Let us finally consider the Evidence and the deductions and suggestions therefrom which tend to prove that subsequent to the dictating of the Letter by the contrite, repentant Christopher Wright, and subsequent to the penning of the Document by the deserving, beneficent Edward Oldcorne, each of these two Englishmen, aye! these two Yorkshiremen, were conscious of having performed the several functions that these pages have attributed unto them.

Let us take, then, the case of Christopher Wright first.

Now, the Evidence that tends to show that Christopher Wright was conscious of having been the revealing plotter and dictating conspirator[121] has been already mainly set forth, but let me recapitulate the same.

It is as follows:—

(1) That either Thomas Winter must have gone in search of Christopher Wright, or Christopher Wright must have gone in search of Thomas Winter, in order that it might be possible for Stowe to record on p. 880 of his “Chronicle” the following allegation of facts:—

“T. Winter, the next day after the delivery of the Letter, told Christopher Wright that he understood of an obscure letter delivered to the Lord Mounteagle, advising him not to appear at the Parliament House the first day, and that the Lord Mounteagle had no sooner read it, but instantly carried it to the Earle of Salisbury, which newes was presently made known unto the rest, who after divers conferences agreed to see further trial, but, howsoever, Percy resolved to stay the last houre.”[122]

(2) Poulson says, in his account of the Wrights, of Plowland (or Plewland) Hall, in his “History of Holderness,” vol. ii., p. 57, that Christopher Wright “was the first who ascertained that the plot was discovered.”

(3) Christopher Wright was possibly being harboured by Thomas Ward in or near Lord Mounteagle’s town-house in the Strand during a part of Monday night, the 4th of November, and during the early hours of Tuesday, the 5th.

Or, if Christopher Wright were not being so harboured, then it is almost certain he must have been taking such brief repose as he did take at the inn known by the name of “the Mayden heade in St. Gyles.”[A] For there is evidence to prove that this conspirator’s horse was being stabled at that hostelry in the afternoon of Monday, the 4th of November.

This we know from the testimony of William Grantham, servant to Joseph Hewett, deposed to on the 5th of November, 1605,[B] taken before Sir John Popham, the Lord Chief Justice of England.

Moreover, the Lord Chief Justice Popham[C] reported to Lord Salisbury on the 5th of November as follows: “Christopher Wright, as I thyncke, lay this last night in St. Gyles.”— “Gunpowder Plot Book,” Part I., No. 10.

(4) Again; from the following passage in “Thomas Winter’s Confession” it is evident that Christopher Wright, at a very early hour in the morning of Tuesday, November 5th, must have been in very close proximity to Mounteagle’s residence, in order to ascertain so accurately— either directly, through the evidence of his own senses, or indirectly, through the evidence of the senses of some other person (presumably of Thomas Ward)— what there took place a few hours after Fawkes’s midnight apprehension by Sir Thomas Knevet.

Thomas Winter says:—

“About five o’clock being Tuesday came the younger Wright to my chamber and told me that, a nobleman[A] called the Lord Mounteagle, saying, ‘Rise and come along to Essex House, for I am going to call up my Lord of Northumberland,’ saying withal ‘the matter is discovered.’

[A] It was Edward Somerset Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse, I believe, an ancestor, lineal or collateral, of the Duke of Beaufort. Worcester was a Catholic.