  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 “Such as are apt to interpret all things to the worst, will not believe other but that Lord Mounteagle might in a policy cause this letter to be sent, fearing “Early on the Monday [vere Tuesday] morning, the Earl of Worcester was sent to Essex House to signify the matter to the Earl of Northumberland, whom he found asleep in his bed, and hath done since his best endeavour for his apprehension ... Some say that Northumberland received the like letter that Mounteagle did, and concealed it ... “Tyrwhyt is come to London; Tresham sheweth himself; and Ward walketh up and down.” 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. 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. But Ben Jonson, the rare Ben Jonson, the friend of Shakespeare, of Donne, Henry Donne (or Dunne), a barrister, was brother to John Donne. He was, I believe, implicated in the Babington conspiracy along with Edward Abington, brother to Thomas Abington, and about ten other young papist gentlemen, some of very high birth, great wealth, and brilliant prospects. At the chambers of Henry Donne, in Thavies Inn, Holborn, London, “the Venerable” William Harrington, of Mount St. John, near Thirsk, was captured. Harrington fled to the College at Rheims to study for the priesthood, in consequence of the impression made upon him by Campion, who was harboured, in the spring of 1581, for ten days at Mount St. John; Campion there wrote his famous “Decem Rationes.” Harrington was executed at the London Tyburn, for his priesthood, in 1594. He is said to have struggled with the hangman when the latter began to quarter him alive. Harrington is mentioned in Archbishop Harsnett’s “Popish Impostures,” a book known to Shakespeare. Harrington was a second cousin to Guy Fawkes, through Guy’s paternal grandmother, Ellen Harrington, of York. “To William Lord Mounteagle. “Lo, what my country should have done (have raised An obelisk, or column to thy name; Or if she would but modestly have praised Thy fact, in brass or marble writ the same). I, that am glad of thy great chance, here do! And proud, my work shall out-last common deeds, Durst think it great, and worthy wonder too, But thine: for which I do’t, so much exceeds! My country’s parents I have many known; But saver of my country, thee alone.” |
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