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 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.

[A] Lady Mary Brandon was the daughter of Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk, who was married four times, one of his wives being a sister of Henry VIII. The Duke of Suffolk was grandfather of Lady Jane Dudley, commonly called Lady Jane Grey, one of the finest moral characters Protestantism has produced.— See Spelman’s “History of Sacrilege” (Masters, ed. 1853), p. 228.

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.), the 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”:—

[A] In the battle of Flodden Field, which caused such lamentation, mourning, and woe in Edinburgh, several citizens of York behaved themselves valiantly under Sir John Mounville. Among English lords in this fight were the Lords Howard (Edmund Howard), Stanley, Ogle, Clifford, Lumley, Latimer, Scroope (of Bolton), and Dacres; among knights were Gascoyne, Pickering, Stapleton, Tilney, and Markenfield; and among gentlemen were Dawney, Tempest, Dawbey, and Heron.— See Gent’s “Ripon,” p. 143.

It is said that the gallant Northumbrian Heron knew all the “sleights of war.”

“Most lively lads in Lonsdale bred,
With weapons of unwieldly weight;
All such as Tatham Fells had bred,
Went under Stanley’s streamers bright.

From Silverdale to Kent Sand Side,[87]
Whose soil is sown with cockle shells;
From Cartmel eke and Connyside,
With fellows fierce from Furness Fells.”

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.

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

“With many a gentleman and squire,
From Rippon, Ripley, and Rydale,
With them marched forth all Massamshire,
With Nosterfield and Netherdale.”

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]

[A] Sir Edward Hoby is the only contemporary, so far as I know, that has written in English the name of Lord Mounteagle’s gentleman-servant as such who read the Letter on the 26th of October, 1605.

Now, Hoby writes Ward without the final “e.” If this be borne faithfully in mind there is no objection to my writing the name either “Ward” or “Warde” indifferently.

To write Thomas Warde as well as Thomas Ward helps the mind, I think, to realize the force of the evidence and arguments of this Inquiry; hence my so doing. But, of course, I wish to make it clear that it is inference only, not direct proof, that supplies the missing link in identifying Thomas Ward.

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 had 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.

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