  Mounteagle, we are told, knew there was a Letter to be sent to him before it came. Lingard says the conspirators suspected that Tresham had sent the Letter, and that there was a “secret understanding between him and Lord Mounteagle, 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. 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.” 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.” 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.” 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 Dr. ElzÉ is grossly wrong in arguing that because Shakespeare’s name is found in the Register of Christenings in the parish church of Stratford-on-Avon, therefore Shakespeare’s father was a Protestant. Such a conclusion founded on such proof is simply ludicrous.— See ElzÉ’s “Life of Shakespeare” (Bell & Sons), p. 457. One really is disposed to distrust many of the conclusions of “German learning” when ElzÉ argues like this. To my mind, much of “the critical” work (so called in a certain department) may be hereafter found to be full of flaws from building on too narrow a foundation of evidence. How little man can know of the Past which affords him evidence to hang even a dog on with absolute, as distinct from moral, certitude! (I wish especially not to be thought to imply any disrespect towards the great German people, whose love for him who is for all nations and all time fills me with the profoundest admiration. But Truth is no respecter of persons when it detects errors, or the probabilities of errors, on the part of such as should be “masters of those that know.”) For even the Rigmaydens, of Woodacre Hall, Garstang (harbourers of Campion in 1581), in the most Catholic part of Lancashire, apparently had at least some of their children baptised at the parish church.— See Colonel Fishwick’s “Parish of Garstang” (Chetham Soc.) |
|
