) Sir Julius Cæsar, Kt., Sir Francis Bacon, Kt.,[110] and Sir George More, Kt., High Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, deposed (among other things) the following: —

That early on Wednesday morning, the 6th of November, as the fugitives were proceeding from Norbrook to Alcester, he (Handy) heard the younger Wright say, “That if they had had good luck they had made those in the Parliament House fly with their heels upward to the sky;” and that “he spake these words openly in the hearing of those which were with him, which were commonly Mr. John Grant, the younger Grant, and Ambrose Rookwood.”[111]

Now, Christopher Wright may have used these words in the early part of that November day, and every candid mind must allow that they are not the words that one would expect to find in a sincerely repentant criminal.

But the philosopher knows that there is “a great deal of human nature in Man.” While the experienced citizen of the world who knows men practically, as the philosopher knows Man theoretically, will not be literally amazed, or even unduly startled, at finding these words recorded against Christopher Wright, even after (ex hypothesi) he had become as one morally resurrected from the dead.

For it is to be remembered that Christopher Wright was the brother of John Wright, and the brother-in-law of Thomas Percy, Thomas Percy having married Martha109 Wright, of Plowland Hall. Now, concerning John Wright and his brother-in-law, Thomas Percy, the following traits of character are chronicled by their contemporary, Father John Gerard.[112]

“It was noted in him [i.e., Thomas Percy] and in Mr. John Wright (whose sister he afterwards married) that if they had heard of any man in the country to be esteemed more valiant and resolute than others, one or the other of them would surely have picked some quarrel against him and fought with him to have made trial of his valour.”

On the march then, with such relatives as these close at hand, there is no antecedent improbability, but the contrary, in the supposal that Christopher Wright used these words by way of a feint, to the end that he might, peradventure, draw his companions away from those scaring suspicions, by the haunting fear of which Wright’s self-consciousness would be sure to be continually visited.

For “Conscience doth make cowards of us all.”

Truly, “The guilty suffer.” And it was part of the awful temporal punishment wherewith severe, just Nemesis, the dread executioner of Destiny, visited this — I still hold, all outward shows to the contrary notwithstanding — repentant wrong-doer, that he should be fast bound to one of the spiked, lacerating wheels of a flying chariot that he desired, “to the finest fibre” of his tortured, writhing being, to have no part nor lot in driving: fast bound, for the residue of that all too brief mortal career, which, on that chill November morning, was rapidly drawing to its shattered close.

110

CHAPTER XXXIV.

What objection, then, can be brought against the hypothesis that Father Edward Oldcorne, Priest and Jesuit, and native of the City of York, was the Penman of this most momentous perhaps of all Letters ever writ by the hand of man?

It is this, that in a pamphlet by a certain Dr. Williams, published about the year 1680,[113] purporting to be a History of the Powder Treason, with a parallel between the Gunpowder Treason and the Titus Oates’ alleged Popish Plot of the reign of Charles II., there occurs the following statement: —

“Mrs. Habington was sister to the Lord Mounteagle and so being solicitous for her brother, whom she had reason to believe would be at the parliament, she writ the aforesaid letter to him, to give him so much notice of the danger as might warn him to provide for his own safety, but not so much (as she apprehended) as might discover it. From this relation betwixt the two families, it was that Mr. Habington alone of all the conspirators, after sentence, had his life given him. This account Mr. Habington himself gave to a worthy person still in being.” (The italics are mine.)

Now, of course, if Mrs. Habington (or Abington), of Hindlip Hall, near Worcester, where Father Oldcorne was domesticated for sixteen years, actually wrote the Letter, then Father Oldcorne did not. There can be no two opinions about that, even with the most sceptical.

111

But did she?

I submit that this testimony of Dr. Williams, second,[114] third, or fourth hand possibly, is hopelessly inadequate for the establishing of any such conclusion.

First, let it be noted that, although “the worthy person” to whom Mr. Abington is said to have imparted this tremendous secret — and apparently to none other human creature in the wide world beside — was living in the year 1680 (or thereabouts), his thrice-important name is not divulged by the learned author, neither is the faintest hint given as to where he may have resided.

Accordingly, we cannot submit the now dead but once highly privileged gentleman to the salutary ordeal of cross-examination: a fact which is well-nigh fatal to his credibility for any serious student of true history; with the further consequence that a grave suspicion is, by this very fact alone, at once cast upon the entire story.

Secondly, Dr. Williams does not say that he (Williams) himself had this testimony direct from the unnamed and unidentified witness — “the worthy person still in being” in (or about) the year 1680.

Therefore, this story may have been handed on by wagging, irresponsible, chattering tongues, whose name is legion. With the result that it gained, not lost, in the course of transmission to the mind of Dr. Williams, who has enshrined in the printed page, still to be viewed in the British Museum, the far-fetched tale for the benefit of succeeding ages.

112

CHAPTER XXXV.

Now, if Dr. Williams solemnly had said that he knew Mrs. Abington personally, and that she (Mrs. Abington) had told him (Williams) with her own lips that she had writ the Letter, the case would have been a good way towards being established: assuming the lady to have been intellectually and morally capable at the time when she made such statement, and Williams himself a man whose word could be relied on.

Or, if Mr. Abington had told Williams that he knew his wife had writ the Letter because he saw with his own eyes the lady do it, then the case would have been also a good way towards being established.

Or, if Mr. Abington had told Williams that he believed his wife had writ the Letter because she had told him (Abington) she had done so immediately after she alleged she had performed the meritorious deed, the case would have been some slight way towards being established.

But when the only shred or patch of evidence we have to support the stupendous article of belief that Mrs. Abington accomplished the immortal feat is an uncircumstantial, uncorroborated allegation by Dr. Williams that some person or another unknown (on the most favourable view) told him (Williams) that Mrs. Abington had writ the Letter merely because her husband said so, then the case for Mrs. Abington’s authorship of the document is in no way towards being established.

113

And, therefore, the story falls to the ground.

And, therefore, it should be, in reason, henceforward consigned to the limbo of exploded myths and idle tales.

It is true that Dr. Nash in his work on Worcestershire,[115] written in the eighteenth century and published in 1780, declares that “Tradition in this county says that she [i.e., Mrs. Abington] was the person who wrote the Letter to her brother, which discovered the Gunpowder Plot.”

But then, obviously, this alleged tradition is absolutely worthless, unless it can be shown to have been a continuous tradition from the year 1605 down to the time when Nash was writing his “History.” For if the tradition sprang up at a later date, for the purposes of true history its value as a tradition is plainly nothing.

The learned David Jardine — to whom all students of the Gunpowder Plot will be for ever indebted for his labours in this conspiracy of conspiracies — in his “Narrative,” published in the year 1857, and to which reference has been already frequently made in the course of this Inquiry, says,[116] “No contemporary writer alludes to Mrs. Abington as the author of the Letter.”

And Jardine evidently does not think that the penmanship of the document can be brought home to this lady.

Moreover, if Mrs. Abington had written the Letter of Letters, surely she would have, at least, shared her brother Lord Mounteagle’s reward, which was £700 a year for life, equal to nearly £7,000 a year in our money.

For if £700 a year was the guerdon of him that merely delivered this Letter of Letters, what should have been the guerdon of her that actually penned the peerless treasure?

114

But the hypothesis that Mrs. Abington penned the Letter of Letters has absolutely no foundation in contemporary evidence. For there is not the faintest echo of an echo of testimony, nor the merest shadow of a shade of proof that either she or Mr. Abington had the remotest previous knowledge of the Gunpowder Treason Plot.

And the mere fact that Mr. Abington, although the harbourer of Fathers Garnet and Oldcorne, was spared from undergoing the extreme penalty of the law, in itself tends to disprove the allegation that either he or his wife had been in any way privy to the Plot. For no plotter’s life was spared.

Mr. Abington became a celebrated antiquary, especially in regard to his own County of Worcestershire, within the confines of which he was ordered by the King to remain for the rest of his days. — See Jardine’s “Narrative,” p. 212.[A]

In these circumstances, Dr. Nash’s alleged tradition cannot possibly outweigh the inferences that the facts known and inferred concerning the Plot all tend to establish. For these inferences, both in respect of what happened before and after the penning of the Letter, all go to show this: that the conjectures, surmises, and suggestions of this Essay are indeed probable to the degree of moral certitude.

And I respectfully submit these same conjectures, surmises, and suggestions cannot be upset, still less broken, by knowledge commensurate with zeal.

115

Jardine mentions the singular hypothesis that this famous Letter was penned by the Honourable Anne Vaux, at the dictation of the Honourable Mrs. Abington.

Now, the Honourable Anne Vaux was one of the daughters of the Lord Vaux of Harrowden, in Northamptonshire, at whose house Father Henry Garnet (the chief of the Jesuits in England) lived for many years, from 1586, when Garnet returned to England from Rome. Anne Vaux and her sister, the Honourable Eleanor Brookesby, were high-minded women who lived at White Webbs, Stoke Pogis,[A] Wandsworth, and other places of Jesuit resort, rendering, along with Edward Brookesby,[B] Esquire (the husband of Eleanor Brookesby), the members of the Jesuit Society in England signally devoted service.

This was especially so in the case of the Honourable Anne Vaux, who spent and was herself spent in behalf of labours wherein the English Jesuits busied themselves for, as they thought, the greater glory of God and the greater good of man.

Jardine, however, after comparing the Letter with many letters and papers at the then State Paper Office, which are undoubtedly in the Honourable Anne Vaux’s handwriting, says, “I am quite unable to discover the alleged identity of the handwriting.”[117]

116

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Now, regard being had to the fact that “there is seldom smoke except there be, at least, some little fire, the question arises: Is it possible to account, on rational grounds, for any such statement of the worthy person still in being in 1680 as Dr. Williams credits him with?

(Nash’s evidence, in the absence of proof of a continuous tradition, is not one whit more worthy of credence than Dr. Williams’ impalpability.)

It is possible.

For, it is well within the bounds of rational probability that what Mr. Abington said to some person or persons unknown (assuming that he ever said anything whatever) was not that his wife “had writ the Letter,” but that his wife “knew, or thought she knew, who had writ the Letter.”

The way in which to test the matter is this: Supposing, for the sake of argument, that my hypothesis be true, and that Father Oldcorne did actually pen that Letter which was the instrument, not only of the temporal salvation of Mrs. Abington’s brother, the Lord Mounteagle, but also of her father, the Lord Morley, together with many others of her kinsfolk, friends, and acquaintance, as well as of her lawful Sovereign and His Royal Consort, is it, or is it not, probable that Mrs. Abington would guess, in some way or another, the mighty secret?

It is probable.

117

For let it be remembered who and what Mrs. Abington was.

The Honourable Mary Parker, the daughter of Edward Parker Lord Morley and the Honourable Elizabeth Stanley, was the mother of William Abington, the well-known poet[118] of that name, who was born, in fact, on or about the 5th of November, 1605.

Therefore Mrs. Abington was the mother of a son who was a man of distinguished intellectual parts.

Moreover, seeing that usually it is from the mother that a son’s capabilities are derived rather than from the father, it is more, rather than less, likely that Mrs. Abington herself was a naturally clear-minded, acute, discerning woman, gifted with that marvellous faculty which constitutes cleverness in a woman — sympathetic, imaginative insight.

Now if this were so, Mrs. Abington’s native perspicacity would be surely potent enough to enable her to form a judgment, at once penetrating and accurate, in reference to such a thing as the penmanship of the great Letter — a document which had come home, as events had proved, with such peculiar closeness to her own “business and bosom.”[119]

In these circumstances, may the Lady of Hindlip not, in after days, when the tragic scenes of those fateful years 1605 and 1606 had become a sad, pathetic memory merely, have recalled to mind certain special aspects in the play of the countenance, in the tone of the voice, aye, in the general mien of Father Edward Oldcorne that she had noted shortly from and after the Michaelmas of that unhappy year 1605, forming evidence whence she might draw her own shrewd, wise conclusions?

May not this honourable woman — honourable by nature as well as by name — have recollected that she118 had then observed that the holy man sought more than hitherto had been his wont the retirement of his “secret chamber?” That, at that period, he seemed more than ever absorbed, nay hidden, in thought?

May she not have recalled that at that “last” Christmastide, too, he, who was by nature so severely yet sweetly just, and the humblest among men, had shown himself disposed to judge those wicked wrong-doers with a mildness and a leniency that assuredly, perforce, betokened — what? I answer, a consciousness of some high prerogative, some kingly right, abiding in him, whereby he was warranted in thus speaking.

Again; did he not then manifest a disposition, remarkable even in him, to act in diametrical opposition to the ordinary way of men, which is so well expressed by the sarcastic, cynical, yet only too true saying, that “the world is ready enough to laugh with a man, but it leaves him to weep alone.” And this, when “a compassionate silence” (save in extraordinary circumstances) was the utmost that Justice and Charity alike would prompt even a Priest and a Jesuit (nay, even a Priest and a Jesuit of the type of Edward Oldcorne) to display towards the wretched, erring victims of that “ineluctabile fatum,” that resistless decree of the Universe — “The guilty suffer.”

Now, I submit, with sure confidence for an affirmative answer, to the judgment of my candid readers — of my candid readers that know something of human nature, its workings, its windings, and its ways — the question: Whether or not it is not merely possible, but probable, that Mrs. Abington divined that stupendous secret, through and by means of the subtle, yet all-potent, mental sympathy, which must have subsisted betwixt herself and the disciplined, exalted, stately soul, who, as119 a Priest — aye! as a very Prophet — this high-born lady, or at least her spouse, had “counted it all honour and all joy” to have harboured, as a beloved spiritual Father, “elect and precious,” for no less than sixteen years?[120]

120

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Let us finally consider the Evidence and the deductions and suggestions therefrom which tend to prove that subsequent to the dictating of the Letter by the contrite, repentant Christopher Wright, and subsequent to the penning of the Document by the deserving, beneficent Edward Oldcorne, each of these two Englishmen, aye! these two Yorkshiremen, were conscious of having performed the several functions that these pages have attributed unto them.

Let us take, then, the case of Christopher Wright first.

Now, the Evidence that tends to show that Christopher Wright was conscious of having been the revealing plotter and dictating conspirator[121] has been already mainly set forth, but let me recapitulate the same.

It is as follows: —

(1) That either Thomas Winter must have gone in search of Christopher Wright, or Christopher Wright must have gone in search of Thomas Winter, in order that it might be possible for Stowe to record on p. 880 of his “Chronicle” the following allegation of facts: —

“T. Winter, the next day after the delivery of the Letter, told Christopher Wright that he understood of an obscure letter delivered to the Lord Mounteagle, advising him not to appear at the Parliament House the first day, and that the Lord Mounteagle had no121 sooner read it, but instantly carried it to the Earle of Salisbury, which newes was presently made known unto the rest, who after divers conferences agreed to see further trial, but, howsoever, Percy resolved to stay the last houre.”[122]

(2) Poulson says, in his account of the Wrights, of Plowland (or Plewland) Hall, in his “History of Holderness,” vol. ii., p. 57, that Christopher Wright “was the first who ascertained that the plot was discovered.”

(3) Christopher Wright was possibly being harboured by Thomas Ward in or near Lord Mounteagle’s town-house in the Strand during a part of Monday night, the 4th of November, and during the early hours of Tuesday, the 5th.

Or, if Christopher Wright were not being so harboured, then it is almost certain he must have been taking such brief repose as he did take at the inn known by the name of “the Mayden heade in St. Gyles.”[A] For there is evidence to prove that this conspirator’s horse was being stabled at that hostelry in the afternoon of Monday, the 4th of November.

This we know from the testimony of William Grantham, servant to Joseph Hewett, deposed to on the 5th of November, 1605,[B] taken before Sir John Popham, the Lord Chief Justice of England.

Moreover, the Lord Chief Justice Popham[C] reported122 to Lord Salisbury on the 5th of November as follows: “Christopher Wright, as I thyncke, lay this last night in St. Gyles.” — “Gunpowder Plot Book,” Part I., No. 10.

(4) Again; from the following passage in “Thomas Winter’s Confession” it is evident that Christopher Wright, at a very early hour in the morning of Tuesday, November 5th, must have been in very close proximity to Mounteagle’s residence, in order to ascertain so accurately — either directly, through the evidence of his own senses, or indirectly, through the evidence of the senses of some other person (presumably of Thomas Ward) — what there took place a few hours after Fawkes’s midnight apprehension by Sir Thomas Knevet.

Thomas Winter says: —

“About five o’clock being Tuesday came the younger Wright to my chamber and told me that, a nobleman[A] called the Lord Mounteagle, saying, ‘Rise and come along to Essex House, for I am going to call up my Lord of Northumberland,’ saying withal ‘the matter is discovered.’

“‘Go back, Mr. Wright,’ quoth I, ‘and learn what you can at Essex Gate.’

“Shortly he returned and said, ‘Surely all is lost,[123] for Leyton is got on horseback at Essex door, and as he parted, he asked if their Lordships would have any more with him, and being answered “No,” he rode as fast up Fleet Street as he can ride.’

“‘Go you then,’ quoth I, ‘to Mr. Percy, for sure it is for him they seek, and bid him be gone: I will stay and see the uttermost.’”

123

(5) Furthermore; Lathbury, writing in the year 1839,[A] asserts that Christopher Wright’s advice was that each conspirator “should betake himself to flight in a different direction from any of his companions.”[124]

124

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Now, as somewhat slightly confirming this statement of Lathbury, is the fact that in an old print published soon after the discovery of the Plot, which shows the conspirators Catesby, Thomas Winter, Percy, John Wright, Fawkes, Robert Winter, Bates, and Christopher Wright, Christopher Wright is represented as a tall man, in the high hat of the period, facing Catesby, and evidently engaged in earnest discourse with the arch-conspirator. Christopher Wright to enforce his utterance is holding up the forefinger of his right hand. Catesby’s right hand is raised in front of Christopher Wright, while Catesby’s left hand rests on the hilt of the sword girded on his side.[125]

(Of course the evidence in paragraphs (2) and (5) of the last chapter may have emanated from one and the same source; but the great point is that it has emanated from somewhere.)

In connection with Christopher Wright’s propinquity to Thomas Ward possibly, and to Thomas Winter possibly likewise, on the Sunday immediately previous to the “fatal Fifth,” the two following items of evidence are of consequence: —

(1) In Jardine’s “Narrative,” p. 98, we are told: “On Sunday, the 3rd of November, the conspirators heard from the same individual who had first informed them of the Letter to Lord Mounteagle, that the Letter125 had been shown to the King, who made great account of it, but enjoined the strictest secrecy.”

This individual was Thomas Ward. — (Jardine.)

Now, we have seen already that Stowe’s “Chronicle” records “the next day after the delivery of the Letter” there was a conjunction of the planets — Thomas Winter and Christopher Wright.

This conjunction at or about this period I hold to be a very significant fact, tending to show that either the one or the other must have sought his confederate out, as has been remarked already.

But from the following important Evidence of William Kyddall, servant to Robert Tyrwhitt, Esquire,[A] brother of Mrs. Ambrose Rookwood, and kinsman of Robert Keyes, it is evident that it was physically impossible for Christopher Wright to have met Thomas Winter on Sunday, the 27th of October; inasmuch as Christopher Wright was then at Lapworth, only twenty miles distant from Hindlip Hall.[B]

Yet this does not disprove the material fact of the meeting itself, the date or circumstance of time not belonging to the essence of the assertion. (See Appendix.)

126

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Gunpowder Plot Books — Part I., No. 52.

“That he was intreated of Mr. John Wrighte, who was dwellinge at Twigmore in the Countie of Lincolne, to bringe his daught^r beinge eight or nine yere old to Lapworth to Nicholas Slyes[B] house where he hath harbored this half yere. He brought the child to Lapworth the xxiiii^th of October, and there was Mr. John Wrighte and his wife and Mr. Christopher Wrighte and his wife, soe he continued at Lapworth from Wednesdaie to Monday, from thence he goeth to London w^th Mr. Christopher Wrighte and came to London on Wednesdaie betwixt two & three a Clocke to St. Giles to the signe of the Maydenhead from whence Mr. Wrighte wente into the Towne 127and he stayed at the Inn, uppon ffriday one Richard Browne s^rvant to Mr. Wrighte wente downe into Surrey, and on ffriday at night Browne returned and he & Browne wente uppon Sattersdaie for the Child to a Towne he knoweth not about Croydon Race and broughte it to the Maydenhead at St. Gyles to Mr. Wrighte the ffath^r who seeinge the child too little to be carried sent them backe w^th it to the place whence thei fetched it on Sonday Morninge, and thei retorned Sondaie night to the Maydenhead and it was purposed by Mr. Wright to come awaie w^th this examinate uppon Mondaie morninge but staied because Mr. Wrightes Clothes were not made till Tuesdaie morninge and then Mr. Wrighte sent this examinate and[A] William Ward nephew to Mr. Wrighte downe to Lapworth in Warwickshire whither they were now goinge. He saith he lefte Mr. Wright at London and knoweth not the causes why he came not away w^th them he saith that Browne lyeth in Westminster neare Whitehall at one Bonkers house. Thei broughte in their Cloakbagge a suit of Cloathes for Mr. John Wright a Petronell and a Rapier & dagger thinkinge to find him at Lapworth.

(No endorsement).

128

Mistress Dorothie Robinson, Widdow, of Spur Alley, on the 7th of November, 1605, also deposed as follows: —

Gunpowder Plot Books — Part I., No. 41.

Mr. Jackson also deposed: —

Furthermore, we have the following Evidence of Mistress Elizabeth More:130 —

7 Nov: 1605.

State Papers Domestic — Jas. I., Vol. xvi., No. 13.

“The Declaracon of Elizabeth More the wief of Edward More taken the 5th of November 1605.

“She saieth that the gent that lay at her howse w^th Mr. Rookwood this last night and the night before his name is Mr. Keyes and he took upp the Chamber for the said Mr. Rookwood.

“And she saieth that uppon ffryday night last Mr. Christofir Wright came to this exaite howse w^th the said Mr. Rookwood and lay that night in a chamber on the said Mr. Rookwoode Chamber.

(Endorsed) “5th No: 1605.

Mistress More, I find, lived near Temple Bar.[A]

131

CHAPTER XL.

Before we well-nigh finally take our leave of Christopher Wright, I should like to bring before my readers two pieces of Evidence, from each of which, at any rate, may be drawn the inference that it was one of the conspirators themselves that revealed the tremendous secret.

That Christopher Wright was that revealing conspirator, the manifold considerations which the preceding pages of this Inquiry have established, I trust, will satisfy the intellect of my readers, seeing that those considerations, I respectfully but firmly urge, must be held to have built up a “probability” so high as to amount to that “moral certitude” which is “the very guide” of Man’s terrestrial life, in that it furnishes Man with those sufficient rules which direct his daily action.[129]

But, in bringing the first piece of Evidence to which I allude before the eyes of my readers, I desire, with great respect, to say that I am keenly conscious that I run the risk of incurring the condemnation implied in the words: “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

But, since “circumstances alter cases,” I feel warranted (under correction) in adventuring, in this one instance, upon a particular line of argument which I feel is, as an affair of taste, primâ facie unseemly, and, as a matter of feeling, a line of action, in ordinary cases, to be rigorously eschewed.

132

Yet, seeing that such a course of conduct cannot be held to be morally wrong, my plea is — and I respectfully submit my all-sufficient plea is — that an Inquiry, having for its purpose the elucidation of the hitherto inscrutable mystery as to who revealed, or who were instrumental in revealing, so satanic an enterprise as the Gunpowder Plot, being far, far removed beyond the range of mere logic-chopping, dry-as-dust, non-human investigations, justifies the following, in one instance, of a course of action which unquestionably would clash with mere, decorous taste, and would collide with mere delicate feeling, except, by the case being altered, it were lifted into the realm of the categories of the extraordinary and the special.

Then the nature of the act or action composing that course of conduct would be, in a sense, fundamentally and meritoriously changed. And, therefore, it would be, by a double title, morally justifiable.

Now, when the Gunpowder conspirators were at Huddington, the mansion-house of Robert Winter, on Thursday, the 7th day of November, certainly most of the conspirators, and probably all of them, received the Sacrament of Penance through the ministry of a Jesuit Father, named Nicholas Hart (alias Strangeways and Hammond), who besides being an alumnus of Westminster School, and for two years a student of the University of Oxford, had, prior to his becoming a Priest and a Jesuit, “studied law in the Inns of Court and Chancery in London.”[130]

Now, William Handy, the serving-man of Sir Everard Digby (of whom we have already heard), further deposed as follows:[131]

“On Thursday morning, about three of the clock, all the said company, as well servants as others, heard Mass, received the Sacrament, and were confessed, which133 Mass was said by a priest named Harte, a little man whitely complexioned, and a little beard.”

Now, Ambrose Rookwood, on the 21st day of January, 1605-6, deposed[132] that he confessed to Hammond at Huddington, on Thursday, the 7th of November, that he was sorry he had not revealed the Plot, it seeming so bloody, and that after his confession Hammond absolved him without remark.

The precise words of the ill-fated Rookwood hereon are these: —

Gunpowder Plot Books — No. 177.

CHAPTER XLI.

Now, regard being had to the fact that this kneeling young Penitent was, with his own lips, avowing the commission in desire and thought of “murder most foul as at the best it is”[A] (and “we know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him”[B]), by confessing to a fellow-creature a wilful and deliberate transgression against that “steadfast Moral Law which is not of to-day nor yesterday, but which lives for ever”[C] (to say nothing of his avowal of the commission in act and deed of the crime of sacrilege,[D] in taking a secret, unlawful oath contrary to the express prohibitions of a visible and audible Institution which that Priest and that Penitent135 alike believed was of divine origin), I firmly, though with great and all-becoming deference, draw these conclusions, namely, that one of the plotters had already poured into the bending ear of his breathless priestly hearer glad tidings to the effect that he (the revealing plotter, whoever he was) had given that one supreme external proof which heaven and earth had then left to him for showing the genuineness of his repentance in regard to his crimes, and the perfectness of his contrition on account of his transgressions, by taking premeditated, active, practical, vigorous steps for the utter frustrating and the complete overthrowing of the prodigious, diabolical Plot.

Furthermore; that it was because of the possession by Hammond of this happy intelligence, early on that Thursday morning, before sunrise, that therefore, in the Tribunal of Penance, “he absolved” poor, miserable (yet contrite) Ambrose Rookwood “for all in general” — “without any other circumstances.”

That is, I take it, without reproaching or even chiding him — in fact “without remark.”[A]

136

CHAPTER XLII.

The other piece of Evidence that I wish to bring before my readers which tends to show that it was one of the conspirators themselves that revealed the Plot is this: —

Jardine gives in his “Criminal Trials”[133] a certain Letter of Instructions to Sir Edward Coke,[134] the Attorney-General who conducted the prosecution of the surviving Gunpowder conspirators at Westminster Hall[135] before a Special Commission for High Treason, on the 27th day of January, 1605-6.

This very remarkable document is in the handwriting of Robert Cecil first Earl of Salisbury.

It is as follows: —

Now, strangely enough, in the day of public trial of these men, the learned Attorney-General forgot in one particular the aforesaid clear and express Injunctions of his Majesty’s principal Secretary of State.

For, if he be correctly reported, Sir Edward Coke then said: — [136]

“The last consideration is concerning the admirable discovery of this treason, which was by one of themselves,138 who had taken the oath and sacrament, as hath been said, against his own will; the means was by a dark and doubtful letter sent to my Lord Mounteagle.”[A] (The italics are mine.)

Now, regard being had (1) to what Salisbury bade Coke not say; and (2) to what Coke as a matter of fact did say, I infer, first, that it was one of the conspirators who revealed the Plot; because of just scruples that his conscience had, well-nigh at the eleventh hour, awakened in his breast: that, secondly, not only so, but that the Government, through Salisbury, Suffolk, Coke, and probably Bacon, strongly suspected as much: that, thirdly, this was the explanation not only of their comparatively mild treatment of the Gunpowder conspirators themselves,[137] but also, I hold, of the subsequent comparatively mild treatment of the recusants generally throughout the country.[138]

For had the Government stripped all English Papists of their lands and goods and driven them into the sea, Humanity scarcely could have complained of injustice or harshness, regard being had to the devilish wholesale cruelty of the Gunpowder Plot.

Contrariwise, the entire action of the Government resembles the action of a man in whose hand the stick has broken whilst he is in the act of administering upon a wrong-doer richly deserved chastisement.

For, indisputably, the Government abstained from following after, and from reaping the full measure of, their victory (to have recourse to a more dignified figure of speech) either on grounds of principle, policy — or both.

Moreover, none of the estates of the plotters were139 forfeited. And this, regard being had to the fact that the plotters were “moral monsters,” and to the well-known impecuniosity of the tricky James and his northern satellites, is itself a circumstance pregnant with the greatest possible suspicion that there was some great mystery in the background. — See Lathbury’s “Guy Fawkes,” pp. 76, 77, first Edition.

For, even if deeds of marriage settlement intervened to protect the plotters’ estates, an Act of Parliament surely could have swept them away like the veriest cobwebs. For Sir Edward Coke himself might have told the King and Privy Council that “an Act of Parliament could do anything, short of turning a man into a woman,” if the King and Council had needed enlightening on the point.

140

CHAPTER XLIII.

Again: the primary instinct of self-preservation alone would have assuredly impelled the bravest of the brave amongst the nine malefactors, including Tresham, who were incarcerated in the Tower of London, either to seek to save his life when awaiting his trial in Westminster Hall, or, at any rate, when expecting the scaffold, the ripping knife, the embowelling fork, and the quartering block, in St. Paul’s Churchyard or in the old Palace Yard, Westminster, to seek to save his life, by divulging the mighty secret respecting his responsibility for the Letter of Letters, had anyone of them in point of fact penned the document. For “skin for skin all that a man hath will he give for his life.”

Hence, from the silence of one and all of the survivors — a silence as unbroken as that of the grave — we can, it stands to reason, draw but this one conclusion, namely, that the nine surviving Gunpowder conspirators were stayed and restrained by the omnipotence of the impossible from declaring that anyone of them had saved his King and Parliament.

Hence, by consequence, the revealing conspirator must be found amongst that small band of four who survived not to tell the tale.

Therefore is our Inquiry reduced to within a narrow compass, a fact which simplifies our task unspeakably.

If it be objected that “a point of honour” may have stayed and restrained one of the nine conspirators141 from “discovering” or revealing his share in the laudable deed, it is demonstrable that it would be a false, not a true, sense of duty that prompted such an unrighteous step.

For the revealing plotter, whoever he was, had duties to his kinsfolk as well as to himself, and, indeed, to his Country, to Humanity at large, and also to his Church, which ought, in justice, to have actuated — and it is reasonable to believe would have assuredly actuated — a disclosure of the truth respecting the facts of the revelation.

But I hold that the nine conspirators told nothing as to the origin of this Letter of Letters, because they had none of them, anything to tell.

Moreover, I suggest that what Archbishop Usher[139][A] meant when he is reported to have divers times said, “that if Papists knew what he knew, the blame of the Gunpowder Treason would not lie on them,”[140][B] was this: —

That it was “the Papist Doctrine” of the non-binding force of a secret, unlawful oath that (Deo juvante) had been primarily the joint-efficient cause of the spinning142 right round on its axis of the hell-begotten Gunpowder Plot.

It is plain that King James’s Government[A] were mysteriously stayed and restrained in their legislative and administrative action after the discovery of the diabolically atrocious Gunpowder Treason Plot.

And illogical and inconstant as many English rulers too often have been throughout England’s long and, by good fortune, glorious History, this extraordinary illogicalness and inconstancy of the Government of King James I. betokens to him that can read betwixt the lines, and who “knows what things belong to what things” — betokens Evidence of what?

Unhesitatingly I answer: Of that Government’s not daring, for very decency’s sake, to proceed to extremities.

Now, by reason of the primal instincts of human nature, this consciousness would be sure to be generated by, and would be certain to operate upon, any and every civilized, even though heathen, government with staying and restraining force.

Now, the Government of James I. was a civilized government, and it was not a heathen government. Moreover, it certainly was a Government composed of human beings, who, after all, were the persecuted Papists’ fellow-creatures.

Therefore, I suggest that this manifest hesitancy to proceed to extremities sprang from, and indeed itself143 demonstrates, this fact, namely, that the then British Government realized that it was an essentially Popish Doctrine of Morals which had been the primary motive power for securing their temporal salvation. That doctrine being, indeed, none other than the hated and dreaded “Popish Doctrine” of the “non-binding force” upon the Popish Conscience of a secret, morally unlawful oath which thereby, ipso facto, “the Papal Church” prohibited and condemned.

Hence, that was, I once more suggest, what Archbishop Usher referred to, in his oracular words, which have become historic, but which have been hitherto deemed to constitute an insoluble riddle.

For certainly behind those oracular words lay some great State mystery.

The same fact possibly accounts for the traditional tale that the second Earl of Salisbury confessed that the Plot was “his father’s contrivance.” — See Gerard’s “What was the Gunpowder Plot?” p. 160.

For the Plot was “his father’s contrivance,” considered as to its broad ultimate effects on the course of English History, in that the Plot was made a seasonable handle of for the destruction of English Popery. And a valuable and successful handle it proved too, as mankind knows very well to-day. Though “what’s bred in the bone” is apt, in this world, “to come out in the flesh.” Therefore, the British statesman or philosopher needs not be unduly alarmed if and when, from time to time, he discerns about him incipient signs, among certain members of the English race, of that “staggering back to Popery,” whereof Ralph Waldo Emerson once sagely spoke.

“’Tis a strange world, my masters! And the whirligig of Time brings round strange revenges!”

144

CHAPTER XLIV.

We come now to the last portion of this Inquiry — to the last portion, indeed, but not to the least.

For we have now to consider what Evidence there is tending to prove that subsequent to the penning of the Letter by Father Edward Oldcorne, he was conscious of having performed the meritorious deed that, I maintain, the Evidence, deductions, and suggestions therefrom all converge to one supreme end to establish, namely, that it is morally (not mathematically) certain that his hand, and his hand alone, actually penned that immortal Letter, whose praises shall be celebrated till the end of time.

Before considering this Evidence let me, however, remind my readers that there is (1) not only a general similarity in the handwriting of the Letter and Father Oldcorne’s undoubted handiwork — the Declaration of the 12th day of March, 1605-6 — a general similarity in point of the size of the letters and of that indescribable something called style,[141] but (2) a particular similarity in the formation of the letters in the case of these following, namely, the small c/s, l/s, i/s, b/s, w/s, r/s, long s/s (as initials), short s/s (as terminals), while the m/s and n/s are not inconsistent.[A]

145

Moreover, there is (3) this fact to be remembered, that in both the Letter and in the said Declaration, the name “God” is written with a small “g,” thus: “god.”

It is true that, of course, not only did this way of writing the name of the Supreme Being then denote no irreverence, but it was commonly so written by Englishmen in the year 1605.

Still, it was certainly not by them universally so written. For in the fac-simile of “Thomas Winter’s Confession” the word “God” occurs more than once written with a handsomely made capital G,[142] to mention none other cases.

There is to be also remembered (4) the user of the expressions “as yowe tender youer lyf,” and “deuys some exscuse to shift of[143] youer attendance at this parleament for god and man hathe concurred to punishe the wickednes of this tyme.”

For these expressions are eminently expressions that would be employed by a man born in Yorkshire in the sixteenth century.

Again; there is to be noted (5) the expressions as “yowe tender youer lyf,” and “god and man hathe concurred.” Inasmuch as I maintain that as “yowe tender youer lyf” was just the kind of expression that would be used by a man who had had an early training in the medical art, as was the case with Edward Oldcorne.

For “Man to preserve is pleasure suiting man, and by no art is favour better sought.” And a deep rooted belief in the powers of Nature and in the sacredness of the life of man are the two brightest jewels in the true physician’s crown.

Once more; (6) the expression “god and man hathe concurred” is pre-eminently the mode of clothing in146 language one way, wherein a rigid Roman Catholic of that time would mentally contemplate — not, indeed, the interior quality of the mental phenomena known as the Gunpowder Plot, in which “the devil” alone could “concur,” but the simple exterior designment of the same, provided he knew for certain that it could be considered as a clear transparency only — as a defecated cluster of purely intellectual acts.[A]

Furthermore, in reflecting on these preliminaries to the general discussion of the Evidence tending to prove a consciousness on Edward Oldcorne’s part, subsequent to the penning of the Letter, of being responsible for the commission of the everlastingly meritorious feat, let it be diligently noted that the Letter ends with these words: “the dangere is passed as soon as yowe have burnt the letter and i hope god will give yowe the grace to mak good use of it to whose holy proteccion i contend yowe.” (The italics are mine.)

147

Now, I opine that what the Writer intended to hint at was a suggestion to the recipient of the Letter to destroy the document. Not, however, that as a fact, I think, he really wished it to be destroyed.[144] Because it is highly probable that (apart from other reasons) the Writer must have wished it to be conveyed to the King, else why should he have said, “i hope god will give you the grace to mak good use of it”?

And why should the King himself in his book have omitted the insertion of this little, but here virtually all-important, adjective?[145]

Besides, the Writer cannot have seriously wished for the destruction of the document. For in that case he would not have made use of such a masterpiece of vague phraseology as “the dangere is passed as soon as yowe have burnt the letter.”[146] But, on the contrary, he would have plainly adjured the receiver of the missive, for the love of God and man, to commit it as soon as read to the devouring flames!

Lastly should be noted the commendatory words wherewith the document closes. These words (or those akin to them), though in use among Protestants as well as Catholics in the year 1605, were specially employed by Catholics, and particularly by Jesuits or persons who were “Jesuitized” or “Jesuitically affected.”[147]

148

CHAPTER XLV.

Having dealt with the preliminary Evidence, we now come to the discussion of the main Evidence which tends to show that subsequent to the penning of the Letter Father Edward Oldcorne, Priest and Jesuit, performed acts or spoke words which clearly betoken a consciousness on his part of being the responsible person who penned the document.

That this may be done the more thoroughly, it will be necessary to ask my readers to engage with me in a metaphysical discussion.

But, before attempting such a discussion, which indeed is the crux of this historical and philosophical work, we will retrace our steps somewhat, in the order of time, to the end that we may, amongst other things, haply refresh and recreate the mind a little preparatory to entering upon our severer labours.

Now, on Wednesday, November the 6th, Father Oswald Tesimond went from Coughton, near Redditch, in Warwickshire, the house of Thomas Throckmorton, Esquire, to Huddington, in Worcestershire, the seat of Robert Winter, who had married Miss Gertrude Talbot, of Grafton. The Talbots, like the Throckmortons, were a people who happily managed to reconcile rigid adherence to the ancient Faith with stanch loyalty to their lawful Sovereign.[A]

149

Tesimond, leaving behind him his Superior Garnet at Coughton, went, it is said, to assist the unhappy traitors with the Sacraments of their Church. But, I imagine, he found most of his hoped-for penitents, at least externally, in anything except a penitential frame of mind.

This was the last occasion when Tesimond’s eyes gazed upon his old York school-fellows of happier, bygone days — the brothers John and Christopher Wright.[148]

Now, to Father Tesimond, as well as to Father Oldcorne, Hindlip Hall[A] and Huddington[B] (in Worcestershire), Coughton,[C] Lapworth,[D] Clopton,[E] and Norbrook[F] (in Warwickshire), must have been thoroughly well known; for at Hindlip Hall for eight years Tesimond likewise had been formerly domesticated.

Where resided either temporarily or permanently: —

Dr. Gardiner’s “History of James I.” (Longmans) contains a map showing the relative positions of these places.

On Wednesday, the 6th November, Fathers Garnet and Tesimond were at Coughton. Catesby, along with Percy, John Wright, Christopher Wright, Sir Everard Digby, Ambrose Rookwood, and others, was at Huddington. Catesby and Digby had sent a letter to Garnet.

Bates was the messenger, and was come from Norbrook, the house of John Grant, where the plotters rested in their wild, north-westward flight from Ashby St. Legers. For to Ashby the fugitives had posted headlong from London town on Tuesday, the “fatal Fifth.”

150

Catesby and Digby urged Garnet to make for Wales.[A]

After half-an-hour’s earnest discourse together, Father Garnet gave leave to Tesimond to proceed to Huddington to administer to the wretched fugitives the rites — the last rites — of the Church they had so disgraced and wronged. Garnet remained at Coughton. Tesimond tarried at Huddington about two hours.

Tesimond arrived at Hindlip from Huddington in a state of the greatest excitement possible. He showed himself on reaching Hindlip to be a choleric man, while Father Oldcorne — who seems to have kept perfectly calm and cool throughout the whole of the momentous conference — Tesimond himself denounced, if he did not reproach, as being phlegmatic.

Tesimond, evidently, had been commissioned by Catesby,[B] at Huddington, to incite Mr. Abington, his household, and retainers, including (I take it, if possible) Oldcorne himself, to join the insurgents at Huddington,151 Holbeach, Wales, and wherever else they might unfurl the banner of “the holy war,” or, in other words, the armed rebellion against King James, his Privy Council, and Government.

Tesimond’s mission, however, to Hindlip, proving fruitless, he thereupon rode towards Lancashire, in the hope of rousing Lancashire Catholics to arms, as one man, in behalf of those altars and homes they loved more than life.

152

CHAPTER XLVI.

Now, in this calm and dignified demeanour of Oldcorne, at Hindlip, which evidently so annoyed, nay, exasperated — because it arrested and thwarted — his younger brother Jesuit (both of whom, almost certainly, had known each other in York from boyhood), the discerning reader, I submit, ought in reason to draw this conclusion, namely, that Edward Oldcorne was tranquil and imperturbable because, in regard to the whole of the unhappy business, that so possessed and engrossed the being of Oswald Tesimond, Edward Oldcorne’s was a mens conscia recti — a mind conscious of rectitude — aye, a mind conscious of superabounding merit and virtue.

So important evidentially do I think the diverse demeanour[149] of Tesimond and Oldcorne on this occasion, that I will transcribe from Jardine’s “Criminal Trials”[150] Oldcorne’s testimony of what took place at Hindlip Hall at this interview: — [151]

“Oldcorne confesseth that upon Wednesday, being the 6th of November, about two of the clock in the afternoon, there came Tesimond (Greenway) from Huddington, from Mr. Robert Winter’s to Hindlip, and told Mr. Abington and him ‘that he brought them the worst news that ever they heard,’ and said ‘that they were all undone.’ And they demanding the cause, he said that there were certain gentlemen that meant to have blown up the Parliament House, and that their plot was153 discovered a day or two before; and now they were gathered together some forty horse at Mr. Winter’s house, naming Catesby, Percy, Digby, and others; and told them, ‘their throats would be cut unless they presently went to join with them.’ And Mr. Abington said, ‘Alas! I am sorry.’ And this examinate and he answered him that they would never join with him in that matter, and charged all his house to that purpose not to go with them. He confesseth that upon the former speeches made by this examinate and Mr. Abington to Tesimond, alias Greenway, the Jesuit, Tesimond said in some heat ‘thus we may see a difference between a flemmatike [phlegmatic] and a choleric person!’, and said he would go to others, and specially into Lancashire, for the same purpose as he came to Hindlip to Mr. Abington.” [152][153] (The italics are mine.)

154

CHAPTER XLVII.

Father Henry Garnet, the chief of the English Jesuits, left London at the end of August, 1605,[154] and proceeded towards Gothurst (now Gayhurst), in the Parish of Tyringham, three miles from Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire.[A]

Now, who was Henry Garnet, whom the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, described in Westminster Hall as “a man — grave, discreet, wise, learned, and of excellent ornament, both of nature and art;” but around whose name so fierce a controversy had raged for well-nigh 300 years? He was born in 1555, and brought up a Protestant of the Established Church; his father being Mr. Briant Garnet, the head master of the Free School, at Nottingham; his mother’s name was Alice Jay. Henry Garnet was a scholar of Winchester School, and the intention was to send him to New College, Oxford. However, he resolved to become reconciled to the Pope’s religion, and in 1575 joined the Jesuit Novitiate in Rome,155 where the great Cardinal Bellarmine was one of his tutors.

Now, to the end that the claims of Truth and Justice, strict, severe, and impartial, may be met in relation to this celebrated English Jesuit, it will be necessary to repeat that as far back as about the beginning of Trinity Term (i.e., the 9th June, 1605), Catesby, in Thames Street, London — outside the Confessional — had propounded to Garnet a question, which ought to have put the Jesuit expressly upon inquiry. For that question was, in case it were lawful to kill a person or persons, whether it were necessary to regard the innocents which were present, lest they also should perish withal.

And this the rather, when Catesby on that very occasion “made solemn protestation that he would never be known to have asked me [i.e., Garnet] any such question as long as he lived.” — See “Hatfield MS.,” printed in “Historical Review,” for July, 1888, and largely quoted in the Rev. J. Gerard’s articles on Garnet, in “Month” for June and July, 1901.

On the 24th of July, 1605, Garnet had sent a remarkable letter to Rome, addressed to Father Aquaviva, the General of the Jesuits. — See “Father Gerard’s Narrative,” pp. 76, 77, in “Condition of Catholics under James I.,” edited by Rev. John Morris, S.J. (Longmans, 1872).

In this letter, which of course was in Latin, Garnet says — amongst other things betokening an apprehension of a general insurrectionary feeling among Catholics up and down the country in consequence of the terrible persecution which had re-commenced as soon as James I. had safely concluded his much-desired peace with Spain — “the danger is lest secretly some Treason or violence be shown to the King, and so all Catholics may be compelled to take arms.”

156

Garnet then proceeds: “Wherefore, in my judgment, two things are necessary, first, that His Holiness should prescribe what in any case is to be done; and then, that he should forbid any force of arms by the Catholics under Censures, and by Brief, publicly promulgated; an occasion for which can be taken from the disturbance lately raised in Wales, which has at length come to nothing. It remains that as all things are daily becoming worse, we should beseech His Holiness soon to give a necessary remedy for these great dangers, and we ask his blessing and that of your Paternity.” (The italics are mine.)

Now, by the word “censures” here, I presume, Garnet meant excommunication, that is, a cutting off from the visible fellowship of Catholics and (what would frighten every Catholic, whether his faith worked by love or fear, that is, whether it were a rational form of religion or a mere abject superstition) a deprivation of the Sacraments of his exacting Church, which are, according to Rome’s tenets, the special means devised by the Founder of Christianity whereby Man is united to “the Unseen Perfectness.”

157

CHAPTER XLVIII.

When Garnet penned this letter to the General of the Jesuits in Rome, he had, outside the Confessional, a general knowledge of the Gunpowder project from Robert Catesby.

Thus much is clear.

That is to say, Garnet had a great suspicion, tantamount to a general knowledge, that Catesby had in his head some bloody and desperate enterprise of massacre, the object whereof was to destroy at one fell blow James I. and his Protestant Government. — See Gerard’s “Narrative,” p. 78.

Garnet most probably in the Confessional even did not at first know all particulars.

That is to say, he did not know that it was intended to put thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in a cellar under the House of Lords — consignments of explosives which it was further intended were to be ignited, when Parliament met, by Guy Fawkes, booted and spurred, by means of a slow-burning match, which would give him one quarter-of-an-hour’s grace to effect his escape to a ship in the Thames bound for Flanders: and that the young Princess Elizabeth was to be seized at the house of the Lord Harrington, in Warwickshire, and proclaimed Queen after her parents and two brothers, Henry Prince of Wales and Charles Duke of York, had been torn and rent into ten thousand fragments.

158

But this able, learned, sweet-tempered, yet weak-willed, unimaginative, irresolute man knew enough outside the Confessional — which is the point we have to deal with here — to render himself liable to have been sent to the galleys by the Pope, if His Holiness could have laid hold of him, when, notwithstanding this atrocious knowledge, he actually refused to give ear to the arch-conspirator, even although Catesby, on Father Gerard’s own admission, “offered sometimes to tell him [Garnet] that they [Catesby and his friends] would not endure to be so long so much abused, but would take some course to right themselves, if others would not respect them or could not relieve them.” — Gerard’s “Narrative,” p. 78.

Truly “Evil is wrought by want of thought as well as by want of heart.”

The fact that Garnet knew violence was likely to be shown to his lawful Sovereign, coupled with the fact that Garnet might have learned all the particulars about that purposed violence had he not, through a negligence which can be only characterized as grossly criminal, passively omitted, if indeed he had not actively declined, to obtain those particulars from the lips of the arch-conspirator himself — such facts make the case up to the 24th of July, 1605, absolutely fatal against Garnet. And such facts can lead the unbiased mind of the philosophical historian (who does not care a pin about all the ecclesiastical spite, on either one side or the other, that ever was or ever shall be), can lead to one inevitable conclusion only: that Henry Garnet was justly condemned to death by an earthly tribunal for misprision, that is, for concealment, of High Treason against the Sovereign power of his Country. Although, being a priest, he ought to have been ecclesiastically “degraded” first, according to the provisions of the Canon law, and then handed159 over to the secular arm for condign punishment, according to the law of the outraged State.

For, “Id certum est quod certum reddi potest,” that is, certain knowledge which can be reduced to a certainty.

Again, the damning evidence against Garnet is clenched by a letter that he sent to Rome, dated 28th August, wherein, amongst other things, he said: “And for anything we can see, Catholics are quiet, and likely to continue their old patience, and to trust to the King or his son for to remedy all in time.” — Gerard’s “Narrative,” pp. 78, 79.

Now Garnet[A] was a man of most acute mind and very clear-sighted; but he was intellectually unimaginative as well as morally weak-willed. And such a man is never a far-sighted man.

But as Garnet’s moral character was almost certainly good on the whole, the conclusion that Justice suggests in reference to this letter of the 28th August especially is that, through intense grief and anguish of mind, Garnet had lost his head, and was not wholly responsible for either his words or actions.[B]

160

CHAPTER XLIX.

At the beginning of the month of September, 1605, Father Garnet was at Gothurst,[A] three miles from Newport Pagnell, in the County of Buckinghamshire,161 and about the 5th of September from this still standing stately English home there proceeded the nucleus of a pilgrim-band bent for the famous well of St. Winifred, the British Saint, situated at Holywell, in North Wales.

Sir Everard Digby, the Master of Gothurst, was not of the company, as he was engaged in negotiating a match between the young Lord Vaux of Harrowden, then a youth of about fourteen years of age, with one of the daughters of the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Suffolk. But Lady Digby formed one of the band, as did the uncle of Lord Vaux, Edward Brookesby, Esquire, of Arundell House, Shouldby, Leicestershire, and his wife the Honourable Eleanor Brookesby, together with her sister the Honourable Anne Vaux.

At least two Jesuits formed part of the cavalcade, Father Henry Garnet and Father John Percy, the chaplain to Sir Everard Digby.

Father John Gerard, who had “reconciled to the Church,” as the phrase went, both Sir Everard and Lady Digby and was their intimate and honoured friend, as well as the friend of the Dowager Lady Vaux of Harrowden and her family, did not join the pilgrimage.

Father Gerard was most probably in Yorkshire at this time. For there is interesting evidence tending to prove that about the 25th of August, 1605, this Lancashire Jesuit was being harboured as the guest of Sir John and Lady Yorke, at Gowthwaite (or Goulthwaite) Hall, near Pateley Bridge, in Nidderdale.[A]

The following abstracts from the Evidence of two of Sir Everard Digby’s serving-men, who accompanied162 their devout, charming young mistress on this now famous pilgrimage, will give the best account of what took place on this occasion.[A] They are as follow: —

165

CHAPTER L.

The pilgrim-band numbered about thirty souls, and included Ambrose Rookwood and his wife in addition to those before mentioned. Ambrose Rookwood appears to have been sworn in as a conspirator by Catesby and others in London about ten weeks before the 2nd day of December, 1605, so that I conclude this must have been very soon after his return from Flintshire.

Sir Everard Digby was also made a confederate by Catesby alone about this time, and in the “Life” of that well-favoured but misguided knight there is an admirably-written account of the unhappy enrolment of the ill-fated young father of the famous cavalier and diplomatist, Sir Kenelm Digby.

It would seem that Father Garnet proceeded to Gothurst with the pilgrims on their return. But he must have shortly afterwards retraced his steps to Great Harrowden.

For a fortnight before Michaelmas (11th October, old style) the chief of the English Jesuits was being harboured at Great Harrowden, the house of the Dowager Lady Vaux and the young Lord Vaux.

Great Harrowden Hall appears to have been rebuilt by the guardians of the youthful baron a little before the year 1605. For in “The Condition of Catholics under James I.,” being largely the life of Father John Gerard, there is (p. 147) the following statement: “Our hostess set about fitting up her own present residence166 for that same purpose, and built us separate quarters close to the old Chapel.... Here she built a little wing of three stories for Father Percy and me. The place was exceedingly convenient, and so free from observation that from our rooms we could step out into the private garden, and thence through spacious walks into the fields, where we could mount our horses and ride whither we would.” On p. 175 Father Gerard says: “Our vestments and altar furniture were both plentiful and costly ... some were embroidered with gold and pearls and figured by well-skilled hands. We had six massive silver candlesticks on the altar, besides those at the sides for the Elevation; the cruets were of silver also, as were the basin for the lavabo, the bell, and the thurible. There were, moreover, lamps hanging from silver chains, and a silver crucifix on the altar. For greater Festivals, however, I had a crucifix of gold, a foot in height.”

The Hall at Great Harrowden contained hiding-places for the priests, probably contrived by Brother Nicholas Owen, the servant of Father Garnet.

The priests that resided at Great Harrowden were at that time mainly Jesuits. And besides Father Gerard himself, Fathers Strange, Nicholas Hart, and Roger Lee were there oftentimes to be found.[A]

167

CHAPTER LI.

On the 4th of October, Father Garnet wrote a long letter to Father Parsons in Rome, who was then virtually the ruler of the Catholics of England, though that sturdy Yorkshireman, Father John Mush,[A] among secular priests, together with many others, resented being dictated to by Father Parsons, certainly a man of great genius, but indulging too much the mere “wire-puller” instinct and propensity to be reckoned a prince among ecclesiastical statesmen.

This letter of Father Garnet’s, to which reference has been just made, is a remarkable production. It begins as follows:168 —

The letter then says: —

There were four paragraphs at the end of the letter.

Now, a short but separate paragraph of three lines is carefully obliterated between the first and the third of these paragraphs.

The third paragraph ends thus: —

The fourth paragraph then continues: —

Here ends the body of the letter.

169

CHAPTER LII.

After the body of the letter there is a post scriptum.

Now, there are nine words in the post scriptum that suffice to clench the argument of this book.

And why? Because, I respectfully submit, those nine words show that between the 4th day of October, 1605, and the 21st day of October, Garnet had received from somewhere intelligence to the effect that machinery was being put into motion whereby the Plot would be squashed.

For the post scriptum to this letter of Father Garnet is as follows: —

The letter and the post scriptum are alike unsigned. The letter and the post scriptum are still in existence, and, I believe, are preserved in London in the archives of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster.

I am indebted for my copy to the work entitled, “A True Account of the Gunpowder Plot,” by “Vindicator” (Dolman), 1851 — taken from Tierney’s Edition of “Dodd’s Church History.”

The Claude referred to in the post scriptum is Father Claude Aquaviva, the then General of the Jesuits, who lived in Rome.

(Irish Catholics will not fail to notice the interest this afflicted, much-tried Englishman took in their case on the 21st October, 1605.)

Father Gerard says in his “Narrative of the Plot,” p. 269: “Father Oldcorne his indictment was so framed that one might see they much desired to have withdrawn him within the compass of some participation in this late Treason; to which effect they first did seem to suppose it as likely that he should send letters up and down to prepare men’s minds for the insurrection.”

Again; respecting Ralph Ashley, the Jesuit lay-brother and servant of Father Oldcorne, Gerard says, on p. 271: “Ralph was also indicted and condemned upon supposition that he had carried letters to and fro about this conspiracy.”

Now, my deliberate conjectures are these: That Edward Oldcorne had indeed sent “Letters” which his servant Ralph Ashley had carried concerning “this conspiracy.” That one of those Letters was sent and carried to Henry171 Garnet. And another to William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle.

On the 12th of March, 1605-6, Father Garnet, when a prisoner in the Tower of London, before the Lord Chief Justice Popham, Sir Edward Coke, Sir William Waade (Lieutenant of the Tower), and John Corbett, “confessed that Father Parsons wrote to him certain letters last summer [i.e., 1605] which he received about Michaelmas last, wherein he requested this examinat to advertise him what plotts the Catholiques of England had then in hand; whereunto for that this examinat was on his journey he made no answere.”

Yea, indeed, this was a part of the truth, no doubt. But the remainder of the truth, I suggest, was that the Plot of Plots Garnet had learned, a few days after the aforesaid Michaelmas, was being assuredly squashed by Edward Oldcorne.

Poor Henry Garnet, a sorry, pathetic figure in the history of his Country, surely. Yet, because much was lost, he knew that it did not therefore follow that all was lost. For this gifted, distraught, erring man still held “something sacred, something undefiled, some pledge and keepsake of his better nature.”

That something was his point of honour as a Priest of the Catholic Church.[A]

172

CHAPTER LIII.

Sir Everard Digby had rented Coughton, near Alcester, in Warwickshire, from Thomas Throckmorton, Esquire, as a base for the warlike operations, which were to be conducted in the Midlands as soon as intelligence had arrived from London that the King, Lords Spiritual and Temporal, together with the Gentlemen of the House of Commons, “were now no more.”

On Sunday, the 3rd of November, the young knight rode from Coughton to Dunchurch, near Rugby.

Robert Winter the same day left Huddington and, sleeping on the Sunday night at Grafton, at the house of his father-in-law, John Talbot, Esquire, rode on to Coventry, in company with the younger Acton, of Ribbesford, and attended by several servants.

At Coventry, Robert Winter was joined by Stephen Littleton, of Holbeach House, in Staffordshire, just over the borders of Worcestershire; and also by his cousin, Humphrey Littleton, brother to the then late John Littleton,[A] of Hagley House, Worcestershire, who had been engaged in the Essex rising.

On the following Tuesday, November the 5th, the whole party proceeded towards Dunchurch, the armed cavalcade continually increasing in numbers.

173

The plan was, that at Dunsmore Heath, under a feigned hunting or coursing match, there should be a gathering of the Midland Catholic clans, then very numerous and powerful. Dunsmore Heath, in fact, was to be the rendezvous of the insurgents.

Robert Winter left the cousins Littleton at “the town’s end” of Dunchurch, and rode on to Ashby St. Legers, the ancestral seat of the Catesbies, where, indeed, the Dowager Lady Catesby was then residing.

Here Robert Winter hoped to meet Catesby, with whom, after the latter had reported progress with reference to things done in London on that Tuesday morning, Winter purposed to gallop off to the rendezvous at Dunsmore Heath.

Ambrose Rookwood was one of the latest to leave for the provinces. He owned many fine horses; and he had placed relays of horses all the way from London to Dunchurch. Rookwood rode one horse at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. Riding for dear life, he overtook Catesby, Percy, and the two Wrights, near Brickhill. Percy and John Wright cast off their cloaks and threw them into the hedge to ride the more swiftly.[155]

About six o’clock in the evening of Tuesday, just as Lady Catesby, Robert Winter, and some others were about to sit down to supper in the old mansion-house, there fell upon their ears a mingled din, occasioned by horses’ feet and men’s excited voices.

Soon in rushed, with scared faces and travel-stained garb, grievously fatigued and intensely agitated, the son of the house (Robert Catesby), Thomas Percy, John Wright, Christopher Wright, and Ambrose Rookwood. Their announcement was the capture of Guy Fawkes early that Tuesday morning.

174

After holding a short council of war, the whole band of conspirators, snatching up all the weapons of warfare they could lay their hands on, took horse again and rode off to Dunchurch.

Sir Everard Digby, his uncle (Sir Robert Digby, of Coleshill), Stephen Littleton, Humphrey Littleton, and many others were awaiting their arrival at Dunchurch, in an inn.

The six fugitive conspirators, all bespattered with the mire of November high roads, with dejected looks and jaded aspect, arrived in due time to tell their tale.

Soon Sir Robert Digby departed with one of his sons, then Humphrey Littleton, and speedily many others of the hunting party.

It was determined by the ringleaders to make for Wales; for the Catholics of the Principality were then very strong,[A] and the Counties of Warwick, Worcester, and Stafford were to be traversed, from all of which valuable reinforcements were expected.

About ten o’clock on Tuesday night the full175 company, now about thirty strong, set out for Norbrook,[A] the house of John Grant.

Thence, it will be recollected, Bates was sent with a note from Catesby and Sir Everard Digby to Father Garnet, at Coughton, urging Garnet to join the rebels in Wales.

Lady Digby had also a letter from her husband, but the poor young wife, we are told, could, alas! do naught but cry.

After a halt of about two hours for refreshments and the procuring of more arms, the insurgents once more slipped their feet into the stirrups, and on they rode for Huddington, near Droitwich, where they arrived at two o’clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, the 6th. Sentinels were posted at the passage of every way at Huddington, possibly by the order of John Winter, half-brother to Robert and Thomas Winter.

Here they were joined by Thomas Winter, who had come down from London with the latest news; also by the Jesuit, Father Tesimond, whom Catesby hailed with joy.

They rested for a good few hours at Huddington; and, as we have seen already, at about three o’clock in the morning of Thursday all the gentlemen assisted at Father Nicholas Hart’s Mass, went to Confession, and received, at the Jesuit’s, hands, what most of them from their childhood had been taught to believe was “the Bread of Angels,” and “the Food of Immortality.”[B]

176

Before daybreak of Thursday the fugitives were on the march north-westward again. For “there is no rest for the wicked.”

The rebels made for Whewell Grange, the seat of the Lord Windsor, one of the numerous Worcestershire Catholic families.

At Whewell Grange the traitors helped themselves to a large store of arms and armour.

Then they sped on towards Holbeach House, near Stourbridge, in Staffordshire. Their number was then about sixty all told, although earlier in the march it had increased to about a hundred. In two days they had traversed about sixty miles, “over bad and broken roads, in rainy and inclement weather.”

To the dire disappointment of Catesby, Sir Everard Digby, and the rest, John Talbot, of Grafton, drove Thomas Winter and Stephen Littleton from his door when they sought his aid for the rebellion.[A]

And Sir Everard was constrained to avow that of the wealthy Catholic gentry “not one man came to take our part though we had expected so many.”[B]

177

CHAPTER LIV.

The High Sheriffs of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, with their posse comitatus, were in pursuit of the fugitives, who arrived at Holbeach House at ten of the clock on Thursday night.

At Holbeach they prepared to make their last stand. And alack! never more were the brothers John and Christopher Wright destined to behold Lapworth, Twigmore, Ripon, Skelton, Newby, Mulwith, York, or Plowland,[A] nor any of those scenes around which must have clung so many endearing associations and sacred memories.[156]

Early in the morning of Friday some of the company went out to descry whether or not reinforcements were in sight. Others began to prepare their shot and powder.

Catesby, Rookwood, and Grant were severely burnt in the face, especially the two latter, with some damp or dank178 gunpowder which they were drying on a platter before the kitchen fire, and into which a hot cinder fell.

This incident seems to have thoroughly unnerved Catesby and all his wicked confederates. They saw in the fact a stroke of poetic justice — nay, the flaming, avenging sword of Heaven.

Thomas Winter was told by Catesby and the rest, in reply to his question, “We mean here to die.”

Winter thereupon replied, “I will take such part as you do.”

“Then they all fell earnestly to their prayers,” says Gerard, “the litanies and such like.” They also “spent an hour in meditation.”

About eleven o’clock in the forenoon of that black Friday, November the 8th, 1605, the High Sheriff of Worcestershire arrived with the whole power and force of the county, and beset the house.

Thomas Winter, going into the court-yard, was shot in the shoulder with an arrow from a cross-bow, and lost the use of his right arm.

John Wright was shot dead.

Christopher Wright was mortally wounded.

Ambrose Rookwood was wounded in four or five places.

John Grant was likewise disabled.

Catesby and Thomas Percy, each sword in hand, and “standing before the door” close together, were mortally wounded by two successive shots fired by one musketeer, who afterwards boasted of his resolute carriage of himself on that eventful day.[A]

179

Catesby, before receiving his fatal shot, we are told by Father Gerard in his “Narrative,” p. 109, “took from his neck a cross of gold, which he always used to wear about him, and blessing himself with it and kissing it, showed it unto the people, protesting there solemnly before them all it was only for the honour of the Cross, and the exaltation of that Faith which honoured the Cross, and for the saving of their souls in the same Faith that had moved him to undertake the business; and seth he saw it was not God’s will it should succeed in that manner they intended, or at that time, he was willing and ready to give his life for the same cause, only he would not be taken by any, and against that only he would defend himself with his sword.

“This done, Mr. Catesby and Mr. Percy turned back to back, resolving to yield themselves to no man, but to death as the messenger of God.

“None of their adversaries did come near them, but one fellow standing behind a tree with a musket, shot them both with one bullet,[A] and Mr. Catesby was shot almost dead, the other lived three or four days.

“Mr. Catesby being fallen to the ground, as they say, went upon his knees into the house, and there got a picture of our Blessed Lady in his arms (unto whom he was accustomed to be very devout), and so embracing and kissing the same, he died.”[B]

On the 9th of November Sir Edward Leigh wrote to the Privy Council that the Wrights were not slain as180 reputed, but wounded. Not till the 13th was their death certified by Sir Richard Walsh, High Sheriff of Worcestershire. — See Gerard’s “What was the Gunpowder Plot?” pp. 153, 154.

Whatever was the case with John Wright, it seems clear that the weight of evidence inclines to show that Christopher Wright did not expire on Friday, the 8th November, but that he lingered at least a day or two. The exact day of Christopher Wright’s death, and what became of his remains, may be ascertained facts hereafter, possibly. At present, they are unknown.[157]

181

CHAPTER LV.

Father Garnet did not go nearer London than Gothurst, in Buckinghamshire, between ten and fifteen miles distant from Great Harrowden.

We know that he was at Gothurst when Catesby was there, on Tuesday, the 22nd of October, one day after the date of the post scriptum mentioned in the last chapter. Probably the post scriptum of the 21st October was written at Gothurst and not at Great Harrowden, though the letter itself of the 4th October undoubtedly was penned at Harrowden, between ten and fifteen miles distant from Gothurst, as just remarked.

The Honourable Anne Vaux, whose maternal grandfather was Sir Thomas Beaumont, Master of the Rolls, was a level-headed woman of acute mental perceptions as well as of great moral ardour and intense spiritual exaltation.[A]

Miss Vaux was allied to both Catesby and Tresham, and their words, and still more their doings, during the few months then last past, had been not unnoticed by her. She evidently had that strange premonitory foreboding, that curious sense of swift approaching doom, which have marked all tragedies written or unwritten since the world began.

Moreover, the large number of cavalry horses in the stables of Norbrook and Huddington (those places being her182 fellow-pilgrims’ and her own places of sojourning when en route for Holywell) had alarmed Anne Vaux’s imagination. And in reply to the lady’s anxious inquiries she had been told by her iniquitous, head-strong connections — Catesby and the rest — that the horses were wanted for the troop of horse whereof Catesby was to be in charge, with King James’s permission, in aid of the cause of the Spanish Archdukes in the Low Countries, then still in rebellion against the Spanish sovereignty.

Again; at either Harrowden or Gothurst, Miss Vaux sought out her father’s friend, and her own honoured and beloved spiritual counsellor, the chief of the English Jesuits, and told him that she feared that some trouble or disorder was a-brewing; and, moreover, that some of the gentlewomen, namely, the wives of the conspirators, “had demanded of her where they should bestow themselves until the burst was past in the beginning of the Parliament.”

Garnet, in reply, asked his inquirer who told her this; but she said “she durst not tell who told her so; she was [choked] with sorrow.”[A]

At Coughton, Father Garnet said Mass on the 1st of November, All Saints’ Day.

There “assisted” at this Mass the Lady Digby,[B] Mr. and Mrs. Brookesby, Miss Anne Vaux, and almost the whole of Sir Everard Digby’s Gothurst household.

183

At Gothurst, however, was Sir Everard himself, busy making his final preparations for the war he was about to levy upon his King.

We find Sir Everard there also on November 2nd, All Souls’ Day, the last he and his ill-fated comrades were destined to keep on earth. — See Gerard’s “Narrative.”

On All Saints’ Day, Father Garnet appears to have offered some prayers, or otherwise advised the offering of the same, which had a certain reference to the King, the Parliament, and the hoped-for triumph of his Church over her enemies, especially over those then molesting the faithful English remnant of “the elect.” He also appears, according to his own admission, to have spoken a sermon which might be easily construed as bearing184 some allusion to the then wretched condition of the unhappy English Catholics.[A]

Now, I infer that all this tends to demonstrate that Father Henry Garnet felt that a great burden or load had been lifted from his heart in regard to the aforetime perilous, but then practically abortive, Gunpowder Treason Plot. Therefore he must have known, from some source or another, that the Plot would be squashed before Tuesday, November the 5th, had dawned upon a “fallen world,” and all danger from the Plot finally swept away.

Again, in the Mass for All Saints’ Day there is a hymn, one verse of which is: “Take away the faithless people from the boundaries of the faithful, that we may joyfully give due praises to Christ.”

Cardinal Allen had induced the Pope “to indulge” the recital of these words by Catholics for the harmless “intention” of the “Conversion of England.”

Garnet, at Coughton, appears to have urged the recital of the same words for “the intention” of the “confounding” of the anti-popish “politics,” and the “frustration” of the “knavish tricks” of James at the forthcoming Parliament. If Garnet did so, then he must have known that James and his Parliament would be in existence to work mischief! And this once more proves that he knew the Plot would be squashed and finally swept away.

185

CHAPTER LVI.

Soon after Catesby, Rookwood, and Grant had been injured by the exploded gunpowder at Holbeach House (as has been already mentioned in Chapter LIV.), Robert Winter, the Master of Huddington, deeming discretion the better part of valour, quitted the ill-fated mansion of Stephen Littleton.

Now, it so fell out that Robert Winter met with Stephen Littleton, the Master of Holbeach, in a wood about a mile from Holbeach. And for no less than two months these two high-born gentlemen were wandering disguised up and down the country. Having plenty of money with them, the fugitives bribed a farmer near Rowley Regis, in Staffordshire, a tenant of Humphrey Littleton, cousin to Stephen Littleton, to grant them harbourage.

On New Year’s Day the rebels came very early in the morning to the house of one Perkes, in Hagley. After an extraordinary adventure there (an account of which may be read in Jardine’s “Criminal Trials,” vol. ii., pp. 90-93), at about eleven of the clock one night, Humphrey Littleton conveyed the two hunted delinquents to Hagley House, in Worcestershire, the mansion wherein dwelt his widowed sister-in-law, Mrs. John Littleton,[158] a Protestant lady, to whose children the place apparently belonged.

Mrs. Littleton was herself either in, or on the way to,186 London at this time, so the two traitors were harboured without the lady’s knowledge or consent.

By the treachery, however, of the man-cook at Hagley, or rather, in justice it should be said, by his diligent zeal in the service of his sovereign lord the King, Stephen Littleton and Robert Winter were captured by the lawful authorities, and forthwith conveyed to the Tower of London.

Now, some time during these two months of the wanderings of these two gentlemen, with whose efforts to elude the vigilance of the law of the land Humphrey Littleton had connived, this same Humphrey Littleton repaired to Father Edward Oldcorne, probably at Hindlip, in order to be resolved in respect of certain doubts which he (Humphrey Littleton) said had entered into his mind as to whether or not the Gunpowder Treason Plot were or were not morally lawful.

Now, although an English Roman Catholic gentleman, it is certain that Humphrey Littleton, like a great many more of his co-religionists before and since, was by no means perfect. Inasmuch as, first, we hear tell of “a love-begot” boy of his (if Virtue’s pure ears can pardon the phrase), who was to become a page of Robert Catesby, in the event of Catesby’s going in command of that company of horse to Flanders to fight, with James’s permission, in behalf of the Spanish Archdukes, whereof we have already heard. And, secondly, Humphrey Littleton was plainly deemed by the astute Edward Oldcorne to be what we should nowadays style “a dangerous fellow,” who was capable, from various motives, of propounding a question of that sort in order to entrap. That is to say, in order wantonly to cause mischief, whatever might be the tenour or purport of Oldcorne’s answer — mischief among either Catholics or Protestants.[159]187

We will, however, let Father Oldcorne tell his own tale as to what took place on the occasion of this momentous visit to him by Humphrey Littleton. For the great casuist’s own words are contained in his holograph Declaration of the 12th day of March, 1605-6, written by him when a prisoner in the Tower, and which I beheld in the Record Office, London, on the 5th of October, 1900.[160]

188

CHAPTER LVII.

190

CHAPTER LVIII.

We are now come to the crux of this Inquiry.

To every philosophical thinker who takes the trouble to ponder the matter it must be evident that the ethical principles enunciated in the first part of the Declaration, given in extenso in the preceding chapter, are intellectually irrefutable and morally irreproachable; although their obviousness, certainly, will not be palpable to “the man in the street.”

The answer of this clear-sighted, strong-headed Yorkshireman, is indeed the answer that is the resultant of exact ethical knowledge, that is, of moral science. For what is science, either in the realms of the intellectual, the moral, the political, or the physical, but “exact knowledge.”

Moreover, these principles are the resultant of abstract moral science, or exact ethical knowledge pure and simple.

Now, “Morality is the science of duty.”[161] But, just as it is most mischievous indiscriminately to apply abstract principles of morality, however faultless in themselves, to the complex affairs of individuals and of States, so is it most dangerous to strew broadcast statements of the abstract principles of ethics for the untutored mind of the merely practical man — first of all, to misunderstand; and, secondly, to wrest to his own undoing and that of his equally unfortunate fellow-men.

191

This is certainly so in the present stage of the world’s imperfect education. Though one lives in the hope that sooner or later that “ampler day” may dawn, when, from the least unto the greatest, men shall come to have a happy conscious realization of the truth of the poet’s dictum: “Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas;”[162] “Happy is he who hath been able to learn the causes of things.”

Still, truth — that which is — is truth.

And partial truth is not less true, according to its measure and in its degree, than the full orb of truth.[A]

Furthermore, “Wisdom is justified by all her children;” even although some of those children are tardy in realizing and in expressing their sense of such justification.

Now, although all this stands to reason — nay, because it is true, is even the perfection of reason — it was an enunciation of principles by Father Oldcorne, which it was more than probable would be misinterpreted by two sets of people, the intellectually stupid and the morally malicious.

Nay, it may be allowed that even persons of the highest intelligence and of the utmost good faith — such as, in the last century, the late David Jardine[163] — might easily enough think that Edward Oldcorne deserved condemnation and chiding for thus apparently showing such a marked disposition to look at this grave matter, the moral rightness or wrongness of the Gunpowder Plot, as though it were as purely abstract and scholastic192 a question as that famous moot of the middle ages: “How many angels can dance on the point of a needle?”[A]

193

CHAPTER LIX.

Now, the contention is this: That regard being had to the extraordinary heinousness of the Gunpowder Plot, in point of underhand stealthiness and secrecy as well as of deliberateness, malice, magnitude, and cruelty, no man of moral uprightness and intellectual keenness could be — without doing a violence to his human nature that is all but incredible — so unspeakably reckless and utterly insane as to fling broadcast to the winds, for the wayfaring man and the fool to pick up and con for their own and their hapless fellow-creatures’ moral destruction, an oral statement as to this diabolical Plot, that expressed ways of looking at the Plot merely speculative and simply in the abstract,[A] save and except on one condition only, namely, that such speaker had had both from without and from within, et ab extra et ab intra, a special knowledge.

Furthermore, a special knowledge, with absolute certitude, which warranted the speaker in mentally surveying that Plot not merely as it then was at the194 moment when he was giving utterance to his speculative statement concerning it, but, as he full well knew, at some point of time prior to that fateful day, November the 5th, 1605, it had been destined to be perpetually, namely, A PLOT ante factum in æternum, a mere abstract mental plan for ever. Aye, a mere abstract mental plan to all eternity; because transmuted and transformed by some process wherein that speaker had himself taken a primal, an essential, a meritorious part.[A]

195

CHAPTER LX.

But it may be objected that instead of assuming that Father Oldcorne was a man not only of mental keenness but also of moral uprightness, and proceeding forthwith to build an argument on such an assumption, the writer ought in truth and justice to have proved, by evidence or reason, the latter part of the proposition. And this the rather, seeing that so many of the co-religionists both in our own day as well as in the days of Father Oldcorne have regarded that society, whereof Oldcorne was a distinguished English member, with not merely unfeigned suspicion but with sincere dislike, and even with genuine loathing.[A]

Now, the unbiased historical philosopher is content not only to let the dead bury their dead but also to let theologian deal with theologian. To the historical philosopher, a Jesuit is a man and nothing more: nothing more, that is, so far as his being entitled to receive at the former’s hands the benefit of all those natural rights which belong to all members of the human species. For all men (including Jesuits) are, in the mind of the philosopher, “born free and equal.”

Hence it follows that when, amid the chances and196 changes of this mortal life, the historical philosopher is thrown across the path of a Jesuit, he looks at him, as a matter of duty, straight in the face, just as he looks at any other rational creature; and then seeks to ascertain, by dint of normal touchstones and tests, what manner of man the person is whom that philosopher, by the ordinances of fate, has then and there confronted.

Now, in the case of Edward Oldcorne, the Text of this Inquiry, and also the Notes thereunto, supply abundant proof that Oldcorne came of a good, wholesome, Yorkshire stock — hard-working, honest, and honourable; that his own mental nature was broad, rich and full, high-minded, just, and generous.[A]

Therefore is it, alike by evidence and reason, borne in upon the mind of the philosopher that, on grounds of197 probability so high as to afford practical certitude, he may proceed to build his argument upon the assumption that Edward Oldcorne was a man not only of intellectual acumen but also of moral integrity, as has been already predicated of him.

198

CHAPTER LXI.

Now, in the first part of his Declaration, Father Oldcorne uttered concerning the Gunpowder Plot a proposition which expressed partial truth alone. Because he expressed truth in the abstract only, not truth in the concrete also, concerning that nefarious scheme.

In other words, Father Oldcorne severed in thought the two kinds of truth, the two aspects of truth, the two parts of truth, which being unified gave the whole truth respecting the moral mode of judging the Gunpowder Treason Plot.

Oldcorne severed concrete truth from abstract truth,[A] practical truth from speculative truth, and so far as his hearer, Humphrey Littleton, was concerned, held that concrete truth, that practical truth, suspended at the sword-point over Littleton’s head.

Now, I maintain that, regard being had to the terrific danger of Littleton’s occasioning mischief, either through stupidity, malice, or both, a man of the intellectual and moral calibre of Edward Oldcorne would have never suffered his tongue to give utterance to a proposition dividing, as with a sword, concrete truth from abstract truth, practical truth from speculative truth, and then199 holding the former suspended above the head of his questioner, unless and until that great Priest and Jesuit had been first possessed of the living consciousness that he had had, and then was, at that very instant of time when speaking, having that Plot, which represented “the sum of all villainies,” in that it involved “sacrilegious murder,”[A] firmly and unconquerably crushed under his feet.[164]

200

CHAPTER LXII.

And how could this be?

It could be only by dint of a two-fold knowledge, a two-fold, warranting, justifying, vindicating knowledge, which this Priest and Jesuit held stored-up deep down within the depths of his conscious being, a knowledge passive or receptive which had come to him “from without,” ab extra; a knowledge active or self-caused which he had bestowed upon himself “from within,” ab intra.

Now, the passive knowledge “from without” was the knowledge Oldcorne had had from the penitent plotter of that penitent’s resolve to reveal the Plot to his lawful Sovereign by the most perfect means for so doing that by the human mind could be devised.

The active knowledge “from within” was the knowledge that Oldcorne had possessed, and was at that moment possessing, of his own sublimely conceived and magnificently executed act and deed: although even this active knowledge “from within” was itself indirectly traceable to that penitent plotter’s repentant resolve and repentant will.[A]

201

CHAPTER LXIII.

But, it may be plausibly objected, if it were of such dangerous tendency indiscriminately to give utterance to bare, abstract, moral principles only, how came it to pass, then, that Oldcorne, who was a good man, morally, as well as a clever man, intellectually, suffered himself thus to act when questioned by Humphrey Littleton respecting the moral lawfulness, or otherwise, of the Gunpowder Plot?

Now, Oldcorne, as we have already seen in his Declaration quoted above, has recorded a — that is one — reason202 why he left Littleton in abstracto — that is furnished with truth in the abstract merely. And beyond a doubt, as subsequent events so signally proved, the astute Jesuit’s judgment of Littleton’s character had not erred one whit.

Littleton, as Oldcorne justly feared, was a “dangerous fellow,” one who was likely to entrap the innocent, and one who was, therefore, not entitled, either in Justice or in that more refined kind of justice called Equity, to have his question dealt with by anything other than a flanking movement; or, in other words, by anything other than such an intellectual manœuvre as would turn aside the question Littleton had elected to propound to the great mental strategist — as would turn aside the question Littleton had elected to propound, on the face of it, probably, and as the event proved, certainly, from sinister motives and with crooked aims.

203

Hence, partly because of his questioner’s inferred insincerity and pernicious purposes did Oldcorne sever speculative truth in thought from concrete truth in action; or, in other words, Oldcorne gave to Littleton an answer “sounding” in partial truth alone.

204

CHAPTER LXIV.

Now, partial truth, as has been affirmed already, is not, in its proportion, less true than the full orb of truth.[A] And many are the times and many are the circumstances in this strangely chequered human life of ours, with its endless movements and its perpetual vicissitudes, when apparently conflicting and antagonistic duties can be in justice, equity, and honour reconciled on one condition only, namely, that man shall leave to Omniscience alone, “from Whom no secrets are hid,” a knowledge of the full orb of certain degrees of some particular kind of truth, governing some particular subject-matter under consideration.[165][B]

205

Just as on some wild, tempestuous night, the full orb of the silvery moon is obscured to the eye of the gazer by a dark, driving cloud.

Now, it has been said that, partly, because Oldcorne inferred insincerity of heart in Humphrey Littleton, and, partly, because Oldcorne inferred in his questioner pernicious purposes in propounding the question he did propound respecting the moral lawfulness, or otherwise, of the Gunpowder Plot, therefore Oldcorne gave Littleton an answer sounding in partial — that is, in this case, in abstract, in speculative — truth alone.

206

Oldcorne’s own expressed words are as follow: —

“In this warie sort I spake to him bycause I doubted he came to entrap me, and that he should take no advantage of my words whither he reported them to Catholics or to Protestants.”

Unquestionably, this must have been a reason — one reason, that is — for Father Oldcorne’s flanking, evasive reply, sounding in partial — that is, in this case, in abstract, in speculative — truth alone.

For otherwise a man of such approved goodness and established character would have never declared it to be a reason. The contrary supposal it is impossible to entertain.

But because Oldcorne’s declared reason was undoubtedly a reason, it does not follow — regard being had to persons, times, and circumstances — either from the demands of universal reason or moral fitness, that it was his only and sole reason, nor (still less) that it was his paramount and predominant reason for his action in question, that is, for his mode of couching the aforesaid Declaration in partial truth alone.

What leads to the conclusion with resistless force that Oldcorne’s alleged reason cannot have been his paramount, his predominant, reason is the simple, indisputable fact that such an aim so egregiously miscarried.

Therefore, in the case of so astute and clever a man, as all the evidence we have concerning Oldcorne to demonstration proves him to have been, it is rendered probable, to the degree of moral certainty, that the great casuist had some far stronger reason latent within him than the reason he chose to put forth for couching an answer to Humphrey Littleton, sounding in partial truth alone.

Besides the sufficient, indeed, yet inferior reason,207 grounded on the primal instinct of personal self-preservation, or, in other words, to put the matter bluntly, the mere brute instinct of not being entrapped, wisdom suggests that Oldcorne must — his moral character being what we know it was — have had a reason latent deep down within the depths of his conscious being, which was not only a sufficient but superior reason, not only a true but a sublime reason, for severing in this grave matter, and holding suspended, truth in thought from truth in action.

Yea, Father Oldcorne, I maintain, gave Humphrey Littleton the flanking, evasive answer that he did give him, notwithstanding the inevitable, possible, and even probable dangers attendant thereon, because he (Oldcorne) felt within himself, “to the finest fibre of his being,” a freedom, a three-fold freedom, which warranted, justified, and vindicated him in so answering.

Now this freedom was a three-fold freedom, because it was a thrice-purchased freedom.

And it was a thrice-purchased freedom because it had been purchased by the merits: —

(1) Of the personal, actual repentance of the revealing plotter himself. By the merits

(2) Of the imputed (or constructive) repentance of that penitent’s co-plotters. And by the merits

(3) Of the laudable action of Oldcorne himself.

208

CHAPTER LXV.

Now, Oldcorne, being a man as good as he was clever, and as clever as he was good, manifests from the inherent nature of his answer to Humphrey Littleton a sense, a consciousness, an assurance of freedom from the restraints and obligations which would have undoubtedly stayed and bound him had he not been already freed from their power.

Now, it is a superior power that countervails, that renders impotent an inferior power.

Now, Oldcorne would be freed from the restraining power of moral obligations, as to the user of a particular character of speech, if he had had residing within him a power of superior, of sublimer, that is, of countervailing force.

Now, Oldcorne, in his answer to Littleton, manifestly gives evidence of power, of countervailing power.

Knowledge gives power: gives countervailing power.

Therefore it follows that the presence of power, of countervailing power, in Oldcorne proves likewise the strong probability of knowledge, of countervailing knowledge likewise.

And what kind of knowledge can such two-fold knowledge have been, save a meritorious knowledge of what aforetime had been, but which was then no longer, the Gunpowder Treason Plot?

For, from the very moment of Oldcorne’s becoming conscious that the Plot as a plot had vanished into thin209 air by (1) personal, actual repentance; by (2) imputed or constructive repentance; by (3) a personally heroic act: had vanished like the morning mists before the beams of the rising sun, Oldcorne would feel himself, so to speak, immediately to be endued with an extraordinary power: with a power that would straightway cause him to grow to a loftier stature than all his fellows: with a power that then would enable him, as it were, to scale the heights, and, at length, to mount up to the very top of what aforetime had been the baleful Plot, but which Plot Oldcorne full well knew would be henceforward and for ever emptied and defecated of and from all murderous, criminous, sacrilegious quality.[166]

Hence was Oldcorne warranted, justified, and vindicated in viewing and surveying “the fact of Mr. Catesbie’s” simply speculatively and purely in the abstract.

Hence was Oldcorne warranted, justified, and vindicated in leaving Humphrey Littleton in abstracto, after the latter had propounded to him his dangerous question: of leaving the doubter with an answer sounding in partial truth alone.

210

CHAPTER LXVI.

Now, this conclusion leads inevitably to the further conclusion that Edward Oldcorne must have had latent within him, deep down within the depths of his conscious being, a particular knowledge, as distinct from a general knowledge, a private knowledge as distinct from a public knowledge, not indeed of this Plot as a plot, but of the Plot after it had been, when it had been, and as it had been first transmuted and transformed, by the causes and processes hereinbefore mentioned: transmuted and transformed into an instrument, sure and certain for the temporal salvation of his fellow-men.

Yea, because Edward Oldcorne’s noblest mental faculty, his conscience, gazing with eagle-eye, sun-filled, yet undazzled and undismayed, upon absolute truth was able unshrinkingly and calmly to bear witness to the other indivisible parts of his rational nature, that his mind in relation to that fell enterprise, which from first to last must have “made the angels weep,” was a mind not only of passive innocence, but of active rectitude, therefore must he have felt himself to be not barely, but abundantly free. Free, because he knew there was no mortal in this world, and no being in the world to come, to condemn him at the bar of eternal Justice; nay, none rightly even to be so much as his accuser: free to survey the baleful scheme purely speculatively: free, orally to express the results of that survey, either as to whole or part, in abstracto, in the abstract merely;211 and this notwithstanding the risk of misinterpretation from his questioner’s “want of thought,” or “want of heart.”

For everlastingly was it the truth, that none could gainsay nor resist, that in relation to this matter, at any rate, it was the lofty privilege of Edward Oldcorne — indeed a man, if ever there were such, “elect and precious” — to have been made “a white soul:” to have been made a soul like unto “a star that dwelt apart.”

Res ipsa loquitur. Yea, the words of Edward Oldcorne speak for themselves. And from those words evident is it that it was the kingly prerogative of this disciplined, self-repressed, humblest of men, to know the truth as to the once atrocious plan: to know the truth and to be free.

For his language implies, and, his mind and his character being what they were, his language is intelligible on none other supposal than this: That at the very moment when his tongue gave utterance to this now famous flanking, evasive answer to his inquirer, he, even he, had possession of a power, a knowledge, a living consciousness, that he had been exalted to be the chosen agent of that Supreme Power of the Universe, to Whom by infinite right, Vengeance belongs: the chosen agent whereby the aforetime, but then no longer, stupendous Gunpowder Treason Plot had been, to all eternity, overthrown, frustrated, and brought to nought.[167]

212

CHAPTER LXVII.

Hence may we say, of a surety, has it been proved that Edward Oldcorne, Priest and Jesuit, used words which imply that, as a fact, he viewed the Plot ante factum, before the fact, and in the abstract merely.

That, being a man as good as he was clever, and as clever as he was good, he must have had his warranting reasons, his justifying reasons, his vindicating reasons for so doing, when such a course of action was obviously likely to be attended with danger from misinterpretation from both the fool and the knave; from both the man lacking thought and from the man lacking heart.

That such warranting reasons, such justifying reasons, such vindicating reasons would be found in the fact that Oldcorne knew the Plot was no longer a plot, but a scheme emptied and defecated of all evil, all murderous, all criminous, all sacrilegious quality. Nay, that it was a scheme sublimated and transfigured by his (Oldcorne’s) own superabounding merit and virtue in relation to the once diabolical, but then repented of, prodigious plan.

Therefore is the inevitable conclusion pressed upon us with resistless force, that, according to the changeless laws which govern man’s intellectual and moral nature, Oldcorne must have had some official or semi-official particular and private knowledge of the thirteen Gunpowder traitors’ heinous project, as distinct from and in addition to that merely personal, general knowledge, which he necessarily cannot have failed to possess in his213 capacity of an ordinary English citizen: some professional or quasi-professional special, private knowledge, as distinct from that general, public, common knowledge, which every sane man then a subject of the British Crown could not help not being possessed of, at that very instant of time when Humphrey Littleton propounded to the great casuist Humphrey Littleton’s aforetime unhappy question.[A]

I say advisedly aforetime unhappy question.

For, I respectfully maintain that the ratiocinative faculty to-day, of a surety, demonstrates that in the majestic cause of impartial, severe, historical truth, the act of this frail, erring child of man, Humphrey Littleton, has proved itself now to be thrice happy.

“O felix culpa!” “O happy fault!” Out of bitterness is come forth sweetness.

Humphrey Littleton was not pardoned by King James, his Privy Council, and Government, notwithstanding the invaluable disclosures he had made.[168]

This high-born English gentleman was executed at Redhill, Worcester, on the 7th day of April, 1606, along with (among others) another open rebel, John Winter, the214 half-brother of Robert Winter and Thomas Winter, the Gunpowder traitors.

Humphrey Littleton, we are told by his contemporary, Father John Gerard, asked forgiveness of Father Oldcorne more than once, and said that he had wronged him much.

He also asked forgiveness of Mr. Abington, who, though condemned to death, was ultimately pardoned at his wife’s and Lord Mounteagle’s intercession.

Humphrey Littleton “died with show of great repentance, and so with sorrow and humility and patient acceptance of his death made amends for his former frailty and too unworthy desire of life.”

Stephen Littleton, the Master of Holbeach — who had likewise joined in the rebellion in the Midlands, under Sir Everard Digby, which grew out of the Gunpowder Plot, although a distinct movement from it, albeit connected with the Plot — was made a public example of in his native County of Staffordshire, in terrorem, as a terror to evil-doers: this unfortunate English gentleman suffering the extreme penalty of the law, according to his contemporary, the aforesaid Father John Gerard, in the ancient town of Stafford.

215

CHAPTER LXVIII.

We now come to the second and latter part of Father Oldcorne’s Declaration to Humphrey Littleton, from the whole of which Declaration Littleton drew the conclusion that Oldcorne answered “the action was good, and seemed to approve of it.”[A]

“And thus I applied it to this fact of Mr. Catesbie’s; it is not to be approved or condemned by the event, but by the proper object or end, and means which was to be used in it; and because I know nothing of thes, I will neither approve it or condeme it, but leave it to god and ther owne consciences, and in this wary sort I spoke to him bycause I doubted he came to entrap me; and that he should take noe advantage of the words whither he reported them to Catholics or Protestants.”[B]

Now, in the first place, let it be remembered that these words were spoken not before but after Wednesday,216 the 6th of November, when, as Oldcorne himself has left on record, and which indeed we have seen already, Father Tesimond came from Coughton to Huddington, and from Huddington to Hindlip; and when “he said that there were certain gentlemen that meant to have blown up the Parliament House, and that their plot was discovered a day or two before.”[A]

Again; Fawkes, we are told by Eudæmon-Joannes,[169] explained at the Trial of the conspirators why the prisoners pleaded “‘Not guilty,’ which was that the Indictment contained ‘many other matters, which we neither can, nor ought to countenance by our assent or silence,’ though none of them meant to deny that which they had not only voluntarily confessed before, but which was quite notorious throughout the realm.”[170] (The italics are mine.)

Now, seeing that Oldcorne told Littleton that “he knew nothing” as to the “end or object” the plotters had in their Plot, nor “the means which was to be used in it,” when the whole of England, not to say Europe, had been ringing with a knowledge of not only the end or object, but also the means, for the last past few days, and perhaps weeks, at the very least, I draw this inevitable conclusion: —

That because Oldcorne was a man as morally good as he was intellectually clever, he must have met his questioner’s inquiry with this nescience, by reason of some antecedent, official, and professional duty; or, at least,217 semi-official and quasi-professional duty, which had been imposed upon him, ab extra, from the outside, prior in time to Humphrey Littleton’s coming to him to be resolved of his doubts as to the moral rightness or wrongness of the Gunpowder Plot.[171]

In other words, that Oldcorne felt instinctively that he could recognise in a private individual, like Humphrey Littleton, no valid right, title, claim, or demand to call forth an answer, which might discover or disclose to Littleton the secret of the repentant Christopher Wright.

Yea, neither in Justice, nor in Equity, nor in Honour could the grand Yorkshireman betray to Humphrey Littleton the secret of trust that in a semi-official, quasi-professional mode or fashion had come to be entrusted to him by another, as that other’s private property and exclusive possession.

That other was Christopher Wright, the penitent revealing plotter, and whomsoever he had, explicitly or implicitly, willed should share a knowledge of the mighty secret. But to none other or others beside. And certainly not to men probably prompted by sinister motives and crooked aims.

For a knowledge of truth in action, truth in the result, truth in the event, truth in the external, and every other kind of truth in relation to the Gunpowder[A] Plot,218 integral or partial, was irrevocably held in trust by Edward Oldcorne, not for Humphrey Littleton, or the like of him, but for Christopher Wright and men that were true of heart.

This was an obligation, that flowed from the truth expressed by the luminous maxim, “Qui prior est tempore potior est jure.” “He who is first in time is the stronger in point of right.”

219

The Jesuit could never that trust, that confidence betray. If needs be, he must be “true till death.” For it was not necessary that he should live. But it was necessary that he should live undishonoured.

220

CHAPTER LXIX.

Again; to all those that are “knowing” enough, the facts of this woeful tragedy “observingly” to “distil out,” the form and substance of this document of the 12th March, 1605-6, under the hand of Edward Oldcorne, alike afford evidence — conclusive evidence — that Father Oldcorne regarded the Gunpowder conspirators as repentant conspirators, through the virtual representative repentance of one of their own number.

And though it is true that, by the inexorable decree of the Universe, “The Guilty suffer,” each man for himself and not another, temporal punishment, searching, terrible, and keen, yet this is not the whole of the truth governing the perfected ethics of the matter. For “Man learns by suffering.” And guilt is pardoned on repentance, that is, on the observance and on the performance of certain equally decreed conditions.

These conditions are (1) confession, (2) contrition, which implies sorrow and regret, and (3) satisfaction or “damages,” which involves amendment, withdrawal, or reversal. And when all three conditions have been observed and performed, then

Hence, could the great moralist, by a complexus of intellectual acts, personal and vicarious, justly regard the whole band of plotters as transgressors released from221 the abstract guilt of their double crime. For it is a dictate of reason that the release of one joint debtor operates derivatively to the release, ipso facto, of all the rest.

Now, if Oldcorne possessed a conscious realization that, through the repentance, personal and representative, of the Gunpowder plotters, that Plot was no longer a plot, then, to speak after the manner of men, he must have had that realization as the resultant of two particular kinds, aspects, or sides of knowledge: ab extra, from without, that is, passive knowledge, or communicated, in the first step; and ab intra, from within, that is, knowledge active, or self-bestowed, in the second step.

Now, both passive knowledge and active knowledge here would imply, in the final analysis, a communication by some external mental agency, the agency of some living, intelligent being.

It would be implied in the first case, directly; in the second case, indirectly. But, directly or indirectly, the source would be the same.

Now, who can that aforesaid living, intelligent being, which reason demands, have been, if not a repentant plotter himself?

Therefore, by irresistible inference, the Letter is surely, with moral certitude, traced home at last.

222

CHAPTER LXX.

Father Edward Oldcorne was racked in the Tower of London, “five times, and once with the utmost severity for several hours,”[172] in order that, haply, information might be extracted from him that would prove him to be possessed of a guilty knowledge of the Plot. But this princely soul had nothing of that kind to tell, so that King James and his Counsellors wreaked their lawless severity in vain.[A]

On the 7th day of April, 1606, at Redhill, one mile from the City of Worcester, on the London Road, “the silver cord was loosed, the golden bowl was broken, the pitcher was crushed at the fountain, the wheel was broken on the cistern.” For on that day, at that spot, the happy spirit of Edward Oldcorne mounted far, far beyond the fading things of time and space.[173]

It may be objected that Father John Gerard’s relation of the last dying speech and confession of the great Jesuit Priest and Martyr is hostile to the223 hypothesis that Oldcorne penned the great Letter, “Litteræ Felicissimæ.”

Gerard’s reported words are these; but, I contend, we have no absolute proof that they are the ipissima verba of Father Oldcorne, though he may have uttered some of these words, and something resembling them in the case of the others. — See Gerard’s “Narrative” p. 275.

“He declared unto the people that he came thither to die for the Catholic faith and the practice of his function, seeing that they neither had, nor could prove anything against him which, even by their own laws, was sufficient to condemn him, but that he was a Priest of the Society of Jesus, wherein he much rejoiced, and was ready and desirous to give his life for the profession of that faith which he had taught many years in that very country, and which it was necessary for everyone to embrace that would save their souls.[174] Then being asked again about the treason and taking part with the conspirators, he protested there again that he never had the least knowledge of the treason, and took it upon his death that he was as clear as the new-born child from the whole plot or any part thereof. Then commending his soul, with great devotion, humility, and confidence, into the hands of God and to the Blessed Virgin, St. Jerome, St. Winifred, and his good Angel, he was turned off the ladder, and hanging awhile, was cut down and quartered, and so his innocent and thrice-happy soul went to receive the reward of his many and great labours.” (The italics are mine.)

224

CHAPTER LXXI.

Now, in the first place, it is to be noticed that Father Oldcorne made the special disclaimer of ever having had the least knowledge of the Plot only after being asked again about the treason and taking part with the conspirators.

My respectful submissions to the judgment of my candid readers, therefore, are these: —

First, that we have no exact, that is, no scientific, proof[175] that Father Oldcorne, as a fact, employed these precise words.

And, secondly, that, even if he did so employ them, what he meant to convey to his hearers’ mind by the words was, I maintain, that he had no criminal, no traitorous knowledge of the ruthless Gunpowder enterprise; or, in other words, no guilty knowledge, no knowledge that his King and his fellow-subjects had any right, title, claim, or demand, in Reason, Justice, Equity, or Honour, to obtain or to wring from him.

For “Qui prior est tempore potior est jure.” “He who is first in time is the stronger in point of right.”

Again; “There is on earth a yet auguster thing, veiled though it be, than Parliament or King.” And that is the Human Conscience, instructed by Truth and Justice. Her rights are invincible and eternally sacred.

Gerard continues, after Father Oldcorne “followed Ralph, his faithful follower and companion of his labours, who showed at his death great devotion and fervour, as may225 be guessed by this one action of his; for whilst Father Oldcorne stood upon the ladder and was preparing himself to die, Ralph, standing by the ladder, suddenly stepped forward, and takes hold of the good Father’s feet, embracing and kissing them with great devotion, and said, ‘What a happy man am I, to follow here the steps of my sweet Father!’ And when his own turn came, he also first commended himself by earnest prayers unto God, then told the people that he died for religion and not for treason, whereof he had ‘not had the least knowledge; and as he had heard this good Father, before him, freely forgive his persecutors and pray for the King and Country, so did he also....’ He showed, at his death, great resolution joined with great devotion, and so resigning his soul into the hands of God, was turned off the ladder and changed this life for a better.” — See Gerard’s “Narrative,” pp. 27, 5276.[176]

Furthermore, Father Gerard says, on p. 269 of his “Narrative,” as we have seen already, that “Father Ouldcorne his indictment was so framed that one might see they much desired to have drawn him within the compass of some participation of this late treason; to which effect they first did seem to suppose it as likely that he should send letters up and down to prepare men’s minds for the insurrection.... Also they accused him of a sermon made in Christmas, wherein he should seem to excuse the conspirators, or to extenuate their fact, and, withal that speaking with Humphrey Littleton in private about the same matter, he should advise him not to judge of the cause, or to condemn the gentlemen by the event.”

Although Father Oldcorne was found guilty and sentenced to death, it is not clearly shewn, from Gerard’s Relation, or that of anybody else, what offences were226 proved against him. Probably, reliance was mainly placed (1) on the fact of his being a notorious Priest and Jesuit, reconciling as many of the King’s subjects to the See of Rome as possible; (2) on his providing, through the Jesuit, Father Jones, a place of refuge for Robert Winter and Stephen Littleton, two of the fugitives from Justice; and (3) on his aiding and abetting the concealment of his Superior, Father Garnet, a proclaimed traitor, at Hindlip.[A]

227

CHAPTER LXXII.

Edward Oldcorne might have, perchance, saved his life had he told his lawful Sovereign that he had been (Deo juvante) a joint efficient cause of that Sovereign’s temporal salvation and the temporal salvation of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, Commons of England, Ambassadors, and Heaven only knows whom, and how many else beside. For King James, with all his faults, was averse from shedding the blood even of popish Priests and Jesuits. But Oldcorne did not do so. And I hold that he had two all-sufficient reasons for not so acting.

First, he may have thought there was a serious danger of his entangling Thomas Ward, in some way or another, as an accessory, at least, after the fact, in the meshes of the Law of that unscrupulous time: the time, be it remembered, of the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission.

And, secondly, although this great Priest and Jesuit, by virtue and as a result of the releasing act of his Penitent, Christopher Wright, had come, practically, to receive a knowledge of the tremendous secret as a Friend and as a Man, and not as a Priest, yet, because that Man and that Friend was a Priest; and because it was impossible for that Priest in practice, and in the eyes of men, to bisect himself, and make clear and manifest the different sides and aspects in which he had — subsequent to the Penitent’s release from the seal of the228 Confessional, sigillum confessionis — thought and acted in relation to the revealing plotter, therefore did Oldcorne, I opine, deliberately — because, according to his own principles, he was predominantly “a Priest,” and that “for ever” — therefore did he deliberately choose the more excellent way, aye! in the chamber of torture and upon the scaffold of death, the way of perfect self-sacrifice for the good of others.

For, by a Yorkshire Catholic mother, dwelling in a grey northern city — and who in January, 1598, is described as “old and lame”[A] — Edward Oldcorne had been taught long years ago “to adjust his compass at the Cross.”[177][178]

Brother Ralph Ashley, too, possibly might have saved his life, had he disclosed that, whatever other letter or letters he had carried to and fro, he had carried that great Letter, that Letter of Letters, which had proved the sheet-anchor, the lever, of his Country’s temporal salvation through the temporal salvation of its hereditary and elected rulers.

But Brother Ralph Ashley knew he had a duty to perform of strict fidelity to his master, a duty which, though unknown to man, would not escape the Eye of Him to advance Whose greater glory this humble Jesuit lay-brother was solemnly pledged.

Father Gerard says, as we have already seen, in his “Narrative,” that Ralph Ashley “was divers times put upon the torture but he revealed nothing.” Gerard furthermore says that Ralph Ashley “was indicted and condemned upon supposition that he had carried letters to and fro about this conspiracy.” “But,” says Gerard, “they neither did nor could allege any instance or proof against him.” — See “Narrative,” p. 271.

229

CHAPTER LXXIII.

A few final words as to Thomas Ward (or Warde), who was, I hold, no less than Edward Oldcorne and his Penitent, the joint arbiter of destinies and the controller of fates.

Indeed, as previously stated in an earlier portion of this Inquiry, my own opinion is that Christopher Wright probably unlocked his burthened heart to his connection, Thomas Ward, of whose constancy in friendship he would be, by long years of experience, well assured, at a time anterior to that at which he unbosomed himself to the holy Jesuit Priest, that skilled, wise, loving minister of a mind diseased.

While Ward, on his part, readily and willingly, though at the imminent risk of being himself charged as a knowing accomplice and accessory to the Plot, undertook the diplomatic engineering of the whole movement, whereby the Plot was so effectually and speedily spun round on its axis, even if well-nigh at the eleventh hour.

In bidding farewell, a long farewell, to Thomas Ward, the following extracts from a letter of Sir Edward Hoby[179] to Sir Thomas Edmunds, Ambassador at Brussels, are important, although some of the passages have already appeared in the earlier part of this Inquiry: —

Surely, the twain facts that Thomas Ward “walked up and down,” and that his brother, Marmaduke, was also at large, with the latter’s eldest daughter, Mary, lodging in Baldwin’s Gardens, Holborn (although we have seen the Master of Newby apprehended in Warwickshire, in the very heart and centre of the conspirators), tend to demonstrate that the King, his Privy Council, and Government were very much obligated to the gentleman-servant and, almost certainly, distant kinsman of William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle, and that they knew it.[A]

231

From a grateful King and Country, Lord Mounteagle received, as we have already learned, a payment of £700 a year, equal to nearly £7,000 a year in our money.[A]

But Ben Jonson, the rare Ben Jonson, the friend of Shakespeare, of Donne,[B] and other wits of the once232 far-famed Mermaid Tavern, Bread Street, London, deemed the temporal saviour of his Country to be still insufficiently requited. So the Poet, invoking his Muse, penned, in the young peer’s honour, the following stately epigram: —

233

RECAPITULATION OF PROOFS, ARGUMENT, AND CONCLUSIONS.

(1) The revealing plotter cannot have been Tresham or any one of the other eight who were condemned to death in Westminster Hall; otherwise he would have pleaded such fact.

(2) The revealing plotter must have been amongst those who survived not to tell the tale: that is, either Catesby, Percy, John Wright, or Christopher Wright.

(3) Christopher Wright, a subordinate conspirator introduced late in the conspiracy, was the revealing conspirator.

(4) Father Edward Oldcorne, S.J., was the Penman of the Letter.

(5) Thomas Ward was the diplomatic Go-between common to both.

All these three were Yorkshiremen.

(6) Ralph Ashley was the messenger who conveyed the Letter to Lord Mounteagle’s page, who was already in the street when the Letter-carrier arrived.

Perhaps a Yorkshireman.

(7) Mounteagle knew a letter was coming. Known to Edmund Church, Esq., his confidant.

(8) Thomas Ward, on Sunday, the 27th October (the day after the delivery), told Thomas Winter, one of the principal plotters, that Salisbury had received the document; and on Sunday, the 3rd November, that Salisbury had shown it to the King.

234

(9) Christopher Wright, who was at Lapworth when the Letter was delivered, and within twenty miles of Father Oldcorne, saw Thomas Winter some little time subsequent to the delivery of the Letter.

(10) Christopher Wright is said to have been the first who ascertained that the Plot was discovered.

(11) Christopher Wright is said to have counselled flight in different directions.

(12) Christopher Wright announced to Thomas Winter, very early on Tuesday, the 5th of November, the capture of Fawkes that morning.

(13) Father Oldcorne’s handwriting to-day resembles that of the Letter; by comparison of documents, certainly one of which is in Oldcorne’s handwriting.

(14) Oldcorne was accused by the Government of sending “letters up and down to prepare men’s minds for the insurrection.”

(15) Brother Ashley, his servant, was accused of carrying “letters to and fro about this conspiracy.”

(16) Father Henry Garnet, Oldcorne’s Superior, mysteriously changed his purpose expressed on the 4th October, of returning to London; and on the 29th October went from Gothurst to Coughton, in Warwickshire. (I think Garnet’s main reason for going to Coughton was in order to meet Catesby, and endeavour to induce him to discard Percy’s counsel and to seek refuge in flight.)

(17) Father Oldcorne evaded giving a direct answer as to the Plot, when questioned by Littleton, after November 5th.

(18) Hence, the facts both before and after the delivery of the Letter are consistent with, and indeed converge towards, the hypothesis sought by this Inquiry to be proved.

235

(19) The circumstance that Christopher Wright displayed a strangely marked disposition to “hang about” the prime conspirator, Thomas Winter, after the sending of the Letter, is a suspicious fact, strongly indicative of a consciousness on Christopher Wright’s part of a special responsibility in connection with the revelation of the Plot; as showing anxiety for personal knowledge that the train of revelation lighted by himself had, so to speak, taken fire.

(20) Christopher Wright lived not to tell the tale.

(21) Hence, the hypothesis is a theory established, with moral certitude, mainly by Circumstantial Evidence, which latter “mosaics” perfectly.

(22) Finally, the crowning proof of the theory sought by this Book to be established is found in these nine words of the post scriptum of 21st October, 1605, to letter dated 4th October, 1605, under the hand of Father Garnet to Father Parsons, in Rome[A]: “This letter being returned unto me again, FOR REASON OF A 236FRIEND’S STAY IN THE WAY, I blotted out some words purposing to write the same by the next opportunity, as I will do apart:” — The word “stay” here being used to signify “check.” Cf., Shakespeare’s “King John,” II., 2: and see Glossary to Globe Edition (Macmillan).

239

SUPPLEMENTA.

Supplementum I.

The forefathers of Guy Fawkes almost certainly sprang from Nidderdale, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. See Foster’s “Yorkshire Families,” under Hawkesworth, of Hawkesworth, and Fawkes, of Farnley.

Guy’s grandfather was William Fawkes, of York, who married a York lady, Ellen Harrington.[A]

William Fawkes became Registrar of the Exchequer Court of the Archbishop of York, and died between the years 1558-1565.

William Fawkes had two sons and two daughters — Thomas Fawkes, a merchant-stapler, and Edward Fawkes, a Notary or Proctor of the Ecclesiastical Court, and afterwards an Advocate of the Consistory Court of the Archbishop of York. (Certainly it is a strange and bitter irony that an ancestry like this should have brought forth such a moral monster as poor Guy Fawkes afterwards became. But our guiding motto must be: “Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.”)

Edward Fawkes married a lady whose Christian name was Edith, but her surname is unknown. She was the240 mother of four children — two sons and two daughters. Only one of her sons grew to man’s estate, and this was the hapless Guy.

(Only four children are known of with certainty; but Guy possibly may have had another brother, who was a student at the Inns of Court, in November, 1605.)

Now, the exact house where Edith Fawkes gave birth to her ill-fated boy is at present not known with certitude. There are four traditions respecting the place. Two traditions say the house was on the south side of High Petergate, York; one tradition that it was on the north side, adjoining the alley called Minster Gates; the fourth tradition that it was at Bishopthorpe. Personally, I am in favour of the Minster Gates’ tradition. But the Bishopthorpe tradition is worthy of a respectful hearing.

My friend, Mr. William Camidge, F.R.H.S. (than whom no man now living in York has a greater, if indeed as great, knowledge concerning the City’s antiquarian lore) tells me in a letter, dated the 5th of November, 1901, that in old Thomas Gent’s “Rippon” (1733) there is mention made of Bishopthorpe as being Guy’s birthplace. Gent says, “The house opposite the church[A] is said to be the birthplace of Guy Faux.”

Mr. Camidge continues: “I found, a few years ago, rooted in the minds of the oldest inhabitants of Bishopthorpe, the positive assurance that Guy Fawkes was born at Bishopthorpe, and the site of the house was indicated by several persons. I found one of the descendants of the former owner of the house, who assured me that her father always held that Guy Fawkes was born in the241 house; that my informant’s great grandfather maintained the same; and that for two or three generations they had shown the house as the place of Guy Fawkes’ birth. The site of the house is now a pleasure-garden; but a stone was put in the ground to mark the site.”

Now it is a remarkable fact that in almost all, if indeed not quite all, of those places where there has been a strong local tradition to the effect that the Gunpowder conspirators had some association with a particular spot, subsequent investigation has found the tradition to be well authenticated. (This was pointed out by David Jardine sixty years ago.)

Yet the strongest argument against the Bishopthorpe tradition is that Guy’s baptismal register is to-day found at the Church of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, in the City of York.

Now, in the time of Elizabeth, as Dr. Elzé has pointed out in his “Life of Shakespeare,” a child would be baptized on the third day after birth. Hence, on the whole, I cannot personally accept the Bishopthorpe tradition as to the birthplace of Guy Fawkes.

It is, however, more than possible that as a babe in arms Guy Fawkes may have lived at Bishopthorpe. For the Act of Uniformity, whereby the York Court of High Commission had been established, would bring much legal work to his father, Edward Fawkes; and that the latter found it convenient to have a house in close proximity to his Grace the Lord Archbishop of York, a leading member of the High Commission, is one of the likeliest things in the world.

In these circumstances, then, the present-day inhabitants of Bishopthorpe may still lay the flattering unction to their souls (if they wish so to do) that Guy Fawkes drank in his mother’s milk in their picturesque Yorkshire village, on the banks of the noble Ouse.

242

Mr. J. W. Knowles, of Stonegate, York, another gentleman well versed in York’s antiquities, informed me in August, 1901, that a Mr. John Robert Watkinson, of Redeness Street, Layerthorpe, York, held a tradition that Guy Fawkes’ birthplace was in the house adjoining the Minster Gates.

Accordingly, some little time afterwards, I wrote to Mr. Watkinson, who at once kindly replied in a letter, dated 22nd October, 1901, as follows: —

Edward Fawkes died, aged forty-six, when his son, Guy, was not quite eight years old. He was buried in the Minster on the 17th January, 1578-9. About twenty-seven years afterwards this Yorkshire citizen’s thrice hapless child — by nature a tall, athletic man, but then,243 by torture of the rack, so crippled “that he was scarce able to go up the ladder” — met on the shameful gallows-tree, and on the quartering block, in the Old Palace Yard, Westminster, over against the Parliament House, the terrible death of a condemned traitor. The whole world knows the reason why.

Mistress Edith Fawkes, Guy’s mother, was married a second time to a gentleman named Dennis Bainbridge. He was connected with the John Pulleyn, Esq., of Scotton, near Knaresbrough, and the probabilities are that Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Bainbridge, and that lady’s children by her first husband, namely Guy, Elizabeth and Ann Fawkes, all lived by the favour of the young squire, John Pulleyn, in patriarchal fashion, at Scotton Hall. The Pulleyns and the Bainbridges were Roman Catholics, and their names (along with the names Walkingham, Knaresborough, and Bickerdyke) occur in Peacock’s “List of Roman Catholics in Yorkshire in 1604,” under the title “Parish of Farnham.” The name Percy, of Percy House, is not found in Peacock’s “List.”

[If the Bainbridges did not live at Scotton Hall, they may have lived at Percy House, hard-by the Hall. Percy House is now owned by Mr. Slater, of Farnham Hall, the property of the relatives of the late Charles Shann, Esquire, of Tadcaster.]

It is, therefore, easy to understand how it came to pass that the mind of young Guy Fawkes became impregnated with Roman Catholicism. For man is a creature of circumstances.

Yorkshire abounded in Roman Catholics in the time of Elizabeth (see the “Hatfield MSS.” and numerous other contemporary records). Such was especially the case with the district round about Knaresbrough and Ripon. And recollecting that many Yorkshiremen had244 suffered a bloody death for their conscientious adherence to their religion between the years 1582 and Easter, 1604, when the Gunpowder Plot was hatched, one ceases to marvel at such a psychological puzzle as even the mind of Guy Fawkes. — See Challoner’s “Missionary Priests” and Pollen’s “Acts of the English Martyrs,” already frequently referred to.

[“The Venerable” martyrs, Robert Bickerdyke, Peter Snow, Ralph Grimston, Francis Ingleby, and John Robinson (some priests, others laymen) came from Low Hall, Farnham; “at or near Ripon;” Nidd, near Scotton; Ferensby and Ripley respectively. While the “Blessed” John Nelson came from Skelton, York, and the “Blessed” Richard Kirkeman from Addingham, near Ilkley (both priests). All these men suffered death for legal treason or felony based upon their religion between the years 1578 and 1604. And, therefore, according to the laws that govern human nature, such events were sure to tell an impressive tale to a man like Guy Fawkes. Princes and statesmen should avoid, as far as possible, inflicting punishments that impress the imagination. Moreover, an inferior but potent objection against all religious persecution is found in the wisdom enshrined in the exclamation of Horace, “O imitators, a servile crowd!”]

The following testimony of Father Oswald Tesimond, one of Guy Fawkes’ old school-fellows, along with John Wright and Christopher Wright, at Old St. Peter’s School, in the Horse Fayre, Gillygate, York, where Union Terrace now stands, will be of interest.

Fawkes was “a man of great piety, of exemplary temperance, of mild and cheerful demeanour, an enemy of broils and disputes, a faithful friend, and remarkable for his punctual attendance upon religious observances.”245 His society was “sought by all the most distinguished in the Archdukes’ camp for nobility and virtue.” — Quoted by Jardine in his “Narrative,” p. 38.

How sad to think that such a man should have so missed his way in the journey of life as to become so demoralized as to join in the Gunpowder Treason Plot; nay, in intention, to be the most deadly agent in that Plot. What can have caused, in the final resort, such a missing of his way, and have wrought such dire demoralization? Echo answers what?

Yet nothing more clearly shows that Guy Fawkes deserved all the punishment he got than the fact that he returned to his post in the cellar, where the thirty-six barrels of gunpowder were, after no less than three distinct warnings that the Government had intelligence of the Plot. One warning was given him on Monday, the 28th October, at White Webbs, by Thomas Winter; a second, on Sunday night, the 3rd November, by Thomas Winter, after the delivery of the Letter to the King; and the third, on Monday, the 4th November, after the visit to the cellar of the Earl of Suffolk and Lord Mounteagle, of which visit Fawkes informed Thomas Percy. — See Lingard’s “History.”

Copies of the three following Deeds given in Davies’ “Fawkeses, of York,” will be read with interest. One of the Deeds is an “Indenture of Lease;” the second, an “Indenture of Conveyance;” and the third, a “Deed Poll,” whereby Dennis and Edith Bainbridge release all right to Dower in Guy Fawkes’ real estate that he “heíred” from his own father, Edward Fawkes; all the property was outside Bootham Bar, in the suburbs of York.

In “The Connoisseur,” for November, 1901, is given a fac-simile of the “Conveyance.” Thomas Shepherd Noble, Esq., of Precentor’s Court, York, one of York’s246 most respected citizens, saw these Deeds sixty years ago in York, he informed me on the 5th of November, 1901; and Mr. Noble then told me he had no doubt that the fac-simile given in “The Connoisseur” of the “Conveyance” is a fac-simile of one of the documents he saw more than half a century ago.

The Pulleyns, Pulleines, Pulleins, or Pullens (for the family spelt their name in all four ways) bore for their Arms one and four azure, on a bend between six lozenges or, each charged with a scallop of the first, five scallops sable: two and three azure, a fess between three martlets. — See Flower’s “Visitation of Yorkshire,” Ed. by Norcliffe.

Flower gives the Pulleyns, of Scotton, first, and then the Pulleyns, of Killinghall, near Harrogate.

Walter Pulleyn, the step-grandfather of Guy Fawkes, is given as a Pulleyn, of Scotton. Walter Pulleyn married for his first wife Frances Slingsby, of Scriven; for his second wife Frances Vavasour, of Weston, near Otley. One branch of the Vavasours, of Weston, settled at Newton Hall, Ripley, which, embosomed in trees, can be seen to-day by all those who drive from Harrogate,[A] through Killinghall and Ripley, on towards Ripon. Their son was William Pulleyn, who married Margaret Bellasis, of Henknoll; and their son and heir was John Pulleyn, almost certainly the John Pulleyn, Esquire, of Scotton, given under the Parish of Farnham, in Peacock’s “List of Roman Catholics in Yorkshire in 1604.”

Flower’s “Pedigree” shows that the Pulleyns, of Scotton, had intermarried with the Ruddes, of Killinghall;247 the Roos, of Ingmanthorpe, near Wetherby; the Tankards, of Boroughbridge; the Swales, of Staveley; the Walworths, of Raventoftes, Bishop Thornton; the Coghylls, of Knaresbrough; and the Birnands, of Knaresbrough; one and all old Yorkshire Catholic gentry.

Flower also shows in his “Pedigree” of the Pulleyns, of Killinghall, that James Pulleyn, of Killinghall, married first Frances, daughter of Sir William Ingleby, of Ripley; and secondly Frances Pulleyn, daughter of Walter Pulleyn, of Scotton. They must have been cousins in some degree. Among their numerous children were Joshua and William, both Roman Catholic priests.

The “Douay Registers” (David Nutt) show that Joshua Pulleyn was ordained priest in 1578. He returned to England on the 27th August of that year. He was educated at Cardinal Allen’s[A] College in Douay. His brother, William Pulleyn, was ordained in 1583, at the same time as the future martyr, “the Venerable” Francis Ingleby, afterwards the friend of “the Venerable” Margaret Clitherow, of York, and for harbouring whom, along with her spiritual director, Father John Mush, belike of Knaresbrough, Margaret Clitherow was indicted in the Guildhall, York, at the Lent Assizes of 1586.

In 1578 the College of Douay was transferred by Cardinal Allen to Rheims (or Reims), where it remained for twenty-one years, when it was transferred back to Douay. Fathers William Pulleyn and Francis Ingleby were educated at the College at Rheims (or Reims). — See “Order of Queen Elizabeth,” dated last day of December, 1582, in Appendix postea where Reims is mentioned in248 connection with the popish missionary priests it was then sending forth into the City of York.[A]

There is a tradition to this day at Cowthorpe (or Coulthorpe, as it is pronounced by ancient inhabitants), near Wetherby, that Guy Fawkes was wont to visit that old-world village (until recently so quaint from its thatched farm-houses and cottars’ dwellings, and but little changed belike since the days of “Good Queen Bess”).

This tradition is certainly probably authentic; for a Roman Catholic family, named Walmsley, at that time lived at Cowthorpe Hall, a dignified “moated grange” between the Nidd and the historic “Cowthorpe Old Oak.” Guy Fawkes, possibly, many a time and oft, may have stabled his horse at the old Hall when, after fording at Hunsingore the shallow Nidd, he traversed the pleasant fields betwixt Cowthorpe and Ingmanthorpe, near Wetherby, where dwelt the family of Roos, who were, as above stated, allied by marriage to Guy’s friends, the Pulleyns, of Scotton.

Lastly; so intelligent a Yorkshire lad as was, beyond all doubt or cavil, the son of Edward Fawkes and Edith his wife — the lad whose manly but delicately-formed handwriting may be seen to-day by all who have the privilege of obtaining a sight of the precious document fac-similed in a well-known monthly periodical for November, 1901[A] — must249 have visited, I opine, Ribston Park, between Knaresbrough, Hunsingore, and Cowthorpe (where had been in mediæval times a celebrated Preceptory of the Knights Templars, the record of whose deeds against “the infidel Turk” may have fired Guy’s imagination from his earliest years). Moreover, Richard Goodricke, Esquire, of Ribston, had married Clara Norton, one of chivalrous, old Richard Norton’s daughters, of Norton Conyers; and this, to the popish youth, would be an additional attraction for going to view Ribston Hall, its chapel, park, and pale.[B]

The Goodrickes derived the Ribston Estate (which included the Manor of Hunsingore and the Lordship of Great Cattal) from Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk, William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle’s great-great-grandfather. The Goodrickes were akin to the Hawkesworths, who again were akin to the Fawkeses, and likewise to the Wards (see ante). The Ribston branch of the Goodrickes died out early in the nineteenth century — Sir Harry Goodricke being the last baronet. The ancient Ribston, Hunsingore, and Great Cattal demesne is now owned by Major Dent, of Ribston Hall, near Knaresbrough.

From “The Fawkes Family of York.”

Supplementum II.

1596, July 17. I have viewed the state of Worcester diocese, and find it, as may somewhat appear by the particulars here enclosed, for the quantity, as dangerous as any place that I know. In that small circuit there are nine score[A] recusants of note, besides retainers, wanderers, and secret lurkers, dispersed in forty several parishes, and six score and ten households, whereof about forty are families of gentlemen, that themselves or their wives refrain the church, and many of them not only of good wealth, but of great alliance, as the Windsors, Talbots, Throgmortens, Abingtons, and others, and in either respect, if they may have their forth, able to prevail much with the simpler sort.

Besides, Warwick[B] and the parts thereabout are freighted with a number of men precisely conceited against her Majesty’s government ecclesiastical, and they trouble the people as much with their curiosity as the other with their obstinacy.

How weak ordinary authority is to do any good on261 either sort long experience hath taught me, excommunication being the only bridle the law yieldeth to a bishop, and either side utterly despising that course of correction, as men that gladly, and of their own accord, refuse the communion of the church, both in sacraments and prayers.

In respect therefore of the number and danger of those divers humours both denying obedience to her Majesty’s proceedings, if it please her Highness to trust me and others in that shire with the commission ecclesiastical,[A] as in other places of like importance is used, I will do my endeavour to serve God and her Majesty in that diocese to the uttermost of my power.

First, by viewing their qualities, retinues, abilities, and dispositions; next, by drawing them to private and often conference, lest ignorance make them perversely devout; thirdly, by restraining them from receiving, succouring, or maintaining any wanderers or servitors that feed their humours; and, lastly, by certifying what effects or defects I find to be the cause of so many revolting.

Her Majesty hath trusted me fifteen years since to be of the quorum on the commission ecclesiastical in Hampshire, and therefore age and experience growing, as also my care and charge increasing, I hope I shall not need to produce any further motives to induce her Majesty’s favour therein, but the profession of my duty and promise of my best service with all diligence and discretion, which I hope shall turn to her content and good of her people.

With which my most humble petition, if it please you to acquaint her Majesty; I will render you all due262 thanks, and make what speed I may towards the place where I long to be and wish to labour to the pleasure of Almighty God and good liking of her Majesty.

The names and qualities of the wealthier sort of Recusants in Worcester diocese: —

The Lady Windsor, with her retinue.

M^r Talbot.

Thomas Abington Esq. and Dorothy, his sister.

Thomas Throgmorton, Esq.

John Wheeler gent. and Elizabeth his wife.

Thomas Bluntt gent. and Bridgett, his wife.

John Smyth gent. Thomas Greene, gent.

Hugh Ligon gent., and Barbara, his wife.

Michael Folliatt, gent., and Margaret, his wife.

William Coles gent., and Marie, his wife.

M^r Bluntt, gent. of Hallow.

Hugh Day gent. and Margaret, his wife.

Lygon Barton, gent.

John Taylor, gent., and Ann, his wife.

John Midlemore, gent., Hugh Throgmorton gent.

Humphrey Packington, gent.

John Woolmer gent. of Inkbarrow.

Rowse Woolmer, gent.

John Woolmer gent. of Kingston.

M^r Busshop gent. of Oldbarrow.

The names of the gentlewomen that refuse the church, though their husbands do not.

Margaret, wife of Roger Pen gent.

Jane wife of John Midlemore.263

Alice wife of John Hornyhold gent.

Margaret wife of William Rigby gent.

Mary wife of Thomas Sheldon gent.

Dorothy wife of Thomas Rauckford gent.

Ann wife of William Fox gent.

Joan, wife of Thomas Barber gent.

Prudence wife of Thomas Oldnall gent.

Frances wife of John Jeffreys gent.

Elizabeth wife of Thomas Randall gent.

Mary wife of William Woolmer gent.

Elizabeth Ferreys widow.

Jane Sheldon widow.

Katherine Sparks of Hinlipp.

Dorothy Woolmer.

Jane Mary Eleanor daughters of Anthony Woolmer gent.

Of the meaner sort: —

Fourscore and ten several households where the man or wife or both are recusants, besides children and servants.

264

Supplementum III.

It is probable that diligent search among the Cecil and Walsingham papers will shed more light on Thomas Ward (or Warde) than I have been able hitherto to gain.

The probabilities are, as has been already indicated, that Thomas Ward was a younger son of Marmaduke Ward, of Newby, and Susannay, his wife. That Marmaduke Ward’s elder son was Marmaduke Ward (who married Ursula Wright, and afterwards, in all likelihood, Elizabeth Sympson), the father of that extraordinary woman, Mary Ward.

I opine that Thomas Ward attached himself to the Court party of Queen Elizabeth, through the Council of the North, established by Henry VIII. after the defeat of the first Pilgrimage of Grace (1536).

Thomas Ward was just the sort of man (me judice) that Queen Elizabeth would affect. Moreover, I find that a Captain John Ward was on the side of the Crown on the occasion of the second Pilgrimage of Grace, commonly called the Rising of the North, or the Earls’ Rebellion (1569).

Therefore, through the influence of a man like Sir Ralph Sadler, who was a distinguished Privy Councillor of the Queen in the northern parts, a Yorkshire gentleman, such as a Ward, of Mulwith, Newby, and Givendale, would have no difficulty in obtaining an entrée at Elizabeth’s Court, who, as is well known, was, from a certain English conservative instinct probably, favourably265 inclined to those Catholics whose leaning was towards the easy side of things.[A]

Now, if Thomas Ward became a member of Elizabeth’s diplomatic service under Sir Francis Walsingham, the inevitable question arises: Can Thomas Ward (or Warde) have always maintained a conscience void of offence, or did he sometimes stoop to compliances which were unworthy of his principles and name?

At present I cannot say, yet I am constrained to allow that the following two pieces of evidence afford curious reading and suggest many possibilities: —

Hatfield MSS. — Part VI., p. 96.

Thomas Morgan to Mary Queen of Scots.

1585, Mar. 30./Ap. 9. Informs her of his apprehension at the request of the Earl of Derby. Mr. Ward’s negotiation to procure his being delivered up into England. Requires her support. Lord Paget’s money taken in his (Morgan’s) lodging. Efforts of Charles Paget and Thomas Throgmorton in his behalf.

[It is to be recollected that this said Thomas Morgan was a Catholic of a sort, who had been in the service of Archbishop Young, of York. Hence, a Ward, of Ripon and York, was the very man the subtle Walsingham would266 employ to negotiate a delicate matter requiring an accurate knowledge of Morgan’s intellectual and moral characteristics; for Ward most likely had known Morgan at York.]

Thirteen years later we find the name “Ward” again in the “Hatfield MSS.”

1598 Aug. 4. Steven Rodwey to secretary Cecil for permission to go to Italy to go over to accompany M^r Paget into Italy.

“The disgrace with your Honour I suspect to proceed, either of Lord Cobham’s disfavour at another man’s suit, which I have not deserved; or by the suggestion of Ward M^r Paget’s, solicitor, because I refused to carry his[A] letters that was so lately “jested” with high treason, and might father all the faults I am charged with.”

[Who or what Mr. Steven Rodwey was, one can only surmise. Possibly he was a spy, who had been doing more business on his own account than on account of his master. Hence, his disgrace with “his Honour.”

Charles Paget, a younger brother of Lord Paget, and his friend, Thomas Morgan, figure in all histories of Mary Queen of Scots; also in “Cardinal Allen’s Memorials,” Ed. by the late Dr. Knox (Nutt), there are some interesting particulars about these two men, Charles Paget and Thomas Morgan. They were hostile to Father Parsons and Parsons’ Spanish faction among the English papists.]

267

But here, for the present, we must take our leave of Thomas Ward, excepting to say that it is possible that he may be the same as the Thomas Ward (or Warde) who is mentioned several times in the “Household Books of Lord William Howard,” as his agent for the Howard-Dacre, Yorkshire, Durham, and Westmoreland estates.[A] — See Note to p. 231 ante.

The Right Honourable Charles James Howard ninth Earl of Carlisle, in the course of two most gracious replies to letters of mine, informs me that, although he has caused search to be made at Naworth and Castle Howard, he has not been able to find any particulars concerning Thomas Ward (or Warde) beyond what are mentioned in the “Household Books of Lord William Howard” (Surtees Soc.); and that probably, owing to the fire at Hinderskelfe Castle, after the time of Thomas Ward, letters or papers containing possible reference to him may have been destroyed.

Lastly; I beg to bring before my readers the following document from the Record Office, which makes mention of the name Ward; but whether or not that of Thomas Ward, of Mulwith, in the Parish of Ripon, I cannot say:268 —

Fyrst at conveniente tymes of receivinge the holye communion at which time he is to give warninge to all his parishioners for his privat comoditye he excepteth sume particuler persones whose names are under written and of them taketh money.

M^r Wardes[A] Two daughters.

M^r Gerrat his wiffe a watinge mayde called M^ris Marye and a man called Anthenie recevinge of him for theire absence divers somes of money and in my knowledge at Easter was Twoo yeares the some of xx^s in goulde.

M^r Saunders and his Two Sonnes certen unknowne money.

Besides M^ris Gerrat being delivered of a doughter aboute Twoe yeares since he did forbeare to cristen yt beinge bribed with a peece of money ye Chillde being Cristned in the house, by a priest and she churched by th’ afforsaide preist being knowne to this Fletcher.

Norris and Watson persevantes have been divers times latly in ye closse 269and Norris hath receved in ye way of borrowinge of sume V^s of others more. But Watson by vertue of a comission from my L. of Cant. hath latly serched Gerates house and M^r Wardes where he found nothinge at all they being partly privie before of his cominge. But in M^r Wardes house theire did latly remayne hidden under ye higest place of ye stares within a nayled boarde divers bookes [not specified] pictures and other folishe serimonyes.

Yt is an order amungst ye papistes for ye releyse of prisoners aswell Jesuytes as Laymen that there be a generall colleccion which beginneth at ye L. Mountegue and so by degree to ye meaner sorte for ye maytenance of three prisones in London, viz. the Klinke, the Marshallseas and Newgate which cesseth not tyll ye some of a hundred and ffyftye poundes be gathered quarterly which somme is sente by some trustye messinger to London where yt is comitted to dyvers mens handes apoynted by the cheyfe and from them to ye foresayde prysones.

Yt is further ordered for ye porer sorte of them beinge at libertie to have theire dyett at several houses kepinge certen dayes for theyre repayre to evereye house with certen money allowed to everye one at ye wekes end And yf any recusante dye a piece of money is bequeathed to ye porest sorte to saye dirge for theire sowles for a xii moneth to be payde weklye both to men and women tyll this money be spente And thus they lyve untyll ye lyke comoditye fall agayne.

270

[On p. 76 of Text, in Note 1 at foot of page, it is stated that the first Lord Mounteagle’s mother was Lady Eleanor Neville, sister to Richard Neville, the King-maker. But I find that, under “Stanley,” in Flower’s “Visitation of Yorkshire,” Ed. by Norcliffe (Harleian Soc.), the great grandfather of Edward Stanley first Lord Mounteagle, namely, Thomas Lord Stanley, is said to have married Eleanor, daughter to Richard Nevell Earl of Salisbury. Their son is given as George Lord Stanley; his son as Thomas Stanley first Earl of Derby; and his son as Edward Stanley first Lord Mounteagle, who married Elizabeth Lady Grey, daughter of Sir Thomas Vaughan, and whose son was Thomas second Lord Mounteagle.

But the “National Dictionary of Biography” (under “Stanley Earl of Derby”) says that Eleanor Countess of Derby (née Neville) was the daughter of Warwick, the King-maker. So the “learned” must be left to determine the truth upon the point.

Again; on p. 160 of Text, in Note at foot of page, I have stated that the young Lord Vaux of Harrowden was a descendant of Sir Thomas More.

But I find that that strong-minded lady his mother, Elizabeth Dowager Lady Vaux of Harrowden, was only distantly connected with Sir Thomas More. For she was descended from Christopher Roper, a younger brother of William Roper, who married Margaret More.

Hence, Christopher Roper is the ancestor of the Lords Teynham, of Kent, who, I believe, conformed to the Established Church after “1715,” as did many old English papist families.]

271

Supplementum IV.

On Sunday, the 22nd day of April, 1901, it fell out that the writer found himself sojourning in the good City of Ripon; a city which a few years ago, calling its friends and neighbours together, kept, amid high festival, the one thousandth anniversary of its own foundation: at Ripon, around the time-honoured towers of whose hallowed Minster abidingly cling memories, strong and gracious, of canonized Saints and beloved Apostles.[A]

“Hail, smiling morn!” I exclaimed, on seeing at an early hour the bright sunshine stream through my chamber windows. On this day of rest and gladness will I hie me to the sites of the ancient roof-trees of those whose graves, parted by long distances of space and time, are known to-day, for the most part, no longer to Man, but to Nature merely.

Not to you and to me, gentle reader, are those graves to-day known (save with one exception), but to the verdant grass, the crimson-tipped daisy, the golden celandine, who are pre-eminently faithful watchers by the272 dead. For steadfastly will they remain watching until the daybreak of an endless day.[A]

Having duly paid my orisons to heaven in the ancient manner, and having broken my fast with such fare as my place of sojourning bestowed, I set out upon my quest.

I set forth alone, yet not alone; for mine was the companionship of lively historical ideas. But as soon as I had journeyed about one mile to the south-east of Ripon, I perforce came to a halt. For my footsteps, on a sudden, had been arrested by the ear being struck with that most musical of natural sounds — the sound of living, gurgling, murmuring waters.

I hearkened again, being infinitely pleasured by such natural music. And, mending my pace somewhat, soon found myself at Bridge Hewick, looking down from the parapet of the old grey bridge upon the rushing, boulder-broken, glancing waters of the Ure, which, after gladdening fruitful Wensleydale, flows through Ripon; and after skirting Givendale and Newby, and laving273 “the green fields of England,” in front of Mulwith, hurries on towards Boroughbridge; thence to Myton, where, by the junction of the Ure and Swale, the Ouse[A] is formed, that majestic flood, which, with broad swelling tide, flows past the towers of York, the far-famed Imperial City, whose only peer in the western world is Rome.

I say I set out upon my quest for Givendale, Newby, and Mulwith alone, yet not alone; because I had the companionship of lively historical ideas.

Thus much is true. And more: for romantic fancy conjured up visions before my mental gaze during that sunny Rest-Day morning,

as I traversed those fair budding country-lanes, “made vocal by the song” of a thousand warbling birds, and paradisaical

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Yea, before my mind’s eye I seemed to behold, ever and anon, riding towards and passing me on horseback, to and fro, from east to west, and from west to east, the shadowy yet tall stately forms of Elizabethan gentlemen, in feathered hat, girded sword, and Ripon spurs; aye, and of Elizabethan gentlewomen likewise, in hooded cloak, white ruff, and pleated gown.

Sometimes the groups, methought, were accompanied by one showing a graver mien and more reverend aspect than the gentlefolk among whom he rode, although apparelled and equipped externally as they. The breviary, crucifix, and large jet rosary-beads which, in my phantasy, lay concealed within the last-named’s breast, would betoken that he was a priest of the ancient faith of the English people, although at that period one of such a vocation was, by law, counted a traitor to his sovereign.

But my day-dreams vanished: from a vivid realization of a near approach to Givendale, which was announced by a new guide-post visible to the eye of flesh. A few paces further of walking, under the boughs of noble interlacing trees, brought me by the gate leading to the dwelling-house to-day known as Givendale — that275 historic name. The old hall occupied a site most probably a little to the north of the present Givendale, and was surrounded by a moat. Leland, writing in the reign of Henry VIII., describes it as “a fair manor place of stone.” Lovely views does Givendale command of the valley of the Ure,[A] looking westward towards the sister valleys of the Nidd and Wharfe and Aire.

A kind wayfarer, whom I chanced to meet near Givendale, pointed out to me the way to Skelton, Newby, and Mulwith.

I had to retrace from Givendale my steps for Skelton; but I soon found from a second friendly guide-post that my good friend of a few moments before had directed my eager steps aright.

The faithful following towards the south-east of the high road, running parallel with the woods of Newby on my right, brought me in due course to Skelton, a large limestone village, characteristic of that part of the West Riding of Yorkshire.

I walked down the town street of Skelton and found that the Park-gates of Newby entered from the village.

I passed, on my left, the little chapel of Skelton, standing in its grave-yard, which, rebuilt in 1812, had taken the place of the chapel where once or twice a276 year, “after long imprisonment,” it is probable that Marmaduke Ward — though not Elizabeth, his wife, nor Mary, nor any of his other children — “against his conscience” went to hear read the Book of Common Prayer, in order to avoid the terrible penalty of having “to pay the statute,” that is, to pay £20 per lunar month by way of fine for “popish recusancy.”[A]

The Newby Hall of to-day, the seat of R. C. De Grey Vyner, Esquire, is a grand structure, having been designed by Sir Christopher Wren about the year 1705. In the Park is the beautiful Memorial Church, built by the late Lady Mary Vyner, in memory of her son, Frederick George Vyner, who was slain by Greek brigands in the year 1870.[B]

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One mile from Newby is Mulwith.[A] It is reached by what evidently has been an avenue in days of yore, connecting the two manor-houses.

The old hall of Mulwith was most probably a castellated mansion, quadrangular in shape, with a Gothic chapel, gateway, drawbridge, and moat, pretty much like Markenfield Hall, near Ripon, at the present day. There was a fire at Mulwith in the year 1593, we know from the “Life of Mary Ward.” And it may be, that the hall was then razed to the ground and never afterwards rebuilt.[B]

To-day Mulwith is a pleasant farmstead, built of brick with slated roof. It is a two-storied, six-windowed dwelling, with homestead, gardens, and orchards all adjoining.[C]

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In front of Mulwith still flows, as in the ancient days, the historic waters of the Ure.[A] On almost every side the eye is gladdened with woodland patches embroidering the horizon with that “sylvan scenery which never palls.”[B]

Hence, at last I was come to my journey’s end. For I had reached Mulwith, or Mulwaith, in the Parish of Ripon, whereof “Thomas Warde” is described, who married M’gery Slater, in the Church of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, York, on the 29th day of May, 1579.

Mrs. John Hardcastle and her son most kindly conducted me round the place once more; for I had visited Mulwith about ten years previously, with my sister, then approaching it from the east.

And on that Sunday evening (April 22nd, 1901), an evening calm and bright, to the sound of sweet church bells, again I satisfied historic feeling by the recollection of the Past; the sense whereof bore down upon me with a force too strong for words, “too deep,” too high, “for tears.”

“Many waters cannot quench Love; neither can the floods drown it.”

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Supplementum V.

On Monday, the 6th day of May, 1901, the writer had the happiness of accomplishing a purpose he had long had in mind, namely, that of paying a visit to Great Plowland (anciently Plewland), in the Parish of Welwick, Holderness, the birthplace of John and Christopher Wright, and also of their sister, Martha Wright, who was married to Thomas Percy, of Beverley. These three East Riding Yorkshiremen have indeed writ large their names in the Book of Fate. For, as the preceding pages have shown, they were among that woeful band of thirteen who were involved, to their just undoing, in the rash and desperate enterprise, known as the Gunpowder Treason Plot, of the year 1605, the second year of the reign of James I., King of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and progenitor and predecessor of our own Most Gracious King Edward VII. Long may he reign, a crowned and sceptred Imperial Monarch: and in Justice may his house be established for ever![A]

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The writer arrived at the town of Patrington (the post-town of Plowland) somewhat late in the afternoon. He had not been before; but he well knew that Patrington is famous, far and near, for its stately and exquisitely-beautiful church, so aptly styled “the Queen of Holderness,” the church of Hedon being “the King.”

After viewing the general features of the little town of Patrington, which, maybe, is but slightly changed since its main street was trodden by English men and English women of “the spacious days of Good Queen Bess,” I (to have recourse to the first person singular, if the liberty may be pardoned) went in search of some ancient hostelry such as wherein “Jack Wright, Kit Wright, and Tom Percy,” then in the hey-day of their youthful strength and vigour, quaffed the foaming tankard of the nut-brown ale, or called for their pint of sack, when William Shakespeare[A] was the Sir Henry Irving of his day, and was writing his immortal dramas for all Nations and all Time.

Such a house of entertainment “for man and beast” I found in the inn bearing the time-honoured and sportsmanlike sign of the “Dog and Duck”.

On entering the portals of this ancient hostelry the historic imagination enabled me to conjure up the sight of some of the gentlemen who, three hundred years ago, must have formed the company who assembled at the “Dog and Duck;” to discuss, maybe, a threatened Spanish invasion of England’s inviolate shores; “a progress” of the great Tudor Queen; or the action of her Privy Counsellors, Lord Burleigh, Sir Francis281 Walsingham, the Earl of Leicester, Sir Robert Cecil, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the ill-fated Robert Devereux Earl of Essex; or, belike, to sound the praises of that model of chivalry, Sir Philip Sidney, the General Gordon, Lord Bowen, and Matthew Arnold of his day, and the darling of his countrymen for ever.

If I had to content myself with the historic imagination alone for the sight of John Wright, one of the most expert swordsmen of his time; of Christopher Wright, who was a taller man than his brother, of a closer and more peaceable disposition; and of Thomas Percy, their brother-in-law, who was agent for his cousin, the great head of the House of Percy; and also for the vision of all those high-born, courageous, but self-willed, wayward Yorkshire Elizabethan gentlemen, in their tall hat, graceful cloak,[A] and short sword girded on their side, with their tinkling falcons on their wrist, with their cross-bows and their dogs: if I had to be content with imagination alone for all this, on that Monday, the 6th day of May, 1901, I had the sight and vision in the solid reality of flesh and blood of “mine host” of the “Dog and Duck,” who bade me welcome in right cheery tones; and, in answer to my question, told me he well knew Great Plowland, in the Parish of Welwick (being a native of those parts), and ever since he was a boy he had heard tell that some of the Gunpowder plotters had been at Plowland.[B]

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Soon was the compact made that that very evening, ere darkness came on, “mine host” should drive me to the site of where John Wright and Christopher Wright first beheld the light of the sun. (In view of the fact that the circumstantial evidence to-day available tends to prove that Christopher Wright was the repentant conspirator who revealed the Plot and so saved King James I., his Queen, and Parliament from destruction by exploded gunpowder, it may be easily conceived that I felt great eagerness to gaze on Plowland with as little delay as possible.)

A short drive brought my driver and myself within sight of the tall “rooky” trees, the blossoming orchard, the ancient gabled buildings in the background, and the handsome two-storied red-brick dwelling, all standing, on slightly rising ground, within less than a quarter of a mile from the king’s highway, which to-day are known as Great Plowland, in the Parish of Welwick, Holderness, in the East Riding of the County of York.

This, then, was the fair English landscape whereon the eyes of Christopher Wright had rested in those momentous years, from 1570 to 1580, when “the child is father of the man!” I exclaimed in spirit.

As we were entering through the gates of Plowland I made enquiry as to the name of the owner of this historic spot. I was informed that the gentleman to whom the ancestral seat of the Wrights, of Plowland, belonged resided on his own domain.

On reaching Plowland Hall (now Plowland House), Mr. George Burnham, of Plowland House, came forward, and, with frank, pleasant courtesy, never to be forgotten, assured me that I was at liberty to see the place where the two Gunpowder conspirators, John and Christopher Wright, had lived when boys.

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I alighted from my vehicle, and being joined by Miss Burnham, sister to Mr. Burnham, the owner of the estate, we all three examined the evident traces of the moat, the remains of what must have been the old Gothic chapel, and certain ancient buildings and doors in the rear, which were left intact when old Plowland Hall was taken down, shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century, to make way for the present Plowland House. — See Frontispiece to this Book for picture of Plowland House.

[The Burnhams, of Plowland, are the grandchildren of the late Richard Wright, Esq., of Knaith, near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. One of that gentleman’s descendants is Robert Wright Burnham, the eldest brother to the present owner of Plowland and his sister. The name Richard Wright is found in the Register of Christenings at Ripon Minster, under date 29th March, 1599, as the son of one John Wright, of Skelton.]

After taking leave of my kind friends, the “guardians” of Great Plowland, Mr. Robert Medforth, of the “Dog and Duck” hostelry, at Patrington, drove me to Welwick. A short survey of this characteristically East Riding Yorkshire village and its grey old Gothic church in its grave-yard, where John and Christopher Wright were christened, no doubt, brought the historical travels and explorations of Monday, May 6th, 1901, to a delightful and profitable close.

“Farewell, Plowland,” I interiorly exclaimed, when I turned myself in my conveyance, for the last time, to take the one last, lingering look, “Farewell, Plowland, once the home not only of those who ‘knowing the better chose the worse,’ and who, therefore, verified in themselves that law of Retribution, that eternal law of Justice, ‘the Guilty suffer,’ but also once the home of some of the284 supremely excellent of the earth. Farewell, Plowland, where Mary Ward, that beautiful soul, resided with Ursula Wright, her sainted grandmother, the wife of Robert Wright, the mother of Christopher Wright: where Mary Ward resided, during the five years, 1589 to 1594, before returning to her father’s house at Mulwith, in the Parish of Ripon, on the banks of the sylvan Ure.”

The Estate of Plowland came into the Wright family in the reign of Henry VIII., owing to John Wright, Esquire (a man of Kent), having married Alice Ryther, one of the daughters and co-heiresses of Sir John Ryther, of Ryther, on the banks of the “lordly Wharfe,” between York and Selby.

John Wright’s son, Robert, succeeded as the owner of Plowland (or Plewland). Robert Wright married for his second wife Ursula Rudston, whose family had been lords of Hayton, near Pocklington, from the days of King John. Ursula Wright was akin to the Mallory (or Mallorie) family, of Studley Royal, Ripon, and so a cousin in some degree to most of the grand old Yorkshire gentry, such as the Ingleby family, of Ripley Castle and of Harewell Hall, Dacre, near Brimham Rocks, in Nidderdale, and the Markenfields, of Markenfield Hall, near Ripon, to mention none others beside.[A][B][C][D] (This is shown by the Ripon Registers.)

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Robert Wright (the second Wright who owned Plowland) had been married before his marriage to Ursula Rudston. His first wife’s name was Anne Grimstone. She was a daughter of Thomas Grimstone, Esquire, of Grimstone Garth. Robert Wright and Anne Grimstone had one son who “heired” Plowland. His name was William Wright. He married Ann Thornton, of East Newton, in Rydale, a lady who was related to many old Rydale and Vale of Mowbray families in the North Riding of Yorkshire. The names of William Wright and Ann, his wife (born Thornton), are still recorded on a brass in the north aisle of Welwick Church.[A]

William Wright was half-brother to Ursula Ward, the wife of Marmaduke Ward, of Mulwith, Newby, and Givendale, near Ripon, the parents of the great Mary Ward, the friend of popes, emperors, kings, nobles, statesmen, warriors, and indeed of the most distinguished personages of Europe during the reigns of James I. and286 Charles I. William Wright (or Wryght, as the name is spelt on the brass in Welwick Church) was also half-brother to the two Gunpowder conspirators, John and Christopher Wright, who were slain at Holbeach House, Staffordshire, a few days after the capture of Guy Fawkes by Sir Thomas Knevet, early in the morning of November 5th, 1605.

The late Rev. John Stephens, Rector of Holgate, York, and formerly Vicar of Sunk Island, Holderness, told me, in September, 1900, that Guy Fawkes is said to have slept at Plowland Hall, on Fawkes’ departure for London for the last time, a tradition which is very likely to be authentic. For, as will be remembered, the Wrights, Fawkes, and Tesimond were old school-fellows at St. Peter’s School, in the Horse Fayre, Gillygate, York,[A] which had been re-founded by Philip and Mary, who likewise founded the present Grammar School at Ripon.

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Supplementum VI.

... You are quite correct in saying that the doctrine of Equivocation is the justification of stratagems in war, and of a great many other recognised modes of conduct.

But I despair of its ever finding acceptance in the minds of most Englishmen: since they will not take the trouble of understanding it; while, at the same time, they have not the slightest scruple in misrepresenting it. It is, of course (like most principles, whether of art, or of science, or of philosophy), not a truth immediately to be grasped by the average intellect, and, therefore, liable to much misapplication. Even the best-trained thinkers may frequently differ as to its comprehension of this or that particular concrete case.

Given the tendency of human nature, English or foreign, to shield itself from unpleasant consequences at the expense of truth, it is unsafe to supply the public with a general principle, which, precisely on account of its universality, might be made to cover with some show of reason, many an unwarrantable jeu de mots. There are many exceedingly useful drugs which it would be unwise to throw into the open market. Hence, I quite recognise the partial validity of the objection to the doctrine in question. But since the doctrine is so often thrust in the public face, it is as well it should appear in its true colours.

This leads me to a point which I think ought to be insisted upon, namely, that those features, which are288 most objectionable to Englishmen in the scholastic doctrine were devised by their authors with the intention of limiting the realm of Equivocation and of safeguarding the truth more closely.

All rational men are agreed that there are circumstances in which words must be used that are primâ facie contrary to truth — in war, in diplomacy, in the custody of certain professional secrets. In such instances the non-Catholic rule seems to be: Tell a lie, and have done with it. The basis of such a principle is Utilitarian Morality, which estimates Right and Wrong merely by the consequences of an action. The peripatetic philosopher, on the other hand, who maintains the intrinsic moral character of certain actions, and who holds mordicus to the love of truth for its own sake, is not content to rest in a lie, however excusable, but endeavours, for the honour of humanity, to demonstrate that such apparent deviations from truth are not such in reality. For he perceives in them two meanings — whence the name Equivocation — one of which may be true, while the other is false. The speaker utters the words in their true meaning, and that the hearer should construe them in the other sense is the latter’s own affair.

“Not at home” may mean “out of the house” or “not inclined to receive visitors.” It is the visitor’s own fault if he attaches the first meaning to the phrase rather than the second, or vice versâ.

No sensible man would consider a prisoner to be “lying” in his plea of “Not Guilty,” because a certain juryman, in his ignorant simplicity, should carry off the impression of the prisoner’s absolute, and not merely of his legal, innocence. Yet the plea may mean either both or only the latter.

Similarly, an impertinent ferretter-out of an important289 secret needs blame none but himself if he conceives the answer “No” to intimate anything else than that he should mind his own business.

As to such facts there is, I should say, an overwhelming agreement of opinion. That they differ from what we all recognise as a sheer “lie” is pretty evident. It is, therefore, convenient and scientific to label them with some other name, and the Scholastic hit upon the not inapt one of Equivocation.

The malice of lying consists, according to Utilitarian Philosophy, in the destruction of that mutual confidence which is so absolutely necessary for the proper maintenance and development of civilized life. But the Scholastic, while fully admitting this ground, looks for a still deeper root, and finds it in the very fact of the discrepancy between the speaker’s internal thought and its outward expression. The difference between the two positions may be more clearly apprehended in the following formula: — The first would define a lie as “speaking with intent to deceive;” whereas the second defines it “speaking contrary to one’s thought” (locutio contra mentem), even where there is no hope (and therefore no intent) of actual deception. The latter is clearly the stricter view, yet very closely allied with, and supplementing, the former. For we may perhaps say with Cardinal de Lugo — and à la Kant — that the malice of the discrepancy mentioned above lies in the self-contradiction which results in the liar, between his inborn desire for the trust of his fellow-men and his conviction that he has rendered himself unworthy of it — that he has, in other words, degraded his nature.

Now, where there do not exist relations of mutual confidence, such malice cannot exist. An enemy, a burglar, a lunatic, an impudent questioner, etc., are, in290 their distinguishing character, beyond the pale of mutual confidence — i.e., when acting professionally as enemies, burglars, etc.

In regard to such outlaws from society, some moralists would accordingly maintain that the duty of veracity is non-existent, and that here we may “answer a fool according to his folly.” If a burglar asks where is your plate, you may reply at random “In the Bank,” or “At Timbuctoo,” or “I haven’t any.” If a lunatic declares himself Emperor of China, you may humour him, and give him any information you may imagine about his dominions, etc.

Such is the teaching of, v.gr., Professor Paulsen, of Berlin, in his “System of Ethics,” in which he is at one with Scholasticism, though, I daresay, we should not follow him in all his applications of the principle. He prefers to call such instances “necessary lies,” whereas we should say they were not lies at all, because they would not be rightly considered to imply speaking strictly understood, that is, the communication of one’s mind to another. There is no real speech where there are no relations of mutual confidence. Practically, however, it is so far a question of name rather than of reality, of theory rather than of fact.

The doctrine of Mental Reservation seems to me to differ from that of Equivocation only in this, that Equivocation implies the use of words which have a two-fold meaning in themselves, apart from special circumstances, and are therefore logical equivoques. Thus to the question: “What do people think of me?” one might diplomatically reply: “Oh! they think a great deal!” which leaves it undetermined whether the thinking be of a favourable or unfavourable character.

But more commonly words, apart from special circumstances, have one definite meaning, e.gr., “Yes” or291 “No.” When Sir Walter Scott denied, as he himself tells us, the authorship of “Waverley” with a plain simple “No,” he was guilty of no logical Equivocation: but the circumstance that it was generally known that the author intended to preserve anonymity gave his answer the signification, “Mind your own business.” This is what I should call a moral equivoque. The Scholastics call it broad mental reservation (restrictio late mentalis). The origin of this terminology seems to me to lie in a bit of purism. Some moralists were not content with merely moral equivoques: they appear to insist on the junction with them of logical Equivocation; and so they would have directed the equivocator to restrict (and so double) the meaning of a word in his own mind. Thus to Sir Walter they would have said: “Don’t say ‘No’ simply, but add in your own head, ‘as far as the public is concerned,’” or something similar.

When this addition could not be conjectured by the hearer, it received the name of pure mental reservation (restrictio pure [or stricte] mentalis): as when one might say “John is not here” (meaning in his mind “not on the exact spot where the speaker stood”), though John was a yard off all the time. Such a position has not found favour in the body of Catholic moralists. They regard it as not only a useless proceeding, but as one which, although intended out of respect for truth, is liable, from its purely subjective character, to easy abuse.

But when objective circumstances (as in the case of Sir Walter) enable the hearer to guess at the double meaning and to suspend his judgment, then we have a case of broad mental reservation: for it is writ large in social convention that, where a momentous secret exists, a negative answer carries with it the limitation (restriction, reservation), “secrets apart.”

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I trust I have made it sufficiently clear that the doctrine of Equivocation, properly understood, has been devised in the interests of Veracity. That we may find in some writers, whether St. Alphonsus de Liguori or Professor Paulsen, particular applications in which we do not concur, surely does not affect the validity of the principle.

I may add that all Catholic theologians with whom I am acquainted limit its use by requiring many external conditions: v.gr., that the secret to be preserved should be of importance; that the questioner should have no right to its knowledge, etc. In one word, that the possible damage to mutual confidence resulting from the hearer’s self-deception should be less than that which would certainly accrue from the revelation of a legitimate secret.

No one feels more keenly than we do that to have resort to Equivocation is an evil rendered tolerable only in presence of a greater evil of the same nature; and I venture to say, from an intimate knowledge of my brother “religious,” that no one is less likely to recur to it, where only his own skin is concerned, than a Jesuit.

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APPENDICES.

Appendix A.

Circumstantial Evidence is indirect, as distinct from direct evidence. It is likewise mediate, as distinct from immediate.

Direct evidence is testimony that is a statement of what the witness himself has seen, heard, or perceived by the evidence of any one of his own five senses,[A] which testimony is directly given by a witness, to lead to the facts in issue, that is, the facts required to be proved in order to make out or to constitute the criminal case, or the civil cause of action, sought to be established, according to some rule of Law.

Indirect or mediate evidence is inferred from a relatively minor fact or relatively minor facts already directly proved.

This inference is drawn by a valid process of reasoning from a relatively minor fact or minor facts already directly deposed to by a witness, who may be a party interested in the case or cause, or a stranger-witness, either friendly or hostile.

Hence, Circumstantial Evidence is specially inferential and cumulative in its nature. It denotes the resultant of a method of knowledge, which has carried the Inquirer forward by successive stages of advancement.

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It implies the inferring of the unknown from the known; but from a known which has been itself transmuted from the unknown, at some point of time anterior to the making of the successive stage of advancement in the knowledge of the facts sought to be proved, and vindicated by some rule of Law.

The following interesting account of Evidence generally is from the pen of Mr. Frank Pick, of Burton Lodge, York, a student of the Law: —

Evidence is the collective term used to denote the facts whereby some proposition, statement, or conclusion is sought to be established or confirmed.

While, as thus defined, the term Evidence primarily denotes the actual known facts themselves which form the basis or point of departure, it connotes also a method or process in the development of those known facts to a resultant fact or opinion: and the resultant fact or opinion so obtained. The former is often styled Testimony.

This will be illustrated in Circumstantial Evidence, and in what is commonly styled “Expert Evidence,” though better, “Evidence of Opinion,” where a person from a consideration of certain facts not necessarily expressed (being likewise one specially competent to form an opinion where such certain facts are involved) gives an opinion which may be used as, and for similar purposes with, evidence as above defined.

The value of evidence, i.e., the completeness and efficiency with which it serves these ends, varies with, and the weight accorded to it in judgment is determined from, a review of the character or quality of the source whence these facts proceed; and the nature or proximity of the relation which they bear to the proposition, statement, or conclusion to be supported.

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As regards the character or quality of its source, evidence is distinguished into primary and secondary.

Primary Evidence is the witness or testimony of personal experience, whether shown in the spoken or written word or by conduct. Or it may be described as, on its positive side, the avowal or confession of fact of a person present knowingly, at the manifestation, in consciousness of the phenomenon to which the fact corresponds: on its negative side, as the denial or negation of fact similarly conditioned.

Secondary Evidence comprises all the manifold degrees of nearness or remoteness to primary evidence.

As all degrees are here included, it is sometimes said that there are no degrees of secondary evidence. This must not be misunderstood to mean that all secondary evidence is entitled to be received as of the same degree of credibility. For a further, and in some respects parallel, distinction to that lastly taken, arises as the speech is or is not deliberate, the writing authenticated, the conduct reasoned. And in every case partiality, bias, and prejudice are grounds not to be neglected in the ascertainment of accuracy and trustworthiness.

So far as regards the nature or proximity of the relation, evidence is either direct and immediate, or indirect and mediate, called circumstantial; as concerned rather with the surrounding circumstances leading to the proof of the presumed truth of a fact than with the fact itself.

Direct Evidence comprises those facts from which, if proved, the truth of the proposition, statement, or conclusion necessarily follows.

Circumstantial Evidence comprises those facts from which again may be inferred facts, whence the truth of the proposition, statement, or conclusion must necessarily follow.

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This inferential method is especially involved in Circumstantial Evidence. In all evidence there is a presumption open more or less to rebuttal, and evidence on this account is qualified as, e.g., primâ facie, conclusive. In Direct Evidence there is the presumption of the truth of the proposition, statement, or conclusion from the proven facts. In Circumstantial Evidence there is first an inference of directly connected facts, otherwise unknown or unevidenced from remotely connected facts, known or given in evidence; then there is further a presumption of the truth of the proposition, statement, or conclusion from these mediately established facts.

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Appendix B.

The above doctrine of the law of Evidence applies, of course, to whatever may be the nature or purpose of the Inquiry, whether conducted in a Court of Law, in the library of the historical scholar, or elsewhere.

The principle was soundly stated at the trial of “the Venerable” Martyrs, Fathers Whitbread, Harcourt, Fenwick, Gavan, and Turner, at the Old Bailey, by Sir William Scroggs, Knt., the Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, on the occasion of the Popish Plot Trials, in the year 1679.

“If it should be a mistake only in point of time, it destroys not the evidence, unless you think it necessary to the substance of the thing.

“If you charge one in the month of August to have done such a fact, if he deny that he was in that place at that time, and proves it by witnesses, it may go to invalidate the credibility of the man’s testimony, but it does not invalidate the truth of the thing itself, which may be true in substance, though the circumstance of time differ; and the question is, whether the thing be true?” Quoted in Morris’s “Troubles: The Southcote Family,” first series, p. 378 (Burns & Oates). (The italics are mine.)

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Appendix C.

Part I.

S^r Everard Digby, Knight

Rob^t Winter

John Winter

John Grant

Tho: Percy

Tho: Winter

Rob^t Acton

Henry Morgan

Christopher Litleton

Lodwicke Grant, who was taken the 9 of Novemb: & confessed there was lodged in Holbage House to the number of 60 Persons.

Tho: Grant

Will^m Cooke

Rob^t Higgins

Christopher Wright

Rob^t Rookwood

M^r Henry Hurleston, Sonne & Heire of Sir Edward Hurleston[A]301

Tho: Anderton[B]

John Clifton[C]

Mathy Batty, late Servant to the Lord Monteagle

Willm Thornberry} Servants to Mr. Hurleston

Henry Sergeant }

Stephne Bonne}

Richard Daye } Servants to S^r Everard Digby

Willm Eadale }

James Garvey }

Rob^t Abram

Rob^t Osborne

Christopher Archer

Ambrose Fuller

Willm Howson

Francis Grant

Richard Westberry

Tho: Richardson

Edward Bickerstaffe

Will Snow

John Facklins

Francis Prior

Tho: Darler, Servant to M^r Rob^t Monson

Reginald Miles, Servant to Sir Willm Engleston

Tho: Rookwood, of Claxton, in Warwickshire

Richard Yorke } Suspected Persons usually resorting

Marmaduke Ward} to M^r Winter, M^r

Rob^t Key } Grant & M^r Rookwoods

Rob^t Townsend, of St. Edmund Berry

The Lord Mountacute} Are all comitted to the

The Lord Mordant } Tower

M^r Francis Tressam}

302

The Earle of North: is in the Custody still of the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.

This was Henry Percy Earl of Northumberland, W.C.

My Lady Mordant

M^ris Dorothy Grant

M^ris Helyn Cooke

M^ris Mary Morgayne

M^ris Anne Higgins

M^ris Martha Percy

M^ris Dorothy Wright

M^ris Margaret Wright

M^ris Rookwood

See Mr. Dod’s “History of Catholick Church,” vol. ii., p. 331, W.C.

[N.B. — This MS. consists of extracts from the Collections of the Rev. Mr. Rand, Rector of Leverington and Newton, in the Isle of Ely.]

Part II.

Ther hath bine at Clapton[A] w^th M^r Ambrous Rucwod

303Mr. Jhon Grant ther is with m^es Rucwood M^es Ceo (?) m^es munson and others and to of his britherin

m^r Wintor

m^r Bosse

m^r Townesend

m^r Ceo (?) w^th on m^r Thomas a Cynesman of M^r Rucwoode

m^r Ryght

Allso mye pepeoll hath seene ther

Se^r Edward bushell

m^r Robeart Catesbee

with diuers others which I can not nam unto youer honer.

(Endorsed) Clopton.

304

Appendix D.

This Examinat sayith that xpofer Wright cam to S^t Gilis in the ffeild to the Maydenhead there vpon Weddnesday laste & sent Wilt Kiddle (that cam vp w^t him as his man) to Westm the same night for this Examinat to come & speek w^th him, which this Examinat did com thither vpon Thursday morning, when Wrights request was to him to fetch his child which he had at nurss some 13 myles off. And Kiddle & this Examinat went vpon ffriday brought the child vpon Satterday to St. Giles & carryed it away agen vpon Sonday which night this Examinat returned back to Westm and lay there at his owne lodging, the next morning being monday this Examinat went to S^t Gyles to speak w^t M^r Wright only vpon Kiddle’s intreaty & not fynding M^r Wright there he retorned towards London & mett M^r Wright in S^t Clem^t ffeilds, at which tyme Wright sent this Examinat to S^r ffrancis Manners w^th a message concerninge a kinsman of M^r Wrights that serveth M^r Manners after which tyme this Examinat did not see the sayd Wright.

This Examinat sayeth that he saw the sayd Wright onely 4 tymes since Wright last coming to London, viz., vpon Thursday morning when he came first vnto him upon Satterday night when he brought his child, vpon Sonday morning when he carryed the child away, and305 vpon monday at noone when he mett of the back syd of S^t Clem^ts

306

Appendix E.

He sayeth that yesterdaye aboute three of the Clocke in the afternoone one m^r wryght was at this Ex masters howse And there boughte three beaver hatts and payde xj^£[A] for them This Ex went w^th the sayde wryght and caryed the hatts to wrighte lodgyng at the Mayden heade in S^t Gyles where m^r wryght & this Ex went into the howse And then wryght went to the Stable and dyd aske yf his man were come the hosteler sayde that he came longe synce, then wryght dyd aske for his horse whether he were readye or no and the hosteler sayde he was Then the sayde wryght went into his Chamber and wryghte man dyd will this Ex to go in And the sayde wryghte man went downe the Stayres And this Ex went into M^r Wryghte Chamber and delyvered the hatts to him And wryght dyd looke uppon the hatts and gave this Ex vj^d for his paynes and then he depted.

307

Appendix F.

He saieth that his Master M^r Ambrose Rookewood whoe dwelleth at Coldhame Halle in Suff came from thence uppon Wensday last and noe more w^th him but this exaite and Thomas Symons another of his servaunte.

He saieth his Master hath layen en sithence Thursday last at one Mores howse w^thout Temple Barre and thear lay w^th him the last night and the night before a talle gent having a reddish beard.[A]

He saieth his Masters horsses stood in drewery Lane at the grey hound.

He saieth his Master & the other gent went forth this morning about 8 of the clock and his Master stayed not forth above an hower before he came in againe and then going in & out some time about x of the clock went alone to his horsse to ryde away in to Suff. and willed this exaite and his fellowe to come after him to morowe.

He saieth his M^rs as he hath hard lyeth in warwick shere whear he knoweth not for he hath not benn w^th his M^r that nowe is aboue a senight.

308

Appendix G.

He sayeth that M^r Rockwood whos father marryed M^r Tirwhyte mother about the Begynyng of the last Som vacac dyd bespeke the puttyng of a Spanyshe Blade off hys into a Sword hilte and appoynted the hylth to have the Story of the passyon of Christ Richly Ingraved, and now w^thn these Syxe dayes cawsed that hylth being enamlled and Rychly sett forth to be taken of and the handle to be new wrought of clere gold and the former hylth w^th hys story to be putt on agayne and delyvered yt unto m^r Rockewood upon Monday last at xj of the Clocke at nyght at his Chamber at m^r Mores and m^r Wynter a pp Gentylman of about xxx yeares or vpward who lyeth at the Syng of the Docke an Drake beyond putrycke in the Strand and ys a great Companyon w^th m^r Catesby m^r Tyrwhyt and m^r Rockwood hadd a Sword w^th the lyke Story and was delyvered hym on Sunday last at nyght but not so Rychly sett forth as the form for w^ch he payed in all xij^£ x^s pt about a quarter of a yeare past at the bespeken thereof and the Rest on Sonday last and this term an other Gentylman of that Cupany being a Blacke man of about xl yeares old bespake a lyke Sword for the story & shuld pay vij^ti for yt gave hym x^s in Ernest he ys yet out of Towne and the 309Sword remayneth w^th thys Exam Christopher Wryght was often w^th thys M^r Rockwood at thys Exam shoppe and he hadd the said Wryghte jugmet for the worcke and Syse of the Blade.

310

Appendix H.

I have sent vnto yo^r L. herin Inclosed the Copye off the declarac off Mr Tatnall, off two that passed the fylde thys mornyg wherof some Suspycyon may be gathered off confederacy he observed them so as he hopeth he may mete w^th them and therfore I have gevin hym a warrant to attach them a lyke note yo^r L shall receave herin off an expectacn that M^rs Vaux hadd off some thyng to be done and I know yt by such a means as I assured my selff the matter is trewe and both Gerrard and Walley the Jesuyte make that the chefest place of their accesse and therfore lyke she may knowe Some what both M^r Wenman hym selff & the lady Tasbard do knowe of this wherfore howe farre forth thys shalbe fytt to be dealt in I humbly leave to yo^r L consyderacn Chrystoffer Wright and M^r Ambrose Rokewood were both together yesternyght at x of the Clocke and vpon ffryday last at nyght they were together at M^r Rokwoode lodgyng and this forenoon Rokwood Rode away into Suffolke about xj of the clocke alone leavyng both hys men behynd hym one Keyes a Gentylma that lay these two last nyghte w^th m^r Rokewood and gave hym hys lodgyng went away also about eight off the clocke for w^ch Keyes I have layed weyet This Rokwood ys of Coldham hall in Suffoke one of the most dangerous houses in Suffolke he marryed m^r Tyrwhytte Syster & she ys now in Warwykshere Chrystoffer Wright as I thyncke lay this last nyght in St. Gyles and yf he be gone yt ys Lyke he ys gone into Warwykesher where I hyer John Wryght311 Brother unto Chrystoffer ys marryed ther were thre hatts bought yesterday in the afternoone by Chrystoffer Wryght the ar for his Brother and two others for two Gentylwomen they cost xj^£ and after that about ix of the Clocke at nyght Chrystoffer Wryght cam again to that haverdasshers and Boughte two hatts more for two Servante unto a Gentylman that was w^th hym he thyncks that Gentylman was called Wynter but I dowbt that mans name ys mystaken Ther cam a yong Gentylman w^th this wryght w^thin these fewe dayes that gave to Cutler here by xix^£ xv^s for a Sword whom I am in some hoep to dyscover by the Sword and other cyrcumstance and even so I humbly take my leave of yo^r L at Serienty Inn the v^th of november 1605.

(P.S.) I have this mornyg the vi^th noveber dyscovered where Wynter [is] w^th the matter which I have delyverd to m^r Att^rney wherof happely yo^r L may make good vse I wyll see yf I can mete w^th m^r Wynter Walley the jesuyt and Strang as I am Informed are now at ffrance Brownes pcke about Surrey as I take yt and Sundry letters lately sent over are yet Remaynyng at fortescues house by the Wadropp but yt wylbe hard to fynd any thyng in that house.

312

Appendix I.

O^r humble dutyes remembred. We have this day apprehended & deliwed to his Ma^ty messenger Berrye the bodie of M^ris Graunt, from whom we gathered that Percyes wief was not farre of, whervppon wee made search in the most lykely place and have even since night apprehended her in the house of M^r John Wright, and have thought fitt to take this opportunitie to send vpp to yo^r honors’ w^th the said M^ris Graunt aswell the said M^res Percye as alsoe the wives of other the principall offenders in this last insurrection as appeth by the Kallender heerinclosed by whos exaiacons we thinke some necessary matters wilbe knowne.

M^r Sherief taketh care & charge of these woomens children vntill yo^r honors pleasures be further knowne.

ffrom Warr this xij^th of November 1605

313

Appendix J.

This Last Vacatio Guy faux als Jhonson did hier a barke of Barkin the owners name Called paris wherein was Caried over to Gravelinge a ma[A] supposed of great import he went disguised and wold not suffer any one ma to goe w^th him but this Vaux[B] nor to returne w^th him This paris did Attend for him back at Gravelyng[C] sixe weekes yf Cause quier there are severall proffs of this matter.

314

Appendix K.

The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle’s Letter.

I well remember accompanying you to the Record Office, Chancery Lane, London, W.C., on Friday, the 5th of October, 1900, when we saw the original Letter to Lord Mounteagle and the Declaration of Edward Oldcorne of the 12th March, 1605-6.

As soon as I began to compare the two documents I noticed a general similarity in the handwritings; although the handwriting of the Letter to Lord Mounteagle was evidently intended to be disguised. The letters were not uniform in their slant, and seemed, as it were, to be “staggering about.” There was also, certainly, a particular similarity in the case of certain of the letters.

I have for the last seventeen years had great experience in transcribing documents of the period of Queen Elizabeth and James I.; and, in my opinion, it is at least probable that the Letter to Lord Mounteagle and the Declaration of the 12th March, 1605-6, signed by Edward Oldcorne, were by one and the same hand.

315

Appendix L.

Having recently learnt that Professor Windle, M.D., F.R.S., Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Birmingham, had written two books descriptive of the Midland Counties, Warwickshire and Worcestershire, with part of Herefordshire, “Shakespeare’s Country,” and “The Malvern Country” (Methuen & Co.), I ventured to write to him respecting the roads from Lapworth to Hindlip (traversed on horseback, I conjecture, by Christopher Wright, about the 11th October, 1605); and from Hindlip to Gothurst, three miles from Newport Pagnell (traversed on horseback, I conjecture, by Ralph Ashley, between the 11th October and the 21st of October); and from Coughton to Huddington, and thence to Hindlip (traversed on horseback, as we know with certitude, by Father Oswald Tesimond, on Wednesday, the 6th November, 1605).

I append Dr. Windle’s most kind and courteous reply for the benefit of my readers. I may say that his opinion is largely corroborative of former opinions as to distances given to me independently by the Rev. Fr. Kiernan, S.J., of Worcester; and the Rev. Fr. Cardwell, O.S.B., of Coughton; as well as of those given by the gentlemen whose names occur in the Notes to the Text — the Rev. Fr. Atherton, O.S.B., of Stratford-on-Avon; Charles Avery, Esq., of Headless Cross; and George Davis, Esq., of York. (I understand that Mr. Avery wrote to the Vicar of Coughton, the parish wherein Coughton Hall, or Coughton Court, is situated, respecting my inquiry. I desire, therefore, to express my thanks to that reverend gentleman, as well as to the reverend the316 Vicar of Great Harrowden, Northamptonshire, for certain information which the latter likewise most readily vouchsafed to me a few months ago.)

...

“With respect to the distances which you wish to know, I have taken them out as well as I can, and I think they will be exact enough; but, of course, I have had to work from modern maps, and I cannot be certain that all the roads now in existence were there in the time of James I. You will observe that most of our great roads, near the parts you mention, run approximately North and South, so that you want cross-roads.

“I expect from what I hear of that part of the county that the roads I have taken are fairly old, or at least represent bridle tracks. I think they may fairly be taken as representing the way by which a horseman would travel. With this preface I now give the figures: —

“1. Lapworth to Hindlip — as the crow flies, nineteen — via Tutnal and Bromsgrove I make it twenty-two miles, and I think this is the most likely route. There were Catholic houses at both Tutnal and Bromsgrove.

“2. Coughton to Hindlip — twelve as the crow flies — about fourteen I make it by road — but I am not sure that the first piece I have used is an old road. But fifteen miles would do it, if the more devious path had to be taken.

317

“3. Huddington is four from Hindlip as the crow flies; going by road by Oddingley I should make it five.

“4. By the route I should go, if I were cycling, I should take

“It would be about the same distance from Hindlip; for from that place you can get into the Worcester and Stratford-on-Avon road by a bye-road.

“I hope this information may be of service to you, and if I can help you any further, pray apply to me.

318

Appendix M.

Since hearing from Professor Windle, M.D., of Birmingham, I have received the following letter from Lieutenant-Colonel Carmichael, the Chief Constable of Worcestershire, which my readers will be glad to see, I am sure. The difference in Professor Windle’s statement of distances and that of Colonel Carmichael is probably to be accounted for by the turns in the road, as well as other differences in the basis of calculation.

“Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle’s Letter.

“Adverting to your letter of the 14th inst., re the above, I am forwarding you, as under, the required distances (by road), which are as accurate as I can possibly ascertain, viz.: —

319

Appendix N.

Assembled in the Counsell Chamber upon Ousebridg the day and year abovesaid when and where the Queen’s Maties Comission to my Lord Maior and Aldermen directed was openly redd to these present the teno^r wherof hereafter enseweth word by word: —

By the Queene

Right trustie and welbeloved we greet you well wheras the great care and zeale we have had ever since our first coming to the crowne for the planting and establishing of God’s holie Word & trew religon w^thin this o^r Realme and other our dominions haith ben notoriouslie knowen unto all o^r Subjects aswell by sundry lawes & ordinances maid and published for the true serving of god and adminstracon of the Sacraments As by divers Commissions and other directions gyven out from us for that purpose to th’end that therby our Subjects being trayned up in the feare and true knowledge of god might the better learne ther dutie and obedience towards us; and yet neverthelesse sondry lewde and evill affected psons to our present estate by nature o^r Subjects borne, but by disloyaltie yelding ther obedience to other forraine potentats have of lait yeares entred into certayne societies in the partyes beyond the Seas, as in the Cyttie of Reimes and other places carreyinge the names of Semynaries & Jesuits where being trayned upp and as it were full fraught with all erronious and detestable320 doctrine they have and do dailie repare over disguised and in most secreet manner into this o^r Realme and especiallie into this o^r County of the Cyttie of Yorke where they are in sondry places well entertained and harbored, by meanes whereof they have not onelie malitiously gone about to seduce and pervert the simple sort of our good subjects in matters of religion but also have practised most unnaturailie trayterouslye to wthdraw them frome their naturall dewties and allegiance towards us Sowing even according to the name they have receved abroad the vere sede of all sedicon and conspiracye amongst o^r people. And all be it we conceved that ther Rebellious harts and practises being thoroughlie discovered as well by the lait trayterous attempts of some of them in o^r Realme of Irland as by the treasonable actions of others w^thin this our Realme And ther obstinate and sedicious manner of dyeing when being justlie condempned by our lawes they have suffered death for the same Yow wold most carefullie and diligentlie have loked into the seeking owt and apphending of such wicked psons, being a matter of so great consequence to our service and tending princepallie to the publique quiet of o^r wholl State and to the p’ticuler saftie of every of our good subjects: and the rather for that our pleasure on that behalf haith often and sundry wayes ben signified unto yow And for the execucion wherof yow have not wanted sufficient authoritie. Yet notwithstanding, smale care or none at all haith ben had to annswere o^r expectacon and trust reposed in yow so as we might juslie be drawen to thinke hardlie of yow if we were not pswaded that yow have rather neglected yo^r duties for some other respect than for want of good affection to our service. We have thought good therfor 321oftsons to renew unto yow the remembrance of yo^r duties, and do hereby straightlie charge and command yow and ev’ye of yow to have a greater care & moare continewall circumspection on that behalf and by all the good and discreet meanes yow may to make diligent enquirie and searche w^thin yo^r severall wardes and devisions for all manner of popish preasts, Jesuits Semynaries and such like psons as yow shall have vehement cause to suspect to be malitious and obstinate mistakers of the religeon by us established and of our present estate and the same to apprehend and send under safe custodie unto our right trustie and welbeloved cosine E. of Huntington President of our Counsell in these partes and in his absence to our Counsell here. And further we will yow to have a speciall regard that such persons as shall ether willinglie absent themselves from the church or shall any way deprave the order of comen praer & of the holie sacraments now established w^thin this realme or shall malitiously abuse the ministers of the same or shall by anie other meanes show themselves obstinate & contemptous in matters concerning religeon may be throughlie p’ceded w^th according to o^r Lawes wherein o^r meaning is that yow should especiallie deale with principall persons who (we assure our selves) do by ther evill example drawe and encouradg the Inferior sort to continew in ther blindnes and disobedience and so requiring yow to procede and continew in the execution hereof in such diligent manner as we may have cause to think yow desier thereby to repare the falts of your former negligence and to dischardge yourselves in your duties according to our expectacon and the trust we comitt to yow. We recomend the due accomplishment of all the p’misses unto your discreet and diligent proceding herein. Whereof yow may not fayle as yow tender o^r favo^r. 322Geven under o^r Signet at o^r Cyttie of Yorke the last of December 1582 the 25^th yeare of o^r reigne.

And by hir Counsell.

(Addressed to) To our right trustie and welbeloved the Maio^r of our Cittie of Yorke and to the Aldermen his bretheren. (On the back.)

M^r Harbart M^r Robinson Maister Maltby M^r Appleyard M^r Trew & M^r May, Aldermen, are appoynted by these presents to view the Chambers upon Ousebridge & Monckbarr tomorrow at after none & to see whether of the same be most mete for the pson for Churche persons as will fullie resist to come to Church to the intent the same may be forthwith repared for that purpose.[A]

323

Note as to authenticity of “Thomas Winter’s Confession,” at Hatfield.

Whilst greatly admiring the erudition and dialectical skill displayed by the Rev. John Gerard, S.J., in his recent Gunpowder Treason Works, mentioned in the Prelude to this Book, I am of opinion that the Confession attributed to the conspirator, Thomas Winter, is authentic. The internal evidence for the genuineness of this document is too strong (me judice) to be upset.

It is true that the change in the form of signature is undoubtedly a suspicious circumstance; but such change was probably due to a desire, on the prisoner’s part, to let “a great gulf be fixed” between “Thos. Wintour,” the free-born gentleman, and “Thomas Winter,” the inchoately attainted traitor.

Moreover, the name Winter, or Wynter, was, at that time, certainly spelt with the “er” as well as with the “our,” just as the name “Ward” was spelt either with the final “e” or without the same. For instance, in Flower’s “Visitation of Yorkshire,” Edited by Norcliffe (Harleian Soc., London), Jane Ingleby is stated to be the “Wyff to George Wynter son and heyr of Robert Winter of Cawdwell in Worceshyre.”

One would like to see from the pen of the Rev. John Gerard a translation of Father Oswald Tesimond’s Italian Narrative, known as “Greenway’s Manuscript.” Tesimond, it is almost certain, knew the bulk of the plotters more intimately than did the seventeenth century Father Gerard. Therefore, Tesimond’s Narrative, pro tanto, must surpass in value even the work of the Father Gerard of three hundred years ago.

327

NOTES.

332

334

336

337

343

369

380

383

388

391

396

400

402

405

410

Sub-note to Note 178.

In 1572 John Oldcorne, we are told, was one of the four “sworn men against the late rebels and other evil-disposed people suspected of papistry, for St. Sampson’s parish.” This is very interesting; for on the 22nd day of August, 1572, at three o’clock in the afternoon, “the Blessed” Thomas Percy, “the good Erle of Northumberland,” was beheaded in The Pavement, at the east end of All Saints’ Church. He was buried in old St. Crux Church, adjoining The Pavement; and it is possible, I conjecture, that John Oldcorne may have been sworn in as a special constable to help to keep the peace on the occasion of the beheading of the Earl, who held the hearts of nine-tenths of the people of York and Yorkshire, as well as of “the North Countrie” generally, at the time of his long and deeply lamented death.

The York “Tyburn,” in the middle of the Tadcaster High-road, opposite Hob Moor Gate, Knavesmire, was abolished at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

John Oldcorne, the father of Father Edward Oldcorne, is described as a Bricklayer as well as a Tiler. I think he was a “Master,” in partnership, maybe, with his brother, Thomas Oldcorne, a great sufferer for the Catholic Faith, whose wife, Alice, died — a prisoner for her conscience — in the Kidcote, on Old Ouse Bridge, and whose body was buried on Toft Green, near to Micklegate Bar. — See Foley’s “Records,” vol. iv. — The name Oldcorne is not now found in the City of York.

411

FINIS.

A task at once pleasurable and laborious is at length accomplished, and the writer humbly sends forth into the world his modest contribution towards the literature of the Gunpowder Treason Plot.

Errors, whether in matters of Fact or in points of Reasoning and Argument, the author will be gratefully obliged by his readers at an early date pointing out to him.

Should his book be read by any of our kith and kin in His Most Gracious Majesty’s Dominions beyond the seas, whom “the stern behests of Duty” have bidden “with strangers make their home,” as well as by professed students of History and the general citizen reader in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, then will be the writer’s joy great indeed.

The author desires to tender his respectful and cordial thanks to the Authorities of the following Libraries for the use of their valuable, and not seldom invaluable, works: — (1) The Minster Library, York; (2) the Minster Library, Ripon; (3) the British Museum, London; (4) the Free Library, York; (5) the Free Library, Leeds; (6) the Free Library, Preston; (7) the Free Library, Wigan; and (8) the Albert Library, York.

Also the like thanks to the following persons of divers nationalities, creeds, and parties. Their aid and assistance have been of various kinds: sometimes the loan of rare and costly books for a twelve-month together;412 in certain cases, advice and counsel; in other cases, the revising of proof sheets, the translation from foreign tongues, and the transcription of Elizabethan and Jacobean documents: —

To the Rev. F. A. Russell, York, formerly of India; the Rev. Edmond Nolan, B.A., St. Edmund’s House, Cambridge; the Rev. Richard Sharp, S.J., Skipton-in-Craven, Yorks.; the Rev. George Machell, York; the Rev. Louis Tils, York, formerly of Germany; the Rev. H. Rawlings, M.A., York, formerly of South Africa; the Rev. T. Harrington, Brosna, Co. Kerry, Ireland; the Rev. H. A. Geurts, Bishop Thornton, Ripon, Yorks., formerly of Holland; the Rev. E. J. Hickey, Lartington, North Yorks.; A. E. Chapman, LL.D., York; A. Neave Brayshaw, B.A., LL.B., York; Oswald C. B. Brown, York, Solicitor (author of “The Life of the Venerable Richard Langley: a Martyr of the Yorkshire Wolds”); G. Laycock Brown, York, Solicitor; Miss Emma M. Walford, 45, Bernard St., Russell Square, London, W.C.; Miss Georgina Kirby, York House, Middlesbrough, Yorks.; Mr. Ralph Currie, York; and Mr. John Sampson, York.

Lastly, to all other kind friends who may have rendered assistance, but whose names do not occur either in the work itself or in the above-mentioned list, the writer begs to offer his sincere acknowledgments.

Transcriber’s Note: Blank pages have been deleted. Footnotes with alphabetic tags now generally follow the referencing paragraph. Footnotes with numeric tags are located near the end of the work. The publisher’s inadvertent omissions of important punctuation have been corrected. Duplicative book and chapter front matter has been removed. The book cover image possibly seen in the web pages that access this ebook is from hathitrust.org.

The following list indicates any additional changes made. The page number represents that of the original publication and applies in this etext except for footnotes and illustrations since they may have been moved.

Page          Change

  2  See Notes at End of Text, indicated by figures in ( )[[ ]]
  2  ['Local' footnotes are indicated with A-Z, not numerals.]
168  This lady was the the[Delete.] above-named Dowager
174  Anglo-Saxon compeers as belonging [to] a comparatively inferior
176  his aid for the rebellion.[Omitted footnote tag added here.]
192  the point of a needle?”[Omitted footnote tag added here.]
248  owned by the Rev. Charles Slingsby Slingsby[Delete.],
251  and from tyme to to[Delete.] tyme,
306  William Grauntham[Grantham].
387  Again; Fawkes, we are told by Endæmon[Eudæmon],