PART II.

GUNPOWDER PLOT BOOKS——PART I., NO. 12.

[Frequenters of Clopton (or Clapton), Stratford-on-Avon.]

Ther hath bine at Clapton[A] w^{th} M^{r} Ambrous Rucwod Mr. Jhon Grant ther is with m^{es} Rucwood M^{es} Ceo (?) m^{es} munson and others and to of his britherin m^{r} Wintor m^{r} Bosse m^{r} Townesend m^{r} Ceo (?) w^{th} on m^{r} Thomas a Cynesman of M^{r} Rucwoode m^{r} Ryght Allso mye pepeoll hath seene ther Se^{r} Edward bushell m^{r} Robeart Catesbee with diuers others which I can not nam unto youer honer.

(Endorsed) Clopton.

[Footnote A: Clopton Hall, Stratford-on-Avon, was likewise styled Clapton Hall. Lady Carew, afterwards the Countess of Totnes, was (with her sister, Anne Clapton, the wife of Cuthbert Clapton, Esquire, of Sledwick, County Durham) the co-heiress of the Claptons (or Cloptons), of Warwickshire. Lady Carew was a Protestant, but her sister and brother-in-law were Catholics. A son of the Catholic Cloptons (or Claptons) was made the “heir” of the Countess of Totnes.——See Foley’s “_Records_,” vol. vi., pp. 326, 327.]

APPENDIX D.

GUNPOWDER PLOT BOOKS——Part I., No. 25.

The Examination of Richard Browne taken the 5^{th} of Novemb^{r} 1605.

This Examinat sayith that xpofer Wright cam to S^{t} Gilis in the ffeild to the Maydenhead there vpon Weddnesday laste & sent Wilt Kiddle (that cam vp w^{t} him as his man) to Westm the same night for this Examinat to come & speek w^{th} him, which this Examinat did com thither vpon Thursday morning, when Wrights request was to him to fetch his child which he had at nurss some 13 myles off. And Kiddle & this Examinat went vpon ffriday brought the child vpon Satterday to St. Giles & carryed it away agen vpon Sonday which night this Examinat returned back to Westm and lay there at his owne lodging, the next morning being monday this Examinat went to S^{t} Gyles to speak w^{t} M^{r} Wright only vpon Kiddle’s intreaty & not fynding M^{r} Wright there he retorned towards London & mett M^{r} Wright in S^{t} Clem^{t} ffeilds, at which tyme Wright sent this Examinat to S^{r} ffrancis Manners w^{th} a message concerninge a kinsman of M^{r} Wrights that serveth M^{r} Manners after which tyme this Examinat did not see the sayd Wright.

This Examinat sayeth that he saw the sayd Wright onely 4 tymes since Wright last coming to London, viz., vpon Thursday morning when he came first vnto him upon Satterday night when he brought his child, vpon Sonday morning when he carryed the child away, and vpon monday at noone when he mett of the back syd of S^{t} Clem^{t}s

mark × Richard Browne

(Endorsed) Examination of Richard Browne 6 Nov. 1605 Concerning Wright.

APPENDIX E.

GUNPOWDER PLOT BOOKS——Part I., No. 15.

The Examynacon of Willum Grantham servaunt to Josephe Hewett taken before S^{r} John Popham Knighte L: Cheife Justyce of England the 5 of November 1605.

He sayeth that yesterdaye aboute three of the Clocke in the afternoone one m^{r} wryght was at this Ex masters howse And there boughte three beaver hatts and payde xj^{£}[A] for them This Ex went w^{th} the sayde wryght and caryed the hatts to wrighte lodgyng at the Mayden heade in S^{t} Gyles where m^{r} wryght & this Ex went into the howse And then wryght went to the Stable and dyd aske yf his man were come the hosteler sayde that he came longe synce, then wryght dyd aske for his horse whether he were readye or no and the hosteler sayde he was Then the sayde wryght went into his Chamber and wryghte man dyd will this Ex to go in And the sayde wryghte man went downe the Stayres And this Ex went into M^{r} Wryghte Chamber and delyvered the hatts to him And wryght dyd looke uppon the hatts and gave this Ex vj^{d} for his paynes and then he depted.

[Footnote A: Unmistakably £11 (E.M.W.).]

William Grantham.

(Endorsed) 5 November 1605. William Grantham Ex.

APPENDIX F.

STATE PAPERS DOMESTIC——JAS. I., Vol. xvi., No. 11.

The Examon of Robert Rookes taken the 5^{th} of November 1605.

He saieth that his Master M^{r} Ambrose Rookewood whoe dwelleth at Coldhame Halle in Suff came from thence uppon Wensday last and noe more w^{th} him but this exaite and Thomas Symons another of his servaunte.

He saieth his Master hath layen en sithence Thursday last at one Mores howse w^{th}out Temple Barre and thear lay w^{th} him the last night and the night before a talle gent having a reddish beard.[A]

[Footnote A: This was Keyes.——See “Elizabeth More’s Evidence.”]

He saieth his Masters horsses stood in drewery Lane at the grey hound.

He saieth his Master & the other gent went forth this morning about 8 of the clock and his Master stayed not forth above an hower before he came in againe and then going in & out some time about x of the clock went alone to his horsse to ryde away in to Suff. and willed this exaite and his fellowe to come after him to morowe.

He saieth his M^{rs} as he hath hard lyeth in warwick shere whear he knoweth not for he hath not benn w^{th} his M^{r} that nowe is aboue a senight.

(Endorsed) 5^{o} No. 1605.

The Ex of Robte Rokes M^{r} Rookwoode boy.

APPENDIX G.

STATE PAPERS DOMESTIC——JAS. I., Vol. xvi., No. 16.

The declarn of John Cradock cutler the vj^{th} of November 1605.

He sayeth that M^{r} Rockwood whos father marryed M^{r} Tirwhyte mother about the Begynyng of the last Som vacac dyd bespeke the puttyng of a Spanyshe Blade off hys into a Sword hilte and appoynted the hylth to have the Story of the passyon of Christ Richly Ingraved, and now w^{th}n these Syxe dayes cawsed that hylth being enamlled and Rychly sett forth to be taken of and the handle to be new wrought of clere gold and the former hylth w^{th} hys story to be putt on agayne and delyvered yt unto m^{r} Rockewood upon Monday last at xj of the Clocke at nyght at his Chamber at m^{r} Mores and m^{r} Wynter a pp Gentylman of about xxx yeares or vpward who lyeth at the Syng of the Docke an Drake beyond putrycke in the Strand and ys a great Companyon w^{th} m^{r} Catesby m^{r} Tyrwhyt and m^{r} Rockwood hadd a Sword w^{th} the lyke Story and was delyvered hym on Sunday last at nyght but not so Rychly sett forth as the form for w^{ch} he payed in all xij^{£} x^{s} pt about a quarter of a yeare past at the bespeken thereof and the Rest on Sonday last and this term an other Gentylman of that Cupany being a Blacke man of about xl yeares old bespake a lyke Sword for the story & shuld pay vij^{ti} for yt gave hym x^{s} in Ernest he ys yet out of Towne and the Sword remayneth w^{th} thys Exam Christopher Wryght was often w^{th} thys M^{r} Rockwood at thys Exam shoppe and he hadd the said Wryghte jugmet for the worcke and Syse of the Blade.

Jo Cradock

Ex p J. Popham

(Endorsed) Cradocke.

APPENDIX H.

GUNPOWDER PLOT BOOKS——Part I., No. 10.

I have sent vnto yo^{r} L. herin Inclosed the Copye off the declarac off Mr Tatnall, off two that passed the fylde thys mornyg wherof some Suspycyon may be gathered off confederacy he observed them so as he hopeth he may mete w^{th} them and therfore I have gevin hym a warrant to attach them a lyke note yo^{r} L shall receave herin off an expectacn that M^{rs} Vaux hadd off some thyng to be done and I know yt by such a means as I assured my selff the matter is trewe and both Gerrard and Walley the Jesuyte make that the chefest place of their accesse and therfore lyke she may knowe Some what both M^{r} Wenman hym selff & the lady Tasbard do knowe of this wherfore howe farre forth thys shalbe fytt to be dealt in I humbly leave to yo^{r} L consyderacn Chrystoffer Wright and M^{r} Ambrose Rokewood were both together yesternyght at x of the Clocke and vpon ffryday last at nyght they were together at M^{r} Rokwoode lodgyng and this forenoon Rokwood Rode away into Suffolke about xj of the clocke alone leavyng both hys men behynd hym one Keyes a Gentylma that lay these two last nyghte w^{th} m^{r} Rokewood and gave hym hys lodgyng went away also about eight off the clocke for w^{ch} Keyes I have layed weyet This Rokwood ys of Coldham hall in Suffoke one of the most dangerous houses in Suffolke he marryed m^{r} Tyrwhytte Syster & she ys now in Warwykshere Chrystoffer Wright as I thyncke lay this last nyght in St. Gyles and yf he be gone yt ys Lyke he ys gone into Warwykesher where I hyer John Wryght Brother unto Chrystoffer ys marryed ther were thre hatts bought yesterday in the afternoone by Chrystoffer Wryght the ar for his Brother and two others for two Gentylwomen they cost xj^{£} and after that about ix of the Clocke at nyght Chrystoffer Wryght cam again to that haverdasshers and Boughte two hatts more for two Servante unto a Gentylman that was w^{th} hym he thyncks that Gentylman was called Wynter but I dowbt that mans name ys mystaken Ther cam a yong Gentylman w^{th} this wryght w^{th}in these fewe dayes that gave to Cutler here by xix^{£} xv^{s} for a Sword whom I am in some hoep to dyscover by the Sword and other cyrcumstance and even so I humbly take my leave of yo^{r} L at Serienty Inn the v^{th} of november 1605.

yo^{r} L very humbly

Jo Popham.[A]

[Footnote A: The Lord Chief Justice of England.]

(P.S.) I have this mornyg the vi^{th} noveber dyscovered where Wynter [is] w^{th} the matter which I have delyverd to m^{r} Att^{r}ney wherof happely yo^{r} L may make good vse I wyll see yf I can mete w^{th} m^{r} Wynter Walley the jesuyt and Strang as I am Informed are now at ffrance Brownes pcke about Surrey as I take yt and Sundry letters lately sent over are yet Remaynyng at fortescues house by the Wadropp but yt wylbe hard to fynd any thyng in that house.

(Endorsed) 5 Novemb^{r} L Ch. Justice

(Addressed) To the Ryght honorable and my very good L the Earle of Sarysbury.

(Declaration enclosed——short.)

APPENDIX I.

GUNPOWDER PLOT BOOKS——Part I., No. 75.

O^{r} humble dutyes remembred. We have this day apprehended & deliwed to his Ma^{ty} messenger Berrye the bodie of M^{ris} Graunt, from whom we gathered that Percyes wief was not farre of, whervppon wee made search in the most lykely place and have even since night apprehended her in the house of M^{r} John Wright, and have thought fitt to take this opportunitie to send vpp to yo^{r} honors’ w^{th} the said M^{ris} Graunt aswell the said M^{res} Percye as alsoe the wives of other the principall offenders in this last insurrection as appeth by the Kallender heerinclosed by whos exaiacons we thinke some necessary matters wilbe knowne.

M^{r} Sherief taketh care & charge of these woomens children vntill yo^{r} honors pleasures be further knowne.

ffrom Warr this xij^{th} of November 1605 yo^{r} honors most humbly at comaundment in all service.

Richard Verney Jo: fferrers W^{m} Combe Bar: Hales

(Endorsed) 12 9bre 1605 S^{r} Rych: Verney and other Justices to me

(Addressed) To the right honorable my especyall good Lord the Earle of Salisbury & the rest of his Ma^{ty} most honorable privie Counsayle

w^{th} all speed.

APPENDIX J.

GUNPOWDER PLOT BOOKS——Part II., No. 130.

This Last Vacatio Guy faux als Jhonson did hier a barke of Barkin the owners name Called paris wherein was Caried over to Gravelinge a ma[A] supposed of great import he went disguised and wold not suffer any one ma to goe w^{th} him but this Vaux[B] nor to returne w^{th} him This paris did Attend for him back at Gravelyng[C] sixe weekes yf Cause quier there are severall proffs of this matter.

[Footnote A: Contraction for “man.”]

[Footnote B: _I.e._, Faux.]

[Footnote C: Gravelyng would be Gravelines in France. Most probably “the man supposed of great import,” who “went disguised,” accompanied by Fawkes, was one of the principal conspirators, perhaps Thomas Winter or John Wright. I suspect their errand was to buy fresh gunpowder through Captain Hugh Owen. Notice “Vacation,” 1605.]

(Endorsed) Concerninge one Paris that caried faukes to Gravelyng and others.

APPENDIX K.

45, Bernard St., Russell Square, London, W.C., 30th October, 1901.

Dear Sir,

The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle’s Letter.

I well remember accompanying you to the Record Office, Chancery Lane, London, W.C., on Friday, the 5th of October, 1900, when we saw the original Letter to Lord Mounteagle and the Declaration of Edward Oldcorne of the 12th March, 1605-6.

As soon as I began to compare the two documents I noticed a general similarity in the handwritings; although the handwriting of the Letter to Lord Mounteagle was evidently intended to be disguised. The letters were not uniform in their slant, and seemed, as it were, to be “staggering about.” There was also, certainly, a particular similarity in the case of certain of the letters.

I have for the last seventeen years had great experience in transcribing documents of the period of Queen Elizabeth and James I.; and, in my opinion, it is at least probable that the Letter to Lord Mounteagle and the Declaration of the 12th March, 1605-6, signed by Edward Oldcorne, were by one and the same hand.

Yours truly, Emma M. Walford.

To H. H. Spink, Jun., Esq., Solicitor, York.

APPENDIX L.

Having recently learnt that Professor Windle, M.D., F.R.S., Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Birmingham, had written two books descriptive of the Midland Counties, Warwickshire and Worcestershire, with part of Herefordshire, “_Shakespeare’s Country_,” and “_The Malvern Country_” (Methuen & Co.), I ventured to write to him respecting the roads from Lapworth to Hindlip (traversed on horseback, I conjecture, by Christopher Wright, about the 11th October, 1605); and from Hindlip to Gothurst, three miles from Newport Pagnell (traversed on horseback, I conjecture, by Ralph Ashley, between the 11th October and the 21st of October); and from Coughton to Huddington, and thence to Hindlip (traversed on horseback, as we know with certitude, by Father Oswald Tesimond, on Wednesday, the 6th November, 1605).

I append Dr. Windle’s most kind and courteous reply for the benefit of my readers. I may say that his opinion is largely corroborative of former opinions as to distances given to me independently by the Rev. Fr. Kiernan, S.J., of Worcester; and the Rev. Fr. Cardwell, O.S.B., of Coughton; as well as of those given by the gentlemen whose names occur in the Notes to the Text——the Rev. Fr. Atherton, O.S.B., of Stratford-on-Avon; Charles Avery, Esq., of Headless Cross; and George Davis, Esq., of York. (I understand that Mr. Avery wrote to the Vicar of Coughton, the parish wherein Coughton Hall, or Coughton Court, is situated, respecting my inquiry. I desire, therefore, to express my thanks to that reverend gentleman, as well as to the reverend the Vicar of Great Harrowden, Northamptonshire, for certain information which the latter likewise most readily vouchsafed to me a few months ago.)

“The University, Birmingham, Dec. 22, 1901.

“My dear Sir,

...

“With respect to the distances which you wish to know, I have taken them out as well as I can, and I think they will be exact enough; but, of course, I have had to work from modern maps, and I cannot be certain that all the roads now in existence were there in the time of James I. You will observe that most of our great roads, near the parts you mention, run approximately North and South, so that you want cross-roads.

“I expect from what I hear of that part of the county that the roads I have taken are fairly old, or at least represent bridle tracks. I think they may fairly be taken as representing the way by which a horseman would travel. With this preface I now give the figures:——

“1. Lapworth to Hindlip——as the crow flies, nineteen——via Tutnal and Bromsgrove I make it twenty-two miles, and I think this is the most likely route. There were Catholic houses at both Tutnal and Bromsgrove.

“2. Coughton to Hindlip——twelve as the crow flies——about fourteen I make it by road——but I am not sure that the first piece I have used is an old road. But fifteen miles would do it, if the more devious path had to be taken.

“3. Huddington is four from Hindlip as the crow flies; going by road by Oddingley I should make it five.

“4. By the _route_ I should go, if I were cycling, I should take

Worcester to Stratford-on-Avon 23 miles. Stratford-on-Avon to Warwick 8 ” Warwick to Daventry 19 ” Daventry to Northampton 12 ” Northampton to Newport Pagnell 12 ” ———— 74 miles. ————

“It would be about the same distance from Hindlip; for from that place you can get into the Worcester and Stratford-on-Avon road by a bye-road.

“I hope this information may be of service to you, and if I can help you any further, pray apply to me.

“I am, Yours very truly, Bertram C. A. Windle.”

APPENDIX M.

Since hearing from Professor Windle, M.D., of Birmingham, I have received the following letter from Lieutenant-Colonel Carmichael, the Chief Constable of Worcestershire, which my readers will be glad to see, I am sure. The difference in Professor Windle’s statement of distances and that of Colonel Carmichael is probably to be accounted for by the turns in the road, as well as other differences in the basis of calculation.

“County Chief Constable’s Office, Worcester, 27th December, 1901.

“Sir,

“Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle’s Letter.

“Adverting to your letter of the 14th inst., _re_ the above, I am forwarding you, as under, the required distances (by road), which are as accurate as I can possibly ascertain, viz.:——

Hindlip distant from Huddington, near Droitwich 3-1/4 miles.

Do. from Coughton, near Alcester, Warwickshire 17-1/2 ”

Do. from Lapworth, Warwickshire 30 ”

Worcester from Northampton 64 ”

“Yours faithfully,

George Carmichael, Lieut.-Col., and Chief Constable of Worcestershire.”

“H. H. Spink, Jun., Esq., Solicitor, Coney Street, York.”

APPENDIX N.

EXTRACT FROM YORK CORPORATION HOUSE BOOK——Vol. xxviii., f. 82.

4 Jany vicesimo quinto Elizth.

Assembled in the Counsell Chamber upon Ousebridg the day and year abovesaid when and where the Queen’s Maties Comission to my Lord Maior and Aldermen directed was openly redd to these present the teno^{r} wherof hereafter enseweth word by word:——

By the Queene

Right trustie and welbeloved we greet you well wheras the great care and zeale we have had ever since our first coming to the crowne for the planting and establishing of God’s holie Word & trew religon w^{th}in this o^{r} Realme and other our dominions haith ben notoriouslie knowen unto all o^{r} Subjects aswell by sundry lawes & ordinances maid and published for the true serving of god and adminstracon of the Sacraments As by divers Commissions and other directions gyven out from us for that purpose to th’end that therby our Subjects being trayned up in the feare and true knowledge of god might the better learne ther dutie and obedience towards us; and yet neverthelesse sondry lewde and evill affected psons to our present estate by nature o^{r} Subjects borne, but by disloyaltie yelding ther obedience to other forraine potentats have of lait yeares entred into certayne societies in the partyes beyond the Seas, as in the Cyttie of Reimes and other places carreyinge the names of Semynaries & Jesuits where being trayned upp and as it were full fraught with all erronious and detestable doctrine they have and do dailie repare over disguised and in most secreet manner into this o^{r} Realme and especiallie into this o^{r} County of the Cyttie of Yorke where they are in sondry places well entertained and harbored, by meanes whereof they have not onelie malitiously gone about to seduce and pervert the simple sort of our good subjects in matters of religion but also have practised most unnaturailie trayterouslye to wthdraw them frome their naturall dewties and allegiance towards us Sowing even according to the name they have receved abroad the vere sede of all sedicon and conspiracye amongst o^{r} people. And all be it we conceved that ther Rebellious harts and practises being thoroughlie discovered as well by the lait trayterous attempts of some of them in o^{r} Realme of Irland as by the treasonable actions of others w^{th}in this our Realme And ther obstinate and sedicious manner of dyeing when being justlie condempned by our lawes they have suffered death for the same Yow wold most carefullie and diligentlie have loked into the seeking owt and apphending of such wicked psons, being a matter of so great consequence to our service and tending princepallie to the publique quiet of o^{r} wholl State and to the p’ticuler saftie of every of our good subjects: and the rather for that our pleasure on that behalf haith often and sundry wayes ben signified unto yow And for the execucion wherof yow have not wanted sufficient authoritie. Yet notwithstanding, smale care or none at all haith ben had to annswere o^{r} expectacon and trust reposed in yow so as we might juslie be drawen to thinke hardlie of yow if we were not pswaded that yow have rather neglected yo^{r} duties for some other respect than for want of good affection to our service. We have thought good therfor oftsons to renew unto yow the remembrance of yo^{r} duties, and do hereby straightlie charge and command yow and ev’ye of yow to have a greater care & moare continewall circumspection on that behalf and by all the good and discreet meanes yow may to make diligent enquirie and searche w^{th}in yo^{r} severall wardes and devisions for all manner of popish preasts, Jesuits Semynaries and such like psons as yow shall have vehement cause to suspect to be malitious and obstinate mistakers of the religeon by us established and of our present estate and the same to apprehend and send under safe custodie unto our right trustie and welbeloved cosine E. of Huntington President of our Counsell in these partes and in his absence to our Counsell here. And further we will yow to have a speciall regard that such persons as shall ether willinglie absent themselves from the church or shall any way deprave the order of comen praer & of the holie sacraments now established w^{th}in this realme or shall malitiously abuse the ministers of the same or shall by anie other meanes show themselves obstinate & contemptous in matters concerning religeon may be throughlie p’ceded w^{th} according to o^{r} Lawes wherein o^{r} meaning is that yow should especiallie deale with principall persons who (we assure our selves) do by ther evill example drawe and encouradg the Inferior sort to continew in ther blindnes and disobedience and so requiring yow to procede and continew in the execution hereof in such diligent manner as we may have cause to think yow desier thereby to repare the falts of your former negligence and to dischardge yourselves in your duties according to our expectacon and the trust we comitt to yow. We recomend the due accomplishment of all the p’misses unto your discreet and diligent proceding herein. Whereof yow may not fayle as yow tender o^{r} favo^{r}. Geven under o^{r} Signet at o^{r} Cyttie of Yorke the last of December 1582 the 25^{th} yeare of o^{r} reigne.

And by hir Counsell.

(Addressed to) To our right trustie and welbeloved the Maio^{r} of our Cittie of Yorke and to the Aldermen his bretheren. (On the back.)

* * * * *

M^{r} Harbart M^{r} Robinson Maister Maltby M^{r} Appleyard M^{r} Trew & M^{r} May, Aldermen, are appoynted by these presents to view the Chambers upon Ousebridge & Monckbarr tomorrow at after none & to see whether of the same be most mete for the pson for Churche persons as will fullie resist to come to Church to the intent the same may be forthwith repared for that purpose.[A]

[Footnote A: Leave was given me to print the aforesaid Order of Queen Elizabeth in Council by the authorities of the York Corporation, on the 3rd day of June, 1901; the Lord Mayor for that year being Alderman the Right Honourable E. W. Purnell; and John Close, Esquire, J.P., Sheriff; J. G. Butcher, Esquire, K.C., and George Denison Faber, Esquire, Representatives in Parliament——the first Parliament of His Most Gracious Majesty King Edward VII.]

_Note as to authenticity of “Thomas Winter’s Confession,” at Hatfield._

Whilst greatly admiring the erudition and dialectical skill displayed by the Rev. John Gerard, S.J., in his recent Gunpowder Treason Works, mentioned in the Prelude to this Book, I am of opinion that the Confession attributed to the conspirator, Thomas Winter, is authentic. The internal evidence for the genuineness of this document is too strong (_me judice_) to be upset.

It is true that the change in the form of signature is undoubtedly a suspicious circumstance; but such change was probably due to a desire, on the prisoner’s part, _to let “a great gulf be fixed” between “Thos. Wintour,” the free-born gentleman, and “Thomas Winter,” the inchoately attainted traitor_.

Moreover, the name Winter, or Wynter, _was_, at that time, certainly spelt with the “_er_” as well as with the “_our_,” just as the name “Ward” was spelt either with the final “e” or without the same. For instance, in Flower’s “_Visitation of Yorkshire_,” Edited by Norcliffe (Harleian Soc., London), Jane Ingleby is stated to be the “Wyff to George _Wynter_ son and heyr of _Robert Winter_ of Cawdwell in Worceshyre.”

One would like to see from the pen of the Rev. John Gerard a translation of Father Oswald Tesimond’s Italian Narrative, known as “_Greenway’s Manuscript_.” Tesimond, it is almost certain, knew the bulk of the plotters more intimately than did the seventeenth century Father Gerard. Therefore, Tesimond’s Narrative, _pro tanto_, must surpass in value even the work of the Father Gerard of three hundred years ago.

NOTES.

[Footnote 1:——The following quotation is from the “_Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1603-1610_,” p. 254:——“Nov. 13 (1605) Declaration of Fras. Tresham——Catesby revealed the Plot to him on October 14th: he opposed it: urged at least its postponement, and offered him money to leave the kingdom with his companions: thought they were gone, and intended to reveal the Treason; has been guilty of concealment, but, as he had no hand in the Plot, he throws himself on the King’s mercy.”

Now surely it stands to reason that if Tresham had penned the Letter——_Litteræ Felicissimæ_——he would have never addressed his Sovereign thus. He would have triumphantly gloried in the effort of his pen, and “worked” (as the phrase goes) “his beneficent action for all that it was worth.” Tresham was held back _by the omnipotence of the impossible_; anybody can see _that_ who reads his evidence.

Besides Mounteagle, Tresham (who died of a painful disease, strangurion, in the Tower 23rd December, 1605) probably would have had a powerful (if bribed) friend in the Earl of Suffolk. Hence his friends saying that had he lived they feared not the course of Justice. The Earl of Suffolk was a son of Thomas fourth Duke of Norfolk, by his second wife, Margaret Audley, the heiress of Sir Thomas Audley, of Walden, Essex. The Duke was beheaded in 1572 for aspiring to the hand of James the First’s mother, Mary Queen of Scots. It is to James’s credit that he seems to have treated the Howard family, in its various branches, with marked consideration, after ascending the English Throne. Thomas fourth Duke of Norfolk’s first wife was the heiress of the then last Earl of Arundel, Lady Mary Fitzalan. She left one son, Philip, who became the well-known Philip Howard Earl of Arundel and Surrey.]

[Footnote 2:——In 1568 a Commission was appointed which sat at York to hear the causes of the differences which had arisen between the Scottish Queen and her subjects. Thomas fourth Duke of Norfolk presided over this Commission, and the late lamented Bishop Creighton, in his fascinating biography of Queen Elizabeth, thinks that the proposal that Mary Stuart should be married to Norfolk came from the Scottish side at York on this occasion. Whatever may be the true history and character of Mary Queen of Scots, in clearness of mind she excelled her Royal cousin of England, that wonderful child of the Renaissance, poor, pathetic, lonely, yet marvellous, “Bess,” who for 342 years, even from the grave, has ruled one aspect of English ecclesiastical life.[A] Moreover, I am of opinion that the Scots’ Queen showed a singular tolerance of spirit towards the holders of theological opinions the contradictory of her own, whilst at the same time continuing constantly established in her own tenure of what she believed to be the Truth: indeed a tolerance of spirit, combined with a personal steadfastness, reached only by the very choicest spirits of that or any succeeding age.

Tolerance is not a simple but a compound product; and its attainment is especially difficult to women by reason of the essential intensity of their nature. Tolerance is a habit born of a consciousness of intellectual strength and moral power. It is a manifestation of that princely gift and grace which “becomes a monarch better than his crown.” It ought to be the birthright and peculiar characteristic of all that know (and therefore believe) they have a living possession of the Absolute and Everlasting Truth. In the interests of our common Humanity, all who think that their strength is as the “strength of ten,” because their “faith” (whatever may be the case with their “works”) is “pure,” should seek to place on an intellectual foundation, sure and steadfast, the principle, the grand principle, considered in so many of its concrete results, of religious toleration: a principle which England has exhibited in its practical working to the world: but rather as the conclusion of the unconscious logic of events than the conscious logic of the mind of man. Now this latter kind of logic alone, because it is idealistic, can give permanency; the former kind, being primarily materialistic, will inevitably sooner or later go “the way of all flesh;” and we know what _that_ is.

The ideas of Truth and Right imply a oneness or _unity_. Now unity is the opposite of multiplicity, and, _therefore_, the contrary of division and distinction. One must rule men by virtue of the prerogatives of Truth and Right when these are ascertained. The problem at the root of the terrible conflict on the veldt of South Africa since 11th October, 1899, to the present time, 26th October, 1901, involves this question of the unity that is implied in the ideas of Truth and Right. For those ideas are the originating causes, the moving springs, the ultimate justification, and the final vindication of all true and just claims to paramountcy and sovereignty everywhere. But who is to determine which side has Truth and Right, and, therefore, the true and the just claim to paramountcy and sovereignty in South Africa?

Surely the answer is that people who have shown that they can rule Humanity because _first_ they have themselves obeyed princely ideals of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Nothing short of this can satisfy the universal conscience of mankind.

What have our men of light and leading been about that they have not explained clearly and straight from the shoulder these truths to the world long, long ago? Had they done so, how much innocent blood might have been never spilt! How many bitter tears might have been never shed!]

[Footnote A: See “_Life of Mary Queen of Scots_,” by Samuel Cowan (Sampson, Low, 1901); also “_The Mystery of Mary Stuart_,” by Andrew Lang (Longmans, 1901).]

[Footnote 3:——Lord Mounteagle had been a party to the sending of Thomas Winter and Father Oswald Tesimond into Spain in 1601 to negotiate with King Philip III. of Spain an invasion of England with an army on Elizabeth’s death. In 1601 he seems to have been a prisoner in the house of Mr. Newport, of Bethnal Green. But in 1602 he was with Catesby at White Webbs, by Enfield Chase, near London; so he was then at liberty. On the accession of James I., Mounteagle——along with the Earl of Southampton (Shakespeare’s patron and friend), and Francis and Lewis Tresham——held the Tower of London for the King, who seems to have welcomed Mounteagle at Court from the first. After James’s accession Christopher Wright and Guy Fawkes were sent on a mission to Spain to urge upon the Spanish King to invade the realm. This mission seems to have been a continuation of the mission in 1601 of Winter and Tesimond. Mounteagle, however, took no part or lot in despatching the second mission. (It is important to notice the fact that as far back as 1601 and 1603 Thomas Winter and Tesimond, Christopher Wright and Fawkes, were co-workers in revolutionary designs against the Government of the day.)

Mounteagle’s father, Lord Morley, was living in 1605. He did not die till 1618, when his son and heir succeeded him as eleventh Baron Morley. Mounteagle was called to the House of Lords in the autumn of 1605, under the title of Baron Mounteagle, in right of his mother. “Mounteagle,” says Father Oswald Tesimond, alias Greenway, “was either actually a Catholic in opinion and in the interior of his heart, or was very well-disposed towards the Catholics, being a friend of several of the conspirators and related to some of them.” After the Plot, Mounteagle evidently left the religion of his ancestors, though his wife (_née_ Tresham) continued constant herein, and brought up her children Catholics; but Mounteagle “died a Catholic.”

Jardine thinks that Mounteagle held some ceremonial office at Court, probably in the Household of Queen Anne of Denmark, wife of James I., who was at heart a Roman Catholic, though most probably never received into that Church.——See “_Carmel in England_” (Burns & Oates, 1899), p. 30. We hear of Mounteagle about ten days before the 5th November, 1605, calling at the Palace at Richmond to kiss the Prince’s hands (_i.e._, Henry Prince of Wales). Thomas Winter told Catesby that Mounteagle, at that time, gathered from what he heard at the Royal Household that the Prince would not be present at the opening of Parliament. Somerset House was Queen Anne’s Palace. It would be the centre for all the most brilliant wits, ambassadors, and diplomatists of the day.]

[Footnote 4:——The Earl of Arundel and Lord William Howard were half-brothers. (Lord William Howard was “the Belted Will Howard,” renowned in Border story as the scourge of the lawless moss-trooper. For a description of this remarkable man see Sir Walter Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel.”) The half-brothers were both the sons of that unfortunate nobleman, Thomas fourth Duke of Norfolk, who in 1572 was beheaded for aspiring to the hand of Mary Queen of Scots. Lord Arundel died in the Tower of London in 1595, “a Martyr-in-will for the Ancient Faith.” Though their father was a strong Protestant (being a pupil of John Fox, the author of Fox’s “_Book of Martyrs_”) both his sons, Philip and William, became strong Roman Catholics, as did his daughter, Margaret Lady Sackville. Philip Howard Earl of Arundel, losing his father when only fifteen years old, was, at an early age, drawn within the vortex of the gaieties of the Court of his kinswoman Queen Elizabeth. However, in the year 1581, while still a mere courtier and votary of pleasure, it happened he was present, we are told, at “the disputation in the Tower of London in 1581, concerning divers points of religion betwixt Fr. Edmond Campion of the Society of Jesus and some other Priests of the one part; Charke, Fulk, Whitaker, and some other Protestant Ministers of the other.” We are further told by his biographer, an unknown Jesuit writer of the seventeenth century, “By that he saw and heard there, he easily perceived on which side the Truth and true Religion was, tho’ at that time, nor untill a year or two after, he neither did nor intended to embrace and follow it: and after he did intend it a good while passed before he did execute it. For, as himself signify’d in a letter which he afterwards writ in the time of his imprisonment in the Tower to Fr. Southwell, he resolved to become Catholic long before he could resolve to live as a Catholic, and thereupon he defer’d the former until he had an intent and resolute purpose to perform the latter. The which (being aided by a special grace of God) he made walking one day alone in the Gallery of his Castle at Arundel, where after a long and great conflict within himself, lifting up his eies and hands to Heaven, he firmly resolved to become a member of God’s Church, and to frame his life accordingly.”

Sir Robert Howard, in the reign of Henry VI., married the Lady Margaret Mowbray, daughter of Thomas De Mowbray Duke of Norfolk, and grand-daughter, maternally, of Richard Fitzalan Earl of Arundel (“_Law Times_,” 9th November, 1901). The motto of the Howards Dukes of Norfolk is, “_Virtus sola invicta_”——“Virtue alone unconquered.” The motto of the Howards Earls of Carlisle is, “_Volo sed non valeo_”——“I am willing, but I am not able.”

The Earl of Arundel was “reconciled” by Fr. Wm. Weston, of the Society of Jesus, in 1584. In the next year he was imprisoned, and after an incarceration of ten years died in 1595. Fr. Robert Southwell, the poet, wrote for the Earl’s consolation, when the latter was in the Tower of London, that ravishing work, the “_Epistle of Comfort_.” (The illustrious House of the Norfolk Howards has been indeed highly favoured in being able to call “Friend” and “Father” two such exquisite geniuses as Robert Southwell and Frederic William Faber.) The two half-brothers, Philip and William, married two sisters, the daughters and co-heiresses of Thomas Lord Dacres of the North, “a person of great estate, power, and authority in those parts (as possessing no less than nine baronies) and one of the most ancient for nobility in the whole kingdom.” These ladies were among the most amiable and delightful women of their time. From Philip Howard Earl of Arundel and Surrey and Anne Dacres is descended the present Duke of Norfolk; and from his half-brother Lord William Howard and Elizabeth Dacres the present Earl of Carlisle: both of which Englishmen are indeed worthy of their “noble ancestors,” and fulfil the great Florentine poet’s ideal of “the truly noble,” in that _they_ confer nobility upon their _race_.

For further facts concerning those mentioned in this note——who so appeal to the historic imagination and so touch the historic sympathies——see the “_Lives of Philip Howard Earl of Arundel and Anne Dacres his wife_” (Hurst & Blackett), and the “_Household Books of Lord William Howard_” (Surtees Society).]

[Footnote 5:——Lord Mounteagle would be also akin to Lord Lumley (who had estates at or about Pickering, I believe), through the great House of Neville. Lord Lumley’s portrait, from a painting in the possession of the Right Hon. the Earl of Scarbrough, Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, is to be found in Edward Hailstone’s “_Yorkshire Worthies_,” vol. i. Edward Hailstone, Esquire, of Walton Hall, Wakefield, was a rich benefactor to the York Minster Library, and his memory should be ever had in grateful remembrance by all who “love Yorkshire because they know her.”——See Jackson’s “_Guide to Yorkshire_” (Leeds).]

[Footnote 6:——It should be remembered that (i.) the page’s evidence goes to show that the man who delivered the Letter was a “tall man.” (ii.) That the Letter was given in the street to the page who was already in the street when the “tall man” came up to him with the document.

Hoxton is about four miles from Whitehall. I opine that Mounteagle proceeded from Bath to Hoxton, and that the supper had been pre-arranged to take place at Hoxton on the evening of the 26th of October, 1605, by Thomas Ward, the gentleman-servant of Lord Mounteagle, who indeed read the Letter after Mounteagle had broken the seal and just glanced at its contents. Anybody gifted with ordinary common sense can see that this scene must have been all planned beforehand.]

[Footnote 7:——The letters “wghe” are not, at this date (5th October, 1900), clearly discernible.]

[Footnote 8:——See letter dated November, 1605——Sir Edward Hoby to Sir Thomas Edmonds. Add. MSS. in British Museum, No. 4176, where name “Thomas Ward” is given.]

[Footnote 9:——Stowe’s “_Chronicle_,” continued by Howes, p. 880. Ed. 1631.

From the evidence of William Kydall, it was physically impossible for Thomas Winter to confer with Christopher Wright, Wright being nearly 100 miles away from London “the next day after the delivery of the Letter,” for the next day would be Sunday, October the 27th. Wright reached London in the afternoon of Wednesday, the 30th.

See Appendix respecting discrepancy as to date not affecting allegation of fact when the former is not of the essence of the statement, per Lord Chief Justice Scroggs, _temp._ Charles II.]

[Footnote 10:——Fawkes was apprehended at “midnight without the House,” according to “_A Discourse of this late intended Treason_.” Knevet having given notice that he had secured Fawkes, thereupon Suffolk, Salisbury, and the Council went to the King’s chamber at the Palace in Whitehall, and Fawkes was brought into the Royal Presence. This was at about four o’clock in the morning of Tuesday, the 5th of November.

Fawkes showed the calmest behaviour conceivable in the Royal Presence. To those whom he regarded as being of authority he was respectful, yet very firm; but towards those whom he deemed as of no account, he was humorously scornful. The man’s self control was astounding. He told his auditory that “a dangerous disease requires a desperate remedy!” (See “_King’s Book_.”)

Whitehall Palace had been a Royal Palace since the reign of Henry VIII.; it was burned down in the time of William and Mary. It was formerly what St. James’s Palace is now in relation to royal functions.

It was at St. James’s Palace that His Most Gracious Majesty King Edward VII. deigned to receive the respectful address of condolence on the death of His late beloved Imperial Mother, and of loyal assurance of devoted attachment to His Throne and Person from Cardinal Vaughan, together with several Bishops, the Duke of Norfolk, the Marquis of Ripon, the Lord Mowbray and Stourton, and the Lord Herries, including other peers and representatives of the English Roman Catholic laity.

By a singular coincidence the day happened to be the 295th anniversary of the execution of Father Henry Garnet, S.J., in St. Paul’s Churchyard, London (3rd May, 1606): a coincidence of happy augury, let us devoutly hope, that old things are about to pass away, and that all things are about to become new!]

[Footnote 11:——Essex House was between the Strand and the River Thames.

Somerset House was a favourite Palace of Queen Anne of Denmark, the Consort of James I. Here the Spanish Ambassador Extraordinary, Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Duke de Frias, and Constable of Castile, sojourned a fortnight, when in 1604 he came to ratify the treaty of peace between England and Spain.]

[Footnote 12:——By Poulson in his “_History of Holderness_,” Yorks. (1841), vol. ii., pp. 5, 7, in an account of the Wright family, where there is a pedigree showing the names of Christopher Wright and his elder brother John. Poulson may have been recording a local tradition, though he mentions no kind of authority.——See also Foster’s Ed. of Glover’s “_Visitation of Yorkshire_,” Also Norcliffe’s Ed. of Flower’s “_Visitation of Yorkshire_” (Harleian Society).

See Supplementum for account of my visit to Plowland (or Plewland) Hall, in the Parish of Welwick, Holderness, on the 6th of May, 1901.]

[Footnote 13:——See “_Guy Fawkes_,” by Rev. Thomas Lathbury, M.A. (J. W. Parker, 1839), p. 21. Lathbury does not give his authority for this interesting statement respecting this conspirator, Christopher Wright. It is presumed, however, that he had some ground for the statement; for it is antecedently improbable that his “imagination” should have provided so circumstantial an assertion. Then, whence did he derive it?

Query:——Does Greenway’s Narrative make any such statement? Apparently Jardine had a sight of the whole of this invaluable MS., and possibly Lathbury (who appears to have been a clergyman of the Established Church) may have seen it likewise through Canon Tierney, the Editor of “_Dodd’s Church History_.”]

[Footnote 14:——I am afraid that when the Acts of the High Commission Court that sat in the King’s Manor, in York, under the Presidency of Queen Elizabeth’s kinsman, the Earl of Huntingdon, come to be published, we shall find that “the lads and lassies” of Yorkshire and Lancashire especially were very “backward in coming forward” to greet the rising of the Elizabethan ecclesiastical aurora which it was their special privilege to behold.

Mr. Thomas Graves Law knows about these invaluable historical documents, and I hope that he will undertake their editorship. He is just the man for this grand piece of work. To the people of “New England,” as well as of “Old England,” these records of the York Court of High Commission are of extraordinary interest, because they relate to “Puritan Sectaries” as well as to “Popish Recusants,” Scrooby, so well known in the history of the Pilgrim Fathers, being in the Archdiocese of York.]

[Footnote 15:——So that bad as they were, they were not hoary-headed criminals, if we except Percy who seems to have been prematurely “grey.”

The name of Thomas Percy’s mother appears under “Beverley” as “Elizabeth Percye the widowe of Edward Percye deceased,” in Peacock’s “_List of Roman Catholics of Yorkshire in 1604_.”

The Percy Arms are in Welwick Church. (Communicated by Miss Burnham, of Plowland, Welwick.)]

[Footnote 16:——I have seen the statement in a letter of the Earl (who was one of the most scientific men of his age) which he wrote after the discovery of the Plot. The letter is in Collins’ “_Peerage_.” The Earl of Salisbury was Northumberland’s enemy, as Northumberland was looked up to by the popish recusants as a sort of natural leader, though the Earl, on his own avowal, was no papist. Salisbury’s native perspicacity, however, told him that Northumberland, from every point of view, was alike to the Royal House of Stuart and to the noble house of Salisbury dangerous. For had the oppressed papists “thrown off” the yoke of James in course of time, Salisbury’s life would have been not worth the price of a farthing candle; and the philosophic, nonchalant Northumberland would have thought that the papists’ support was well “worth a Mass,” just as did King Harry of Navarre, the father of Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I., a few years previously. (An ancient portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria is in the possession of the York Merchant Adventurers, York.) Then again, Salisbury had a personal grudge against the proud Percy. For the latter evidently in his heart scorned and rejected Salisbury, not only as a _novus homo_——a new man——but as belonging to that band of statesmen who had controlled Elizabeth’s policy, and told her not what she ought to do, but what she could do; and whom the great Northern Earl would have been taught from his cradle to spurn at and despise, because they were nothing other than “a low bad lot,” who “were for themselves;” very different indeed from the Earls of Essex, Walter and Robert, and such men as Sir Henry Sidney and his still greater son, Sir Philip Sidney, the darling of the England of his day. Percy indeed once declared that if Percy blood and Cecil blood were both poured into a bowl, the former would refuse to mix with the latter. So, human nature being what it is, no wonder the shrewd and able Salisbury had no love for the “high and mighty” Northumberland, and that _carpe diem_——seize your opportunity——was Salisbury’s motto as soon as he got the chance. (I know of no stronger proof that, during the past 300 years, in spite of back-waters, the world _has_ made true moral progress than the contrast presented by the present Prime Minister and the present First Lord of the Treasury and their ancestors of “Great Eliza’s golden time” and the days of James Stuart.)]

[Footnote 17:——Robert Catesby held his Chastleton estate in possession from his grandmother. He sold it to pay his ransom after the Essex rebellion. (Dr. Jessopp in Article on “Catesby,” “_National Dictionary of Biography_.”)

Had Catesby an estate at Armcote, in Worcestershire, not far from Chipping Norton?]

[Footnote 18:——This Father Gerard of the seventeenth century was the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard, of Byrn, Lancashire. He was an acquaintance of the Wards, of Mulwith, Newby, and Givendale, most probably, for he was the early and life-long friend of Mary Ward.——See the “_Life of Mary Ward_,” by Mary Catherine Elizabeth Chambers (Burns & Oates).]

[Footnote 19:——Sir Thomas Leigh settled considerable property to the uses of the marriage. Jardine says that only Chastleton actually came into Catesby’s possession.]

[Footnote 20:——S. T. Coleridge, speaking of the age of Elizabeth, says that, notwithstanding its marvellous physical and intellectual prosperity, “it was an age when, for a time, the intellect stood superior to the moral sense.” “_Lectures on Shakespeare_,” Collier’s Ed. (1856), p. 34.]

[Footnote 21:——What a lesson to us all, of every creed and philosophy, is the just, yet terrible fate of these personally charming men, “to hug the shore” of plain Natural Ethics, of solid Moral Virtue, which indeed is “fairer than the morning or the evening star.” The establishment of Ethical Societies by such men as the late Sir John Seeley and Professor Henry Sidgwick for the diffusion of true Moral Ideas is a fact pregnant with happy augury for the twentieth century.]

[Footnote 22:——Jardine’s “_Narrative_,” pp. 31, 32.]

[Footnote 23:——Gerard’s “_Narrative_,” p. 56.]

[Footnote 24:——Knaresborough, Knaresbrough or Knaresburgh, is thus pleasantly celebrated in Drayton’s “_Polyolbion_”:——

“From Whernside Hill not far outflows the nimble Nyde, Through Nytherside, along as sweetly she doth glide Tow’rds Knaresburgh on her way—— Where that brave forest stands Entitled by the town[A] who, with upreared hands, Makes signs to her of joy, and doth with garlands crown The river passing by.”]

[Footnote A: The allusion is to the ancient Forest of Knaresbrough belonging to the Duchy of Lancaster. (As to the extent and history of the Forest, see Grainge’s “_Forest of Knaresbrough_.”)]

[Footnote 25:——“The Venerable” Francis Ingleby’s portrait is still to be seen at Ripley Castle, an ideal English home, hard-by the winding Nidd.]

[Footnote 26:——For the facts of Francis Ingleby’s life, see Challoner’s “_Missionary Priests_,” edited by Thomas G. Law; and “_Acts of the English Martyrs_” (Burns & Oates), by the Rev. J. H. Pollen, S.J.]

[Footnote 27:——From Father Gerard’s “_Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot_,” p. 59.]

[Footnote 28:——See the admirably written life of Sir Everard Digby, under the title “_The Life of a Conspirator_,” by “One of his descendants” (Kegan Paul & Co., 1895). The learned descendant of Sir Everard Digby, however, evidently knows very much more concerning his gallant ancestor than he knows about Guy Fawkes, who (excepting that “accident of an accident”——fortune) was as honourable a character as the high-minded spouse of Mary Mulsho himself——_honourable, of course, I mean after their kind_.——Jardine’s “_Narrative of Gunpowder Plot_,” p. 67.]

[Footnote 29:——Sir William Catesby and Sir Thomas Tresham were excellent types of the English gentry of their day. Each was “a fine old English gentleman, one of the olden time.” They had both become “reconciled” Roman Catholics——along with so many of the nobility, gentry, and yeomanry in the Midlands——in 1580-81, through the famous missionary journey of the Jesuit, Robert Parsons, probably forming with Edmund Campion two of the most powerful extempore preachers that ever gave utterance to the English tongue.

We may readily picture to ourselves “the coming of age” of the son and heir of each of these gallant knights and stately dames. And we may easily conceive of the bright hopes that either of the gentlewomen (especially the two sisters), in their close-fitting caps, laced ruffs, and gowns falling in pleated folds, must have cherished in their maternal hearts for an honourable career for the child——the treasured child——of their bosom. Alas! through the evil will of man, for the pathetic vanity of human wishes.]

[Footnote 30:——Jardine, in his “_Narrative_,” p. 51, says that John Grant’s ancestors are described in several pedigrees as of Saltmarsh, in Worcestershire, and of Snitterfield, in Warwickshire; that Norbrook adjoined Snitterfield, though it is not now considered locally situate therein. Students of Shakespeare will be interested to learn that in the Parish of Snitterfield, near Grant’s ancestral home, the poet’s mother, Mary Arden——herself connected with the Throckmorton family——owned property. Moreover, through his mother, Shakespeare was distantly connected with several of the plotters. For Catesby and Tresham, as well as Lady Wigmore, of Lucton, Herefordshire, were all first cousins to Lady Mounteagle, who was a daughter of Sir Thomas Tresham. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton (the father of Francis Throckmorton, who was executed in the reign of Elizabeth) having three daughters whom he married to Sir William Catesby, Sir Thomas Tresham, and Sir William Wigmore.——See Jardine’s “_Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot_,” p. 11; also Foley’s “_Records of the Jesuits in England_” (Burns & Oates), vol. iv., p. 290.

Probably Shakespeare knew Grant personally, and not only Grant, but Catesby, Percy, the Winters (Robert and Thomas Winter were likewise akin to the Throckmortons), and Tresham. That the bard of Avon knew Lord Mounteagle, the associate of his friend and patron the Earl of Southampton, is even still more probable.

How is it that Shakespeare never in his writings sought to make political capital (as the sinister phrase goes) out of the Gunpowder Plot? For several reasons: first, his heart (if not his head) was with the ancient faith he had learned in the old Warwickshire home; secondly, his large humanity prompted him to sympathise with all that were oppressed. I hold that in this studied silence, this dignified reserve of Shakespeare, we may discern additional proof of the nobleness of the man, supposing that he knew personally any of the plotters. He would not kick friends that were down, when those friends were even traitors. He could not approve their action——far from it. He might have condemned with justice, and with the world’s applause. But upon himself a self-denying ordinance he laid, tempting as it must have been to him to perform the contrary, especially when we recollect the course then followed by his brother-poet——Jonson. But Shakespeare would not “take sword in hand” with the pretence of restoring “equality” between these wrong-doers and their country. He deemed that the ends of justice——exact, strict Justice——were met in “the hangman’s bloody hands”——“Macbeth,” 1606——and that sufficed for him.

Since writing the above note I find it stated in “_The Religion of Shakespeare_,” by Henry Sebastian Bowden (Burns & Oates, 1899)——chiefly from the writings of that great Elizabethan scholar, the late Richard Simpson——that “among the chief actors in the so-called Gunpowder Plot were Catesby; the two Bates; John Grant, of Norbrook, near Stratford; Thomas Winter, Grant’s brother-in-law; all Shakespeare’s friends and benefactors” (p. 103); so that my conjecture is, belike, warranted that the poet knew Catesby, Winter, and Grant. Moreover, from the same work, it appears that Shakespeare, through the Ardens and Throckmortons, was connected by family marriages, not only with Catesby, the Winters, and Tresham, but distantly with the Earl of Southampton himself, who was a relative of Lord Mounteagle. Hence it is still more probable that Shakespeare knew Mounteagle personally.

Again, Shakespeare probably was present as one of the King’s players in 1604 at Somerset House, on the occasion of the Constable of Castile’s visit.——See Sidney Lee’s “_Life of Shakespeare_” (Smith & Elder), p. 233.——If this were so, then it is well-nigh certain that the poet must have there beheld Mounteagle, who would be one of the Lords then present, most probably in attendance on the Queen Consort. The festivities in honour of the Spanish Ambassador Extraordinary wound up with a magnificent banquet at the Palace of Whitehall, when the Earl of Southampton “danced a correnta” with the Queen. This was August 19th, 1604.——_Cf._ Churton Collins’s “_Ephemera Critica_” (Constable) as to religion of Shakespeare.]

[Footnote 31:——The name is also spelt Tirwhitt. Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, Lady Ursula Babthorpe’s grandfather, had entertained Henry VIII. at the old Hall at Kettleby. A new Hall was built in the time of James I., but this was pulled down about 1691, I believe. The Tyrwhitts, of Kettleby, were allied to such as the Tailboys, Boroughes, Wymbishes, Monsons, Tournays, Thimbelbies, Thorolds, and other Lincolnshire houses. They were rigidly Roman Catholic. The marriage between Sir William Babthorpe and Ursula Tyrwhitt was one of those marriages “that are made in heaven.” The lovely pathos of the lives of this ideal Yorkshire family is indescribable; beginning with Sir William Babthorpe, who harboured Campion in 1581. It was continued through Sir Ralph Babthorpe, who married that “valiant woman” (the only daughter and heiress of William Birnand, the Recorder of York), Grace Birnand by name, of Brimham, Knaresbrough, and York. Lady Grace Babthorpe’s active and contemplative life was one long singing of _Gloria in excelsis_. Sir William Babthorpe and Lady Ursula his wife, like their noble parents, Sir Ralph Babthorpe and Lady Grace, “for conscience sake” became voluntary exiles “and with strangers made their home.” Sir William died a captain in the Spanish Army fighting against France. Lady Ursula, his wife, died of the plague at Bruges. They had many children, some of whom were remarkably gifted. Mary Anna Barbara Babthorpe, the grand-daughter of Sir William Babthorpe, and great-great-grand-daughter of the Sir William Babthorpe who harboured Campion, was the Mother-General of the Nuns of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin, one of whose oldest convents, St. Mary’s, is still situated near Micklegate Bar, York, on land given by Sir Thomas Gascoigne, Bart., of Barnbow Hall, near Aberford, in the time of James II. In Ireland the nuns of this order are styled the Loretto Nuns. The story of the Babthorpes is a veritable English “_Un Récit d’une sœur_.”——See “_Life of Mary Ward_.”——The Wards——like the Inglebies, of Ripley; the Constables, of Everingham;[A] the Dawnays, of Sessay; and the Palmes, of Naburn——were related to this “family of saints.”——See also “The Babthorpes, of Babthorpe” (one of whose ancestors carried the sword before King Edward III. on entering Calais in 1347), in the late Rev. John Morris’s “_Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers_,” first series (Burns & Oates).

For “the Kayes,” of Woodsome, see Canon Hulbert’s “_Annals of Almondbury_” (Longmans).

“The Venerable” Richard Langley, of Owsthorpe and Grimthorpe, near Pocklington, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, who suffered at the York Tyburn on the 1st December, 1586, for harbouring priests, was great-grandson of one of the Kayes, of Woodsome. (Communicated by Mr. Oswald C. B. Brown, Solicitor, of York.)]

[Footnote 32:——“_Greenway’s MS._,” quoted by Jardine, “_Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot_,” p. 151.]

[Footnote 33:——Hawarde, “_Reportes of Star Chamber_.”

See “_The Fawkeses, of York_,” by Robert Davies, sometime Town Clerk of York (Nichols, Westminster, 1850); and the “_Life of Guy Fawkes_,” by William Camidge (Burdekin, York). Davies was a learned York antiquary.

William Harrington, the elder, first cousin to Edward Fawkes (Guy’s father), and Thomas Grimstone, of Grimston, were both “bound over” by the Privy Council, on the 6th of December, 1581, to appear before the Lord President of the North and the Justices of Assize at the next Assizes at York, for harbouring Edmund Campion.——See “_Acts of Privy Council, 1581_” (Eyre & Spottiswoode), p. 282.——What was the upshot I do not know.

Their Indictments are probably still to be found at York Castle. And it is a great desideratum that the old York Castle Indictments should be catalogued, and a catalogue published. I believe such never has been done. Since August, 1900, York Castle has been used as a Military Prison. All the old Indictments that are in existence, whether at York, Worcester, or other Assize towns, would be of interest and value re the Gunpowder Plot _if the affair is to be thoroughly bottomed_.

The York Quarter Sessions’ Indictments appear to be irretrievably lost, which is a great pity, as many of those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries must have referred to Popish recusants, and those of the seventeenth century probably to Puritan sectaries, and, later, to Quakers as well——the latter being punished under the Popish Acts of Supremacy and Allegiance. Indeed, the barrister, William Prynne (seventeenth century), a Calvinistic English Presbyterian, wrote a book to prove that Quakerism was only a sort of indirect and derivative Popery. The learned gentleman entitled his work: “_The Quakers unmasked and clearly detected to be but the spawn of Romish Frogs, Jesuites, and Franciscan Fryers._” Now, Prynne was not far wrong either, the erudite historical philosopher knows very well, who has studied the genesis of the remarkable system developed by Fox, Barclay, and Penn.

Was there a Grimston near Mount St. John, Feliskirk, near Thirsk? Or was it Grimston Garth, Holderness? or was it North Grimston, between Malton and Driffield, that Thomas Grimstone came from; or Grimston, three miles east of York?

Since writing the preceding note I have come to the conclusion that the Grimston was, most likely, the Grimstone some twelve miles from Mount St. John, in the Parish of Gilling East, near Hovingham and Ampleforth, in the Vale of Mowbray, and near Gilling Castle, once the seat of the Catholic branch of the Fairfaxes, now the seat of George Wilson, Esquire, J.P. This Grimstone would be a spot very suitable for harbouring Campion after he had been at Babthorpe, near Selby; Thixendale, near Leavening, east of Malton; and Fryton, west of Malton, near Hovingham.

(How wonderful to think that the probabilities are in favour of the supposal that these tranquil, sequestered nooks, each with its own fair summer beauty, once rang with the golden eloquence of Edmund Campion, “one of the diamonds of England,” in the days of Shakespeare.)

Guy Fawkes was also connected with another Roman Catholic martyr, “the Venerable” William Knight, yeoman, of South Duffield, Hemingbrough, Selby, East Yorkshire, who suffered death at the York Tyburn in 1596, for “explaining to a man the Catholic faith.”——See Challoner and Foster’s “_Pedigrees of Yorkshire Families_” (“Fawkes, of Farnley”).]

[Footnote A: The Constables, of Everingham, are one of those old English Roman Catholic families who so appealed to the historic imagination and so touched the historic sympathies of the first Earl of Beaconsfield. The present Lord Lieutenant of the East Riding of Yorkshire, Lord Herries, is the owner of this grand old home of the Constables, one of whom was executed for his share in the first Pilgrimage of Grace under Robert Aske, of Aughton on the Derwent, in the time of Henry VIII. (1536). The pilgrims captured York, Pontefract, and Hull, and laid siege to Skipton Castle. Aske was hanged as a traitor from one of the towers of York, either Clifford’s Tower or possibly the tower of All Saints’ Church, The Pavement, York. After the movement had been quelled, Henry VIII. came with dread majesty to York and established the Council of the North. Lady Lumley, the wife of Sir John Lumley, of Lumley Castle, was burned alive at Smithfield.——See Burke’s “_Tudor Portraits_.”]

[Footnote 34:——Father Morris, S.J., in “_The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers_” (York volume), says that Father Tesimond was a Yorkshireman; though in Foley’s “_Records_,” in one place, he is said to have been born in Northumberland, perhaps a translation of the Latin “Northumbria,” intended to represent the name “Yorkshire.” There were, at least, three families of Tesimond in York in the reign of Elizabeth, namely, Robert Tesimond, a butcher, of Christ’s Parish; Anthony Tesimond, a cordyner; and William Tesimond, a saddler, both of St. Michael-le-Belfrey’s Parish. I incline to think that Father Oswald Tesimond was the son of William Tesimond, who lived in the Parish of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, York. Oswald Tesimond was born in 1563; but as the Register books of St. Michael’s Church, unfortunately, begin in 1565, two years afterwards, there are no means of verifying my supposal. William Tesimond was, for a great part of his life, a rigid Catholic, suffering imprisonment for his faith, although eventually he appears to have yielded. Margaret Tesimond, the wife of William Tesimond, also bore a more than lip testimony to the ancient religion by suffering imprisonment for it. Whether William Tesimond died “reconciled” or not, I cannot say. Perhaps further researches will clear the matter up as to this and the exact parentage of Father Tesimond. In the very learned and deeply lamented Dr. James Raine’s admirable book on the City of York (Longmans, 1893), on p. 110, is the following:——“Whilst the Earl of Northumberland’s head was lying in the Tolbooth on Ouse Bridge, William Tessimond cut off some hair from the beard. He wrapped it in paper, and wrote on the outside, ‘This the heire of the good Erle of Northumberland, Lord Perecy.’ For this he got into great trouble.” This must have been about the 22nd August, 1572, as Thomas Percy Earl of Northumberland was beheaded on that day, at three o’clock in the afternoon, in The Pavement, York, for his share in the Rising of the North. The Church Register of St. Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, York, contains an entry of the death of the Earl of Northumberland. The Percy family had property in Walmgate at that time. The Earl is now “the Blessed Thomas Percy,” one of “the York martyrs.” The Lady Mary Percy, of Ghent, a well-known Benedictine Abbess, was his daughter. She would be probably named after her aunt Mary, the wife of Francis Slingsby, of Scriven Hall, near Scotton. There is a fine monument in the Parish Church of Knaresbrough to the memory of Francis Slingsby and Mary Percy, his wife. The Slingsbies were Roman Catholics till many years after the reign of Elizabeth; in fact, Sir Henry Slingsby, who was beheaded during the Commonwealth, was himself a Roman Catholic.

The Half Moon Hotel, in Blake Street, York, perhaps derives its name from the well-known device of the Percy family.]

[Footnote 35:——Quoted from Father Gerard’s “_Narrative_,” p. 278.]

[Footnote 36:——So that the Plot was first hatched about Easter, 1604.——See Dr. S. R. Gardiner’s “_What Gunpowder Plot was_,” as to the decisive causes of the Plot.——Jardine, in his “_Narrative_” (pp. 45 and 46), thinks that the Star-Chambering of that aged but charming Roman Catholic gentleman, Thomas Pounde, Esquire, of Belmont, Hampshire, contributed to the causes of the Plot. This is very probable. Pounde was first cousin to the father of the Earl of Southampton, the patron and friend of Shakespeare. Pounde was a devoted friend of Campion, and himself a Jesuit lay-brother. He spent a large part of his life in prison. He was attired in prison as became his rank and fortune, and was, besides being a “mystical” Catholic, a most accomplished Elizabethan gentleman.——See “_Jesuits in Conflict_” (Burns & Oates).]

[Footnote 37:——_I.e._, according to Winter, about two months after.]

[Footnote 38:——See pp. 269 and 271 of the Rev. John Gerard’s, S.J., work, “_What was the Gunpowder Plot?_” (Osgood, McIlvaine, & Co., 1897).]

[Footnote 39:——_I.e._, a Prayer Book. Sir Everard Digby appears to have been sworn in by Robert Catesby on the cross formed by the hilt of a poniard.——See “_Life of Sir Everard Digby_.”]

[Footnote 40:——It is also said that Catesby “peremptorily demanded of his associates a promise that they would not mention the project, even in Confession, lest their ghostly fathers should discountenance and hinder it.”——See “_The Month_,” No. 369, pp. 353, 4.——This would be to make assurance double sure. But, happily, the “best laid schemes o’ men gang aft agley.” “For there is on earth a yet auguster thing, veiled though it be, than Parliament or King”——the human conscience, which is “prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathenas” (John Henry Newman). Also, “Conscience is the knowledge with oneself of the better and the worse” (James Martineau).]

[Footnote 41:——See Jardine’s “_Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot_,” p. 41.]

[Footnote 42:——The Most Hon. the Marquess of Ripon, K.G., Lord Lieutenant of the North Riding of Yorkshire, and the Marchioness of Ripon, C.I., of Studley Royal, near Ripon, are descended from this leile-hearted and chivalrous Yorkshire race, in whom so many idealistic, stately souls, of a long buried Past, claim kindred.

Of what manner of men these Mallories were, the puissant owners of Studley Royal, is evident from what we are told concerning that Sir William Mallory, “who was so zealous and constant a Catholic, that when heresy first came into England, and Catholic service commanded to be put down on such a day, he came to the church, and stood there at the door with his sword drawn to defend, that none should come in to abolish religion, saying that he would defend it with his life, and continued for some days keeping out the officers so long as he could possibly do it.”——From the “Babthorpes, of Babthorpe,” Morris’s “_Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers_,” first series, p. 227.——The Church referred to must have been the old Chapel at Aldfield, near Studley Royal. Aldfield was one of the Chapelries of the ancient Parish of Ripon. The old Chapel at Aldfield is now represented by the noble new Church which is seen in the distance, at the end of the long avenue, by all who have the rare happiness of visiting Studley Royal and the tall grey ruins of the Cistercian Abbey of St. Mary, Fountains, laved by the musical little River Skell. (Studley Church is twin-sister to Skelton Church, the Vyner Memorial in the Park of Newby. Skelton was likewise one of the old Ripon Chapelries.) This phrase “to abolish religion,” I opine, refers to the time of Edward VI., when the Mass was first put down, and a communion substituted therefor.——See Tennyson’s “_Mary Tudor_.”——There is a curious old traditional prophecy extant in Yorkshire, as well as other parts of England, that as the Mass was abolished in the reign of the Sixth Edward, so it will be restored in the reign of the Seventh!]

[Footnote 43:——The promoters of the Rising of the North wished:——

(1) To restore to her kingdom Mary Queen of Scots, who simply fascinated Francis Norton, and every other imaginative, romantic, Yorkshire heart that she came in contact with.

(2) To depose Elizabeth, whom they regarded as morally no true claimant for the throne, until dispensed from her illegitimacy by the Pope.

(3) To place Mary Stuart on the throne of England.

(4) Above all, to restore “the ancient faith,” which they did in Durham, Staindrop, Darlington, Richmond, Ripon, and some of the churches in Cleveland, for a very brief season.

It is to be remembered that the Rising of the North in 1569 was not joined in by _all_ the Catholics of Yorkshire, nor by any of the Catholics of Lancashire. This latter fact, together with the influence of Cardinal Allen, of Rossall, partly accounts for the circumstance that Lancashire (especially the neighbourhood of “Wigan and Ashton-on-Makerfield, and, above all, the Fylde, that region between Lancaster and Preston, whence “the great Allen” sprang) is “the Rome of England” to this day. It is said that the Parish Church of Bispham (near which the well-known sea-side resort, Blackpool, is situated) was the parish church where last the parochial Latin Mass was said publicly in Lancashire, the priest being Jerome Allen, uncle to the Cardinal. In the white-washed yeoman dwellings of the Fylde have been reared many of the sturdiest and most solidly pious of the post-Reformation English Catholic Priests. William Allen’s plain, honest, finely-touched spirit seems to have brooded over this fruitful, western, wind-swept land which is well worthy of exploration by all philosophic historians that visit Blackpool.

Also, all who travel in Yorkshire, either by road or rail, from Knaresbrough and Harrogate to Ripon, and thence to Topcliffe, Thirsk, Darlington, Durham, and Alnwick, pass through a part of the North of England whose very air is laden with historic memories of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. And how often, when visiting Bishop Thornton (an idyllic hamlet betwixt Harrogate, Pateley Bridge, and Ripon, that is still a stronghold of “the ancient faith,” which, as in a last Yorkshire retreat, has _there_ never died out), has the writer recalled the following lines from the old “Ballad of the Rising of the North”:——

“Lord Westmoreland his ancyent [_i.e._, ensign] raisde, The Dun Bull he rais’d on hye; Three dogs with golden collars brave, Were there set out most royallye. Earl Percy there his ancyent spred, The half moon shining all so fair; The Nortons ancyent had the Cross And the Five Wounds Our Lord did beare.”

Norton Conyers, in the Parish of Wath, near Ripon, was forfeited by the Nortons after the Rebellion of 1569. It is now, I believe, the property of Sir Reginald Graham, Bart. If the Grantley estate belonged to the Nortons in 1569, it was not forfeited, or else it was recovered to the Norton family. Grantley, however, may have possibly belonged to the Markenfields, and, being forfeited by them, granted to Francis Norton, the eldest son of old Richard Norton.——See “_Sir Ralph Sadlers Papers_,” Ed. by Sir Walter Scott.——The present Lord Grantley is descended from Thomas Norton, who was sixth in descent from old Richard Norton, and fifth in descent from Francis, the eldest of the famous “eight good sons.” The Grantley property belonged to Lord Grantley until it was recently disposed of to Sir Christopher Furness, M.P. Lord Grantley’s ancestor, Sir Fletcher Norton, was created Lord Grantley and Baron Markenfield in 1782. Sir Fletcher Norton’s mother was a Fletcher, of Little Strickland, in the County of Westmoreland. The present Sir Henry Fletcher, Bart., M.P., belongs to a branch of the Fletcher family, who originally came from Cockermouth, in Cumberland. There is a tradition that when Mary Queen of Scots had been defeated at the Battle of Langside, after her romantic escape from Lochleven Castle, Henry Fletcher, of Cockermouth Hall, waited on the Scots’ Queen when she first landed at Workington. Henry Fletcher “entertained” the Queen at Cockermouth Hall (17th May, 1568), “most magnificently, presenting her with robes of velvet.” It is further said that when James I. came to the English Throne he treated Henry Fletcher’s son, Thomas Fletcher, with great distinction, and offered to bestow upon him a knighthood.——See Nicholson & Burns’ “_History of Cumberland and Westmoreland_.”

As to the Nortons and Markenfields, see Wordsworth’s “_White Doe of Rylstone_”; “_Memorials of the Rebellion of 1569_” (1840); Froude’s “_History of England_”; “_Memorials of Cardinal Allen_”[A] (Ed. by Dr. Knox, published by Nutt, London); and J. S. Fletcher’s “_Picturesque Yorkshire_” (Dent & Co.). In Hailstone’s “_Portraits of Yorkshire Worthies_” (two magnificent volumes published by Cundall & Fleming) are photographs of old Richard Norton and of his brother Thomas, and of the former’s seventh son, Christopher. The photographs are taken from paintings in the possession of Lord Grantley, now, I believe, at Markenfield Hall.

The same valuable work also contains a photograph of a portrait of “the Blessed” Thomas Percy Earl of Northumberland, from a painting belonging to the Slingsbies, of Scriven.

From the Ripon Minster Registers of Baptisms, Marriages, and Deaths, it is plain that, between the years 1589 and 1601, a “Norton,” described as “_generosus_,” lived at Sawley, close to Bishop Thornton and Grantley, near Ripon.]

[Footnote 44:——In 1569 the Norton Conyers estate seems to have been vested in a Nicholas Norton, probably as a trustee.——See “_Sir Ralph Sadler’s Papers_,” and see _ante_, Supplementum III.

The Winters were also related to the Markenfields, their aunt, Isabel Ingleby, having married Thomas Markenfield, of Markenfield.

The Wrights and Winters were also, through the Inglebies, connected with the Yorkes, of Gowthwaite, in Nidderdale, of which family, most probably, sprang Captain Roland Yorke (who introduced the use of the rapier into England——see Camden’s “_Elizabeth_”), the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, in the Netherlands.——See Foster’s Edition of “_Glover’s Visitation of Yorkshire_”; “_The Earl of Leicester’s Correspondence_” (Camden Soc.); also “_Cardinal Allen’s Defence of Sir William Stanley’s Surrender of Deventer, 29th January, 1586-87_” (Chetham Soc.).

The Wards, of Mulwith, Newby, and Givendale, were related to the Nortons, old Richard Norton’s grandmother being Margaret, daughter of Roger Ward, of Givendale. Richard Norton’s mother was Ann, daughter and heiress of Miles Ratcliffe, of Rylstone. Through her came to the Nortons the Rylstone estates. Hence the title of the immortal poem of the Lake poet.

Rylstone and Barden (or Norton) Tower are both near Skipton-in-Craven. Skipton Castle was the seat of the Cliffords Earls of Cumberland. The Craven estates of the Nortons, it is said, were granted by James I. to Francis Earl of Cumberland. (I visited Norton Tower in company with my friend, Mr. William Whitwell, F.L.S., now of Balham, a gentleman of varied literary and scientific acquirements, in the year 1883. Norton Tower, built on Rylstone Fell, between the valleys which separate the Rivers Aire and Wharfe, commands a magnificent prospect “without bound, of plain and dell, dark moor and gleam of pool and stream.”——See Dr. Whitaker’s “_Craven_.”)]

[Footnote A: Cardinal Allen, though a Lancashireman by his father, was a Yorkshireman by his mother, who was Jane Lister, of the County of York.——See Fitzherbert’s Life of Allen, in “_Memorials of Cardinal Allen_.”——Lord Ribblesdale, of Gisburn Park, in the West Riding of the County of York, is the representative of this ancient Yorkshire family of Lister. Lord Masham is a representative of a younger branch of the same family.

By a remarkable coincidence, on the 16th day of October, 1900, there were presented to Pope Leo XIII., at Rome, on the occasion of the English Pilgrimage, the Rev. Philip Fletcher, M.A., and Lister Drummond, Esq., barrister-at-law, representatives respectively of the families of both Fletcher and Lister.]

[Footnote 45:——That Thomas Percy (of the Percies, of Beverley, not of Scotton, I feel certain), the eldest of the conspirators, must have been a Roman Catholic as a young man is plain from the fact that Marmaduke Ward, brother-in-law to John Wright and Christopher Wright, had a designment “to match” his gifted and beautiful eldest daughter, Mary, with Thomas Percy who, however, singularly enough married Martha Wright, Mary Ward’s aunt.——See “_Life of Mary Ward_,” by Mary Catherine Elizabeth Chambers (Burns & Oates, 1882), vol. i., pp. 12 and 13.——Percy, being agent for his kinsman, the Earl of Northumberland, would frequently reside at the Percy palace at Topcliffe, which was only distant twelve miles or so of pleasant riding across a breezy, charming country to Mulwith and Newby. Sampson Ingleby, uncle to the Winters, succeeded Thomas Percy as the Earl’s agent in Yorkshire. Sampson Ingleby was a very trusty man. A photograph of a painting of him is in Hailstone’s “_Yorkshire Worthies_,” taken from a painting at Ripley Castle.

Edmund Neville Earl of Westmoreland, _de jure_, was afterwards one of the many unsuccessful suitors for the hand of Mary Ward.——See her “_Life_,” vol. i.——The Government would have liked to implicate Neville in the Gunpowder Plot, but utterly failed to do so. He eventually became a Priest of the Society of Jesus. He petitioned James to restore to him the Neville estates, but without avail; so that historic Middleham and Kirbymoorside (in Yorkshire), and Raby and Brancepeth (in Durham), finally passed from the once proud house of Neville, one of whom was the well-known Warwick, the King-maker, owing to the chivalrous, ill-fated Rising of 1569. This Rising first broke out at Topcliffe, between Ripon and Thirsk, where the Earl of Northumberland was then sojourning at his palace, the site of which is pointed out to this day. Topcliffe is situated on the waters of the River Swale, which (like the East Riding river, the Derwent) is sacred to St. Paulinus, the disciple of St. Augustine, the disciple of St. Gregory the Great, the most unselfish, disinterested friend the English and Yorkshire people ever had.

The first Pilgrimage of Grace, under Robert Aske, of Aughton, broke out on the banks of the Derwent. Hence, each of “the holy rivers” of Yorkshire inspired a crusade——a thing worth memory.

Mr. Thomas P. Cooper, of York (author of “_York: the History of its Walls and Castles_”), kindly refers me to “_Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII., 1537_,” p. 87, for evidence tending to prove that Robert Aske was executed “on the height of the castle dungeon,” where the High Sheriff of Yorkshire had jurisdiction, and _not_ the Sheriffs of the City of York.

This would be Clifford’s Tower, not The Pavement, where Aske is sometimes said to have met his fate. I think Mr. Cooper has, most probably, settled the point by his discovery of this important letter of “the old Duke of Norfolk” to Thomas Cromwell.]

[Footnote 46:——Father Gerard’s “Narrative of Gunpowder Plot” in “_Conditions of Catholics under James I._” Edited by Father Morris, S.J. (Longmans, 1872).]

[Footnote 47:——The “very imperfect proof” to which I refer is contained in a certain marriage entry in the Registers at Ripon Minster. The date is “10th July, 1588” (the year and month of the Spanish Armada), and _seems_ to me to be as follows: “Xpofer Wayde et Margaret Wayrde.” Now, “Margaret” was a family name of the Wardes, of Givendale, Newby, and Mulwith, and the clergyman making the entry _may_ have written “Wayde” instead of Wright. We cannot tell. Therefore, alone, it is a mere _scintilla_ of evidence to show that Christopher Wright married a Warde, of Mulwith.

Further research among those of the Ward (or Warde) papers that are yet extant may clear the question as to whom Christopher Wright married. The mysterious silence which broods over the life and career of Marmaduke Ward, subsequent to the year 1605, suggests to my mind many far-reaching supposals. Marmaduke Ward seems to have died before the year 1614, but the “burials” of the Ripon Registers are lost for this period apparently.]

[Footnote 48:——Born 1563. Father Oswald Tesimond was for six years at Hindlip Hall, along with Father Oldcorne. Ralph Ashley, a Jesuit lay-brother, was Oldcorne’s servant.]

[Footnote 49:——John Wright was born about 1568. Christopher Wright was born about 1570. Had they a brother Francis, living at Newbie (or Newby), who had a son Robert?——See Ripon Registers, which records the baptism of a Robert Wright, 25th March, 1601, the son of Francis Wright, of Newbie; also of a Francis Wright, son of Francis Wright, of Newby, under date 2nd February, 1592.

The Welwick Church Registers for this period are lost apparently, though the burial is recorded, under date 13th October, 1654, of ffrauncis Wright, Esquire, and of another ffrauncis Wright, under date 2nd May, 1664, both at Welwick. (Communicated to me by the Rev. D. V. Stoddart, M.A., Vicar of Welwick.) Probably the Francis Wrights, of Newby (or Newbie), are those buried at Welwick, being father and son respectively. Certainly the coincidence is remarkable.——See _ante_.]

[Footnote 50:——Foley’s “_Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus_,” vol. iv., pp. 203-5 (Burns & Oates, 1878).]

[Footnote 51:——Quoted in Foley’s “_Records_,” vol. iv., p. 213.]

[Footnote 52:——It is noteworthy, as illustrative of Father Oldcorne’s character, that Robert Winter says in his letter to the Lords Commissioners, 21st January, 1605-6: “After our departure from Holbeach, about some ten days, we [_i.e._, himself and Stephen Littleton, the Master of Holbeach] met Humphrey Littleton, cousin to Stephen Littleton, and we then entreated him to seek out one Mr. Hall [an alias of Oldcorne] for us, and desire him to help us to some resting place.”——See Jardine’s “_Criminal Trials, Gunpowder Plot_,” vol. ii., p. 146.]

[Footnote 53:——Schismatic Catholics were those Catholics that went to Mass in private houses, and then, more or less, frequented their parish church afterwards to escape the fines. They were further divided into Communicants and Non-communicants. Very often the men of a family were Catholics of this sort, and the womenkind strict Catholics. Indeed, it was mainly the women and the priests that have kept “the Pope’s religion” alive in England: although, of course, _many_ men of great mental and physical powers were papists of the most rigid class. The practice of “going to the Protestant church,” as English Roman Catholics term the practice to this day, was deliberately condemned by the Council of Trent.

The cause of the historic controversy between the Jesuits and the Secular Priests in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. lies in a nut-shell. It was this: the Jesuits, and especially their extraordinarily able leader, Father Parsons, thought that the Secular Priests required watching. And so they did; and so do all other human creatures. But the mistake that Parsons made was this: his prejudices and prepossessions blinded him to the fact that the proper watchers of Secular Priests are Bishops and the Pope, and not a society of Presbyters, however grave, however gifted, or however pious.]

[Footnote 54:——“_Collecti Cardwelli_,” Public Record Office, Brussels Vitæ Mart, p. 147.

In Foley’s “_Records_,” vol. iv., there is a beautiful picture of Father Edward Oldcorne, S.J., now “the Venerable Edward Oldcorne,” one of York’s most remarkable sons. In the left-hand corner of the portrait is a representation of a portion of Old Ouse Bridge, with St. William’s Chapel (at present the site of which is occupied by Messrs. Varvills’ establishment). St. Sampson’s Church, the ancient church which gave the name of the parish where Oldcorne first saw the light of the sun, is still standing. It is near Holy Trinity, King’s Court, or Christ’s Parish, where “the Venerable,” Margaret Clitherow lived. Oldcorne must have known that great York citizen well. She was born in Davygate, and was the second wife of a butcher, named John Clitherow, of the Parish of Christ, in the City of York. She was married in the Church of St. Martin, Coney Street, in 1571. She was one of Nature’s gentlewomen, by birth: and the Church of Rome, ever mindful of her own, declared in 1886 (just three hundred years after the martyr’s death in the Tolbooth, on Old Ouse Bridge) that Margaret Clitherow, a shrewd, honest, devout York tradeswoman, is one of the Church’s “Venerable Servants of God,” by grace.——See J. B. Milburn’s Life of this extraordinary Elizabethan Yorkshire-woman, entitled, “_A Martyr of Old York_” (Burns & Oates, London).]

[Footnote 55:——This crossing-out of the word “yowe” is noticed in Nash’s “_History of Worcestershire_.”]

[Footnote 56:——The word “good” is omitted in the copy of the Letter given in the “_Authorised Discourse_,” which is remarkable. I think it was done designedly, in order to minimize the merit of the revealing plotter.]

[Footnote 57:——King James’s interpretation of these enigmatical words was simply fantastical. It may be read in Gerard’s “_Narrative_,” and in most contemporary relations of the Plot.]

[Footnote 58:——I am of opinion that one of Father Oldcorne’s servants, Ralph Ashley by name, a Jesuit lay-brother, was the person that actually conveyed the Letter to the page who was in the street adjoining Lord Mounteagle’s Hoxton residence, on the evening of Saturday, the 26th of October, 1605. My reason for being of the opinion that Ralph Ashley conveyed the Letter will be seen hereafter, in due course of this Inquiry.

The page’s evidence went to show that the deliverer of the Letter was a tall man, or a reasonably tall man. There is nothing inconsistent in this account of the height of the Letter-carrier with what we know of the size of Ashley, which is negative knowledge merely. I mean we are not told anywhere that he was of short stature, as we are told in the case (1) of the Jesuit lay-brother, Brother Ralph Emerson, a native of the County of Durham, and the servant of Edmund Campion——see Simpson’s “_Life of Campion_”——whom the genial orator playfully called “his little man”——“_homulus_”; and in the case (2) of the Jesuit lay-brother, Brother Nicholas Owen, the servant of Garnet, who was affectionately termed “little John” by the Catholics in whose castles, manor-houses, and halls, up and down the country, he constructed most ingenious secret places for the hiding of priests.

Ralph Ashley had acted in some humble capacity at the English Catholic College of Valladolid, which had been founded in Spain from Rheims, through the generosity of noble-hearted Spanish Catholics, among whom was that majestic soul, Dona Luisa de Carvajal.——See her “_Life_,” by the late Lady Georgiana Fullerton (Burns & Oates).——See also “_The Life of the Venerable John Roberts, O.S.B._,” by the Rev. Bede Camm, O.S.B. (Sands & Co.)——Father Roberts founded the Benedictine College at Douay, still in existence. Cardinal Allen’s secular priests’ College is now used as a French Barracks. Ushaw College, Durham, and St. Edmund’s College, Ware, are the lineal successors of Cardinal Allen’s College at Douay.

(By the way, when are the letters of the late Dr. Lingard likely to be published? Lingard, after Wiseman, was the greatest man Ushaw has produced, and his letters would be interesting reading; for Lingard must have known many of the most considerable personages of his day. Lingard died at Hornby, near Lancaster, not far from Hornby Castle, the seat of the once famous Lord Mounteagle.)

Brother Raphael (or Ralph) Ashley, was possibly akin to the Ashleys, of Goule Hall, in the Township of Cliffe, in the Parish of Hemingbrough, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, or to the Ashleys, of Todwick, near Sheffield, in the south-east of Yorkshire. He came to England along with Father Oswald Tesimond, in 1597.——See “Father Tesimond’s landing in England,” in Morris’s “_Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers_,” first series (Burns & Oates).——If Ashley were a Yorkshireman, one can easily understand his being the chosen companion of the two Yorkshire Jesuits, Oldcorne and Tesimond.

This Jesuit lay-brother was acquainted with London; and as, _Qui facit per alium facit per se_, it was pre-eminently likely that Oldcorne would employ his confidential servant to perform so weighty a mission as the one I have attributed unto him.

Again, since “he who acts through another acts through himself,” it is unnecessary for me to treat at large in the Text concerning my supposal respecting the part that Brother Ralph Ashley played in the great drama of the Gunpowder Plot. Ashley being identified with his master, Father Oldcorne, shares, in his degree, his master’s merits and praise.

Professor J. A. Froude thought that Ralph Waldo Emerson was of the same stock as Brother Ralph Emerson. It is quite possible. For after the Gunpowder Plot, I opine that the younger Catholics in many cases became Puritans, and in some cases, later on, Quakers.]

[Footnote 59:——Notwithstanding the endless chain of the causation of human acts and human events, man’s strongest and clearest knowledge tells him that he is “master of his fate,” nay, that “he is fated to be free,” inasmuch as at any moment man can open the flood-gates that are betwixt him and an Infinite Ocean of Pure Unconditioned Freedom: can open those flood-gates, and in that Ocean can lave at will, and so render himself a truly emancipated creature.

The antinomies of Thought and Life do not destroy nor make void the Facts of Thought and Life. Antinomies surround man on every side, and one of the great ends of life is to know the same, and to act regardful of that knowledge.]

[Footnote 60:——The copy in the “_Authorised Discourse_” gives “shift off,” not “shift of” as in the original. Doubtless “shift off” was the expression intended. It is still occasionally used in the country districts about York. The word “tender,” in the sense of “take care of” or “have a care of,” is to-day quite common in that neighbourhood (1901).]

[Footnote 61:——“_Gunpowder Plot Books_,” vol. ii., p. 202.]

[Footnote 62:——It is impossible to describe the emotions that welled up in the heart of the writer as he gazed on this small, faded, and fading document: emotions of awe and gratitude, blended with veneration and reverence, for the maker of this lever——this sheet-anchor——of the temporal salvation of so many human creatures, who had been barbarously appointed to die by those that had forgotten what spirit they were of.

The writer was favoured by the sight of the original Letter on Friday, the 5th day of October, 1900, at about half-past two o’clock in the afternoon. He desires to place on record his sense of obligation for the courteous civility with which he was treated by the authorities at the Record Office, London, on this occasion.]

[Footnote 63:——Oldcorne, being a Jesuit, would from time to time go to White Webbs, Morecrofts (near Uxbridge), Erith-on-the-Thames, Stoke Pogis, Thames Street (London), and other places of Jesuit resort where Mounteagle and Ward had the _entrée_. Again, he must have known well the Vaux family of Harrowden, and all the circle that Mounteagle and Ward would move in. Again, if Ward were married in York, in 1579, he may have met Oldcorne as a Catholic medical student of promise in the ancient city.

Along with a dear brother, a young Yorkshireman, in London, I visited White Webbs, by Enfield Chase, on Saturday, the 6th October, 1900. The old house known as Dr. Hewick’s House, where the conspirators met, is now no longer standing; but the spacious park, with its umbrageous oak trees, meandering streams, tangled thickets, and pleasant paths, is almost unchanged, I should fancy, since it was the rendezvous of the Gunpowder traitors, concerning whom the utmost one can say is that they were not for themselves; and that Nemesis in this life justly punished them, and drove them to make meet expiation and atonement, before the face of all men, for their infamous offences. Thereby Destiny enabled the men to restore equality between the State they had so wronged, _in act and in desire_, and themselves; and a happy thing for the men, as well as for others, that Destiny did so enable them whilst there was yet time.

(In October, 1900, I was informed that the present mansion, known as White Webbs, belongs to the Lady Meúx.)]

[Footnote 64:——Known by Edmund Church, Esq., his confidant.]

[Footnote 65:——See “_Life of Mary Ward_,” vol. i., p. 1.]

[Footnote 66:——M’rgery Slater most probably belonged to a Ripon family, as I find the same Christian name and surname among entries of the “Christenings” in the Ripon Minster Register, a few years after the year 1579. Possibly the child was a niece of “Mistress M’rgery Ward.” “Mistress Warde” may have been a relative of Mr. Cotterell, as I find in the St. Michael-le-Belfrey Register the entry of the burial (1583) of Anne ———— who is described as “s’vaunt and cozine to Mr. Cotterell, being about twenty-six years of age.” Now, Mr. Cotterell was probably Mr. James Cotterell, of the Parish of (Old) St. Wilfred, York, a demolished church, whose site is to-day (1901) occupied by the official lodgings of the King’s Judges of Assize when on circuit. For the “subsidy” of 1581, a Mr. James Cotterell of that parish was assessed in “Lande” at £6 13s. 4d. (among the highest of the York assessments). There was a Mr. Cotterell “an Examiner” for the Council of the North in the time of Elizabeth, and I have no doubt that “Mistress Warde’s” late master was this very gentleman. Whether the young woman whom “Thomas Ward, of Mulwaith,” made his wife (evidently direct from the house of her master), on the 29th day of May, 1579, was the equal by birth and by descent of her husband, I do not know. Let us hope, however, that alike in gifts of personal attractiveness and graces of character she was not unworthy of one who came from so truly “gentle” a people as the Wardes, of Mulwith, Givendale, and Newby. If M’gery Slater did hail from Ripon, this “faithful following” of her to York, and from the house of her master, publicly making her, in the face of all the world, his “true and honourable wife, as dear to him as were the ruddy drops that visited his own heart,” bears early witness to an idealism of mind in this Yorkshire gentleman that was thoroughly in keeping with the chivalrous race whence he sprang. I cannot give any personal description of Thomas Warde; but I can of Marmaduke Warde, who was also of Mulwith, or Mulwaith, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and from _this_ picture we may imagine _that_.]

[Footnote 67:——Speaking of Marmaduke Warde (or Ward)——for the name was spelt either way——his kinswoman Winefrid Wigmore, a lady of high family from Herefordshire, in after years said:——“His name is to this day famous in that country [_i.e._ Yorkshire] for his exceeding comeliness of person, sweetness and beauty of face, agility and activeness, the knightly exercises in which he excelled, and above all for his constancy and courage in Catholic religion, admirable charity to the poor, so as in extreme dearth never was poor denied at his gate; commonly sixty, eighty, and sometimes a hundred in a day, to whom he gave great alms: and yet is also famous his valour and fidelity to his friend, and myself have heard it spoken by several, but particularly and with much feeling by Mr. William Mallery, the eldest and best of that name, who were near of kin to our ‘Mother,’ both by father and mother.”

The William Mallery, here spoken of, was one of “the Mallories,” of Studley Royal, near Ripon, the present seat of their descendants, the Most Hon. the Marquess and Marchioness of Ripon.

The above quotation is taken from the “_Life_” of Marmaduke Ward’s eldest daughter, Mary, who was one of the most beautiful and heroic women of her age.——See M. C. E. Chambers’ “_Life of Mary Ward_,” vol. i., p. 6 (Burns & Oates).——Mary Ward died at the Old Manor House, Heworth, near York, on the 20th January, 1645-6. She was related to Father Edward Thwing, of Heworth Hall, who suffered at Lancaster for his priesthood, 26th July, 1600. I think the Old Heworth Hall was built _behind_ the present Old Manor House, which seems to be an erection of about the end of the seventeenth century. The Thwing family, of Gate Helmsley, then owned Old Heworth Hall, where Father Antony Page was apprehended, who suffered at the York Tyburn in 1593 for the like offence, which, by statute, was high treason (27 Eliz.). Thomas Percy, John Wright, and Christopher Wright, as well as Guy Fawkes, may have often visited Old Heworth Hall. In fact there is still a tradition that the Gunpowder plotters “were at Old Heworth Hall” (communicated to me in 1890 by the owner, W. Surtees Hornby, Esq., J.P., of York), and also a tradition that Father Page was apprehended there. Mr. T. Atkinson, for the tenant, his brother-in-law, Mr. Moorfoot, showed the writer, on the 9th August, 1901, the outhouse or hay chamber (of brick and old timber) where this priest was taken on Candlemas Day morning in the year 1593.——See Morris’s “_Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers_,” third series, p. 139.——This holy martyr was a connection of the Bellamy family, of Uxendon, with whom the great and gifted Father Southwell was captured. Father Page was a native of Harrow-on-the-Hill. The last of the English martyrs was Father Thomas Thwing, of Heworth, who was executed at the York Tyburn, 1680. His vestments belong to the Herbert family, of Gate Helmsley. I have seen them about three times at St. Mary’s Convent, York, where they have been lent by the kindness of the owner. What a hallowed and affecting link with the past are those beautiful, but fading, priestly garments.

The following letter of Mr. Bannister Dent will be read with interest, as helping the concatenation of the evidence. It is from a York solicitor who for many years was Guardian for the old Parish of St. Wilfred, in the City of York:——

“York, 21st March, 1901.”

“OLD PARISH OF ST. WILFRED.”

“In reply to your letter of to-day’s date, the streets comprised in the above parish were Duncombe Place, Blake Street, Museum Street, Lendal Hill, and Lendal. I have made enquiries, and am informed that St. Michael-le-Belfrey’s Church would be the church at which a resident in this parish would be married.”]

[Footnote 68:——Margery Warde (born Slater) was probably the sister of one Hugo Slater, of Ripon, who, subsequently to 1579, had a daughter, Margery, and a son, Thomas.——See Ripon Registers.

John Whitham, Esq., of the City of Ripon, has been so kind as to place at my disposal the Index, which is the result of his researches into the Ripon Registers. There seems to be no entry of the baptism of Mary (or Joan or Jane) Ward in 1585-86, nor of John Ward, William Ward, nor Teresa Ward. George Warde’s baptism is recorded: “18th May, 1595 [not 1594], George Waryde filius M’maduci de Mulwith.” Then under date 3rd September, 1598, occurs, three years afterwards, this significant entry: “Thomas Warde filius M’maduci _de Nubie_.” This naming of his son “Thomas” by Marmaduke Warde, I submit, _almost_ suffices to clench the proof that Marmaduke and Thomas Warde were akin to each other _as brothers_.

If proof be required that the name “Ward” was spelt both Ward and Warde, it is contained in the following entries in the Ripon Minster Registers of the baptism of Marmaduke Ward’s daughters, Eliza and Barbara[A]: “30 April 1591——Eliza, daughter of Marmaduke Warde of Mulwith;” “21 November 1592——Barbara, daughter of Marmaduke Warde of Mulwith.” The entries are in Latin. In some subsequent entries Marmaduke Warde is described as of Newbie, _e.g._: “5 Nov. 1594——Ellyn, daughter of Marmaduke Warde of Newbie.”]

[Footnote A: Eliza was probably Elizabeth Warde, and Ellyn——Teresa Warde.]

[Footnote 69:——Newby was spelt “Newbie” at that time. Newby adjoins the village of Skelton. Mulwith is about a mile from Newby.]

[Footnote 70:——See vol. v., p. 681.]

[Footnote 71:——Henry Parker Lord Morley, the grandfather of Mounteagle, married Lady Elizabeth Stanley, daughter of Edward Earl of Derby. He was one of the peers who recorded his vote against Elizabeth’s Act of Uniformity, and became “an exile for the faith” in the Netherlands after the year 1569. His son, Edward Parker Lord Morley, Mounteagle’s father, was born in 1555; he too lived abroad for some years, but eventually seems to have conformed wholly, or in part, to the established religion; although his son, Lord Mounteagle, was, on the latter’s own testimony, brought up a Roman Catholic, and, in fact, died in that belief. From an undated letter of Mounteagle, ably written, addressed to the King, and given in Gerard’s “_What was the Gunpowder Plot?_” p. 256, it is evident that (after the Plot, most likely) Mounteagle intended to conform to the Establishment. The Morley barony was created in 1299.——See Burke’s “_Extinct Peerages_,” and Horace Round’s “_Studies in Peerage and Family History_,” p. 23 (Constable, Westminster, 1901).——From Camden’s “_Britannia_,” the Morleys evidently owned, at various times, estates in the Counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, in addition to Essex, Lincolnshire, and Lancashire.

That the conformity to the Established Church of Edward Parker Lord Morley (the father of William Parker Lord Mounteagle) was in part only is, to some extent, evidenced by the fact that Mr. Edward Yelverton (one of the well-known Yelvertons, of Norfolk) is described at the end of the reign of Elizabeth as “a Catholic, domiciled in the household of Lord Morley.”——See Dr. Jessopp’s “_One Generation of a Norfolk House_,” being chiefly the biography of the celebrated Jesuit, Henry Walpole, who suffered for his priesthood at the York Tyburn, 7th April, 1595, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. Rome, in 1886, declared Henry Walpole to be “a Venerable Servant of God.”]

[Footnote 72:——See vol. i., p. 244.]

[Footnote 73:——See vol. i., p. 244.]

[Footnote 74:——See vol. i., p. 238.]

[Footnote 75:——See vol. i., p. 237.]

[Footnote 76:——Edward Poyntz, Esquire, was a relative, lineal or collateral, of the celebrated James Duke of Ormonde, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whose mother was a daughter of Sir John Poyntz.——See that valuable work, “_The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland_,” p. 254, by John P. Prendergast (McGlashan & Gill, Dublin, 1875).

I have found much information about the Poyntz family in the “_Visitation of Essex_” (Harleian Soc). I think that Edward Poyntz was uncle to the Viscountess Thurles. If so, he would be great-uncle to the Duke of Ormonde. From this it would follow that the Viscountess Thurles (who was a strict Roman Catholic) would be a first cousin to Mary Poyntz, the friend and companion, as well as relative, of Mary Warde, the daughter of Marmaduke Warde, and niece of Thomas Warde.——See “_Life of Mary Ward_,” vol. i.

Winefrid Wigmore, already mentioned, was cousin, once removed, to Lady Mounteagle, who was a daughter of Sir Thomas Tresham, Sir William Wigmore, Winefrid’s father, having married her aunt, Anne Throckmorton, a daughter of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. Lady Catesby was another daughter.——See Note 30 _supra_.]

[Footnote 77:——As slightly supporting the contention that Lord Morley, the father of Mounteagle, was related to, or at least connected with, the Wards, it is to be observed that John Wright, the elder brother by the whole blood of Ursula Ward, at the time when the Plot was concocted, had his “permanent residence at Twigmore,” in the Parish of Manton, near Brigg, in Lincolnshire.——Jardine’s “_Narrative_,” p. 32.——Now, in Foley’s “_Records_,” vol. i., p. 627, it is stated that Twigmore, or Twigmoor, and Holme “were ancient possessions of the Morley family.” The brothers John and Christopher Wright were evidently called after two uncles who bore these two names respectively.——See Norcliffe’s Ed. of Flower’s “_Visitation of Yorkshire_” (Harleian Soc).]

[Footnote 78:——To-day (April, 1901) Newby-cum-Mulwith forms one township. Givendale is a township by itself. Along with Skelton they form a separate ecclesiastical parish. Skelton Church, in Newby Park, is one of the most beautiful in the county, having been erected by the late Lady Mary Vyner, of Newby Hall. The Church is dedicated under the touching title of “Christ, the Consoler.”

Formerly the Parish of Ripon included no less than thirty villages. At Skelton, Aldfield, Sawley, Bishop Thornton, Monckton, and Winksley there were Chapels. Pateley Bridge also had a Chapel, but this was parochial.——See Gent’s “_Ripon_.”——At Sawley, I find from the Ripon Register of Baptisms, there was a William Norton living (described as “_generosus_”) in 1589. He would be the great-grandson of old Richard Norton, who by his first wife, Susanna, daughter of Neville Lord Latimer, had eleven sons and seven daughters. They were (according to an old writer), these Nortons, “a trybe of wicked people universally papists.” It is reported to this day (Easter Day, 1901), at Bishop Thornton, by Mr. Henry Wheelhouse, of Markington, aged 84, that the Nortons, of Sawley, continued constant in their adherence to the ancient faith till well on into the nineteenth century.

Mr. Wheelhouse’s recollection to this effect may be well founded; because not only has there been a remnant of English Roman Catholics always in the adjoining hamlet of Bishop Thornton, but there was at Fountains, in 1725, a Father Englefield, S.J., stationed there——see Foley’s “_Records_,” vol. v., p. 722——and if the Nortons, of Sawley (or some of them) remained Papists, one can understand how it might come to pass that there was a Jesuit Priest maintained at Fountains and a Secular Priest at Bishop Thornton, only a few miles off. The Roman Catholic religion was also long maintained by the Messenger family, of Cayton Hall, South Stainley, and by the Trapps family, of Nydd Hall, both only within walking distance of Bishop Thornton: maintained until the nineteenth century. I think the Messengers, too, owned Fountains in 1725. Viscount Mountgarret now owns Nydd Hall. His Lordship’s family, the Butlers, are allied to the Lords Vaux of Harrowden.

Mass also was said (before the present Roman Catholic Chapel was built at Bishop Thornton) at Raventoftes Hall, in the Ripon Chapelry of Bishop Thornton, once the home of the stanch old Catholic family of Walworth. Then Mass was said in the top chamber, running the whole length of the priest’s present house. Afterwards (about 1778) followed the present stone Chapel. Clare Lady Howard, of Glossop, built the Schools at Bishop Thornton a few years ago.

F. Reynard, Esquire, J.P., of Hob Green, Markington and Sunderlandwick, Driffield, now owns Raventoftes Hall, which has a splendid view towards Sawley, How Hill, and Ripon. It is rented by a Roman Catholic, named Mr. F. Stubbs, who is akin to the Hawkesworths, the Shanns, the Darnbroughs, and other old Bishop Thornton and Ripon families.

Peacock, in his “_List_,” speaks of William Norton as a grandson of Richard Norton, but, according to Burke’s “_Peerage_,” he must have been a great-grandson. The Nortons may have saved the Sawley estate from forfeiture, somehow or another, or perchance they bought it in afterwards from some Crown nominee. Francis Norton, the eldest son and heir of old Richard Norton, fled with his father to the continent. His son was Edmund, and _his_ son was William Norton, of Sawley, whose descendant was the first Lord Grantley.

Gabetis Norton, Esquire, owned Dole Bank, between Markington and Bishop Thornton, where Miss Lascelles, Miss Butcher, and others of Mary Ward’s followers, lived a semi-conventual life during the reign of Charles II., previously to their taking up their abode near Micklegate Bar, York.——See “_Annals of St. Mary’s Convent, York_,” Edited by H. J. Coleridge, S.J. (Burns & Oates).——Sir Thomas Gascoigne, of Barnbow, Aberford, was the benefactor of these ladies, both at Dole Bank and York; Dole Bank probably at that time belonging to this “fine old English gentleman,” who died a very aged man at the Benedictine Abbey of Lambspring, in Germany, a voluntary exile for his faith. Dole Bank came to Gabetis Norton, Esquire, in the eighteenth century, from his sister, who was the wife of Colonel Thornton, of Thornville Royal (now Stourton Castle, near Knaresbrough, the seat of the Lord Mowbray and Stourton) and of Old Thornville, Little Cattal, now the property of William Machin, Esq. (Derived from old title-deeds and writings in the possession of representatives of William Hawkes, yeoman, of Great Cattal.) Dole Bank, I believe, now belongs to Captain Greenwood, of Swarcliffe Hall, Birstwith, Nidderdale. During the early part of the nineteenth century the Darnbroughs rented Dole Bank, the present tenant being Mr. Atkinson.]

[Footnote 79:——I think that Thomas Warde may have been born about the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign; for if he were married in 1579, and was, say, twenty-one years of age at the time of his marriage, this would fix his birth about the year 1558. Early marriages were characteristic of the period. Mounteagle, for example, was married before he was eighteen. The Ripon Registers begin in fairly regular course in 1587, though there are fragments from 1574, but not earlier. If Christopher Wright, the plotter, lived in Bondgate, Ripon, and had a child born to him in 1589 (the year after the Spanish Armada), he must, like Mounteagle, have been married when about eighteen years of age. These instances should be carefully noted by students of Shakespeare, inasmuch as they render the poet’s marriage with Anne Hathaway in 1582, when he was little more than eighteen and a-half years old, less startling.——See Sidney Lee’s “_Life of Shakespeare_,” p. 18 (Smith & Elder, 1898).

I should like also to add that I think there is a great deal in Halliwell-Phillips’ contention as to Shakespeare having made the “troth-plight.”——Concerning the “troth-plight” see Lawrence Vaux’s “_Catechism_,” Edited by T. G. Law, with a valuable historical preface (Chetham Soc).——Shakespeare’s “mentor” in the days of his youth was, most probably, some old Marian Priest, like Vaux, who was a former Warden of the Collegiate Church at Manchester, and with “the great Allen” and men like Vivian Haydock——see Gillow’s “_Haydock Papers_” (Burns & Oates)——retained Lancashire in its allegiance to Rome——so that “the jannock” Lancashire Catholics style their county, “God’s County” even unto this day.]

[Footnote 80:——The strong and, within due limits, admirable spirit of “clannishness” that still animates the natives of Yorkshire——a valiant, adventurous, jovial race, fresh from Dame Nature’s hand——is evidenced by the fact that within a very recent date the Yorkshiremen who have gone up to the great metropolis, like many another before them, to seek their livelihood, and maybe their fortune, have formed an association of their own. This excellent institution for promoting good fellowship among those hailing from the county of broad acres has for Patron during the present year, 1901, the Duke of Cornwall and York (now H.R.H. The Prince of Wales, December, 1901), and that typical Yorkshireman, Viscount Halifax, for President. The Earl of Crewe, Lord Grantley, Sir Albert K. Rollit, Knt., M.P., _cum multis aliis_, are members. May it flourish _ad multos annos_!]

[Footnote 81:——In the Record Office, Chancery Lane, London.]

[Footnote 82:——The Earl of Northumberland was fined by the Star Chamber £30,000, ordered to forfeit all offices he held under the Crown, and to be imprisoned in the Tower for life. He paid £11,000 of the fine; and was released in 1621. He was the son of Henry Percy eighth Earl of Northumberland, and nephew of “the Blessed” Thomas Percy seventh Earl of Northumberland, and of Mary Slingsby, the wife of Francis Slingsby, of Scriven, near Knaresbrough. Although the Earl of Northumberland that was Star-Chambered was by his own declaration no papist, he was looked up to by the English Roman Catholics as their natural leader. His kinship with the conspirator, Thomas Percy, alone is usually thought to have involved the Earl in this trouble; but probably the inner circle of the Government knew more than they thought it policy to publish. “Simple truth,” moreover, was not this Government’s “utmost skill.”

Lord Montague compounded for a fine of £4,000. Guy Fawkes, for a time, was a member of this peer’s household.——See “_Calendar of State Papers, James I._”

Lord Stourton compounded for £1,000.

Lord Mordaunt’s fine was remitted after his death, which took place in 1608. Robert Keyes and his wife were members of this peer’s household.——See “_Calendar of State Papers, James I._”

These three noblemen were absent from Parliament on the 5th of November, no doubt having received a hint so to do from the conspirators. This fact of absence the Government construed into a charge of Concealment of Treason and Contempt in not obeying the King’s Summons to Parliament.——See Jardine’s “_Narrative_,” pp. 159-164.

The Gascoignes, through whom the Earl of Northumberland and the Wardes were connected, belonged to the same family as the famous Chief Justice of Henry IV., who committed to prison Henry V., when “Harry Prince of Wales.”——See Shakespeare’s “King Henry IV.” and “King Henry V.”

The Gascoignes were a celebrated Yorkshire family, their seats being Gawthorpe, Barnbow, and Parlington, in the West Riding. They were strongly attached to their hereditary faith, and suffered much for it, from the infliction of heavy fines. Like Lord William Howard, the Inglebies, of Lawkland, near Bentham, the Plumptons, of Plumpton, near Knaresbrough, and the Fairfaxes, of Gilling, near Ampleforth, the Gascoignes were greatly attached to the ancient Benedictine Order, which took such remarkable root in England through St. Gregory the Great, St. Augustine, and his forty missionaries, all of whom were Benedictines.——See Taunton’s “_The English Black Monks of St. Benedict_” (Methuen & Co.); also Dr. Gasquet’s standard work on “_English Monasteries_” (John Hodges).

It may be, perhaps, gratifying to the historic feeling of my readers to learn that the influence of these old Yorkshire Roman Catholic families, the Gascoignes, the Inglebies, and the Plumptons, is still felt at Bentham and in the old Benedictine Missions of Aberford, near Barnbow, and of Knaresbrough, near picturesque Plumpton, notwithstanding that the places which once so well knew the Gascoignes and the Plumptons now know them no more. The present gallant Colonel Gascoigne, of Parlington, I believe, is not himself descended from the Roman Catholic Gascoignes in the direct male line of descent; the Inglebies, of Lawkland, recently died out; and the Plumptons to-day are not even represented in name.

The stately Benedictine Abbey of St. Lawrence, Ampleforth, in the Vale of Mowbray, will long perpetuate the memory of the Fairfaxes, of Gilling; H. C. Fairfax-Cholmeley, Esquire, J.P., of Brandsby Hall, now represents this ancient family.]

[Footnote 83:——See “_Condition of Catholics under James I._,” by the Rev. John Morris, S.J., pp. 256, 257 (Longmans). The charge of complicity was based on an alleged reception of Father John Gerard, S.J. (the friend of Sir Everard Digby, and author of the contemporary Narrative of the Plot), by Sir John Yorke at Gowthwaite Hall, after the Gunpowder Treason. Gerard left England in 1606, and there is no evidence whatever that he had anything to do with the Plot. I do not know, for certain, how Sir John Yorke fared as to the upshot of his prosecution. But I strongly suspect that the tradition that obtains among the dalesmen of Nidderdale to the effect that the Yorkes, of Gowthwaite (or Goulthwaite, as it is styled in the Valley), were once heavily fined by the Star Chamber for acting in the great Chamber of Gowthwaite a political play, wherein the Protestant actors were worsted by the Catholic actors, sprang from these proceedings against Sir John Yorke anent the Gunpowder Plot. For long years after the reign of James I., the Yorkes, like the Inglebies their relatives, were rigid Catholics. This ancient and honourable family of Yorke is still in existence, being represented by T. E. Yorke, Esquire, J.P., of Bewerley Hall, Pateley Bridge. The old home of the Yorkes, Gowthwaite Hall, where doubtless many priests were harboured “in the days of persecution,” is about to be pulled down to make way for the Bradford Reservoir. I visited, about 1890, the charming old Hall built of grey stone, with mullioned windows. A description of this historic memorial of the days of Queen Elizabeth and James I. is to be seen in “_Nidderdale_,” by H. Speight, p. 468 (Elliot Stock); also in Fletcher’s “_Picturesque Yorkshire_” (Dent & Co.), which latter work contains a picture of the place, a structure “rich with the spoils of time,” but, alas! destined soon to be “now no more.”

Ripley Castle, the home of the Inglebies, at the entrance to Nidderdale (truly the Switzerland of England), still rears its ancient towers, and still is the roof-tree of those who worthily bear an honoured historic name for ever “to historic memory dear.”

“_From Eden Vale to the Plains of York_,” by Edmund Bogg, contains sketches of both Ripley Castle and Gowthwaite Hall. Lucas’s “_Nidderdale_” (Elliot Stock) is also well worth consulting for its account of the dialect of this part of Yorkshire which, like the West Riding generally, retains strong Cymric traces. There are also British characteristics in the build and personal appearance of the people, as also in their marvellous gift of song. The Leeds Musical Festival and its Chorus, for example, are renowned throughout the whole musical world.]

[Footnote 84:——It is, moreover, possible that Mounteagle may have met his connection, and probably kinsman, Thomas Warde, at White Webbs, about the year 1602. Mounteagle, at that time, like the Earl of Southampton and the Earl of Rutland, was not allowed to attend Elizabeth’s Court on account of his share in the Essex tumult. He was, in fact, then mixed up with the schemes of Father Robert Parsons’ then-expiring Spanish faction among the English Catholics. If a certain Thomas Grey, to whom Garnet at White Webbs showed the papal breves (which the latter burnt in 1603, on James I. being proclaimed King by applause), were the same person as Sir Thomas Gray, he would be, most probably, a relative of Thomas Warde. For the Wardes, of Mulwith, certainly were related to a Sir Thomas Gray.——See “_Life of Mary Ward_,” vol. i., p. 221, where it is said that, “through the Nevilles and Gascoignes,” the Wards were related to the families of Sir Ralph and Sir Thomas Gray.[A]

As to father Garnet showing the breves to Thomas Grey, see Foley’s “_Records_,” vol. iv., p. 159, where it says:——Garnet “confesseth that in the Queen’s lifetyme he received two Breefs (one was addressed by the Pope to the English clergy, the other to the laity) concerning the succession, and immediately upon the receipt thereof, be shewed them to Mr. Catesby and Thomas Winter, then being at White Webbs; whereof they seemed to be very glad and showed it (_sic_) also unto Thomas Grey at White Webbs before one of his journies into Scotland in the late Queen’s tyme.”

It will be remembered that Thomas Percy, who married Martha Wright, Ursula Warde’s sister, was one of those who waited upon James VI. of Scotland before Elizabeth’s death, in order to obtain from him a promise of toleration for the unhappy Catholics. James, the English Catholics declared, did then promise toleration, and they considered that they had been tricked by the “weasel Scot.” Fonblanque, in his “_Annals of the House of Percy_,” vol. ii., p. 254 (Clay & Sons), thinks that Percy was a man of action rather than of words, and that the reason he entered into the Plot was that he was stung by the reproaches of the disappointed Catholics, whom he had given to understand James intended to tolerate, and that his vanity (or rather, I should say, self-love) was likewise wounded at the recollection of the proved fruitlessness of his mission or missions into Scotland. I think this is a very likely explanation. For, according to “Winter’s Confession”——see Gardiner’s “_Gunpowder Plot_” (Longmans), and Gerard’s three recent works (Osgood & Co. and Harper Bros.)——Thomas Percy seems to have shown a stupendous determination “to see the Plot through,” a fact which I have always been very much struck with. But if, in addition to other motives, Percy had the incentive of “injured pride,” we have an explanation of his extraordinarily ferocious anger and spirit of revenge. For well does the Latin poet of “the tale of Troy divine” insist with emphasis on the fact that it was “the _despised_ beauty”——“_spretæque_ injuria _formæ_”——of Juno, the goddess, that spurred her to such deathless hatred against the ill-starred house of Priam. What a knowledge of the springs of human action does not this portray!]

[Footnote A: Were Sir Ralph and Sir Thomas Gray of the Grays (or Greys), of Chillingham, Northumberland? It may be remarked that, about the year 1597-98, Marmaduke Ward and his wife and some of his family went to live in Northumberland, maybe at Alnwick; and as Thomas Percy was connected with Marmaduke Ward, it is at least possible that Marmaduke Ward went himself into Scotland on the mission to King James VI. in the company of his brother-in-law, Thomas Percy.

But the Wards may have gone to Chillingham about 1597-9, and not to Alnwick. Sir Thomas Gray, of Chillingham, married Lady Catherine Neville, one of the four daughters of Charles Neville sixth Earl of Westmoreland, whose wife was Lady Jane Howard, daughter of Henry Howard Earl of Surrey. Lady Margaret Neville was married to Sir Nicholas Pudsey, of Bolton-in-Bowland, Yorkshire, I think. Lady Anne Neville was married to David Ingleby, of Ripley, a cousin of Marmaduke Ward and of Ursula Wright. Lady Margaret Neville conformed to the Establishment, but afterwards, I believe, the lady relapsed to popery.——See the “_Hutton Correspondence_” (Surtees Soc.), and “_Sir Ralph Sadler’s Papers_,” Edited by Sir Walter Scott.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.”]

[Footnote 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]]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.)]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.)]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.”]

[Footnote 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.”]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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_.”]

[Footnote 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.”]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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).]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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).]

[Footnote 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).]

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

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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_.]

[Footnote 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!)]

[Footnote 109:——See Article in “_National Dictionary of Biography_” on “John Wright” (citing Camden in “_Birch Original Letters_”) second series, vol. iii., p. 179.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 111:——See Jardine’s “_Criminal Trials_,” vol. ii., p. 166.]

[Footnote 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!]

[Footnote 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_.”]

[Footnote 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).]

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

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 115:——Vol. i., p. 585.]

[Footnote 116:——Jardine’s “_Narrative_,” p. 83.]

[Footnote 117:——Jardine’s “_Narrative_” p. 84.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.”]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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!]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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._”]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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?]

[Footnote 131:——See Jardine’s “_Criminal Trials_;” vol ii., p. 166.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.”]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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!”]

[Footnote 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_.”]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.)]

[Footnote 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.)]

[Footnote 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.]

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

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

[Footnote 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.”)]

[Footnote 144:——This enigmatical sentence partook of the nature of a clever sleight of mental strategy or of a skilful manœuvre 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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).]

[Footnote 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?

“Good Sir,——I pray you lette me intreate y^{r} favoure and frendshippe for my Cosen Germane Mr Guydo Fawks who serves S^{r} William (Stanley) as I understande he is in greate wante and y^{r} worde in his behalfe may stande him in greate steede. I have not deserved aine such curtesie at y^{r} handes as for my sake to helpe my friendes but assure yrselfe that yf there be aine thinge I can doe for you, you may commande me for the respecte I beare to our ould friendshippe but also by this meanes you shalle bynde me more unto you. He hath lefte a prettie livinge here in his countre which his mother being married to an unthriftie husbande since his departure I think hath wastied awaye.[A] Yet she and the reste of our friends are in good health. I durste not as yet goe to them but this sommer I meane to see them all God willinge lette him tell my Cousin Martin Harrington that I was at his Brother Henries house at _the mounte_ but he was not then at home he and his wyfe are well and have manie prettie children. Mr D. Worthington’s brother hath wrote a letter unto him desiringe a speedie answere he is a good honeste and devoute man I often mete with him for nowe I am residente at his Cozens house in that province which is fallen to my lotte they expecte therefor for some helpe nothinge is wanting but a beginner amonge them so they saye for the redemption of Israel. Remember I pray you my commendacons to my good and honourable godmother my L. Marie[B] (Percie) and the twoe devoute sisters in her companie. Mr Roberte Chambers[C] writte to me for his mother, the charge is geven to Mr Duckette[D] to inquire for her for she is in his vicinitie tho four Sirsbies of his companie as [? are] here very well. Within this week I have sene both Cor^{n} & Gould and Batte, to-morrowe I shall mete w^{th} John Lassells. Thinges goe well forwarde here o^{r} enemies persecute us all more than ever and are in particulare feare or rather looke for some what more from o^{r} owne malcontents. Thus requesting y^{r} favoure in my suite and remembrance in y^{r} beste memories as you shall have myne _I comitte you to sweete Jesus his hole protection_ this St John Baps^{t} Eve.——Yours in Christe Richard Collinge.

“Lette D. Kellison know that his brother Valentine is in goode healthe and a well wisher but noe Catholike.”

Addressed thus:——

“All Molto Mag^{co} Sig^{re} il Signiore Guilio Piccioli a Venezia” [_i.e._, Venice].

(Endorsed) Fugitives.

Vol. cclxxi., No. 21.

_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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.”]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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).]

[Footnote 148:——Jardine, in his “_Narrative_” p. 37, has the following exceptionally interesting paragraph: “Sir William Waad in a letter to Lord Salisbury, reporting a conversation with Fawkes, says, ‘Fawkes’s mother is alive and re-married, and he hath a brother in one of the Inns of Court. John and Christopher Wright were school-fellows of Fawkes and neighbours’ children. Tesimond, the Jesuit, was at that time schoolfellow also with them. So as this crew have been brought up together.’”——State Paper Office, Add. Papers No. 481, Jardine (now Record Office).

Probably what Fawkes said was that _he_ (Fawkes) _and Tesimond_ were neighbours’ children; for John and Christopher Wright’s parents were of Plowland Hall, in the Parish of Welwick, in Holderness, as we have seen. Two explanations, however, are possible, which will reconcile this statement that, after all, Fawkes may have _said that he and the Wrights were neighbours’ children_. One is that possibly the young Wrights boarded with some citizen dwelling in St. Michael-le-Belfrey’s Parish, York, whilst they were at the Royal School of St. Peter, then in the Horse Fayre, Gillygate (but now in Clifton), York; the other explanation is that possibly a portion of the fourteen years during which the mother of John and Christopher Wright was (as we have seen already _ante_) imprisoned for her resolute profession of the Catholic religion was spent in company with her husband, Robert Wright, in some private gentleman’s house in the Belfrey Parish, in the City of York——a thing then very common. For example, Dr. Thomas Vavasour, a physician, of Christ’s Parish, who——_or whose wife_, Mrs. Dorothy Vavasour——favoured Campion, and probably harboured him in 1581, was for a time imprisoned in the house of his brother. This was probably Mr. Edward Vavasour, a Protestant gentleman, who resided in “the Belfray” Parish, and was a freeman of York and one of its tradesmen, being, I find, a hatter. In the York “Subsidy Roll for 1581” Edward Vavasour’s name appears as being assessed in goods at £8. Dr. Thomas Vavasour’s name does not appear in the Subsidy Roll. I believe he was then in prison, at Hull, for his persistent refusal to conform to the Queen’s demands in matters of faith.

Query——Did Father Oldcorne learn his “medicine” from Dr. Vavasour, of the Parish of Christ? What was the system of medical training in the “golden days”?]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 150:——Vol. ii., pp. 285, 286.]

[Footnote 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_.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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).]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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:——

“Linquenda tellus, et domus, et placens Uxor: neque harum, quas colis, arborum Te, praeter invisas cupressos, Ulla brevem dominum sequetur.”——_Horace._[A]

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.]

[Footnote A:

“Land must be left, and home, and charming wife, And of these trees which you cultivate, None will follow you, their short-lived owner and lord, Save the detested cypress.”]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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).]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

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

[Footnote 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.”]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.”]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.”]

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

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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._”]

[Footnote 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.]

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

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

_Sub-note to Note 178._

In 1572 John Oldcorne, we are told, was one of the four “sworn men against the late rebels and other evil-disposed people suspected of papistry, for St. Sampson’s parish.” This is very interesting; for on the 22nd day of August, 1572, at three o’clock in the afternoon, “the Blessed” Thomas Percy, “the good Erle of Northumberland,” was beheaded in The Pavement, at the east end of All Saints’ Church. He was buried in old St. Crux Church, adjoining The Pavement; and it is possible, I conjecture, that John Oldcorne may have been sworn in as a special constable to help to keep the peace on the occasion of the beheading of the Earl, who held the hearts of nine-tenths of the people of York and Yorkshire, as well as of “the North Countrie” generally, at the time of his long and deeply lamented death.

The York “Tyburn,” in the middle of the Tadcaster High-road, opposite Hob Moor Gate, Knavesmire, was abolished at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

John Oldcorne, the father of Father Edward Oldcorne, is described as a Bricklayer as well as a Tiler. I think he was a “Master,” in partnership, maybe, with his brother, Thomas Oldcorne, a great sufferer for the Catholic Faith, whose wife, Alice, died——a prisoner for her conscience——in the Kidcote, on Old Ouse Bridge, and whose body was buried on Toft Green, near to Micklegate Bar.——See Foley’s “_Records_,” vol. iv.——The name Oldcorne is not now found in the City of York.

FINIS.

A task at once pleasurable and laborious is at length accomplished, and the writer humbly sends forth into the world his modest contribution towards the literature of the Gunpowder Treason Plot.

Errors, whether in matters of Fact or in points of Reasoning and Argument, the author will be gratefully obliged by his readers at an early date pointing out to him.

Should his book be read by any of our kith and kin in His Most Gracious Majesty’s Dominions beyond the seas, whom “the stern behests of Duty” have bidden “with strangers make their home,” as well as by professed students of History and the general citizen reader in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, then will be the writer’s joy great indeed.

The author desires to tender his respectful and cordial thanks to the Authorities of the following Libraries for the use of their valuable, and not seldom invaluable, works:——(1) The Minster Library, York; (2) the Minster Library, Ripon; (3) the British Museum, London; (4) the Free Library, York; (5) the Free Library, Leeds; (6) the Free Library, Preston; (7) the Free Library, Wigan; and (8) the Albert Library, York.

Also the like thanks to the following persons of divers nationalities, creeds, and parties. Their aid and assistance have been of various kinds: sometimes the loan of rare and costly books for a twelve-month together; in certain cases, advice and counsel; in other cases, the revising of proof sheets, the translation from foreign tongues, and the transcription of Elizabethan and Jacobean documents:——

To the Rev. F. A. Russell, York, formerly of India; the Rev. Edmond Nolan, B.A., St. Edmund’s House, Cambridge; the Rev. Richard Sharp, S.J., Skipton-in-Craven, Yorks.; the Rev. George Machell, York; the Rev. Louis Tils, York, formerly of Germany; the Rev. H. Rawlings, M.A., York, formerly of South Africa; the Rev. T. Harrington, Brosna, Co. Kerry, Ireland; the Rev. H. A. Geurts, Bishop Thornton, Ripon, Yorks., formerly of Holland; the Rev. E. J. Hickey, Lartington, North Yorks.; A. E. Chapman, LL.D., York; A. Neave Brayshaw, B.A., LL.B., York; Oswald C. B. Brown, York, Solicitor (author of “_The Life of the Venerable Richard Langley: a Martyr of the Yorkshire Wolds_”); G. Laycock Brown, York, Solicitor; Miss Emma M. Walford, 45, Bernard St., Russell Square, London, W.C.; Miss Georgina Kirby, York House, Middlesbrough, Yorks.; Mr. Ralph Currie, York; and Mr. John Sampson, York.

Lastly, to all other kind friends who may have rendered assistance, but whose names do not occur _either_ in the work itself _or_ in the above-mentioned list, the writer begs to offer his sincere acknowledgments.

PRINTED BY THE YORKSHIRE HERALD NEWSPAPER COMPANY, LIMITED, YORK.

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TRANSCRIBER’S AMENDMENTS

Transcriber’s Note: Blank pages have been deleted. Footnotes with alphabetic tags now generally follow the referencing paragraph. Footnotes with numeric tags are located near the end of the work. The publisher’s inadvertent omissions of important punctuation have been corrected. Duplicative book and chapter front matter has been removed.

The following list indicates any additional changes made. The page number represents that of the original publication and applies in this etext except for footnotes and illustrations since they may have been moved.

Page Change

2 See Notes at End of Text, indicated by figures in ( )[[ ]] 2 ['Local' footnotes are indicated with A-Z, not numerals.] 168 This lady was the the[Delete.] above-named Dowager 174 Anglo-Saxon compeers as belonging [to] a comparatively inferior 176 his aid for the rebellion.[Omitted footnote tag added here.] 192 the point of a needle?”[Omitted footnote tag added here.] 248 owned by the Rev. Charles Slingsby Slingsby[Delete.], 251 and from tyme to to[Delete.] tyme, 306 William Grauntham[Grantham]. 387 Again; Fawkes, we are told by Endæmon[Eudæmon],

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