[85]— Interesting evidence of the connection of Mounteagle with not only these great northern families of Preston and Leybourne (whose places that once so well knew them now know them no more), but also with the Lords Dacres of the North and with the Earls of Arundel, is contained in Stockdale’s book on the beautiful and historic Parish of Cartmel, on the west coast of Lancashire, “North of the Sands.”— See Stockdale’s “Annales Caermoelenses,” p. 410, a work, I believe, now out of print.— Stockdale says that in the old Holker Hall (which seems to have been built by George Preston, in the reign of James I.), in the Parish of Cartmel, there was over the mantel-piece in the entrance-hall an elaborately ornamented oak-wood carving, on which were displayed, in alto-relievo, twelve coats-of-arms, namely:— Those of (1) King James I., with the lion and unicorn as supporters. (2) The Preston family, younger branch; from whom, through an heiress, the Dukes of Devonshire to-day own the Holker estates. The younger branch of the Prestons, viz., those of Holker, were probably Schismatic Catholics, or “Church-papists,” for some time, but gradually they conformed entirely to the Established Church. The elder branch of the Prestons, namely, the Prestons, of the Manor Furness, were strict Roman Catholics. Margaret Preston was married to Sir Francis Howard, of Corby, third son of Lord William Howard, of Naworth. The last of the Prestons, of the Manor, was Sir Thomas Preston, Bart., who, in 1674, became a Jesuit at the age of thirty-two.— See Foley’s “Records,” vol. iv., p. 534, and vol. v., p. 358.— Sir Thomas Preston, S.J., had been twice married, but had him surviving only two daughters, whom he amply provided for, and then gave his Furness estates to the Society he had joined. A subsequent Act of Parliament, however, defeated his intention almost entirely. (3) Arundel impaling Dacre; Philip Howard Earl of Arundel having married Anne Dacre, or Dacres, daughter of Thomas Lord Dacres of the North. (4) Howard impaling Dacre; Lord William Howard having married Elizabeth Dacre, or Dacres, sister to Anne Dacres Countess of Arundel and Surrey. Through Elizabeth Howard, the Earls of Carlisle have the Naworth Castle and Hinderskelfe (or Castle Howard) estates. (5) Morley impaling Stanley; Edward Parker Lord Morley having married, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth Stanley, only daughter of Lord Mounteagle, of Hornby Castle, Lancashire (these were the parents of Lord Mounteagle, who married Elizabeth Tresham). (6) Dacre impaling Leybourne, of Cunswick, near Kendal; Thomas Lord Dacre having married Elizabeth Leybourne, daughter of Sir James Leybourne, of Cunswick. (7) Stanley impaling Leybourne; William Stanley third Lord Mounteagle, of Hornby Castle, having married Anne Leybourne, sister to Elizabeth Lady Dacre. (8) Leybourne impaling Preston; Ellen (Stockdale by mistake says Eleanor), daughter of Sir Thomas Preston, of Westmoreland and Lancashire, having married Sir James Leybourne, of Cunswick; this lady afterwards married Thomas Stanley second Lord Mounteagle, the father of her son-in-law, William Stanley third Lord Mounteagle, who married her daughter, Anne Leybourne, and who was the grandfather of Lord Mounteagle, who married Elizabeth Tresham. (9) Cavendish impaling Keighley; William Cavendish first Earl of Devonshire having married Anne Keighley, daughter of Sir Henry Keighley, of Keighley, Yorks. (10) Keighley impaling Carus; Henry Keighley, of Keighley, having married Mary Carus, daughter of Sir Thomas Carus, of Kirkby Lonsdale. (11) Carus impaling Preston; Sir Thomas Carus, of Kirkby Lonsdale, having married Catherine Preston, daughter of Sir Thomas Preston, about the reign of Philip and Mary. (12) Middleton impaling Carus; Edward Middleton, of Middleton Hall (who died in 1599), having married Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Carus, of Kirkby Lonsdale.[A]

Fittingly does that great master of English, Frederic Harrison, quote approvingly, in his charming book, “Annals of an Old Manor House” (i.e., Sutton Place, Guildford, the home of the Westons, and the dwelling, for a time, of the above-mentioned Anne Dacres Countess of Arundel and Surrey— that queenly Elizabethan woman), the words of a historian-friend of his: “Sink a shaft, as it were, in some chosen spot in the annals of England, and you will come upon much that is never found in the books of general history.” The late Robert Steggall, of Lewes, wrote a fine poem in blank verse on “the Venerable” Philip Howard Earl of Arundel and Surrey, the husband of Anne Dacres. It appeared in “The Month” some years ago.

[A] The arms of Lord Mounteagle were az., between two bars, sa., charged with three bezants, a lion passant, gu., in chief three bucks’ heads caboshed of the second.

The title Morley and Mounteagle is now in abeyance— see Burke’s “Extinct Peerages”— since the year 1686, the reign of James II.

The last Lord Morley and Mounteagle died without issue. The issue of two aunts of the deceased baron were his representatives. One aunt was Katherine, who married John Savage second Earl of Rivers, and had issue; the other aunt was Elizabeth, who married Edward Cranfield.

The present Earl of Morley, Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords, though a Parker, is of the Parkers of Devonshire, a different family from the Parkers of Essex.

[86]— The beautiful and pathetic “Lament,” so well known to Scotsmen under the title of “The Flowers of the Forest,” was penned to express “the lamentation, mourning, and woe” that filled the historic land of “mountain and of flood,” on the tidings reaching “brave, bonnie Scotland” of the “woeful fight” of Flodden Field. At the funeral of that gallant soldier and fine Scotsman, the late General Wauchope, of the Regiment known as the Black Watch, the pipers played this plaintive air, “The Flowers of the Forest.” Who does not hope that those funereal strains may be prophetic that, through the power of far-sighted wisdom, human sympathy, and the healing hand of Time, there may be a reconciliation as real and deep and true betwixt England’s kinsman-foe of to-day and herself as there is betwixt herself and her kinsman-foe of the year 1513— the year of Flodden Field!

See also Professor Aytoun’s “Edinburgh after Flodden,” in his “Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers” (Routledge & Sons); also, of course, Sir Walter Scott’s well-known “Marmion.”

[87]— It should be remembered that Baines says that Nichols, in his “Progresses of James I.,” describes Hornby Castle in Yorkshire, by mistake, for the one in Lancashire.

The sunny, balmy, health-giving watering-place of Grange-over-Sands, built at the foot of Yewbarrow, a pine-clad, hazel-loving fell, “by Kent sand-side,” is in the ancient Parish of Cartmel; and, in connection with the family of Lord Mounteagle, the following will be read with interest by those who are privileged to know that golden land of the westering sun, the paradise of the weak of chest.

About three miles from the Grange— so called because here was formerly a Grange, or House, for the storing of grain by the Friars, or black Canons, of the Augustinian Priory at Cartmel— is the square Peel Tower known as Wraysholme Tower. In the windows of the old tower were formerly arms and crests of the Harrington and Stanley families. A few miles to the west of Cartmel were Adlingham and Gleaston, ancient possessions of the Harringtons, which likewise became a portion of the Mounteagles’ Hornby Castle estates. All this portion of the north of England abounded in adherents of the ancient faith up to about the time of the Gunpowder Plot. The Duke of Guise had planned that the Spanish Armada should disembark at the large and commodious port of the Pile of Fouldrey, in the Parish of Dalton-in-Furness, “North of the Sands.” This rock of the Pile of Fouldrey, from which the port took its name, was not only near Adlingham and Gleaston, but also near the Manor Furness, the seat of the elder branch of the Prestons, from whom Mounteagle, on his mother’s side, was descended.[A]

[A] William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle’s great-great-uncle, James Leybourne (or Labourn), of Cunswick and Skelsmergh, in the County of Westmoreland, was hanged, drawn, and quartered by Queen Elizabeth, in the year 1583.— See “The Acts of the English Martyrs,” by the Rev. J. H. Pollen, S.J. (Burns & Oates).— James Leybourne is not reckoned “a Catholic martyr” by Challoner, because he denied that Elizabeth was “his lawful Queen.” There has been a doubt as to where this gentleman suffered “a traitor’s death.” Baines says that he was executed at Lancaster, that his head was exposed on Manchester Church steeple, and that prior to his execution Leybourne was imprisoned in the New Fleet, Manchester. This is probably a correct statement of the case. Burke, however, in his “Tudor Portraits” (Hodges, London), says that Leybourne was executed at Preston. Though a minute point, it would be interesting to know what the truth of the matter is.

There is a marble tablet on the north wall of the east end of the fine old Parish Church of Kendal, to the memory of John Leybourne, Esquire, the last of his race, and formerly owners of Cunswick, Skelsmergh, and Witherslack Halls. The tablet bears the arms of the Leybournes, and shows that the last male representative of this ancient Westmoreland family died on the 9th December, 1737, aged sixty-nine years, evidently reconciled to the faith of his ancestors.

[88]— The exact relationship of Marmaduke Ward and Thomas Warde to Sir Christopher Ward has been not yet traced out. Sir Christopher Ward was the last of the Wards in the direct line. He died in the year 1521, but left no male heir. His eldest daughter, Anne, married Francis Neville, of Thornton Bridge, in the Parish of Brafferton, near Boroughbridge; his second daughter, Johanna, married Edward Musgrave, of Westmoreland; and his third daughter, Margaret, married John Lawrence, of Barley Court (probably near St. Dennis’ Church), York. A grand-daughter married a Francis Neville, of Holt, in Leicestershire.— But see the “Plumpton Correspondence” (Camden Soc.).

I find that, along with Thomas Hallat, one Edmund Ward was Wakeman (or Mayor) of Ripon, in 1524. He is described as “Gentleman.” He may have been the grandfather, or even possibly the father, of Marmaduke and Thomas Ward.— Concerning the Ward family down to Sir Christopher Ward, see Slater’s “Guiseley,” Yorks. (Hamilton Adams), and the “Life of Mary Ward,” vol. i., p. 102.— There is still to be found the name Edmund Ward at Thornton Bridge (June, 1901); possibly of the same family as the Wards of the sixteenth century; for Christian names run in families for generations.

It is, however, possible that the name of the father of Marmaduke and Thomas Ward may have been Marmaduke. For I find an entry in the Ripon Registers, under date the 16th December, 1594, of the burial of “Susannay wife of Marmaduke Wayrde of Newby.” (At least, so I read the entry.) When this Marmaduke died I do not know. Nor, indeed, have I been able to ascertain when Marmaduke, the father of Mary Ward, died. It is probable that Marmaduke Ward, the younger, sold the Newby estate prior to 1614. At what date the Mulwith and Givendale estates were sold, I cannot say. Possibly R. C. De Grey Vyner, Esquire, of Newby Hall, their present owner, may know. In vol. iii. of the “Memorials of Ripon” (Surtees Soc.) occur the names of Edmund Ward and Ralph Ward, both as paying dues for lands in Skelton (p. 333). Also the “Fabric Roll for 1542” (in the same work) has the name Marmaduke Ward. This would be the husband of Susannay, who died in 1594, probably. So that, most likely, Marmaduke and Susannay Ward were the parents of Marmaduke Ward and Thomas Ward, if the latter were brothers, as it is practically certain they were.

I am inclined, on the whole, to think that Edmund Ward cannot have been the father to Marmaduke and Thomas Ward, though he may have been their grandfather. There is a curious reference to, most probably, this Edmund Ward, in the “Plumpton Correspondence,” pp. 185, 186 (Camden Soc.); but it sheds no light on this question of the parentage of any of the Wards. From Slater’s “History of Guiseley” it is evident that a branch of the Wards settled at Scotton, near Knaresbrough.

Miss Pullein, of Rotherfield Manor, Sussex, a relative of the Pulleins, of Scotton, tells me that in the “Subsidy Roll for 1379” the names occur:— “Johannes Warde et ux ej. ijs. Tho. Warde et ux ej. vjd Johannes fil. Thomae Warde iiij d.” So that the names John and Thomas were evidently hereditary in the various branches of the Wardes, of Givendale and Esholt. (18th April, 1901.)

[89]— From the “Authorised Discourse,” or “King’s Book,” we learn that the King returned from Royston on Thursday, the 31st day of October; that on Friday, All Hallows Day, Salisbury showed James the Letter in the “gallerie” of the palace at Whitehall. On the following day, Saturday, the 2nd of November, Salisbury and the Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Chamberlain, saw the King in the same “gallerie,” when it was arranged that the Chamberlain should view all the Parliament Houses both above and below. This “viewing” or “perusing” of the vault or cellar under the House of Lords took place on the following Monday afternoon by Suffolk and Mounteagle, when they saw Fawkes, who styled himself “John Johnson,” servant to Thomas Percy, who had hired the house adjoining the Parliament House and the aforesaid cellar also.

Now, Mounteagle, almost certainly, must have known that there would be this second conference with the King, on this Saturday, and from what Mounteagle (ex hypothesi) had said to Tresham about “the mine,” Tresham would have concluded that what Mounteagle knew, Salisbury would be soon made to know, and, through Salisbury’s speeches, the King. My opinion is that Mounteagle saw and spoke to Tresham between the conference of the King, Suffolk, and Salisbury (Mounteagle being made acquainted with, by either Suffolk or Salisbury, if he were not actually an auditor of, all that had passed), and the meeting with Winter in Lincoln’s Inn Walks, on the night of that same Saturday, November the 2nd.

[90]— See “Winter’s Confession,” Gardiner, pp. 67 and 68.

This meeting on the Saturday was behind St. Clement’s. At this meeting Christopher Wright was present. Query— What did he say? And in whose Declaration or Confession is it contained? If in one of Fawkes’, then which? Possibly it may have been at this meeting that Christopher Wright recommended the conspirators to take flight in different directions. It is observable that, so far as I am aware, Christopher Wright and John Wright do not appear to have expressed a wish that any particular nobleman should be warned, except Arundel. Whereas Fawkes wished Montague; Percy, Northumberland; Keyes, Mordaunt; Tresham was “exceeding earnest” for Stourton and Mounteagle; whilst all wished Lord Arundel to be advertised. Arundel was created Earl of Norfolk by Charles I. in 1644.

(Since writing the above, I have ascertained that there is no report in any of Guy Fawkes’ Confessions of this statement of Christopher Wright, nor in his written “Confessions” does Fawkes refer to his own mother.)

[91]— “Labile tempus”— the motto inscribed over the entrance of the fine old Elizabethan mansion-house situate at Heslington, near York, the seat of the Lord Deramore, formerly belonging to a member of the great Lancashire family of Hesketh, of Mains Hall, Poulton-in-the-Fylde, and Rufford. Edmund Neville, one of the suitors of Mary Ward, was brought up with the Heskeths, of Rufford. In 1581 the Mains Hall branch of the Heskeths harboured Campion.

[92]— As a fact, the Government did not know of the mine, according to Dr. Gardiner, even on Thursday, the 7th of November, but certainly they did know, says Gardiner, by Saturday, the 9th.— See Gardiner’s “Gunpowder Plot,” p. 31.— Probably the entrance to the mine was sealed up. No useful purpose would be served by either Mounteagle or Ward telling the Government about the mine, which then was an “extinct volcano.”

[93]— The exact words of Lingard are these:— “Winter sought a second interview with Tresham at his house in Lincoln’s Inn Walks, and returned to Catesby with the following answer: That the existence of the mine had been communicated to the Ministers. This Tresham said he knew: but by whom the discovery had been made he knew not.”

Lingard does not give his authority, but probably he got the material for this important passage from “Greenway’s (vere Tesimond’s) MS.” It is an historical desideratum that this MS. should be published. Mounteagle, conceivably, may have falsely told Tresham that the Government already knew of the mine, in order to alarm him the more effectually; but, most probably, it was an inference that Tresham himself erroneously drew from Mounteagle’s words, whatever may have been their precise nature. Mounteagle possibly said something about “the mine,” and that the Parliament Houses would be with minuteness searched far and near. This would be quite sufficient to inflame the already heated imagination of Tresham, and he would readily enough leap forth to the conclusion that the “mine” must be for certain known to the Government.

One can almost feel the heart-beats of the distraught Tresham as one reads the relation of his second interview with Winter. Then from the pulsations of one human heart, O, Earth’s governors and ye governed, learn all. For the study of true History is big with mighty lessons and “he that hath ears let him hear.” Let him hear that Truth and Right, although each is, in its essential nature, a simple unity, and therefore imperially exclusive in its claims, and therefore intolerant of plurality, of multiplicity, of diversity, yet that each of these high attributes of the eternal and the ideal is the mistress not only of man’s god-like intellect, but also of his heart and will. And these two faculties are likewise of divine original and have severally a voice which perpetually bids man, poor wounded man, “be pitiful, be courteous” to his fellows. For human life at best is “hard,” is “brief,” and “piercing are its sorrows.”

[94]— The meeting between Catesby, Winter, and Tresham, at Barnet, on the road to White Webbs, was on Friday, the 1st of November, the day the Letter was shown to the King.

[95]— Or, Mounteagle may have thought that, as it would be meritorious in Percy supposing he had sent the Letter, he (Mounteagle) would expressly, in the hearing of Suffolk, give Percy the benefit of the doubt; since it might stand his old friend in good stead hereafter if Percy were involved in the meshes of the law for the part that, I hold, Mounteagle by Christopher Wright through Thomas Warde then knew for a fact, Percy, and indeed all his confederates, had taken in the nefarious enterprise. Such a train of thought may have flashed through Mounteagle’s brain well-nigh instantaneously; for what is quicker than thought? I suspect, moreover, that Mounteagle conjectured that the Letter was from one of Warde’s and his own connections: for Percy, as well as the Wrights, would be a connection of Mounteagle, through the Stanleys, Percies, Gascoignes, Nortons, Nevilles, and Wardes, who were all more or less allied by marriages entered into within the last few generations. Percy would be about Thomas Warde’s own age (forty-six).

I do not, however, think that Mounteagle knew for certain who was the revealing conspirator; and his lordship would not want to know either. Besides, I hold that Warde would be too good a diplomatist and too faithful a servant to suffer his master to know, even if he had wanted. “Say ‘little’ is a bonnie word,” would be a portion of the diplomatic wisdom that Warde would carry with him up to the great metropolis from his “native heather” of Yorkshire.

[96]— Ben Jonson was “reconciled” to the Church of Rome either in 1593 or 1594. After, and probably on account of, the Plot he left the Church, whose “exacting claims” he had “on trust” accepted. Possibly it was under the influence of Jonson’s example that Mounteagle wrote the letter to the King, given in the Rev. John Gerard’s “What was the Gunpowder Plot?” p. 256. Mounteagle, however, died in the Church of Rome, and the Article in the “National Dictionary of Biography” says that he had a daughter a nun. Belike, she was a member of the Institute of “The English Virgins,” for the name “Parker” is mentioned in Chambers’ “Life of Mary Ward.”[A] There has been recently (1900) published a smaller “Life of Mary Ward,” by M. Mary Salome (Burns & Oates), with a Preface by Bishop Hedley, O.S.B., which should be read by those not desirous of possessing the more costly work by Mary Catharine Elizabeth Chambers, in 2 vols. (Burns & Oates), with a Preface by the late Henry James Coleridge, S.J. (brother to the late Lord Coleridge). May I express the hope that these two learned authoresses will cause the Ward Papers, at Nymphenburg, near Munich, in Germany (that are extant), to be carefully examined afresh to see if they contain anything about Thomas Warde, Mary’s uncle, and anything further about her connection, through the Throckmortons and Nevilles, the Lord Mounteagle? By so doing, they will cause to be obliged to them all serious students of the Gunpowder Plot, which is of perennial interest and value to human beings, whether governors or governed, by reason of the intellectual, moral, and political lessons that with the truest eloquence— the eloquence of Fact— it teaches mankind for all time.

[A] Whilst it is possible that the “Parker” mentioned in the “Life of Mary Ward” was one of Lord Mounteagle’s daughters, I find, from a statement in Foley’s “Records,” vol. v. (by a contemporary hand, I think), that “Lord Morley and Mounteagle,” as he is styled, had a daughter who was “crooked,” and who was an Augustinian nun. Her name was Sister Frances Parker. Her father is said to have given his consent to this daughter becoming a nun “after much ado.” Lady Morley and Mounteagle, a strict papist, brought up the children Roman Catholics.— See Foley’s “Records,” vol. v., p. 973.— The same writer is of opinion that Mounteagle was not a Roman Catholic. Evidently he was a very lax one, and between the Plot and the time of his death he probably conformed to the Establishment.

[97]— Born Lord Thomas Howard, brother to Lord William Howard, of Naworth, near Carlisle.— For an interesting account of the Tudor Howards, see Burke’s “Tudor Portraits” (Hodges); also Lodge’s “Portraits,” and “Memorials of the House of Howard.”

[98]— Did Mounteagle likewise behold Fawkes? If so, his self-command apparently was extraordinary; for, almost certainly, Mounteagle must have met Fawkes at White Webbs, if not at the Lord Montague’s and elsewhere. Fawkes was so strict and regular in his habits and deportment that he was thought to be a priest or a Jesuit (I suppose, a Jesuit lay-brother). That Tesimond should think that part of the “King’s Book” fabulous which describes this “perusing of the vault” and finding of Fawkes, is just what I should expect Tesimond, erroneously, would think; inasmuch as this particular Jesuit would naturally enough consider it to be simply incredible that Mounteagle should not have displayed some outward token, however slight, of recognising Fawkes, who would be sure to carry with him his characteristic air of calm and high distinction, even amid “the wood and coale” of his “master” Thomas Percy. But Tesimond did not know what a perfect tutoring Mounteagle had received from his mentor to qualify him to play so well his part in life at this supreme juncture. Thomas Ward was evidently a consummate diplomatist. If he had been trained under Walsingham he would certainly “know a thing or two.”

[99]— It is to be remembered that, for the first time, the powder was found by Knevet and his men about midnight of Monday, the 4th of November. Previous to, possibly, late in the day of the 4th of November, I do not think that Salisbury and Suffolk knew any more about the existence of this powder than “the man in the moon.” Such ignorance on their part redounded to their great discredit, and would be, doubtless, duly noted by the small and timid, yet sharp, mind of James. But the Country’s confidence in the Government had to be maintained at all costs; hence the comical, side-glance, slantingdicular, ninny-pinny way in which the “King’s Book,” for the most part, is drawn up. A re-publication of the “King’s Book,” and of “The Fawkeses, of York,” by R. Davies, sometime Town Clerk of York (Nichols, 1850), are desiderata to the historical student of the Gunpowder Plot.

I readily allow that it is difficult to believe that neither Salisbury, nor Suffolk, nor anybody (not even a bird-like-eyed Dame Quickly of busy-bodying propensities residing in the neighbourhood) knew of this powder, which had been (at least some of it) in Percy’s house and an outhouse adjoining the Parliament House. Still, even if they did know (whether statesmen or housewife) of the Gunpowder, it does not follow, either in fact or in logic, that they knew of the Gunpowder Plot. For they might reasonably enough conclude that the ammunition was to carry out “the practice for some stir” which Salisbury admits that he knew the recusants had in hand at that Parliament.— See “Winwood’s Memorials,” Ed. 1725, vol. ii., p. 72.— Moreover, for such a purpose, in the natural order of things, I take it, the powder would be brought in first, then the shot, muskets, armour, swords, daggers, pikes, crossbows, arrows, and other ordnance. (The barrels, empty or nearly so, would be carried in first.)

Sir Thomas Knevet, of Norfolk, was created Baron Knevett, of Escrick, near York, in 1607. He died without male issue. He went to the Parliament House on the night of November 4th, 1605, as a Justice of the Peace for Westminster.— See Nichols’ “Progresses of James I.,” vol. i., p. 582.— Escrick is now the seat of the Lord Wenlock.

[100]— “Hatfield MS.,” 110, 30. Quoted in “the Rev. J. H. Pollen’s S.J., thoughtful and learned booklet, entitled “Father Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot” (Catholic Truth Society’s publication, London).

[101]— See Jardine’s Letter to Sir Henry Ellis, K.H., F.R.S., Feb., 1841, in “ArchÆologia,” vol. xxix., p. 100. This letter should be carefully read by every serious student of the Plot.

[102]— Sir William Stanley, of Hooton (in that strip of Cheshire between the Mersey and the Dee), was not seen by Fawkes between Easter and the end of August, 1605, when Fawkes went over to Flanders for the last time in his career so adventurous and so pathetic. Sir William knew nothing of the Gunpowder Plot. It was said that he surrendered Deventer in pursuance of the counsel of Captain Roland Yorke, who to the Spaniards had himself surrendered Zutphen Sconce. These surrenders to the Spaniards on the part of two English gentlemen were strange pieces of business, and one would like the whole question to be thoroughly and severely searched into again. As to Roland Yorke, see Camden’s “Queen Elizabeth.”

Captain Roland Yorke, like his patron Sir William Stanley, was an able soldier. He held a position of command in the Battle of Zutphen, in which the Bayard of English chivalry, Sir Philip Sidney, received his death wound.— See the “Earl of Leicester’s Correspondence” (Camden Soc.).— Sidney’s widow (the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham) afterwards married Robert second Earl of Essex. She became a Roman Catholic, like her kinsman, the gifted and engaging Father Walsingham, S.J. Frances Walsingham, the only child of Sir Francis Walsingham, became a Catholic, I think, through her third marriage with Richard De Burgh fourth Earl of Clanricarde, afterwards Earl of St. Albans. He was also known as Richard of Kinsale and Lord Dunkellin. He was an intimate friend of the Earl of Essex and of Father Gerard, S.J., the friend of Mary Ward.

It would be interesting if Major Hume, or some other authority on the reign of Queen Elizabeth, could ascertain whether or not there was a Thomas Warde in the diplomatic service during the “Eighties” of her reign. Certainly there was a Thomas Warde in the service of the Government then. I am almost sure that the “Mr. Warde” mentioned by Walsingham, in his letter to the Earl of Leicester, must have been this Thomas Warde, and one and the same man with Thomas Warde, of Mulwaith (or Mulwith). It is to be remembered, too, that the Gunpowder conspirator, Thomas Winter, had served in the Queen’s forces against the Spanish King for a time. The names Rowland Yorke, Thomas Vavasour, Sir Thomas Heneage, and Thomas Winter are very suggestive of the circle in which a Warde, of Mulwith, Newby, and Givendale, would move. Besides, there was a family connection between the Parkers, Poyntzes, and Heneages.— See “Visitation of Essex, 1612” (Harleian Soc.), under “Poyntz.”

Moreover, it must be continually borne in mind that Father Tesimond (alias Greenway), in his hitherto unprinted MS., declares that Mounteagle was related to some of the plotters. “Greenway’s MS.,” according to Jardine’s “Narrative,” p. 92, also says that Thomas Ward was an intimate friend of several of the conspirators, and suspected to have been an accomplice in the treason. That would imply that Ward was suspected to have had at least a knowledge of the treason.

[103]— Mary Ward, the daughter of Marmaduke Ward and Ursula Wright, lived with her grandmother, Mrs. Ursula Wright (nÉe Rudston, of Hayton, in the East Riding of Yorkshire), between the years 1589-94 at Plowland (or Plewland) Hall, Holderness, Yorkshire; and between the years 1597-1600 at Harewell Hall, in the township of Dacre, Nidderdale, with her kinswoman, Mrs. Katerine Ardington (nÉe Ingleby). Mrs. Ardington, as well as Mrs. Ursula Wright, had suffered imprisonment for her profession of the ancient faith. We have a relation by Mary Ward herself of her grandmother’s incarceration, which is as follows:— Mrs. Wright “had in her younger years suffered imprisonment for the space of fourteen years together, in which time she several times made profession of her faith before the President of York (the Earl of Huntingdon) and other officers. She was once, for her speeches to the said Huntingdon, tending to the exaltation of the Catholic religion and contempt of heresy, thrust into a common prison or dungeon, amongst thieves, where she stayed not long because, being much spoken of, it came to the hearing of her kindred, who procured her speedy removal to the Castle prison where she was before.”— See Chambers’ “Life of Mary Ward,” vol. i., p. 13.

This common prison or dungeon would be, it is all but certain, the Kidcote, the common prison for the City of York and that portion of Yorkshire between the Rivers Wharfe and Ouse known as the Ainsty of the City of York. This dungeon was, according to Gent’s “History of York,” under the York City Council Chamber on Old Ouse Bridge, to the westward of St. William’s Chapel.— See also J. B. Milburn’s “A Martyr of Old York” (Burns & Oates).— The Old Ouse Bridge was pulled down in 1810.— See Allen’s “History of Yorkshire”— After the Kidcote was demolished, the York City prison called the Gaol, likewise now demolished (1901), was built on Bishophill, near the Old Bailie Hill. The prison for the County of Yorkshire was the Castle built by William the Conqueror, the tower of which, called Clifford’s Tower, on an artificial mound, is still standing. There was, moreover, in York, a third prison into which the unhappy popish recusants, as appears from Morris’s “Troubles” were sometimes consigned. This was the Bishop’s prison, commonly called Peter Prison. The writer is told by Mr. William Camidge, a York antiquary of note, that Peter Prison stood at the corner of Precentor’s Court, Petergate, near to the west front of the Minster. Mr. Camidge remembers Peter Prison being used as a City lock-up prison about the year 1836, soon after which year it was pulled down. The late Mr. Richard Haughton, of York, showed the writer, about Easter, 1899, a sketch of this interesting old prison, a sketch which Mr. Haughton had himself made. The building was a plain square erection, the door of which was reached by a flight of stone steps.

Again, we are told— “Life of Mary Ward,” vol. i., p. 17— that one day Mary came to her grandmother, “who was singing some hymns,” and the child asked the old lady whether she would not send “something again to the prisoners,” a question, we are told, which “pleased” Mrs. Wright “very much.”

Lastly, the gifted daughter of Marmaduke Ward, and the niece of Thomas Ward, bears this striking testimony concerning one aspect of her aged relative’s gracious life, that “so great a prayer was she” that during the whole five years that the child lived with her grandmother, the most of which time she lodged in the same chamber, she “did not remember in that whole five years she ever saw her grandmother sleep, nor did she ever awake when she perceived her not at prayer” (p. 15).

[104]— Maybe Christopher Wright, from his earliest school-days, had with reverence looked up to Edward Oldcorne, for the latter was the senior of the former by no less than ten years, so that when Oldcorne was a clever youth of fifteen years Christopher would be a little fellow of five, “with his satchel and shining morning-face,” though we may be permitted to hope that little Kit Wright did not “creep like snail unwillingly to school.” For it was at a school second to none in England that the future ill-fated Yorkshireman learned to con his “hic, hÆc, hoc.” It was a school originally founded by Egbert, Archbishop of York, in the eighth century, and which, as the Cathedral Grammar School, had been rendered famous by Alcuin himself, the tutor of Charlemagne. It was a school re-founded and re-endowed in the Horse Fayre, now Union Terrace, on the left-hand side going down Gillygate, outside Bootham Bar, by King Philip and Queen Mary, especially for the training of priests for the northern parts.— See in Leach’s “Endowed Schools of Yorkshire” for an account concerning St. Peter’s School, Clifton, York, but no register of scholars of this ancient seat of learning now exists prior to the year 1828. (Title deeds and writings lent by Mrs. Martha Lancaster, of York, have enabled me to identify the site of the old school.)

It is, I take it, furthermore possible that Edward Oldcorne may have taught Christopher Wright; and if the relation of pedagogue and scholar ever subsisted between them, a bond of mutual regard would be created which the lapse of long years would not weaken. For an account of the kind of education given in a Grammar School in “the spacious days of Good Queen Bess,” see Dr. ElzÉ’s “Life of Shakespeare” (Bell & Sons), also H. W. Mabie’s very recent and able American “Life of Shakespeare” (Macmillan).

[105]— “Surgam, et ibo ad patrem meum, et dicam ei: Pater, peccavi in cÆlum et coram te!” “I will arise.”

[106]— Possibly the Earl of Northumberland. He was (it will be remembered) the son of Henry the eighth Earl, and nephew to “the Blessed” Thomas Percy the seventh Earl, and likewise nephew to Mary Slingsby, of Scriven, Knaresbrough. Sir Kenelin Digby, the eldest son of Sir Everard Digby, married the beautiful Venetia Stanley, who was descended from “the Blessed” Thomas Percy. The helmet and gauntlets of this nobleman were kept at the handsome old Church of St. Crux, in The Pavement, York, which was pulled down a few years ago. Thomas Longueville, Esquire, of Llanforda Hall, Oswestry, Salop, through the Lady Venetia Digby, is descended from “the Blessed” Thomas Percy, as are several other families, including the Peacocks, of Bottesford Manor, Lincolnshire, I believe. Mr. Longueville is the learned author of the “Lives” of his ancestors, Sir Everard and Sir Kenelm Digby.

[107]— We know that on the 5th day of October, two days after the prorogation of Parliament, Christopher Wright quitted his lodging, in Spur Alley, where he had been for eighteen days prior to the 5th October.— See “Evidence of Dorathie Robinson,” p. 128 ante.

[108]— John Wright was acknowledged to be one of the most expert swordsmen of his time. He was commonly known as “Jack Wright,” and his brother as “Kit Wright.” Father Garnet says, in a voluntary statement that he made in the Tower— Foley’s “Records,” vol. iv., p. 157— “‘These are not God’s knights, but the devil’s knights.’ And related how Jack Wright had sent a challenge by Thomas Winter to a gentleman.” The duel, however, did not come off, though Winter measured swords. Winter appears to have fulfilled the happy office of peace-maker on the occasion. (What “strange mixtures” these English and Yorkshire papist gentlemen were, to be sure!)

[109]— See Article in “National Dictionary of Biography” on “John Wright” (citing Camden in “Birch Original Letters”) second series, vol. iii., p. 179.

[110]— Afterwards the great Viscount Verulam, commonly known as Lord Bacon. Bacon’s particular friend and familiar was Sir Toby Matthews, the eldest son of Dr. Tobias Matthews, in 1606 created Archbishop of York. Sir Toby translated Bacon’s “Essays” into Italian.— See Spedding’s “Life of Bacon,” and Alban Butler’s “Life of Matthews.”— Sir Toby Matthews (in the February of 1605-6, just after the Plot) was converted to popery by Father Robert Parsons, who was then at the English College, Rome; and Matthews’ was, without doubt, the most remarkable and interesting of all the conversions effected by that strong-minded and most able Jesuit. Parsons’ intellect was one of marvellous range, reach, versatility, and power. He was a spiritual or mystical man in his way, too; but his spirituality or mysticism not seldom failed to control his action in daily life. It was shut up, as it were, in a watertight compartment. This (me judice) sums up, approximately, the truth about Parsons. Of all the men in Europe, Parsons was the man Burleigh, Walsingham, and Salisbury most feared. He died in 1610. A really impartial Life of Parsons, if possible, by a learned lawyer and politician, is a desideratum. In some of his political ideas this Jesuit was a progressive born prematurely— “a man before his time.” For he believed thoroughly in the sovereignty of the People, and in the desirableness of universal education. In this latter respect he resembled “that good lady, Mary Ward,” the daughter of Marmaduke Ward, and niece of Thomas Ward (ex hypothesi). Campion, the Jesuit, who died a martyr in 1581, was much the more amiable and attractive character. But Campion was no politician. Oldcorne, I maintain, was the greatest of all the three, because of his extraordinary mental equipoise and balance.

“The History of the Jesuits in England, 1580-1773,” by the Rev. Ethelred L. Taunton, with twelve illustrations (Methuen & Co., 1901), in some sort supplies a Life of Robert Parsons. But evidently the Jesuit Society is an enigma to Father Taunton, as to so many papists. A man must be a jurist and a statesman to understand the Jesuits. For their aim (me judice), their noble aim, ever has been to make the “Kingdoms of the world the Kingdoms of God and of His Christ.”

If a delusion, surely a delusion merely, not a crime, the most puissant spirit among us must allow.

James Robert Hope-Scott, Q.C., thought that the Jesuits were the backbone of the Church of his adoption. And Dr. Christopher Wordsworth (no mean judge) thought that Hope-Scott might have become a more popular Prime Minister than even W. E. Gladstone, had he chosen a political career. Wordsworth was Hope-Scott’s tutor at Oxford.— See Dr. Christopher Wordsworth’s “Autobiography.”— He was Bishop of St. Andrews, N.B., and as a classical scholar almost without a peer.

[112]— “Narrative” p. 57. As appears from the Lives of Mary Ward, Father Gerard had known Mary Ward when a child in Yorkshire. Hence he probably knew her uncles, John and Christopher Wright, and also Thomas Percy.

Mary Ward was one of the greatest women-educationists and, in a sense, women’s rights advocates England has ever seen. She ought to figure in the Supplement to the “National Dictionary of Biography.” The following word-portrait of Mary Warde we owe to the skilful hand of her kinswoman, the gifted Winefrid Wigmore, a cousin once removed to Lady Mounteagle. It is as Mary Ward, that wonderful Yorkshire-woman, appeared in the year which witnessed the death of Shakespeare (1616). Perhaps the poet knew her; if so, no wonder he knew how to describe queenly souls. “She was rather tall (was Mary), but her figure was symmetrical. Her complexion was delicately beautiful, her countenance and aspect most agreeable, mingled with I know not what which was attractive.... Her presence and conversation were most winning, her manners courteous. It was a general saying ‘She became whatsoever she wore or did.’ Her voice in speaking was very grateful, and in song melodious. In her demeanour and carriage, an angelic modesty was united to a refined ease and dignity of manner, that made even princes[A] find great satisfaction, yea, profit, in conversing with her. Yet, these were withal without the least affectation, and were accompanied with such meekness and humility as gave confidence to the poorest and most miserable. There was nothing she did seem to have more horror of than there should be anything in herself or hers that might put a bar to the free access of any who should be in need of ought in their power to bestow.”

No wonder that— with a brother to the right of him like Marmaduke Ward, and with a niece to the left o£ him like Mary Ward, “that great soul,” who in after years, “in a plenitude of vision planned high deeds as immortal as the sun”[B]— Thomas Warde, the husband for eleven brief years (lacking nine days) of Margery Warde (born Slater), was instrumental, under Heaven, in giving effect to the all but too late repentance of the penitent, Christopher Wright!

[A] Mary Ward was the friend or acquaintance of some of the greatest men and women in Europe. She was a friend of Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I. and daughter of Henry Bourbon, better known as “King Harry of Navarre.”— See Macaulay’s poem, “Ivry.”

[B] Line borrowed from Lord Bowen.— See his magnificent poem, entitled, “Shadowland,” p. 214 of his “Life,” by Sir Henry Stewart Cunningham, K.C.I.E. (Murray).

[113]— The second Edition is dated 1681. The Pamphlet was by a Dr. Williams, afterwards Bishop of Chichester.— See “National Dictionary of Biography.”

[114]— The report would be at least second-hand, and it might be much more. For example, if Mr. Abington saw his wife write the Letter and told the worthy person what he (Abington) had by the evidence of his own eyes ascertained, then the worthy person would have the evidence at first-hand. Any person to whom the worthy person conveyed the intelligence would have it at second-hand, and so on. But if Mr. Abington had not seen his wife write the Letter, but had only been told by his wife that she had writ the Letter, then, although Abington would be a witness at first-hand as to the bare fact of such a report having been made, he would be only a witness at second-hand as to the truth of the report; for Mrs. Abington, in herself reporting, might have spoken falsely either wilfully or through mental defect.

[115]— Vol. i., p. 585.

[116]— Jardine’s “Narrative,” p. 83.

[117]— Jardine’s “Narrative” p. 84.

[118]— William Abington’s chief poem was “Castara,” sung in praise of his wife, the Honourable Lucia Powys. In the recent “Oxford Book of English Verse,” selected by Quiller-Couch (Clarendon Press), there is a fine philosophic poem of the younger Abington (or Habington), entitled “Nox nocti indicat scientiam.” John Amphlett, Esq., has edited the elder Abington’s (or Habington’s) “Survey of Worcestershire,” with a valuable introduction, for the Worcestershire Historical Society.

[119]— It is, moreover, possible that, through her brother’s good offices with the Government, Mrs. Abington had a sight of the Letter itself. If so, she would have been almost sure to detect the general similarity of the handwriting, notwithstanding the disguise, with the handwriting of Father Oldcorne, handwriting she must have known familiarly enough, to say nothing of the particular similarity in the case of certain of the letters.

As showing that, when at Hindlip, Father Oldcorne came into Mrs. Abington’s company, the following quotation may be given from one of Father Oldcorne’s Declarations, dated 6th March, 1605-6:— “Both Garnett and he when there were no straungers did ordinarilye dyne and supp with Mr. Abington and his wyfe in the dyninge chamber.”

[120]— Some idea of the feeling that Mrs. Abington and her husband must have had for this able and upright Jesuit, a true Jesuit in whom there was no guile, may be gathered from the following, which is taken from Foley’s “Records,” vol. iv., p. 213:— “Father Edward Oldcorne, S.J., came to Hindlip in the month of February or March, 1589, Mr. Richard Abington keeping house there at the time, who by the advice of other Catholics, then sojourning with him, sent into Warwickshire for the said Father to talk with Mrs. Dorothy Abington, his sister, about her religion, who, at the time living in the house with her brother Richard, was a very obstinate and perverse heretic, and had left the Court of Elizabeth, where she was brought up, to come and live with her brother principally.” We are told that Miss Abington desired to have speech on the subject of religion with some more than ordinarily learned Catholic. “Father Oldcorne being sent for to that end, and after some earnest discourses with her for the space of two days, and having yielded her full satisfaction in all points of religion, and showed such gravity, zeal, learning, and prudence in his proceeding with her that she was astonished thereat, and was unable to make any reply of contradiction to what he propounded to her.”— From a MS. at Stonyhurst, Anglia, vol. vi., attributed to Father Thomas Lister, S.J.

Another manuscript account of Father Oldcorne says that he fasted and prayed for three days for the sake of this lady’s conversion to the Catholic faith; after the third day he fell down from exhaustion, and yet a fourth day’s fasting followed. Then the lady was converted and “became a sharer and participant in the incredible fruit which he reaped in that county,” i.e., Worcestershire.— See Foley’s “Records,” vol. iv., p. 213.

Father Gerard, in his “Narrative” of the Plot, says that the Government accused Father Oldcorne “of a sermon made in Christmas, wherein he should seem to excuse the conspirators, or to extenuate their act.” The Government had this report from a certain Humphrey Littleton, concerning whom we shall learn more hereafter.

Richard, Thomas, and Dorothy Abington were brothers and sister respectively to Edward Abington, who suffered, in 1587, as one of the fellow-conspirators of Anthony Babington, a distinguished and captivating gentleman from Dethick, a chapelry or hamlet in the Parish of Ashover, in the County of Derbyshire. In the Parish Church of Ashover may be still seen monuments to members of the Babington family. (Communicated to me by my partner, Mr. G. Laycock Brown, Solicitor, of York.)

The history of the romantic but ill-fated Babington conspiracy requires to be impartially re-written, and to this end diligent search should be made to find, if possible, the alleged contemporary history of that curious, ill-starred movement, which is said to have been written by the gifted Jesuit martyr, “the Venerable” Robert Southwell, S.J., the author of that exquisitely imaginative and tender poem, “The Burning Babe,” an Elizabethan gem of the highest genius.— See the “Oxford Book of English Verse;” also Dr. Grossart’s Edition of Southwell’s Poetical Works, and Turnbull’s Edition likewise.— A good Life of Southwell is a desideratum.

[121]— It is obviously unnecessary either in the former part or in the latter part of this Inquiry to assign separate logical divisions for the case of Thomas Ward. His evidence is common to both, and will appear in due course of this investigation.

[122]— Thomas Winter lodged apparently at an inn known by the sign of the “Duck and Drake,” in St. Clement’s Parish, in the Strand. This fact is proved by the testimony of John Cradock, a cutler, who deposed on the 6th of November, before the Lord Chief Justice Popham, that he had engraved the story of the Passion of Christ on two sword hilts for Mr. Rookwood and Mr. Winter, and on a third sword hilt for another gentleman, “a black man,” of that company, of about forty years of age. The Winter here referred to, no doubt, was Thomas, not Robert, the elder brother.

For Cradock’s evidence in extenso, see Appendix; also for evidence of Richard Browne, servant to Christopher Wright; also for letter of Popham, the Chief Justice to Salisbury, as to Christopher Wright; also for evidence of William Grantham as to purchase by Christopher Wright of beaver hats at the shop of a hatter, named Hewett.

[123]— This emphatic “surely all is lost,” of Christopher Wright, is worthy of notice, as indicating the certitude of his frame of mind. Now, “certitude” is the offspring of knowledge, and therefore of belief, and when it is not the life is the death of Hope, an emotion Wright had then clearly abandoned. Hence we may justly infer a special consciousness on Christopher Wright’s part as to the genesis of the fact that the game was indeed up, thanks to the infatuated behaviour of his brother-in-law, Thomas Percy: “up” to all and singular the plotters’ fatal undoing; yet, after all, traceable back indirectly to Christopher Wright’s own repentant act and deed! Truly the repentant wrong-doer suffers temporal punishment by the everlasting Law of Retribution, which lives for ever!

[124]— Was this said by Christopher Wright on Sunday, the 3rd of November, at the meeting behind St. Clement’s? There is none such statement recorded by Fawkes in any of his Declarations or Confessions in the Record Office, London.

[125]— See H. Speight’s “Nidderdale” (Elliot Stock), p. 344. The title of this interesting work is “Nidderdale and the Garden of the Nidd; A Yorkshire Rhineland”: being a complete account, historical, scientific, and descriptive, of the beautiful Valley of the Nidd.— See also “Connoisseur” for November, 1901.

[126]— Christopher Wright must have known well the great family of Hildyard, of Winestead, near Patrington. General Sir H. J. T. Hildyard, K.C.B., is a scion of this ancient house. The Hildyards are mentioned in the “Hatfield MSS.”

[127]— This good woman’s evidence proves that on the 5th of October Wright left her lodgings. Now, my suggestion is that Christopher Wright, after quitting Spurr Alley, went down into Warwickshire, probably to Lapworth. That thence he repaired to Hindlip Hall, four miles from Worcester, to have his interview with Father Oldcorne. Rookwood went to Clopton, close to Stratford-on-Avon, and not far from both Lapworth and Hindlip, soon after Michaelmas, i.e., the 11th of October (old style). That about Michaelmas the diplomatic Thomas Warde came into Warwickshire and Worcestershire to interview Father Oldcorne, and give full assurance to the Jesuit that he, Warde, as diplomatic go-between, would vouch for the conveyance of the Letter, on receipt of the same, to the Government authorities. That the shrewd, diplomatic Warde, all eyes and ears, from what he was ear-witness and eye-witness of at Lapworth, sent post-haste for his brother, Marmaduke Ward, of Newbie. Most probably William Ward, Marmaduke Ward’s son, was at this time on a visit to his uncle Thomas in London.— See Kyddall’s evidence as to “William Ward, nephew to Mr. Wright.”— The boy was sent down to Lapworth on November the 5th, the fatal Tuesday, in the charge of Kyddall. It is possible that William Ward, however, came up into Warwickshire along with his father and half-sister Mary. If so, he must have gone up to London between Marmaduke Ward’s going to Lapworth and the flight of “uncle Christopher” on the 5th; for there is no evidence that William Ward accompanied Christopher Wright and Kyddall up to London on Monday, the 28th of October. Kyddall styles William Ward “nephew to Mr. Wright.” Now, this designation would be, by common usage, accurate if Christopher Wright married Margaret Ward; otherwise, supposing William Ward’s mother was Elizabeth Sympson, it would not be; for Ursula Wright would be naught akin to William Ward.

[128]— Mr. Jackson, “mine host” of “the Salutation,” probably meant between a week and a fortnight when he said “about a fortnight.” “Many things had happened since then,” so Mr. Jackson might easily fancy a longer time had elapsed than was really the case. For Kyddall’s evidence shows that Christopher Wright was at Lapworth on the 24th October, and that he did not reach London till the 30th (Wednesday). On Wednesday Wright may have again called for his quart of sack or for the foaming tankard of the nut-brown ale, partly with a view to ascertaining whether or not any tidings had “leaked out” as to the Letter received by Salisbury, though, as a fact, it was not shown to the King until Friday, the 1st of November. Christopher Wright’s last visit to “the Salutation” was, belike, what is styled nowadays “a pop visit.”

At Patrington, in Holderness, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, there is to-day (May, 1901) an ancient hostelry known by the sign of the “Dog and Duck.” At this house, I doubt not, both John and Christopher Wright full many a time and oft had quenched their thirst and heard and discussed the rural gossip of their day; for Plowland Hall was only about a mile distant from the “Dog and Duck” and its good cheer. The “Hildyard Arms” and the “Holderness” Inn, Patrington, may have been likewise, belike, favourite haunts of theirs, for human nature is pretty much the same generation after generation. And even our social habits bind us to the Past. What thoughts crowd into the mind when one makes a visit to the “Dog and Duck,” at Patrington, within a short walk of Plowland Hall!

It is possible that, between the reigns of Elizabeth and Victoria, Plowland Hall was reduced to smaller proportions than it had been in the days of John and Christopher Wright. This was the case with Ugthorpe Hall, the seat of the Catholic Ratcliffes, near Whitby, situate in a lovely little dingle or dell amid the Cleveland Moors; also it was the case with Grosmont House, the seat of the Catholic Hodgsons, near Whitby, situate near and almost laved by the rushing waters of the Yorkshire Esk.

[129]— Father Henry Garnet knew John Wright, but, according to Garnet’s testimony, he did not know Christopher Wright, a fact which alone tends to show that the younger Wright was essentially a subordinate conspirator; for certainly Father Garnet knew, more or less, all the principal plotters, namely, Catesby, Thomas Winter, John Wright, Percy, and even Fawkes, whom he once saw, and to whom he gave letters of introduction when Fawkes went to Flanders, in 1605, to see Stanley and Owen.

[130]— Father Hart was captured, along with Father John Percy (alias Fisher, afterwards famous for his controversy with Archbishop Laud, who could not “abide” the Jesuits), at the house of Lord Vaux of Harrowden. Hart was banished for a time, but died in England, in 1650, aged seventy-two.

Query— Did Hart make any communication to Bellarmine or EudÆmon-Joannes, I wonder?

[131]— See Jardine’s “Criminal Trials;” vol ii., p. 166.

[132]— See Foley’s “Records,” vol. i., p. 173, citing “Gunpowder Plot Book,” No. 177. EudÆmon-Joannes, in his “Apologia” for Henry Garnet, gives reasons why Father Hart, S.J., may have thus acted. Dr. Abbott, in his “Antilogia,” in reply to EudÆmon-Joannes, answers Joannes at great length.

[133]— Vol. ii., p. 120. It may be here stated that by the Common Law of England a confessor was obliged to reveal the fact to the Government in the case of his receiving from a penitent the confession of the heinous crime of High Treason.

Garnet said that “the priest is bound to find all lawful means to hinder and discover it, but that the seal of the Confessional must be saved, salvo sigillo confessionis.”— See Foley’s “Records,” vol. iv., p. 162.— It seems to me that this statement of Garnet is of the utmost importance.

[134]— Afterwards the well-known Lord Coke, the famous Editor of Judge Littleton’s work on “Tenures.”— For a diverting account of Coke and his domestic infelicities see Lord Macaulay’s Essay on “Lord Bacon.”

[135]— Catesby, John Wright, Christopher Wright, and Thomas Percy were already dead; the two first were slain at Holbeach; Christopher Wright and Thomas Percy both were wounded unto death at the same place; but certainly Percy and possibly Christopher Wright actually breathed their last a day or two afterwards. Query— Where were the bodies of these four men interred? Were they first quartered as traitors according to law?

Tresham died in the Tower, but his body was quartered, and its members exposed at Northampton in the usual way.

[136]— Jardine’s “Criminal Trials,” vol. ii., p. 135. This of the learned Attorney-General reminds one of the late Lord Bowen’s witty saying: “Truth will out; even in an Affidavit!”

[137]— Father Henry Garnet, the chief of the Jesuits in England, said that he considered the authors of the Gunpowder Treason were not only deserving of the punishment that some of them had undergone, but even a more severe one, if possible.— See Foley’s “Records.”

[138]— Fonblanque, in his “Annals of the House of Percy,” in the chapter dealing with Thomas Percy, expresses the opinion that the Government’s behaviour was comparatively mild, regard being had to the atrocious nature of the designment against the King and Parliament. Such is candidly my own opinion, and this, although I remember that James’s Oath of Allegiance and very tyrannical anti-recusant legislation were the dire consequences of the Plot, which (me judice)— far more than the Marian burnings, the Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy, of Uniformity, Constructive Treason, and the Spanish Armada, all put together— led finally to England’s being “bereft” of what to a Roman Catholic is “the one true faith.”

In regard to James’s Oath of Allegiance (1609), it is to be recollected that while strict Roman Catholics, whether “Jesuitized” or not, refused to take the oath, some Catholics thought they might lawfully take it. Among such was the Arch-priest, Blackwell, who, however, was deposed from his office, as, in general terms, Rome condemned the oath. “The sting” of this famous oath was “in its tail;” inasmuch as it not only contained a disclaimer of the deposing power of the Pope, but declared that the doctrine of the deposing power was “impious, heretical, and damnable.” It is remarkable that all the Roman Catholic peers took the Oath of Allegiance, except Lord Teynham, a collateral descendant of William Roper, the husband of Margaret More.

“An apostate” Jesuit, named Sir Christopher Perkins, aided in framing this searching test, so the Government knew exactly how to get the unhappy papist recusants tightly within their grip. (Perkins, like Sir Edwin Sandys, a philosophic friend of Sir Toby Matthews, was an incipient rationalist. Shakespeare may have known Sir Toby Matthews.)

For valuable information (derived from an unpublished manuscript) as to the working of this Oath of Allegiance, see the late Richard Simpson’s Article, entitled, “A Glimpse of the Working of the Penal Laws,” in “The Rambler,” vol. vi., p. 401 (1856). If this Article has not been printed separately, it ought to be. In it occur the names Middleton, Gascoigne, Ingleby, Whitham, Cholmeley, Vavasour, Dolman, Mennell (or Meynell), and Catterick, of Yorkshire; Preston and Towneley, of Lancashire; Tichbourne, of Hampshire; Wiseman, of Essex; Gage, of Sussex; Vaux, of Northamptonshire; Throckmorton, of Warwickshire; Tregean, of Cornwall; Plowden, of Shropshire; Morgan, of Monmouthshire; Edwards, of Flintshire; together with other English and Welsh names, which can be only described as synonymous with honour, high-mindedness, heroism, and all goodness.

[139]— James Usher[A] (1581-1656), Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, was an Anglo-Irishman, who was “learned to a miracle,” so the great English Jurist, Seldon, said.— See “Usher,” “National Dictionary of Biography.”— Usher was, through his mother, who became a Roman Catholic, a grandson of James Stanihurst (Recorder of Dublin, and Speaker of the Irish House of Commons), whose family were the patrons of Edmund Campion, when in Ireland. The great orator wrote his history of that country after leaving Oxford, and before going to Douay. Usher crossed over to England in 1602. He held in the University of Dublin, in 1607, a divinity professorship, worth £8 a year, which was founded by Mr. James Cotterell, who died in York. Now, I find from the Register of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, York, that there is a record of the burial of a “Mr. James Cotterell— in the mynster— the 29th day of August, 1595.” This, I have no doubt, was the self-same gentleman as the “Mr. Cotterell,” from whose house, on the 29th day of May, 1579, Thomas Warde made M’gery Slater “his true and honourable wife;” and the same Mr. James Cotterell as founded the Dublin divinity professorship. Dr. Usher knew personally Lord Mordaunt, the son of the Lord Mordaunt who died in the Tower in 1608; and also, according to the “National Dictionary of Biography,” Father Oswald Tesimond. If so, it is possible that Usher knew personally Lord Mounteagle and Thomas Warde, and it may be it was from them that he gathered hints upon which he founded his oracular statement. (I desire here to express my sense of obligation to the Rev. E. S. Carter, M.A., the Vicar of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, York, who most kindly and generously gifted me with a copy of his singularly valuable “Parish Register” Part I., edited by Dr. Francis Collins, from which I have obtained that item of domestic information so valuable as a leading clue for the purposes of this Inquiry, namely, the marriage of Thomas Warde, of Mulwaith.)

[A] “The Life of Archbishop Usher” by Barnard (1656), however, does not bear out the statement of the Author of the Article on “Usher” in the “National Dictionary of Biography.” For Barnard says that the Jesuit who debated at Drayton, in Northamptonshire, with Archbishop Usher, was called “Beaumond,” but that his real name was Rookwood, and that he was a brother of Ambrose Rookwood, the Gunpowder plotter. The debate was arranged by Lord Mordaunt (afterwards the Earl of Peterborough), to the end that his wife, the Lady Mordaunt, a daughter of the Earl of Nottingham, might become convinced of the soundness of the exacting claims of the Church of Rome. The upshot was that not only was the Lady Mordaunt not convinced, but that the Lord Mordaunt himself became a Protestant! The topics for discussion were:— Transubstantiation, Invocation of Saints, Images, and the Visibility of the Church. According to Barnard, Beaumond at the third day of meeting sent to excuse himself, saying, “That all the arguments he had framed within his own head, and thought he had them as perfect as his ‘Pater noster,’ he had forgotten and could not recover them again; that he believed it was the just judgment of God upon him thus to desert him in the defence of His cause for the undertaking of himself to dispute with a man of that eminency and learning without the licence of his superior.”

If it were a Rookwood, probably it was Robert (S.J.)

[140]— The “Oliver Cromwell,” by John Morley (Macmillan, 1900), contains a picture of Usher, taken from the original portrait by Sir Peter Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery. The face is one of great keenness and power.

[141]— “Style” in handwriting is its genius, its ethos, its air, its aroma, its active, its essential principle. “Style is the man.”

[142]— See the Rev. John Gerard’s published fac-simile.

[143]— “Shift off,” no doubt, is meant as “The Kings Book” gives it. (I should like to say that a gentleman, a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, the Rev. Edmond Nolan, B.A., suggested to me in August, 1900, when I had the pleasure of meeting him in York, that probably “shift of” was really “shift off.”)

[144]— This enigmatical sentence partook of the nature of a clever sleight of mental strategy or of a skilful manoeuvre of mental tactics. In the case of a man of Oldcorne’s combination of the mystical and the practical, it is probable that there would be wheels within wheels, and depths below depths, which are beyond the reach of us ordinary mortals to detect or to fathom. But all this mystery would tend to grip hold of the attention of the reader by compelling him to peruse and weigh the document again and again, and so would tend to beat its warning message into his brains, and so impel beneficent action.

[145]— Gerard’s “Narrative” likewise omits the word “good,” which shows us that the Jesuit was indebted to the Royal Author for his copy of the document.

[146]— The Mounteagle Letter is a remarkably clever composition. Its liveliness, its pithiness, its directness, and its force, in spite of its designed obscurity, gain upon one more and more the oftener one ponders it. But Father Oldcorne was a very clever man. His combination of qualities, theoretical and practical, shows him to have been a man of distinct genius.

In Foley’s “Records,” vol. iv., there is, as has been already remarked, a portrait of this great Yorkshire Jesuit, showing a portion of Old Ouse Bridge, York, and St. William’s Chapel in the left-hand corner. The face depicted betokens an intellect of great acumen, a heart of great benevolence, both controlled by a will strong with the strength of persistent discipline. The keenness of the countenance portrayed struck a distinguished Oxford friend of mine forcibly the moment he beheld the picture, for he remarked forthwith, “He has an acute look!” The countenance, moreover, as another Protestant friend in effect observed, has that look of infinite patience, of calm resignation, and of sweet melancholy, which was so characteristic of the best of the old English Roman Catholics during “troublesome times.”

This phrase, “troublesome times,” was used in my hearing about the year 1890 by an ancient lady, the late Mrs. Ann Matterson, widow, of High-field, Bishop Thornton, near Ripon. Mrs. Matterson was an interesting specimen of the solid, calm, old, Garden-of-the-Soul type of English Catholic, or as they proudly and touchingly put it, “Catholics that have never lost the Faith.” My informant said she was the daughter of one Francis Darnbrough— a family well known in that part of Yorkshire, a Darnbrough being Wakeman (or Mayor) of Ripon in 1542: that her father’s branch of the Darnbrough family had regained the Catholic Faith through marriages with the Bishop Thornton Hawkesworths, hereditary Catholics, who were formerly tenants under the Lords Grantley and Markenfield, of Markenfield Hall. Mrs. Matterson furthermore told me on that occasion that she was distantly connected (through the marriage of her aunt with a Mr. William Bickerdyke) with one of the York Catholic Martyrs, whose cause of canonization had been, in 1886, introduced at Rome, namely, with “the Venerable” Robert Bickerdyke, a gentleman born at Low Hall, near Scotton, in the Parish of Farnham, near Knaresbrough, and who suffered at the York Tyburn, in 1586, for being “reconciled to the Church of Rome.” The aged lady also said that her uncle, William Bickerdyke, had lived at Brampton Hall, on the River Ure, close to Mulwith: that Brampton Hall had belonged to the ancient and now extinct Yorkshire Catholic family of Tankard, or Tancred— one branch of which had their seat at Whixley: and that at Brampton Hall there had been a place to hide the priest in during “troublesome times.”

For an interesting work on priests’ hiding-places see “Secret Chambers and Hiding-places,” by Allen Fea (Bousfield, 1901).

[147]— The following letter (1599, probably), which ends with the words: “I comitte you to sweete Jesus his hole protection,” etc., will be read with interest. It was written by Richard Collinge, Coolinge, or Cowling, a Jesuit, who was a native of York, being the son of a certain Raulf Cowling (then pronounced Cooling), whose name appears in the York Elizabethan “Subsidy Roll for 1581” as of “St. Olave’s parish and Belfray’s without Bootham Bar,” and as being assessed in goods at the sum of £3, which shows him to have been a well-to-do citizen. Raulf Cowling died a captive in York Castle for his profession of the Catholic Faith.

This valuable letter (for which I am indebted to the great generosity of Dr. Collins, of Pateley Bridge) was written probably in 1599, and intercepted by the Government. From the document we learn that Father Richard Collinge, S.J., was not only a cousin to Guy Fawkes, but also to the Harringtons, of Mount St. John. William Harrington, the elder, who harboured “the Blessed” Edmund Campion for ten days in the spring of 1581 at that secluded, tranquil, and lovely spot, Mount St. John, near the Hambleton Hills, Thirsk, Yorkshire, would be not only father to “the Venerable” William Harrington, the martyr for his priesthood at the London Tyburn, but uncle to Father Richard Collinge, and cousin once removed to Guy Fawkes himself. Guy’s mother married for her second husband Denis Bainebridge, of Scotton, a Roman Catholic gentleman connected with the ancient and honourable Roman Catholic family of Pulleyn (Pullein, or Pulleine), of Killinghall and Scotton, by reason of the marriage of Denis Bainbridge’s mother to Walter Pulleyn, Esq., as her third husband. We learn also from Father Collinge’s letter that, belike, Mr. Denis Bainbridge, Guy Fawkes’ step-father, was one of those gentlemen that are “ornamental” rather than “useful.” He was, however, certainly a papist, and his name, together with that of his wife, occurs in Peacock’s “List for 1604,” under the Parish of “Farnham.” There is a blank left for the name of the wife of Denis Bainbridge, probably because Mr. Peacock could not decipher the name indicated. I think that Mrs. Denis Bainbridge must have sprung originally from Nidderdale or Wharfedale, and that she was akin to the Vavasours, of Weston and Newton Hall, near Ripley; to the Johnsons, of Leathley; and the Palmes, of Lindley; both of the two last in that part of the Forest of Knaresbrough which is near to the town of Otley. But further researches may solve the problem as to the maiden name of her who gave birth to Guy Fawkes.

Guy Fawkes called himself “John Johnson” when accosted by the Earl of Suffolk and Lord Mounteagle in the cellar under the House of Lords, on Monday, the 4th November. Possibly, therefore, his mother was a Johnson. Query— Does the Rev. Dr. Robert Collyer, of Chicago, U.S.A., know of any tradition hereon?

Cf. also a letter of Father Richard Holtby, S.J., of Fryton, Hovingham, North Riding of Yorkshire, to Father Parsons, dated 6th May, 1609, ending:— “I commit you to our sweet Saviour His keeping.”— Foley’s “Records,” vol. iii., p. 9.

[A] Guy Fawkes’ little patrimony was situate in Gillygate and Clifton, then in the suburbs of the City of York.— See Robert Davies’ “Fawkeses, of York,” and William Camidge’s pamphlet, “Guy Fawkes” (Burdekin, York).

Miss Catharine Pullein, of Rotherfield, Sussex, and Edward Pulleyn, Esq., of York and Lastingham, I have reason to believe, likewise belong to this ancient family so long settled near Knaresbrough.— See Flower’s “Visitation of Yorkshire,” and Glover’s “Visitation,” for a pedigree of the family in the time of Elizabeth.

[B] The Lady Mary Percy was niece to Francis and Mary Slingsby (daughter of Sir Thomas Percy), of Scriven Hall, whose monuments are still to be seen in the Knaresbrough Parish Church. Dr. Collins tells me that “Sirsbie” was then “a Knaresbrough name,” and occurs in the Knaresbrough Parish Church Registers of that period. The name “Sizey,” which is given in Peacock’s “List,” under “Knaresbrough,” is probably the way “Sirsbie” was pronounced, just as “subtle” is pronounced “su(b)tle.”

[C] I incline to think that this Robert Chambers is the same as the Robert Chambers mentioned in the “Douay Diary,” edited by Dr. Knox (David Nutt); the name, Robert Chambers, appears as one of the students at the English College, Rome. Gould and Batte (or Bates) were probably also the names of priests who had been at this College. Corn may have been Father Oldcorne, S.J., who came to England as a missionary in 1588 with Father John Gerard; or he may have been Father Thomas Cornforth, S.J., a native of Durham, and a great friend of Edward fourth Lord Vaux of Harrowden, whose mother was Elizabeth Roper, a daughter of Sir John Roper first Lord Teynham. Father Cornforth became a Jesuit in 1600. He was at the English College at Rome, and came to England in April, 1599.

[D] The Duckette here mentioned was doubtless Father Richard Holtby, S.J., who succeeded Garnet as Superior of the English Jesuits. Holtby was born at Fryton— in the Parish of Hovingham, in the Vale of Mowbray— between Slingsby and Hovingham, where his brother, George Holtby, lived.— See Peacock’s “List of Roman Catholics in Yorkshire in 1604;” also Foster’s Edition of Glover’s “Visitation of Yorkshire.”— It was Richard Holtby, then a secular priest, who found for Campion secluded, lovely Mount St. John. I think it is probable that, after being harboured by Sir William Babthorpe, at Babthorpe Hall or Osgodby (or both), Campion would proceed through the Vale of Ouse and Derwent to Thixendale, in the Parish of Leavening, to the house of a Mrs. Bulmer; thence, I opine, to Fryton, in the Parish of Hovingham; thence to Grimston Manor, in the Parish of Gilling East; thence through the Vale of Mowbray, by Coxwold, to Mount St. John, the home of the Harringtons, who seem to have quitted the place soon after the year 1603, because the Gregory family are found recorded in the Parish Registers shortly after that date, and they certainly resided at Mount St. John. (Communicated to me by the Rev. Henry Clayforth, M.A., Vicar of Feliskirk, near Thirsk.) Near Mount St. John are Upsal Castle, magnificently situated, and Kirby Knowle Castle (commonly called New Building). These were ancient Catholic houses, formerly of a branch of the Constable family. In Kirby Knowle Castle, embosomed in trees, is still to be seen a priests’ hiding-place. During the early part of the nineteenth century a skeleton was found in this hiding-place— possibly that of a priest. (Communicated to me by the late Very Rev. Monsignor Edward Canon Goldie, of York, about the year 1889.) George S. Thompson, Esquire, now lives at Kirby Knowle Castle, or New Building. This gentleman married a Miss Elsley, of York, whose family, I believe, formerly owned Mount St. John, through their relatives, the Gregories, who seem to have succeeded the Harringtons, harbourers of the great Campion, whom Lord Burleigh himself styled “one of the diamonds of England.” Campion’s guides through Yorkshire were Mr. Tempest (probably of Broughton Hall, near Skipton-in-Craven), Mr. More (probably of Barnbrough Hall, near Doncaster, which came to the descendants of Sir Thomas More, through the Cresacre family), Mr. Smyth (brother-in-law of William Harrington, the elder), and Father Richard Holtby.— See Simpson’s “Life of Campion,” second Edition (Hodges, London).— In recent years the Walker family have owned Mount St. John, but I believe that to-day (1901) Sir Lowthian Bell is the owner. When I visited this historic and ravishing spot, the Honourable Mrs. Bosville was the lessee, and the writer has a pleasant recollection of that lady’s gracious courtesy (1898).

[149]— As revealing the interior state (1) of Oldcorne’s mind in relation to the Gunpowder enterprise, and (2) of Tesimond’s mind, respectively, the former stands in sharp contrast with the latter, and must be pregnant with significance to the discerning and judicious reader.

[150]— Vol. ii., pp. 285, 286.

[151]— “Somers’ Tracts,” Edited by Sir Walter Scott, vol. ii., p. 106, says: “Tesimond severely censured Hall (alias Oldcorne) for his timidity on the occasion, calling him a phlegmatic fellow.”

Dr. Abbott’s “Antilogia” confirms Jardine’s report of Tesimond’s denunciation, although Foley most improperly omits it.

[152]— The diverse demeanour on this critical occasion of these two Jesuits (both natives of the same City, most probably, and fellow-scholars in the then recently re-founded Grammar School belonging to York Minster) is very striking, and reminds one of the following sagacious remark of that clear writer, Dr. James Martineau: “In human psychology, feeling when it transcends sensation is not without idea, but is a type of idea.”— “Essays and Addresses,” vol. iv., p. 202 (Longmans, 1891).— Such feeling then is mens cordis— the mind of the heart.

[153]— Hindlip Hall, about four miles from Worcester, was built on an eminence in 1572 and the following years of Elizabeth’s reign. It had a large prospect of the surrounding country, and contained many conveyances, secret chambers, and priests’ hiding-places, perhaps more than any house in England. The old Hall of the Abingtons was pulled down at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The present mansion was built by the Lord Hindlip’s family, I believe. This demesne is one of the most historic spots in the kingdom, owing to its memorable associations with Fathers Garnet and Oldcorne, Garnet having left Coughton at the request of Oldcorne, in December, 1605. The two Jesuits were nourished, after Salisbury instituted his search, during seven days, seven nights, and some odd hours, mainly by broth and other warm drinks, conveyed to them through a quill or reed passed “through a little hole in a chimney that backed another chimney into a gentlewoman’s chamber.” Doubtless Mrs. Abington and Miss Anne Vaux (the devoted friend of Father Garnet, who, along with Brother Nicholas Owen, accompanied him to Hindlip) had administered this food to the two famishing Jesuits detained in durance.

[154]— Father Garnet’s house in Thames Street, London, had been broken up, this place of Jesuit sojourning having become known to the Government. Consequently, Garnet, at the beginning of September, 1605, went down to Gothurst, in Buckinghamshire, the seat of Sir Everard and Lady Digby.

Christopher Wright, it will be remembered, quitted his lodging near Temple Bar, on October the 5th, and, I opine, then went down to Lapworth, or Clopton, near Stratford-on-Avon. Catesby was born at Lapworth.

It will be remembered that the Ardens, the relatives of Shakespeare’s mother, were allied to the Throckmortons, and therefore to Francis Throckmorton, the friend of Mary Queen of Scots. It is a remarkable coincidence that the great dramatist was, through both the Ardens and the Throckmortons, connected with those whose quartered remains he may have had in his mind’s eye (in addition to those of the Gunpowder conspirators) when in 1606, in “Macbeth,” he writ of “the hangman’s bloody hands.”

For an account of the Somerville-Arden and the Francis Throckmorton alleged conspiracies against the life of Queen Elizabeth, see Froude’s “History.” For an account of Shakespeare’s family, including the Ardens, see Mrs. C. C. Stope’s recent book (Elliot Stock, 1901).

[155]— In the “Life of Sir Everard Digby,” by “One of his descendants” (Kegan Paul), is to be found a vivid and historically accurate account of the proceedings of November the 5th and afterwards. The conspirators’ line of flight would be nearly parallel with the London and North Western Railway from Euston Station to Rugby.

[156]— The country crossed by these unhappy fugitives is undoubtedly the very “heart of England,” and in spring and summer is one of the gardens of England. As those then flying, on that gloomy November day, from the Avenger of blood, were probably almost all men of strong family affections, and certainly all ardent lovers of their country, how often must the feelings have welled up in their heart, as from some intermittent crystalline spring, so beautifully expressed by the old Latin poet:—

Alas! Like many another wrong-doer, before and since, they thought of this too late.

Well-nigh the final glimpse we get of Christopher Wright is from a letter the conspirator, Thomas Bates, wrote to a priest, which is given in Gerard’s “Narrative,” p. 210. Christopher Wright, we are told by Bates, on the morning of the day when the powder exploded at Holbeach House, “flung to Bates, out of a window, £100, and desired him, as he was a Catholic, to give unto his wife, and his brother’s wife, £80, and take £20 himself:”— Wright owing Bates some money.

[A]

[157]— Does Greenway’s “Narrative” clearly state how many of these conspirators received from Tesimond the sacraments? If so, what sacraments were they?

The Government would have had a clear case of inciting to open rebellion against Tesimond if they had caught him, but he escaped to Flanders. He was “a very deep dog,” was Master Tesimond, and no mistake. But he was wholly under the finger and thumb (me judice) of Catesby, which shows what a powerful man of genius Catesby must have been.

Father Henry Garnet, at his trial, allowed that Tesimond had acted “ill,” in seeking to rouse the country to open rebellion.

[158]— This lady was Muriel, the widow of John Littleton, who had been involved in the rebellion of Robert Devereux Earl of Essex. She was the daughter of Elizabeth’s Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Bromley.— See Aiken’s “Memoirs of the Reign of James I.”

For a true estimate of the second Earl of Essex, see Dr. R. W. Church’s “Bacon” (Macmillan).— See also Major Hume’s “Courtships of Queen Elizabeth (Fisher Unwin) and his “Treason and Plot” (Nesbit).

[159]— How well-grounded Oldcorne’s suspicions of Littleton were, and how soundly he had discerned the man’s spirit, is proved from the fact that after Littleton had been condemned to death for harbouring his cousin, the Master of Holbeach, and Robert Winter, the Master of Huddington, Littleton sought to save his life by telling the Government that Oldcorne had “answered that the [Gunpowder] action was good, and that he seemed to approve of it.” Littleton also said that “since this last rebellion he heard Hall [i.e., Oldcorne] once preach in the house of the said Mr. Abington, at which time he seemed to confirm his hearers in the Catholic cause.”— See Foley’s “Records,” vol. iv., p. 219.

[160]— On the 5th of October, 1900, I saw this Declaration by the courtesy of the authorities at the Record Office, London, and compared it with the Letter to Lord Mounteagle. Miss Emma M. Walford was present the while.— See Appendix.

[161]— This luminous definition is by that great writer, Frederic Harrison.

[162]— It is not less dangerous to indulge in Irony. For an emphatic proof of this see the “Life of Lord Bowen,” p. 115 (Murray), by Sir H. S. Cunningham, K.C.I.E.

Cf. the great Stagyrite’s discountenancing the study by the inexperienced (the young in years or in character) of the fundamental grounds of those moral rules that each man must observe if he would faithfully do his duty from day to day, and “walk sure-footedly” in this life.— See “The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle,” book i. See also Professor Muirhead’s “Chapters from the Ethics” (Murray).

Hector, in “Troilus and Cressida,” act ii., scene 2, speaks of “Young men, whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear moral philosophy.”

[163]— Jardine thinks that Oldcorne manifests a disposition “to hesitate and argue about the moral complexion” of the Gunpowder Treason; and this disposition Jardine regards as exhibiting in Oldcorne, “apparently a man of humane and quiet character,” a “distorted perception of right and wrong.”— See “Criminal Trials,” pp. 232, 233.

But it is evident that, for the nonce, the London Magistrate’s judicial temper of mind had deserted him, when he sniffed too closely the moral air breathed by a Jesuit. For manifest is it that, e.g., all acts of insubordination against an established government are not treasons and rebellions when that government is hopelessly tyrannical, inhuman, and corrupt. Nor are all acts of slaughter of human beings acts of wilful murder. They may be acts of justifiable tyrannicide, as, possibly, in the case of “the man Charles Stuart, King of England;” and acts of justifiable homicide, as in the case of every just war, or of every legitimate slaying upon the gallows.

[164]— In this connection the following words of the conspirator John Grant should be remembered. After the Jury had found a verdict of “guilty” against the prisoners, at Westminster Hall, on being asked what he could say wherefore judgment of death should not be pronounced against him, Grant replied, “He was guilty of a conspiracy intended, but never effected.”

Cf. Wordsworth’s Sonnet on the Gunpowder Plot, which is very penetrating.

[165]— Let it be remembered by the gentle, though unreflecting, reader who is disposed to be unnerved at the sound of the word “Casuist,” as at the sound of something “uncanny,” that Casuistry is that great science, so indispensable to statesmen, warriors, and politicians, especially in these days of democratic self-government, whereby the electing, self-governing people are told by their own authorized expert representatives so much of public affairs as it is for the common good should be known by them, but no more. The late Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone once styled Casuistry “a great and noble science.” Now, the Marquis of Salisbury, K.G., the present Prime Minister of King Edward VII., denominated Mr. Gladstone in the House of Lords, when paying his tribute to the memory of that “king of men,” “a great Christian statesman.” And justly; for although Mr. Gladstone was himself a master in the science of Casuistry, the object that science has in view is to forge a palladium for Truth, and this at the cost of endless intellectual labour. Casuistry, properly understood, counts all mere intellectual toils as cheaply purchased, no matter at what cost, provided only that Truth herself— unsullied Truth— be saved. For, after its kind, in whatever sphere, Truth is infinitely more excellent than the diamond, neither is the ruby so lovely; while partial Truth, according to its degree, is not less true than the full orb of Truth.

[166]— This phrase, “sacrilegious murder,” is used by Shakespeare in “Macbeth,” and so precisely does it express the double crime of the Gunpowder plotters that I feel certain that from this allusion— as well as from the evident allusion to the well-known equivocations of Father Henry Garnet (alias Farmer) before the Privy Council— the great dramatist must have had the Gunpowder Plot in his mind the whole time he wrote this finest of his tragedies.

I suggest, too, that the words “The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan? for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell” are an allusion to the mysterious warning bell that the plotters thought they heard whilst working in the mine.— See Jardine’s “Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot,” p. 54.

Compare also Mr. H. W. Mabie’s description of the tragedy of “Macbeth” in his very recent and valuable “Life of Shakespeare” (Macmillan & Co.). Mr. Mabie’s account sounds in one’s ears like a very echo of a recital of the facts and purposes of the Gunpowder Plot.

[167]— Now, as the conspirators were engaged in a joint-enterprise, it must be evident to every clear-minded thinker that the repentance of any one of the joint-plotters must have shed an imputed beneficent influence over and upon all the band. For just as no man liveth only to himself, and no man dieth only to himself, so, by a parity of reasoning, no man is morally resurrected only to himself. Therefore, the moment Christopher Wright was, in the pure eyes of Edward Oldcorne, freed from the leprosy of his sacrilegious-murderous crime— freed (1) by his owning to the same in word; (2) by his manifesting sorrow for the same in heart; and, above and beyond all, freed (3) by his making amends for the same in deed, through the earnest and part performance he had given and made of his unconquerable purpose of reversal, in assenting to the proposal of his listener to pen the revealing Letter— from that moment Christopher Wright, I say, and, through him (though in a secondary, subordinate, derivative sense), all the remaining twelve plotters, would rise up, as an army from the dead; would rise up and stand once more with head erect and in marching order— that noble posture and manly attitude which is ever the reward, sure and certain, of a recovered sense of justice, sincerity, truth.

[168]— The Government, it is said, appointed a special Commission to try Humphrey Littleton and some others at Worcester. The following quotation is taken from “the Relation of Humphrey Littleton, made January 26th, 1605-6,” written by one Sir Richard Lewkner to the Lords of the Privy Council. Lewkner was one of the Commissioners.

This sentence is to be specially noted in this “Relation”:— “The servant of the said Hall [i.e., Oldcorne] is now prisoner in Worcester Gaol, and can, as he thinks, go directly to the secret place where the said Hall lieth hid.”

Now, what was the name of this servant? It certainly was not Ralph Ashley (alias George Chambers), Jesuit lay-brother, for he and Nicholas Owen, the servant of Garnet, who died in the Tower, “in their hands,” whatever that may mean, were not captured at Hindlip until a few days before their masters. This treacherous servant of Oldcorne, whoever he was, was possibly the self-same person who told the Government that Ashley “had carried letters to and fro about this conspiracy.”— See Gerard’s “Narrative,” p. 271.— The man may have shrewdly suspected it from something in Ashley’s deportment or from his riding up and down the country in a way that portended that something unusual was afoot. He may have been a “weak or bad Catholic” servant of Mr. Abington, whom that gentleman placed at the special disposal of Oldcorne for a class of work which could be done by one who was not a Jesuit lay-brother. The Government had evidently got a clue to something from somebody, because I find Father Oldcorne making answer in the course of one of his examinations:— “He sayth he bought a black horse of Mr. Wynter at May next shall be three yeares, and sould him againe.” Examination, 5th March, 1606.— See Foley’s “Records,” vol. iv., p. 224.

According to Foley’s “Records,” Oldcorne was indicted at Worcester for—

(1) Inviting Garnet, a denounced traitor, to Hindlip.

(2) Writing to Father Robert Jones, S.J., in Herefordshire, to aid in concealing Stephen Littleton and Robert Winter, thus making himself an accomplice.

(3) Of approving the Plot as a good action, though it failed of effect.

Father Jones had provided a place of concealment at Coombe, in the Parish of Welch Newton, on the borders of Herefordshire, which then abounded in Catholics. Stephen Littleton and Robert Winter, being captured at Hagley, in Worcestershire, were executed as traitors according to law. Hagley House is now the residence of Charles George Baron Lyttelton and Viscount Cobham.

[169]— A learned Cretan Jesuit, Father L’Henreux, who was appointed by Pope Urban VIII. Rector of the Greek College at Rome, wrote a powerful “Apologia” in behalf of Father Henry Garnet, which was published in 1610. In 1613 Dr. Robert Abbott, a Master of Balliol College, Oxford, and Regius Professor of Divinity at that University, wrote his “Antilogia” as a reply to EudÆmon-Joannes’ “Apologia.” It would be a boon to historical students if both the “Apologia” and the “Antilogia” were “Englished” by some competent hand. Abbott was made Bishop of Salisbury, partly on account of the learning he displayed in his “Antilogia.” He was a Calvinist, and a vigorous writer, being styled “the hammer of Popery and Arminianism.”

Dr. Lancelot Andrewes (in answer to Cardinal Bellarmine) and Isaac Casaubon also contributed to the literature of the controversies anent the Plot, and modern editions of their works with notes are desiderata. Casaubon is best known, at the present day, through his “Life,” by Mark Pattison; Andrewes, through the late Dr. R. W. Church’s “Lecture,” now in “The Pascal” volume (Macmillan) of that judicious and learned man.

[170]— See Jardine’s “Criminal Trials,” vol. ii., p. 120, quoting “Apologia,” p. 200.

Sir Everard Digby was the only conspirator who pleaded “guilty,” and he was arraigned by a different Indictment from that which charged the rest of the surviving conspirators.

[171]— My contention is that the conclusion is inevitable to the discerning mind that the sphinx-like nescience— the face set like a flint— with which Oldcorne met Littleton’s inquiry, displays indisputable evidence of a sub-consciousness on Oldcorne’s part, of what? Of a special, private, official knowledge (as distinct from a general, public, personal knowledge) of what had been intended to be the executed Gunpowder Plot, but which Oldcorne himself had thwarted, and so prevented everlastingly any one single human creature being able, even for the infinitesimal part of an instant, to contemplate “post factum”— after the fact— and in the concrete; which, indeed, judged “from the outside,” and as the bulk of mankind are entitled to judge it, was the only side or aspect of the baleful enterprise that was of practical and, therefore, to them, of paramount personal consequence. The conspirator John Grant expressed the state of the case exactly when he said in Westminster Hall, after being asked what he could say wherefore judgment of death should not be pronounced against him, “He was guilty of a conspiracy intended, but never effected.”

[172]— See Butler’s “Memoirs of English Catholics,” vol. ii., p. 260. See also Gerard’s “Narrative.”— It is possible (according to Gerard) that Oldcorne may have been even still more cruelly tortured, namely, as Dr. Lingard says, during five hours for each of five successive days; but to me, humanly speaking, this is incredible.

[173]— Father Edward Oldcorne and Brother Ralph Ashley are both, along with others, now styled by Rome, “Venerable Servants of God.” The Decree introducing the cause of these “English Martyrs,” dated 1886, and signed by the present Pope, Leo XIII., is kept in the English College at Rome, where Oldcorne had himself entered as a student a little more than three hundred and four years previously, namely, in 1582.

Through the truly kind courtesy of the Right Rev. Monsignor Giles, D.D., President of the English College, Rome, the writer was privileged to see, along with the Rev. Father Darby, O.S.B., and some other gentlemen, this Decree in the afternoon of Saturday, the 13th of October, 1900, the Feast of St. Edward the Confessor, King of England. In the forenoon of the same day the first great band of the English Pilgrims for the Holy Year, the Year of Jubilee, had received, in St. Peter’s, the Papal Blessing, amid great rejoicing, the apse or place of honour in this, the largest Church in Christendom, being graciously accorded to these fifteen hundred British Catholic subjects of Her late Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria.

[174]— As to the precise teaching of the theologians of Father Oldcorne’s Church respecting the famous dictum of St. Augustine of Hippo, “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus,” see the book of the once celebrated Douay theologian, Dr. Hawarden, entitled, “Charity and Truth; or Catholics not uncharitable in saying that none are saved out of the Catholic Communion, because the rule is not universal” (1728). And, again, that great Yorkshire son of St. Philip Neri, Dr. Frederic William Faber, an ultramontane papist of the ultramontane papists, has thus recorded his own potent testimony on this subject in his singularly able and beautiful work, entitled, “The Creator and the Creature,” first edition, p. 368.

Dr. Faber says: “We are speaking of Catholics. If our thoughts break their bounds and run out beyond the Church, nothing that has been said has been said with any view to those without. I have no profession of faith to make about them, except that God is infinitely merciful to every soul; that no one ever has been, or ever can be, lost by surprise or trapped in his ignorance; and as to those who may be lost, I confidently believe that our Heavenly Father threw His arms round each created spirit, and looked it full in the face with bright eyes of love in the darkness of its mortal life, and that of its own deliberate will it would not have Him.”

[175]— Either from the phonograph or even the shorthand scribe.

[176]— Are the Indictments in existence of Father Oldcorne and Ralph Ashley, who seem to have been tried in the Shire Hall, Worcester, at the Lent Assizes of 1606? If so, they and extracts from any Minute Books still extant bearing on the subject would be of great interest and value to the historical Inquirer, if published.

[177]— Oldcorne realized experimentally, in the final action of the great tragedy, what it means, as Goethe has it, for a man “to adjust his compass at the Cross.”

And than Oldcorne no human creature ever lived that had a better right to anticipate those magnificent words of triumph over death of one of Yorkshire’s supremest geniuses: “If my barque sink, ’tis to another sea.”

[178]— In Morris’s “Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers,” third series, p. 325, we read: “In 1572 John Oldcorne is one of the four sworn men against the late rebels and other evil-disposed people suspected of papistry, for St. Sampson’s parish.”

Again, under date April 10th, 1577, we read: “And now also John Oldcorne, of St. Sampson’s parish, who cometh not to the church on Sundays and holidays, personally appeared before these presents, and sayeth he is content to suffer the churchwarden of the same parish to take his distresses for his offence.”

There is also for January, 1598, the following pathetic entry concerning the mother of Father Oldcorne:—

“Monckewarde Saint Sampson’s, Elizabeth Awdcorne, alias Oldcorne, old and lame a recusant.”

York is now divided into six wards for the purposes of municipal government, namely: Bootham, Monk, Micklegate, Walmgate, Guildhall, and Castlegate. Until the nineteenth century there were only the first four wards, which, indeed, corresponded to the four great Gates or chief Ways for entering the City.

The writer remembers with pleasure that, now some years ago, his fellow-citizens of Micklegate Ward, on the west side of York, did him the honour of electing him to occupy a seat, for the term of three years, in the Council Chamber of his native City, which, he is proud to remember, was the City wherein first drew the breath of life Edward Oldcorne; one, he has every reason to believe, whose keen, sane mind, and ready, skilful hand were instrumental, under Heaven, in penning that immortal document which saved the life, certainly, of King James I., of His Royal Consort Queen Anne of Denmark, of Henry Prince of Wales, and Charles Duke of York, afterwards King Charles I., as well as the life of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, the Gentlemen of the House of Commons, and many Foreign Ambassadors, in the year of grace 1605, now well-nigh three centuries ago.

As some readers may be, perchance, interested in a few particulars concerning the ancient Parish of St. Sampson, which is in the heart of the City of York, close to the Market Place, I propose to mention a few. First of all, then, the ancient parish church which bears the name of the old British Saint, St. Sampson, is pre-eminently one of “the grey old churches of our native land,” whereof in the reign of King Henry V. (Shakespeare’s ideal English monarch) there were in the City of York and its suburbs no less than forty-one, though in the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth the number was reduced. That forty-one was the number originally we know from a subsidy of Parliament which granted to King Harry, in 1413, two shillings in the pound leviable on all spirituals and temporals in the realm for carrying on the then war with France.— See Drake’s “Eboracum,” p. 234.

St. Sampson’s Church consists of a lower nave and chancel with north and south aisles to both, extending nearly to the west base of the tower. The architecture of the church is in the decorated and the perpendicular styles. King Richard III., in 1393, granted the advowson of this church to the Vicars Choral of York Minster. The present Vicar (1901) is the Rev. William Haworth, one of the Vicars Choral of the Minster, to whom I am indebted for information respecting the Registers of St. Sampson’s Church and the Church of Holy Trinity, King’s Court, or Christ’s.

Mr. Councillor John Earle Wilkinson, “mine host” of the “Garrick’s Head” Hotel, Low Petergate, York, who was the Guardian of the Poor for the old Parish of St. Sampson (as he is now the Guardian for Ward No. 2 of the United Parish of York), kindly informed me on the 10th July, 1901, that the following streets are in the Ecclesiastical Parish of St. Sampson. Hence we may conclude that it was in a house in one of these streets that were spent the earliest years of Edward Oldcorne, the son of John Oldcorne, Tiler, and of Elizabeth, his wife:—

(1) Church Street, a street between the Market Place (which Market Place is formed by St. Sampson’s Square and Parliament Street) and Goodramgate towards Monk Bar. Here is St. Sampson’s Church.

(2) Patrick Pool, to the east of St. Sampson’s Church.

(3) The right-hand side of Newgate, leading into High Jubbergate (formerly Jews-Gate).

(4) Little Shambles and Pump Yard.

(5) That part of Parliament Street on the south-west which includes the site of the York City and County Bank.

(6) That part of Parliament Street on the north-east which includes Mr. F. H. Vaughan’s “Clock” Hotel.

(7) Silver Street, to the west of St. Sampson’s Church, connecting Church Street with High Jubbergate.

(8) On the north side of Church Street, opposite St. Sampson’s Church, Swinegate.

Finkle Street.

(9) Back (or Little) Swinegate, between Swinegate and Finkle Street.

(10) That part of Little Stonegate which includes the back part of the premises of Messrs. Myers and Burnell, Coachbuilders, and the Model Lodging House opposite.

(11) Coffee Yard.

(12) The top part of Grape Lane (leading into Low Petergate), which adjoins Coffee Yard and the north end of Swinegate.

(13) St. Sampson’s Square (forming part of the Market Place).

Some of the old Elizabethan dwelling-houses and shops in these streets and yards, built of oak (doubtless from the famous Galtres Forest, northward of York), with their projecting stories of lath and plaster, happily, are still standing, “rich with the spoils of time,” and the eyes of Edward Oldcorne must have, many a time and oft, gazed upon them at that momentous period of life when “the child is father of the man.”

Besides these ancient dwelling-houses and shops, relics of the Past, the grey old Parish Church of St. Sampson must have been one of the sights which, from the earliest dawn of reason, entered into the historic “imagination” of the great Elizabethan Englishman, who was destined to become a learned student at Rheims and Rome and “to see much of many men and many cities” before he came to England, in the year 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada.

Another familiar object to the future honoured friend and trusted counsellor of Mr. and Mrs. Abington and the highest in the land would be also the old Market Cross, which stood in the middle of St. Sampson’s Square, then, and even still sometimes, called Thursday Market.— See Gent’s “York.”

The fact that during the month of December, 1901, the claim of the ancient City of York to be specially represented, through its Lord Mayor, on the occasion of the forthcoming Coronation of His Most Gracious Majesty King Edward VII., was considered by the Court of Claims next after the claim of the City of London, is interesting evidence to show that the City of Edward Oldcorne is still counted the second City of the British Empire, notwithstanding that such claim was disallowed.

[179]— Sir Edward Hoby was a man of parts, a learned diplomatist and able Protestant controversialist.— See “National Dictionary of Biography.”

[180]— Nichols’ “Progresses of James I.,” pp. 584-587. (The italics are mine.)