CHAPTER LI.

[A]The present Lord Vaux of Harrowden, in the course of a most courteous reply to various historical questions the writer ventured to propound to him, says, in a letter dated 15th November, 1901, that his residence, Harrowden Hall, was erected in the year 1719. It will, therefore, not be the self-same mansion as that wherein Fathers Garnet, Gerard, Fisher, Roger Lee, etc., were wont to be harboured by his Lordship’s distinguished ancestors.None of the grand old English Catholic families, those “honourable people,” if such were ever known to mortal, have a better right than the Lords Vaux of Harrowden, to take as their motto those fine words of Gerald Massey: —“‘They wrought in Faith,’ andnot‘They wrought in Doubt,’ —Is the proud epitaph that we inscribeAbove our glorious dead.”The name “Vaux of Harrowden” is still to be found in the bead-roll of English Roman Catholic Peers. And, along with such historic names as Norfolk, Mowbray and Stourton, Petre, Arundell of Wardour, Stafford, Clifford of Chudleigh, and Herries, the name “Vaux of Harrowden” was appended to “the Roman Catholic Peers’ Protest,” dated from the House of Lords, 14th February, 1901, addressed to the Earl of Halsbury, Lord High Chancellor of England, anent “the Declaration against Popery,” that Our Most Gracious King Edward VII. was compelled, by Act of Parliament, to utter on the occasion of meeting His Majesty’s first Parliament.

None of the grand old English Catholic families, those “honourable people,” if such were ever known to mortal, have a better right than the Lords Vaux of Harrowden, to take as their motto those fine words of Gerald Massey: —

“‘They wrought in Faith,’ andnot‘They wrought in Doubt,’ —Is the proud epitaph that we inscribeAbove our glorious dead.”

The name “Vaux of Harrowden” is still to be found in the bead-roll of English Roman Catholic Peers. And, along with such historic names as Norfolk, Mowbray and Stourton, Petre, Arundell of Wardour, Stafford, Clifford of Chudleigh, and Herries, the name “Vaux of Harrowden” was appended to “the Roman Catholic Peers’ Protest,” dated from the House of Lords, 14th February, 1901, addressed to the Earl of Halsbury, Lord High Chancellor of England, anent “the Declaration against Popery,” that Our Most Gracious King Edward VII. was compelled, by Act of Parliament, to utter on the occasion of meeting His Majesty’s first Parliament.

On the 4th of October, Father Garnet wrote a long letter to Father Parsons in Rome, who was then virtually the ruler of the Catholics of England, though that sturdy Yorkshireman, Father John Mush,[A]among secular priests, together with many others, resented being dictated to by Father Parsons, certainly a man of great genius, but indulging too much the mere “wire-puller” instinct and propensity to be reckoned a prince among ecclesiastical statesmen.

[A]Mush may have been of the Mushes, of Knaresbrough, stanch Catholics, but in humble circumstances. — See Peacock’s “List.”

This letter of Father Garnet’s, to which reference has been just made, is a remarkable production. It begins as follows:—

“My very loving Sir,“This I write from the elder Nicholas[A]his residence where I find my hostess with all her posterity very well; and we are to go within few days nearer London.”

“My very loving Sir,

“This I write from the elder Nicholas[A]his residence where I find my hostess with all her posterity very well; and we are to go within few days nearer London.”

[A]Father Nicholas Hart, S.J., as distinguished from Brother Nicholas Owen, S.J.

The letter then says: —

“The judges now openly protest that the King will have blood and hath taken blood in Yorkshire.”[B]

[B]The “Venerable” Thomas Welbourn and John Fulthering suffered at York on the 1st August, 1605; and William Brown at Ripon on the 5th September. — See Challoner’s “Missionary Priests.” Ed. by T. G. Law (Jack, Edinburgh).

There were four paragraphs at the end of the letter.

Now, a short but separate paragraph of three lines is carefully obliterated between the first and the third of these paragraphs.

The third paragraph ends thus: —

“I cease 4th Octobris.”

The fourth paragraph then continues: —

“My hostesses both and their children salute you. Sir Thomas Tresham is dead.”[C]

[C]The hostesses would be those valiant women, Elizabeth Dowager Lady Vaux of Harrowden (néeRoper), the Honourable Eleanor Brookesby, and the Honourable Anne Vaux. William Lord Vaux of Harrowden, who harboured Father Parsons in 1580-81, had married for his second wife a sister of Sir Thomas Tresham. This Lord Vaux’s eldest son Ambrose, a priest, resigned his title in favour of his half-brother the Honourable George Vaux, afterwards Lord Vaux of Harrowden. The first wife of William Lord Vaux was Elizabeth Beaumont, of Gracedieu, Leicestershire. She was the mother of Ambrose, Elizabeth, and Anne Vaux. Father Garnet for many years lived at Harrowden, from 1586 as the guest of William Lord Vaux, whose son, George Lord Vaux of Harrowden, married Elizabeth Roper, daughter of the first Lord Teynham. This lady was the above-named Dowager Lady Vaux of Harrowden, mother of Edward Lord Vaux of Harrowden, who became as “noble a confessor for the Faith” as were his numerous other relatives. (The present Lord Vaux of Harrowden, whose family name is Mostyn, is descended from the above-mentioned Lords Vaux, through the female line.)

Here ends the body of the letter.

After the body of the letter there is a post scriptum.

Now, there are nine words in thepost scriptumthat suffice to clench the argument of this book.

And why? Because, I respectfully submit, those nine words show that between the 4th day of October, 1605,andthe 21st day of October, Garnet had received from somewhereintelligence to the effect that machinery was being put into motion whereby the Plot would be squashed.

For thepost scriptumto this letter of Father Garnet is as follows: —

“21º Octobris.

“This letter being returned unto me again,FOR REASON OF A FRIEND’S STAY IN THE WAY, I blotted out some words, purposing to write the same by the next opportunity, as I will do apart.“I have a letter from Field, the Journeyman in Ireland, who telleth me that of late, there was a very severe proclamation against all ecclesiastical persons, and a general command for going to the churches, with a solemn protestation that the King never promised nor meant to give toleration.“I pray you speak to Claude, and to grant them, or obtain for them all the faculties we have here; for so he earnestly desireth, and is scrupulous. I gave unto two of them, that passed by me, all we have; and I think it sufficient in law; for being here, theywere my subjects, and we have our faculties also for Ireland, for the most part. I pray you procure them a general grant for their comfort.”

“This letter being returned unto me again,FOR REASON OF A FRIEND’S STAY IN THE WAY, I blotted out some words, purposing to write the same by the next opportunity, as I will do apart.

“I have a letter from Field, the Journeyman in Ireland, who telleth me that of late, there was a very severe proclamation against all ecclesiastical persons, and a general command for going to the churches, with a solemn protestation that the King never promised nor meant to give toleration.

“I pray you speak to Claude, and to grant them, or obtain for them all the faculties we have here; for so he earnestly desireth, and is scrupulous. I gave unto two of them, that passed by me, all we have; and I think it sufficient in law; for being here, theywere my subjects, and we have our faculties also for Ireland, for the most part. I pray you procure them a general grant for their comfort.”

The letter and thepost scriptumare alike unsigned. The letter and thepost scriptumare still in existence, and, I believe, are preserved in London in the archives of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster.

I am indebted for my copy to the work entitled, “A True Account of the Gunpowder Plot,” by “Vindicator” (Dolman), 1851 — taken from Tierney’s Edition of “Dodd’s Church History.”

The Claude referred to in thepost scriptumis Father Claude Aquaviva, the then General of the Jesuits, who lived in Rome.

(Irish Catholics will not fail to notice the interest this afflicted, much-tried Englishman took in their case on the 21st October, 1605.)

Father Gerard says in his “Narrative of the Plot,” p. 269: “Father Oldcorne his indictment was so framed that one might see they much desired to have withdrawn him within the compass of some participation in this late Treason; to which effect they first did seem to suppose it as likely that he should send letters up and down to prepare men’s minds for the insurrection.”

Again; respecting Ralph Ashley, the Jesuit lay-brother and servant of Father Oldcorne, Gerard says, on p. 271: “Ralph was also indicted and condemned upon supposition that he had carried letters to and fro about this conspiracy.”

Now, my deliberate conjectures are these: That Edward Oldcorne had indeed sent “Letters” which his servant Ralph Ashley had carried concerning “this conspiracy.” That one of those Letters was sent and carried to HenryGarnet. And another to William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle.

On the 12th of March, 1605-6, Father Garnet, when a prisoner in the Tower of London, before the Lord Chief Justice Popham, Sir Edward Coke, Sir William Waade (Lieutenant of the Tower), and John Corbett, “confessed that Father Parsons wrote to him certain letters last summer [i.e., 1605]which he received about Michaelmas last, wherein he requested this examinat to advertise him what plotts the Catholiques of England had then in hand;whereunto for that this examinat was on his journey he made no answere.”

Yea, indeed, this was a part of the truth, no doubt.But the remainder of the truth, I suggest, was that the Plot of Plots Garnet had learned, a few days after the aforesaid Michaelmas, was being assuredly squashed by Edward Oldcorne.

Poor Henry Garnet, a sorry, pathetic figure in the history of his Country, surely. Yet, becausemuchwas lost, he knew that it did not therefore follow thatallwas lost. For this gifted, distraught, erring man still held “something sacred, something undefiled, somepledgeand keepsake of his better nature.”

That something was his point of honour as a Priest of the Catholic Church.[A]

[A]How many a gallant soldier and sailor in our own day, young and old, has been sustained in life and death by the consolinginfinite thought of fidelity to the commands of a lawful superior; by the comfortingtranscendental thought of duty done!Cf., Frederic Denison Maurice’s fine passage on the inspiring and ennobling idea of Duty, in his “Lectures on the Epistles of St. John(Macmillan); also Wordsworth’s magnificent “Ode to Duty.”

Sir Everard Digby had rented Coughton, near Alcester, in Warwickshire, from Thomas Throckmorton, Esquire, as a base for the warlike operations, which were to be conducted in the Midlands as soon as intelligence had arrived from London that the King, Lords Spiritual and Temporal, together with the Gentlemen of the House of Commons, “were now no more.”

On Sunday, the 3rd of November, the young knight rode from Coughton to Dunchurch, near Rugby.

Robert Winter the same day left Huddington and, sleeping on the Sunday night at Grafton, at the house of his father-in-law, John Talbot, Esquire, rode on to Coventry, in company with the younger Acton, of Ribbesford, and attended by several servants.

At Coventry, Robert Winter was joined by Stephen Littleton, of Holbeach House, in Staffordshire, just over the borders of Worcestershire; and also by his cousin, Humphrey Littleton, brother to the then late John Littleton,[A]of Hagley House, Worcestershire, who had been engaged in the Essex rising.

[A]All the Littletons were descended from the great Judge Littleton, author of “Littleton on Tenures.” The present Lord Lyttelton belongs to the same family.

On the following Tuesday, November the 5th, the whole party proceeded towards Dunchurch, the armed cavalcade continually increasing in numbers.

The plan was, that at Dunsmore Heath, under a feigned hunting or coursing match, there should be a gathering of the Midland Catholic clans, then very numerous and powerful. Dunsmore Heath, in fact, was to be the rendezvous of the insurgents.

Robert Winter left the cousins Littleton at “the town’s end” of Dunchurch, and rode on to Ashby St. Legers, the ancestral seat of the Catesbies, where, indeed, the Dowager Lady Catesby was then residing.

Here Robert Winter hoped to meet Catesby, with whom, after the latter had reported progress with reference to things done in London on that Tuesday morning, Winter purposed to gallop off to the rendezvous at Dunsmore Heath.

Ambrose Rookwood was one of the latest to leave for the provinces. He owned many fine horses; and he had placed relays of horses all the way from London to Dunchurch. Rookwood rode one horse at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. Riding for dear life, he overtook Catesby, Percy, and the two Wrights, near Brickhill. Percy and John Wright cast off their cloaks and threw them into the hedge to ride the more swiftly.[155]

About six o’clock in the evening of Tuesday, just as Lady Catesby, Robert Winter, and some others were about to sit down to supper in the old mansion-house, there fell upon their ears a mingled din, occasioned by horses’ feet and men’s excited voices.

Soon in rushed, with scared faces and travel-stained garb, grievously fatigued and intensely agitated, the son of the house (Robert Catesby), Thomas Percy, John Wright, Christopher Wright, and Ambrose Rookwood. Their announcement was the capture of Guy Fawkes early that Tuesday morning.

After holding a short council of war, the whole band of conspirators, snatching up all the weapons of warfare they could lay their hands on, took horse again and rode off to Dunchurch.

Sir Everard Digby, his uncle (Sir Robert Digby, of Coleshill), Stephen Littleton, Humphrey Littleton, and many others were awaiting their arrival at Dunchurch, in an inn.

The six fugitive conspirators, all bespattered with the mire of November high roads, with dejected looks and jaded aspect, arrived in due time to tell their tale.

Soon Sir Robert Digby departed with one of his sons, then Humphrey Littleton, and speedily many others of the hunting party.

It was determined by the ringleaders to make for Wales; for the Catholics of the Principality were then very strong,[A]and the Counties of Warwick, Worcester, and Stafford were to be traversed, from all of which valuable reinforcements were expected.

[A]It is a curious fact that in the reign of Elizabeth, Father Weston, S.J., specially spoke of Wales, along with the counties bordering on Scotland, as being firm in its attachment to the Church of Rome. It was the lack of a Welsh College in Rome which, causing the supply of priests to fail, gradually caused the interesting Cymric people to lose the Faith which they of all the inhabitants of the British Isles were the first to embrace.It is to be remembered, however, that there has always been a remnant in a few of the valleys of Wales faithful to the See of Rome; and Dr. Owen Lewis, the Bishop of Cassano, a Welshman, aided Cardinal Allen to found Douay College, in 1568. Several of the Martyrs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, too, were Welsh.At the English College at Rome the Welsh and the English students had violent and, to read of, amusing quarrels. Evidently the Welsh, students looked down upon their Anglo-Saxon compeers as belonging to a comparatively inferior race.

It is to be remembered, however, that there has always been a remnant in a few of the valleys of Wales faithful to the See of Rome; and Dr. Owen Lewis, the Bishop of Cassano, a Welshman, aided Cardinal Allen to found Douay College, in 1568. Several of the Martyrs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, too, were Welsh.

At the English College at Rome the Welsh and the English students had violent and, to read of, amusing quarrels. Evidently the Welsh, students looked down upon their Anglo-Saxon compeers as belonging to a comparatively inferior race.

About ten o’clock on Tuesday night the fullcompany, now about thirty strong, set out for Norbrook,[A]the house of John Grant.

[A]At Warwick,en routefor Norbrook, they took some horses out of a stable near the Castle, and left their own steeds in exchange therefor. They arrived at Warwick at about three o’clock on Wednesday morning.

Thence, it will be recollected, Bates was sent with a note from Catesby and Sir Everard Digby to Father Garnet, at Coughton, urging Garnet to join the rebels in Wales.

Lady Digby had also a letter from her husband, but the poor young wife, we are told, could, alas! do naught but cry.

After a halt of about two hours for refreshments and the procuring of more arms, the insurgents once more slipped their feet into the stirrups, and on they rode for Huddington, near Droitwich, where they arrived at two o’clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, the 6th. Sentinels were posted at the passage of every way at Huddington, possibly by the order of John Winter, half-brother to Robert and Thomas Winter.

Here they were joined by Thomas Winter, who had come down from London with the latest news; also by the Jesuit, Father Tesimond, whom Catesby hailed with joy.

They rested for a good few hours at Huddington; and, as we have seen already, at about three o’clock in the morning of Thursday all the gentlemen assisted at Father Nicholas Hart’s Mass, went to Confession, and received, at the Jesuit’s, hands, what most of them from their childhood had been taught to believe was “the Bread of Angels,” and “the Food of Immortality.”[B]

[B]Certainly Man’s natureneedsthese things; but the question is: Can it get them? “Aye, there’s the rub.”

Before daybreak of Thursday the fugitives were on the march north-westward again. For “there is no rest for the wicked.”

The rebels made for Whewell Grange, the seat of the Lord Windsor, one of the numerous Worcestershire Catholic families.

At Whewell Grange the traitors helped themselves to a large store of arms and armour.

Then they sped on towards Holbeach House, near Stourbridge, in Staffordshire. Their number was then about sixty all told, although earlier in the march it had increased to about a hundred. In two days they had traversed about sixty miles, “over bad and broken roads, in rainy and inclement weather.”

To the dire disappointment of Catesby, Sir Everard Digby, and the rest, John Talbot, of Grafton, drove Thomas Winter and Stephen Littleton from his door when they sought his aid for the rebellion.[A]

[A]See Jardine’s “Narrative,” p. 112, to which I am indebted for this account; also Handy’s evidence, Jardine’s “Criminal Trials,” vol. ii., pp. 165, 166.

And Sir Everard was constrained to avow that of the wealthy Catholic gentry “not one man came to take our part though we had expected so many.”[B]

[B]Jardine’s “Narrative,” p. 112. Holbeach House is no longer standing.

The High Sheriffs of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, with theirposse comitatus, were in pursuit of the fugitives, who arrived at Holbeach House at ten of the clock on Thursday night.

At Holbeach they prepared to make their last stand. And alack! never more were the brothers John and Christopher Wright destined to behold Lapworth, Twigmore, Ripon, Skelton, Newby, Mulwith, York, or Plowland,[A]nor any of those scenes around which must have clung so many endearing associations and sacred memories.[156]

[A]For an account of recent visits to Mulwith and Plowland, see Supplementum IV. and Supplementum V.To the generosity of my friend, Miss Burnham, the lady of Plowland, my readers owe the view of the present Plowland House, which forms the Frontispiece to this Book. The old Hall occupied the site of the present dwelling, and faced the river Humber towards the south. The gabled buildings in the rear are ancient, and behind them are a few mossy Gothic stones, evidently belonging to the old chapel. Behind the ancient buildings is a willow-fringed remnant of the old moat. George Burnham, Esq., brother to Miss Burnham, is the owner of this historic spot. Edward Wright Burnham, Esq., of Skeffling, Holderness, is their brother. The namesEdward Wrightsuggest descent from Edward Wright, the son of Christopher Wright, the revealing conspirator.

[A]For an account of recent visits to Mulwith and Plowland, see Supplementum IV. and Supplementum V.

To the generosity of my friend, Miss Burnham, the lady of Plowland, my readers owe the view of the present Plowland House, which forms the Frontispiece to this Book. The old Hall occupied the site of the present dwelling, and faced the river Humber towards the south. The gabled buildings in the rear are ancient, and behind them are a few mossy Gothic stones, evidently belonging to the old chapel. Behind the ancient buildings is a willow-fringed remnant of the old moat. George Burnham, Esq., brother to Miss Burnham, is the owner of this historic spot. Edward Wright Burnham, Esq., of Skeffling, Holderness, is their brother. The namesEdward Wrightsuggest descent from Edward Wright, the son of Christopher Wright, the revealing conspirator.

Early in the morning of Friday some of the company went out to descry whether or not reinforcements were in sight. Others began to prepare their shot and powder.

Catesby, Rookwood, and Grant were severely burnt in the face, especially the two latter, with some damp or dankgunpowder which they were drying on a platter before the kitchen fire, and into which a hot cinder fell.

This incident seems to have thoroughly unnerved Catesby and all his wicked confederates. They saw in the fact a stroke of poetic justice — nay, the flaming, avenging sword of Heaven.

Thomas Winter was told by Catesby and the rest, in reply to his question, “We mean here to die.”

Winter thereupon replied, “I will take such part as you do.”

“Then they all fell earnestly to their prayers,” says Gerard, “the litanies and such like.” They also “spent an hour in meditation.”

About eleven o’clock in the forenoon of that black Friday, November the 8th, 1605, the High Sheriff of Worcestershire arrived with the whole power and force of the county, and beset the house.

Thomas Winter, going into the court-yard, was shot in the shoulder with an arrow from a cross-bow, and lost the use of his right arm.

John Wright was shot dead.

Christopher Wright was mortally wounded.

Ambrose Rookwood was wounded in four or five places.

John Grant was likewise disabled.

Catesby and Thomas Percy, each sword in hand, and “standing before the door” close together, were mortally wounded by two successive shots fired by one musketeer, who afterwards boasted of his resolute carriage of himself on that eventful day.[A]

[A]The man’s name was John Streete. He received a pension of two shillings a day for life, equal to about sixteen shillings a day in our money. Gerard’s “What was the Gunpowder Plot?” p. 155.

Catesby, before receiving his fatal shot, we are told by Father Gerard in his “Narrative,” p. 109, “took from his neck a cross of gold, which he always used to wear about him, and blessing himself with it and kissing it, showed it unto the people, protesting there solemnly before them all it was only for the honour of the Cross, and the exaltation of that Faith which honoured the Cross, and for the saving of their souls in the same Faith that had moved him to undertake the business; and seth he saw it was not God’s will it should succeed in that manner they intended, or at that time, he was willing and ready to give his life for the same cause, only he would not be taken by any, and against that only he would defend himself with his sword.

“This done, Mr. Catesby and Mr. Percy turned back to back, resolving to yield themselves to no man, but to death as the messenger of God.

“None of their adversaries did come near them, but one fellow standing behind a tree with a musket, shot them both with one bullet,[A]and Mr. Catesby was shot almost dead, the other lived three or four days.

[A]It was with one musket, but two successive bullets.

“Mr. Catesby being fallen to the ground, as they say, went upon his knees into the house, and there got a picture of our Blessed Lady in his arms (unto whom he was accustomed to be very devout), and so embracing and kissing the same, he died.”[B]

[B]The mind of each of the thirteen Gunpowder conspirators affords the intellectual philosopher and the moral philosopher rich food for thought. What a reflection from human nature is not the soul of these men, one and all — especially Catesby, Thomas Percy, Thomas Winter, Guy Fawkes, Ambrose Rookwood, and Christopher Wright. I would especially point out the strange superstition that Catesby exhibited in wishing to blow up theParliament House, because it wastherethe iniquitous laws had been made against the Catholics. He primarily wished, like some pagan, to be revenged on thematerial object, which had been the unconscious and irresponsible instrument of his kinsfolk’s and friends’ hurt.Moreover, how true to daily experience is the behaviour of Catesby in his last moments: of one who in his youth had been very wild, but who, on reaching maturer years, had grown to have a great devotion toherwhom Wordsworth has so beautifully styled “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”Again; the dying soldier’s flying for protection to, and the kissing in his last agony, when the light of life was about to be quenched in his mortal eyes for ever, a picture ofherwho is “the Mother of Christ,” and whom millions hold to be likewise “the Refuge of sinners,” is startlingly true to human nature.But — “Close up his eyes, and let us all to meditation.” For “In la sua volontade è nostra pace” — “Only in the Will of God is man’s peace.” And the essence of that Will is the Everlasting Moral Law.

Moreover, how true to daily experience is the behaviour of Catesby in his last moments: of one who in his youth had been very wild, but who, on reaching maturer years, had grown to have a great devotion toherwhom Wordsworth has so beautifully styled “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”

Again; the dying soldier’s flying for protection to, and the kissing in his last agony, when the light of life was about to be quenched in his mortal eyes for ever, a picture ofherwho is “the Mother of Christ,” and whom millions hold to be likewise “the Refuge of sinners,” is startlingly true to human nature.

But — “Close up his eyes, and let us all to meditation.” For “In la sua volontade è nostra pace” — “Only in the Will of God is man’s peace.” And the essence of that Will is the Everlasting Moral Law.

On the 9th of November Sir Edward Leigh wrote to the Privy Council that the Wrights were not slain asreputed, but wounded. Not till the 13th was their death certified by Sir Richard Walsh, High Sheriff of Worcestershire. — See Gerard’s “What was the Gunpowder Plot?” pp. 153, 154.

Whatever was the case with John Wright, it seems clear that the weight of evidence inclines to show that Christopher Wright did not expire on Friday, the 8th November, but that he lingered at least a day or two. The exact day of Christopher Wright’s death, and what became of his remains, may be ascertained facts hereafter, possibly. At present, they are unknown.[157]

Father Garnet did not go nearer London than Gothurst, in Buckinghamshire, between ten and fifteen miles distant from Great Harrowden.

We know that he was at Gothurst when Catesby was there, on Tuesday, the 22nd of October, one day after the date of thepost scriptummentioned in the last chapter. Probably thepost scriptumof the 21st October was written at Gothurst and not at Great Harrowden, though the letter itself of the 4th October undoubtedly was penned at Harrowden, between ten and fifteen miles distant from Gothurst, as just remarked.

The Honourable Anne Vaux, whose maternal grandfather was Sir Thomas Beaumont, Master of the Rolls, was a level-headed woman of acute mental perceptions as well as of great moral ardour and intense spiritual exaltation.[A]

[A]The psychologist will have observed that these qualities are not seldom combined in a certain order of minds.Cf., Shakespeare’s “great wits to madness are near allied” — some thinkers will be inclined to say.

Miss Vaux was allied to both Catesby and Tresham, and their words, and still more their doings, during the few months then last past, had been not unnoticed by her. She evidently had that strange premonitory foreboding, that curious sense of swift approaching doom, which have marked all tragedies written or unwritten since the world began.

Moreover, the large number of cavalry horses in the stables of Norbrook and Huddington (those places being herfellow-pilgrims’ and her own places of sojourning whenen routefor Holywell) had alarmed Anne Vaux’s imagination. And in reply to the lady’s anxious inquiries she had been told by her iniquitous, head-strong connections — Catesby and the rest — that the horses were wanted for the troop of horse whereof Catesby was to be in charge, with King James’s permission, in aid of the cause of the Spanish Archdukes in the Low Countries, then still in rebellion against the Spanish sovereignty.

Again; at either Harrowden or Gothurst, Miss Vaux sought out her father’s friend, and her own honoured and beloved spiritual counsellor, the chief of the English Jesuits, and told him that she feared that some trouble or disorder was a-brewing; and, moreover, that some of the gentlewomen, namely, the wives of the conspirators, “had demanded of her where they should bestow themselves until the burst was past in the beginning of the Parliament.”

Garnet, in reply, asked his inquirer who told her this; but she said “she durst not tell who told her so; she was [choked] with sorrow.”[A]

[A]Garnet’s examination of the 12th March. Foley’s “Records,” vol. iv., p. 157.

At Coughton, Father Garnet said Mass on the 1st of November, All Saints’ Day.

There “assisted” at this Mass the Lady Digby,[B]Mr. and Mrs. Brookesby, Miss Anne Vaux, and almost the whole of Sir Everard Digby’s Gothurst household.

[B]Lady Digby had been brought up a strong Protestant, and, like most converts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the Church of Rome from Calvinistic Puritanism, she became an ardent devotee of the Jesuits. (The point of contact was probably a common interest in the problems of the mystical life, and a tendency towards a grave, sober, strict regularity of “daily walk and conversation.”) George Gilbert, a gentleman of high Suffolk family and great wealth, was likewise a convert from Calvinism, through the instrumentality of the Jesuit Fathers, Darbyshire and Parsons. Gilbert, as a young man, daily “waited upon the ministry” of the once celebrated Puritan Divine, Dering, the friend of Thomas Cartwright. George Gilbert died in Rome in 1583, holding in his hand a crucifix made in prison by “the Blessed” Alexander Briant, a martyr friend of “the Blessed” Edmund Campion. Of Briant it is said he was “of a very sweet grace in preaching,” and that he was “replenished with spiritual sweetness” when suffering the tortures of the rack. George Gilbert mainly defrayed the cost of painting on the walls of the Church of the English College at Rome certain pictures of some of “the English Martyrs,” although “old Richard Norton,” of Norton Conyers, near Ripon, and some others who as exiles had “with strangers made their home,” likewise subscribed to the expense of the pious and artistic work. I saw, on the 13th October, 1900, through the kind courtesy of the Right Reverend Monsignor Giles, D.D., Rector of the English College, copies of these remarkable pictures, copies which are painted on the walls of that very College where Father Oldcorne himself had been educated.The original pictures on the walls of the Church are no longer in existence. The copies, however, even in our own day, have played an important part in “the beatification” of those of the English Martyrs already beatified, including “the Blessed” Thomas Percy Earl of Northumberland, who suffered death at York in 1572. — See the “Acts of the English Martyrs,” by the Rev. J. H. Pollen, S.J. (Burns & Oates).

The original pictures on the walls of the Church are no longer in existence. The copies, however, even in our own day, have played an important part in “the beatification” of those of the English Martyrs already beatified, including “the Blessed” Thomas Percy Earl of Northumberland, who suffered death at York in 1572. — See the “Acts of the English Martyrs,” by the Rev. J. H. Pollen, S.J. (Burns & Oates).

At Gothurst, however, was Sir Everard himself, busy making his final preparations for the war he was about to levy upon his King.

We find Sir Everard there also on November 2nd, All Souls’ Day, the last he and his ill-fated comrades were destined to keep on earth. — See Gerard’s “Narrative.”

On All Saints’ Day, Father Garnet appears to have offered some prayers, or otherwise advised the offering of the same, which had a certain reference to the King, the Parliament, and the hoped-for triumph of his Church over her enemies, especially over those then molesting the faithful English remnant of “the elect.” He also appears, according to his own admission, to have spoken a sermon which might be easily construed as bearingsome allusion to the then wretched condition of the unhappy English Catholics.[A]

[A]See Letter to Miss Anne Vaux, dated 2nd March, 1605-6, quoted in Foley, vol. iv., p. 84, where Garnet says: “There is a muttering here of a sermon which either I or Mr. Hall [an alias of Father Oldcorne] made. I fear mine, at Coughton. Mr. Hall hath no great matter, but only about Mr. Abington, though Mr. Attourney saith he hath more.”

Now, I infer that all this tends to demonstrate that Father Henry Garnet felt that a great burden or load had been lifted from his heart in regard to the aforetime perilous, but then practically abortive, Gunpowder Treason Plot. Therefore he must have known, from some source or another, that the Plot would be squashed before Tuesday, November the 5th, had dawned upon a “fallen world,” and all danger from the Plot finally swept away.

Again, in the Mass for All Saints’ Day there is a hymn, one verse of which is: “Take away the faithless people from the boundaries of the faithful, that we may joyfully give due praises to Christ.”

Cardinal Allen had induced the Pope “to indulge” the recital of these words by Catholics for the harmless “intention” of the “Conversion of England.”

Garnet, at Coughton, appears to have urged the recital of the same words for “the intention” of the “confounding” of the anti-popish “politics,” and the “frustration” of the “knavish tricks” of James at the forthcoming Parliament. If Garnet did so, then he must have known that James and hisParliamentwould be inexistenceto work mischief!And this once more proves that he knew the Plot would be squashed and finally swept away.

Soon after Catesby, Rookwood, and Grant had been injured by the exploded gunpowder at Holbeach House (as has been already mentioned in Chapter LIV.), Robert Winter, the Master of Huddington, deeming discretion the better part of valour, quitted the ill-fated mansion of Stephen Littleton.

Now, it so fell out that Robert Winter met with Stephen Littleton, the Master of Holbeach, in a wood about a mile from Holbeach. And for no less than two months these two high-born gentlemen were wandering disguised up and down the country. Having plenty of money with them, the fugitives bribed a farmer near Rowley Regis, in Staffordshire, a tenant of Humphrey Littleton, cousin to Stephen Littleton, to grant them harbourage.

On New Year’s Day the rebels came very early in the morning to the house of one Perkes, in Hagley. After an extraordinary adventure there (an account of which may be read in Jardine’s “Criminal Trials,” vol. ii., pp. 90-93), at about eleven of the clock one night, Humphrey Littleton conveyed the two hunted delinquents to Hagley House, in Worcestershire, the mansion wherein dwelt his widowed sister-in-law, Mrs. John Littleton,[158]a Protestant lady, to whose children the place apparently belonged.

Mrs. Littleton was herself either in, or on the way to,London at this time, so the two traitors were harboured without the lady’s knowledge or consent.

By the treachery, however, of the man-cook at Hagley, or rather, in justice it should be said, by his diligent zeal in the service of his sovereign lord the King, Stephen Littleton and Robert Winter were captured by the lawful authorities, and forthwith conveyed to the Tower of London.

Now, some time during these two months of the wanderings of these two gentlemen, with whose efforts to elude the vigilance of the law of the land Humphrey Littleton had connived, this same Humphrey Littleton repaired to Father Edward Oldcorne, probably at Hindlip, in order to be resolved in respect of certain doubts which he (Humphrey Littleton) said had entered into his mind as to whether or not the Gunpowder Treason Plot were or were not morally lawful.

Now, although an English Roman Catholic gentleman, it is certain that Humphrey Littleton, like a great many more of his co-religionists before and since, was by no means perfect. Inasmuch as, first, we hear tell of “a love-begot” boy of his (if Virtue’s pure ears can pardon the phrase), who was to become a page of Robert Catesby, in the event of Catesby’s going in command of that company of horse to Flanders to fight, with James’s permission, in behalf of the Spanish Archdukes, whereof we have already heard. And, secondly, Humphrey Littleton was plainly deemed by the astute Edward Oldcorne to be what we should nowadays style “a dangerous fellow,” who was capable, from various motives, of propounding a question of that sort in order to entrap. That is to say, in order wantonly to cause mischief, whatever might be the tenour or purport of Oldcorne’s answer — mischief among either Catholics or Protestants.[159]

We will, however, let Father Oldcorne tell his own tale as to what took place on the occasion of this momentous visit to him by Humphrey Littleton. For the great casuist’s own words are contained in his holograph Declaration of the 12th day of March, 1605-6, written by him when a prisoner in the Tower, and which I beheld in the Record Office, London, on the 5th of October, 1900.[160]

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