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

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.

[A] Mush may have been of the Mushes, of Knaresbrough, stanch Catholics, but in humble circumstances.— See Peacock’s “List.”

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

“My very loving Sir,

“This I write from the elder Nicholas[A] his residence where I find my hostess with all her posterity very well; and we are to go within few days nearer London.”

[A] Father Nicholas Hart, S.J., as distinguished from Brother Nicholas Owen, S.J.

The letter then says:—

“The judges now openly protest that the King will have blood and hath taken blood in Yorkshire.”[B]

[B] The “Venerable” Thomas Welbourn and John Fulthering suffered at York on the 1st August, 1605; and William Brown at Ripon on the 5th September.— See Challoner’s “Missionary Priests.” Ed. by T. G. Law (Jack, Edinburgh).

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:—

“I cease 4th Octobris.”

The fourth paragraph then continues:—

“My hostesses both and their children salute you. Sir Thomas Tresham is dead.”[C]

[C] The hostesses would be those valiant women, Elizabeth Dowager Lady Vaux of Harrowden (nÉe Roper), the Honourable Eleanor Brookesby, and the Honourable Anne Vaux. William Lord Vaux of Harrowden, who harboured Father Parsons in 1580-81, had married for his second wife a sister of Sir Thomas Tresham. This Lord Vaux’s eldest son Ambrose, a priest, resigned his title in favour of his half-brother the Honourable George Vaux, afterwards Lord Vaux of Harrowden. The first wife of William Lord Vaux was Elizabeth Beaumont, of Gracedieu, Leicestershire. She was the mother of Ambrose, Elizabeth, and Anne Vaux. Father Garnet for many years lived at Harrowden, from 1586 as the guest of William Lord Vaux, whose son, George Lord Vaux of Harrowden, married Elizabeth Roper, daughter of the first Lord Teynham. This lady was the above-named Dowager Lady Vaux of Harrowden, mother of Edward Lord Vaux of Harrowden, who became as “noble a confessor for the Faith” as were his numerous other relatives. (The present Lord Vaux of Harrowden, whose family name is Mostyn, is descended from the above-mentioned Lords Vaux, through the female line.)

Here ends the body of the letter.

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