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 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.

[A] It is a remarkable fact that Sir Thomas Heneage (whose name frequently occurs in the correspondence of Sir Francis Walsingham with the Earl of Leicester when in the Low Countries), married for his first wife Anne Poyntz, the eldest daughter of Sir Nicholas Poyntz and the Honourable Margaret Stanley, the daughter of Edward Stanley Earl of Derby.— See “Visitation of Essex, 1612” (Harleian Soc.) under “Poyntz.”— Sir Thomas Heneage is described as Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Sir Thomas Heneage married for his second wife the Dowager Countess of Southampton, the mother of Shakespeare’s friend and patron. Now this Earl of Southampton, like the Earl of Rutland, was an intimate friend of Lord Mounteagle.

Besides, as we have also seen, this was not William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle’s only relationship with 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]

[A] The modern Witherslack Hall, in Westmoreland, is the property of the present Earl of Derby. It is situated in a lovely neighbourhood which instinctively recalls the words of the poet:

“Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take,
The winds of March with beauty.”— Winter’s Tale.

Witherslack is reached from Arnside, Silverdale, or Grange-over-Sands.

The old Witherslack Hall of the Leybournes is now a farm-house.

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