[A]If Mounteagle was in the company of Catesby at Fremland in the summer of 1605, these two may have been together at Bath between the 12th October and the 26th. Catesby probably would endeavour to induce Lord Mounteagle to join Sir Everard Digby’s rebellion, as he did induce Stephen Littleton and Humphrey Littleton.
[A]If Mounteagle was in the company of Catesby at Fremland in the summer of 1605, these two may have been together at Bath between the 12th October and the 26th. Catesby probably would endeavour to induce Lord Mounteagle to join Sir Everard Digby’s rebellion, as he did induce Stephen Littleton and Humphrey Littleton.
Then said Father Garnet, “You see we must all have patience.”[100]
It is also to be remembered that when Sir Edmund Baynham, a Gloucestershire Catholic gentleman of goodfamily — but of whom Winter said “he was not a man fit for the business at home,”i.e., the purposed Gunpowder massacre — went to Flanders and Rome in the first week of September, 1605, Mounteagle appears to have written certain letters of introduction or of general recommendation, in Baynham’s behalf, to English Catholics residing in Flanders or in Rome. Jardine says that “it is not quite certain that Baynham was himself entrusted with the great secret of the Plot.”[101]
I think that it is morally certain he was not.
Sir Edmund Baynham[A]was intended by the prime conspirators to be at Rome to justify (if he could) to the Pope any action that the conspirators might have perpetrated on or after November the Fifth in behalf of their religion. But the prime conspirators were far too astute “to open their mouth” to let a chattering, hare-brained swashbuckler like Baynham “fill other people’s” in every wine-shopen routefor “the Eternal City.”
[A]Father Garnet was also employing Sir Edmund Baynham ashisdiplomatic intermediary with the Pope in order “to gain time,” so that meanwhile the plotters might find space for repentance! Garnet was apparently one of those men who though possessed of a profound knowledge of Man know little or nothing of men. Whereas Oldcorne seems to have had practical reason as well as theoretical wisdom. Oldcorne, I take it, had a good, strong, clear, practical head on his shoulders, which included in its armourywill, in the sense ofpower, as well as intellect and heart, and “where there’s a will there’s a way.”
[A]Father Garnet was also employing Sir Edmund Baynham ashisdiplomatic intermediary with the Pope in order “to gain time,” so that meanwhile the plotters might find space for repentance! Garnet was apparently one of those men who though possessed of a profound knowledge of Man know little or nothing of men. Whereas Oldcorne seems to have had practical reason as well as theoretical wisdom. Oldcorne, I take it, had a good, strong, clear, practical head on his shoulders, which included in its armourywill, in the sense ofpower, as well as intellect and heart, and “where there’s a will there’s a way.”
Guy Fawkes probably was authorised to impart and possibly actually did, under the oath, impart some knowledge of the Plot to Captain Hugh Owen, a Welsh Roman Catholic soldier of fortune serving in Flanders under the Archdukes.[102]Owen’s name figures in the Earl of Salisbury’s instructions to Sir Edward Coke, the Attorney-General who prosecuted the surviving Gunpowder conspirators in the historic Westminster Hall.
Moreover, I have thought that at least some of the powder must have been purchased in Flanders through the good offices of the said Captain Owen. The powder and the mining tools and implements appear to have been stored at first in the house at Lambeth and placed under the charge of Robert Keyes and, eventually, of Christopher Wright. The powder was, I take it, packed in bags, and the bags themselves packed in padlocked hampers. Afterwards, I conclude, the powder bags were deposited in the barrels, and the barrels themselves carried by two of the conspirators, with aid of brewers’ slings, and deposited in the cellar, which apparently had at least two doors.
Now, when deep within the depths of the moral being of Christopher Wright there first arose that tender day-spring, a realization of guilt and shame: that crimsoned dawn, a sense of grief and sorrow for those two high crimes whereby his wretched conscious-self had been made darksome and deformed: acts, wondrous in the telling, in that soul had been indeed wrought out; regard being had to the overmastering power of Man’s conditioned yet free will.
Furthermore, the historical Inquirer cannot but seek, if possible, by the exercise of the philosophic faculty, to penetrate to what, on the human side, may have been the originating cause, the moving spring, of the limited yet responsible moral nature of a guilty creature, whose eyes for well-nigh three hundred years have been closed by a violent death; of a guilty creature who, in the awful tragedy of his end, verified in himself, in the sight of all men, the sublimely terrible words of the old Greek tragedy, “The guilty suffer.”
For wrong-doing, by a steadfast law of the universal reason, “till time shall be no more,” will ever entail temporal punishment; and, by nature, expiation and atonement must be wrought out in the criminal’s own keen consciousness.
Yet, by a compensating law of universal reason, as inexorable as its fellow, according as Man does work out that measure of punishment, expiating and atoning, whichto him Destiny has allotted for his guerdon, in that proportion does his soul regain its forfeited harmoniousness and peace.
Now the originating cause, the moving spring, in the case of the, I hold, contrite Christopher Wright was, on the human side, the flooding of his soul by memories pure and bright of days long, long ago.
I need not labour this point; but in a note I will relate certain facts concerning her to whom Christopher Wright owed the gifts of life and nurture, which will sufficiently tell what manner of woman that Elizabethan Yorkshire mother was, in respect of courage, humanity, and devotedness to her ideals.[103]
I furthermore opine that, although it was the personal dawning consciousness of Christopher Wright himself thatprimarilyprompted the happy step of recourse to Father Edward Oldcorne,[104]yet Christopher Wright, in my judgment, already had confided the just scruples of his conscience to the ear, not of a “superior” judicial Priest, but of an “equal” counselling Layman.
That Layman, I hold, was Thomas Ward, who, belike, heightened and strengthened his connection’s laudable resolve.[105]
Now, if such were the case, I do not doubt that Father Oldcorne, that skilled, tried “minister of a mind diseased,” the duties of whose vocation urged him, with persistent force, promiscuously “to work good unto all men,” voluntarily offered to pen the immortal Letter;provided he were released from the obligations of that solemn secrecy imposed by “the seal of the Confessional”: released by the Penitent himself, in whom alone resided the prerogative of granting or withholding such a release.
Again; I think that probably Thomas Ward had either at Hindlip, Evesham or elsewhere at least one interview with the great Jesuit himself — “the gradely Jesuit,” as the good, simple-hearted Lancashire Catholics would style him — in order that Father Oldcorne might receive from Ward in person satisfactory assurance that, with certainty, when the Letter had been prepared it would be delivered directly by Ward himself, or indirectly by him, through Mounteagle, to the Government authorities.
Nay, to make assurance doubly sure, it is even possible that Father Oldcorne may have insisted on asecond Letterbeing penned and sent toanother nobleman at the Court, the Earl of Northumberland, a man of ancient lineage and great name, with whom Ward, through the Gascoignes, would be distantly connected.[106]
It appears to me that the moral certitude is so strong that Thomas Ward was brother to Marmaduke Ward, of Mulwith, Newby, and Givendale, that it seems practically almost the mere extravagance of caution to express a doubt of it.[A]
[A]It will be remembered that we have evidence that William Ward, a son of Marmaduke Ward,had an uncle who lived at Court.This evidence is of the greatest value and importance in identifying Thomas Ward, the secretary and friend of Lord Mounteagle, and should be continually borne in mind by all my readers.It should be also remembered that Edmund Neville, the claimant of the Earldom of Westmoreland, was the man who accused Dr. William Parry of a plan to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. Now this Neville became a suitor for the hand of Mary Ward, though about double her age. Neville would be related to the Wards, and perhaps knew Thomas Ward when in 1584 Parry was tried and executed. Parry had invited Neville to join in assassinating the Queen. I believe Parry to have been a great liar; but all the same it is not absolutely certain that the wretch was not the victim of a state intrigue. If we could ascertain at Hatfield more about Thomas Ward there might be a clue to the Parry mystery.
[A]It will be remembered that we have evidence that William Ward, a son of Marmaduke Ward,had an uncle who lived at Court.
This evidence is of the greatest value and importance in identifying Thomas Ward, the secretary and friend of Lord Mounteagle, and should be continually borne in mind by all my readers.
It should be also remembered that Edmund Neville, the claimant of the Earldom of Westmoreland, was the man who accused Dr. William Parry of a plan to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. Now this Neville became a suitor for the hand of Mary Ward, though about double her age. Neville would be related to the Wards, and perhaps knew Thomas Ward when in 1584 Parry was tried and executed. Parry had invited Neville to join in assassinating the Queen. I believe Parry to have been a great liar; but all the same it is not absolutely certain that the wretch was not the victim of a state intrigue. If we could ascertain at Hatfield more about Thomas Ward there might be a clue to the Parry mystery.
Now, the suggestion that Thomas Ward was probably in the Midland counties of Warwickshire and Worcestershire sometime about the 11th of October, 1605,[107]is, I maintain, to some very slight extent supported by the fact that we know for certain that Marmaduke Ward came up from Yorkshire to Lapworth about thirteen days afterwards, and that he was bracketed with those who were said to have been at the houses of John Wright, Ambrose Rookwood, and John Grant at that time.[A]
[A]See the List of the names of conspirators, insurgents, and others arrested in the Midlands given in the Appendix.
[A]See the List of the names of conspirators, insurgents, and others arrested in the Midlands given in the Appendix.
Now, if about the 11th of October Thomas Ward found at Lapworth, Clopton, and Norbrook every inchoate evidential sign of a heady, hopeless, armed rebellion, what was there more natural than that he should have despatched some trusty horseman, fleet of foot, “from the heart of England” down into Yorkshire, bearing an urgent missive adjuring Marmaduke Ward, by the love that he bore to his kith and kin, to come up to Lapworth with all speed possible? To the end that he might use his counsels and entreaties to induce his late wife’s combative brother, John Wright,[108]the close-natured Christopher Wright, the gallant Ambrose Rookwood, and the strong-willed John Grant, to abandon all designment of insurrectionary stirs.
For Thomas Ward, from the experience of a man at Court aged forty-six, who knew from the daily observationof his own senses, how firmly James’s Executive was certainly established, must have clearly perceived that, at that time Catholic stirs against the Government could be fated to have only one unhappy issue and disgraceful termination, namely, the utter, bloody, irretrievable ruin of all that were so thrice wretchedly bewitched as to have become entangled in them.[A]
[A]It is to be borne in mind that hereafter proof may be forthcoming that Christopher Wright married Margaret Ward, the sister of Marmaduke and Thomas Ward. Ithinkthat they had another sister named Ann Ward, who married a Marmaduke Swales. — (See Ripon Registers). There was an old county family called Swales at Staveley Hall, near Farnham and Scotton. They were Roman Catholics. They are the same, I opine, as the Swales (or Swale) family, of South Stainley, between Ripley and Ripon, whose descendants are of the ancient faith in Yorkshire to this day.The late Sir James Swale, Bart., of Rudfarlington, near Knaresbrough, I conclude, likewise belonged to the same race. I was introduced in the year 1898 to this fine specimen of an old Yorkshire Catholic by my friend, Charles Allanson, Esq., of Harrogate — himself of an old West Riding family that “had never lost the Faith.”
[A]It is to be borne in mind that hereafter proof may be forthcoming that Christopher Wright married Margaret Ward, the sister of Marmaduke and Thomas Ward. Ithinkthat they had another sister named Ann Ward, who married a Marmaduke Swales. — (See Ripon Registers). There was an old county family called Swales at Staveley Hall, near Farnham and Scotton. They were Roman Catholics. They are the same, I opine, as the Swales (or Swale) family, of South Stainley, between Ripley and Ripon, whose descendants are of the ancient faith in Yorkshire to this day.
The late Sir James Swale, Bart., of Rudfarlington, near Knaresbrough, I conclude, likewise belonged to the same race. I was introduced in the year 1898 to this fine specimen of an old Yorkshire Catholic by my friend, Charles Allanson, Esq., of Harrogate — himself of an old West Riding family that “had never lost the Faith.”
And this the rather, when it is remembered that, the names of John and Christopher Wright were already unfavourably known to the Government; since during Elizabeth’s reign, in the year 1596, they, together with Catesby, Tresham, and others, had been put under arrest by the Crown authorities, who feared that on the death of Elizabeth these “young bloods” would, at what they deemed to be “the psychological moment” for the execution of their revolutionary designs, lead, sword in hand, the oppressed recusants in some wild, fierce dash for liberty.[109]
We have now considered the Evidence leading up to the commission of the respective acts that this Inquiry, at an earlier part, has attributed severally to Christopher Wright and Father Oldcorne, who stand, as it were, at the angular points in the base of that triangular movement of revelation, at whose vertex is Thomas Ward (or Warde), the entirely trustworthy friend and diplomatic intermediary common to both the repentant conspirator and the beneficent Priest of the Society of Jesus.
But before proceeding with the Evidence and the deductions and suggestions therefrom, which tend to prove that,subsequentto the dictating of the Letter by Christopher Wright and the penning of the same by Father Oldcorne, these two Yorkshiremen were conscious of having performed the several parts attributed unto them, let us deal with certainobjectionsthat may be put forward as preliminary objections fatal to the contentions of this Inquiry.
Now, there is an objection which, with aprimâ facieplausibleness, may be advanced against the hypothesis that Christopher Wright was the dictating, repentant, revealing conspirator, through whom primarily the Plot was frustrated and overthrown.
And there is also a second objection that may be urged against the hypothesis, with even still greaterprimâ facieplausibleness, that Father Edward Oldcorne,Priest and Jesuit, was the meritorious Penman of the dictated Letter.
Each objection must be dealt with separately.
Let us take the objection in the case of Christopher Wright first, and, having laid that one, proceed to the objection in the case of Edward Oldcorne.
Now, a certain William Handy, servant to Sir Everard Digby, on the 27th day of November, 1605, before (among others) Sir Julius Cæsar, Kt., Sir Francis Bacon, Kt.,[110]and Sir George More, Kt., High Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, deposed (among other things) the following: —
That early on Wednesday morning, the 6th of November, as the fugitives were proceeding from Norbrook to Alcester, he (Handy) heard the younger Wright say, “That if they had had good luck they had made those in the Parliament House fly with their heels upward to the sky;” and that “he spake these words openly in the hearing of those which were with him, which were commonly Mr. John Grant, the younger Grant, and Ambrose Rookwood.”[111]
Now, Christopher Wrightmayhave used these words in the early part of that November day, and every candid mind must allow that they arenotthe words that one would expect to find in a sincerely repentant criminal.
But the philosopher knows that there is “a great deal of human nature in Man.” While the experienced citizen of the world who knows men practically, as the philosopher knows Man theoretically, will not be literally amazed, or even unduly startled, at finding these words recorded against Christopher Wright, even after (ex hypothesi) he had become as one morally resurrected from the dead.
For it is to be remembered that Christopher Wright was the brother of John Wright, and the brother-in-law of Thomas Percy, Thomas Percy having married MarthaWright, of Plowland Hall. Now, concerning John Wright and his brother-in-law, Thomas Percy, the following traits of character are chronicled by their contemporary, Father John Gerard.[112]
“It was noted in him [i.e., Thomas Percy] and in Mr. John Wright (whose sister he afterwards married) that if they had heard of any man in the country to be esteemed more valiant and resolute than others, one or the other of them would surely have picked some quarrel against him and fought with him to have made trial of his valour.”
On the march then, with such relatives as these close at hand, there is no antecedent improbability, but the contrary, in the supposal that Christopher Wright used these words by way of a feint, to the end that he might, peradventure, draw his companions away from those scaring suspicions, by the haunting fear of which Wright’s self-consciousness would be sure to be continually visited.
For “Conscience doth make cowards of us all.”
Truly, “The guilty suffer.” And it was part of the awful temporal punishment wherewith severe, just Nemesis, the dread executioner of Destiny, visited this — I still hold, all outward shows to the contrary notwithstanding — repentant wrong-doer, that he should be fast bound to one of the spiked, lacerating wheels of a flying chariot that he desired, “to the finest fibre” of his tortured, writhing being, to have no part nor lot in driving: fast bound, for the residue of that all too brief mortal career, which, on that chill November morning, was rapidly drawing to its shattered close.
What objection, then, can be brought against the hypothesis that Father Edward Oldcorne, Priest and Jesuit, and native of the City of York, was the Penman of this most momentous perhaps of all Letters ever writ by the hand of man?
It is this, that in a pamphlet by a certain Dr. Williams, published about the year 1680,[113]purporting to be a History of the Powder Treason, with a parallel between the Gunpowder Treason and the Titus Oates’ alleged Popish Plot of the reign of Charles II., there occurs the following statement: —
“Mrs. Habington was sister to the Lord Mounteagle and so being solicitous for her brother, whom she had reason to believe would be at the parliament,she writ the aforesaid letter to him, to give him so much notice of the danger as might warn him to provide for his own safety, but not so much (as she apprehended) as might discover it. From this relation betwixt the two families, it was that Mr. Habington alone of all the conspirators, after sentence, had his life given him.This account Mr. Habington himself gave to a worthy person still in being.” (The italics are mine.)
Now, of course, if Mrs. Habington (or Abington), of Hindlip Hall, near Worcester, where Father Oldcorne was domesticated for sixteen years, actually wrote the Letter, then Father Oldcorne did not. There can be no two opinions aboutthat, even with the most sceptical.
But did she?
I submit that this testimony of Dr. Williams, second,[114]third, or fourth hand possibly, is hopelessly inadequate for the establishing of any such conclusion.
First, let it be noted that, although “the worthy person” to whom Mr. Abington is said to have imparted this tremendous secret — and apparently to none other human creature in the wide world beside — was living in the year 1680 (or thereabouts),his thrice-important name is not divulged by the learned author, neither is the faintest hint given as to where he may have resided.
Accordingly, we cannot submit the now dead but once highly privileged gentleman to the salutary ordeal of cross-examination: a fact which is well-nigh fatal to his credibility for any serious student of true history; with the further consequence that a grave suspicion is, by this very fact alone, at once cast upon the entire story.
Secondly, Dr. Williams does not say that he (Williams) himself had this testimony direct from the unnamed and unidentified witness — “the worthy person still in being” in (or about) the year 1680.
Therefore, this story may have been handed on by wagging, irresponsible, chattering tongues, whose name is legion. With the result that it gained, not lost, in the course of transmission to the mind of Dr. Williams, who has enshrined in the printed page, still to be viewed in the British Museum, the far-fetched tale for the benefit of succeeding ages.
Now, if Dr. Williams solemnly had said that he knew Mrs. Abington personally, and that she (Mrs. Abington) had told him (Williams) with her own lips that she had writ the Letter, the case would have beena good waytowards being established: assuming the lady to have been intellectually and morally capable at the time when she made such statement, and Williams himself a man whose word could be relied on.
Or, ifMr. Abingtonhad toldWilliamsthathe knew his wife had writ the Letter because he saw with his own eyes the lady do it, then the case would have beenalso a good waytowards being established.
Or, ifMr. Abingtonhad toldWilliamsthathe believed his wife had writ the Letter because she had told him (Abington) she had done so immediately after she alleged she had performed the meritorious deed, the case would have been someslight waytowards being established.
But when the only shred or patch of evidence we have to support the stupendous article of belief that Mrs. Abington accomplished the immortal feat is an uncircumstantial, uncorroborated allegation by Dr. Williams thatsome person or another unknown(on the most favourable view)told him(Williams) that Mrs. Abington had writ the Lettermerely because her husband said so, then the case for Mrs. Abington’s authorship of the document isin no waytowards being established.
And, therefore, the story falls to the ground.
And, therefore, it should be, in reason, henceforward consigned to the limbo of exploded myths and idle tales.
It is true that Dr. Nash in his work on Worcestershire,[115]written in the eighteenth century and published in 1780, declares that “Tradition in this county says that she [i.e., Mrs. Abington] was the person who wrote the Letter to her brother, which discovered the Gunpowder Plot.”
But then, obviously, this alleged tradition is absolutely worthless, unless it can be shown to have been acontinuoustradition from the year 1605 down to the time when Nash was writing his “History.” For if the tradition sprang up at a later date, for the purposes of true history its value as a tradition is plainly nothing.
The learned David Jardine — to whom all students of the Gunpowder Plot will be for ever indebted for his labours in this conspiracy of conspiracies — in his “Narrative,” published in the year 1857, and to which reference has been already frequently made in the course of this Inquiry, says,[116]“No contemporary writer alludes to Mrs. Abington as the author of the Letter.”
And Jardine evidently does not think that the penmanship of the document can be brought home to this lady.
Moreover, if Mrs. Abington had written the Letter of Letters, surely she would have, at least,sharedher brother Lord Mounteagle’s reward, which was £700 a year for life, equal to nearly £7,000 a year in our money.
For if £700 a year was the guerdon ofhimthatmerely deliveredthis Letter of Letters, what should have been the guerdon ofherthat actuallypennedthe peerless treasure?
But the hypothesis that Mrs. Abington penned the Letter of Letters has absolutely no foundation in contemporary evidence. For there is not the faintest echo of an echo of testimony, nor the merest shadow of a shade of proof thateithersheorMr. Abington had the remotest previous knowledge of the Gunpowder Treason Plot.
And the mere fact that Mr. Abington, although the harbourer of Fathers Garnet and Oldcorne, was spared from undergoing the extreme penalty of the law, in itself tends to disprove the allegation that either he or his wife had been in any way privy to the Plot. For no plotter’s life was spared.
Mr. Abington became a celebrated antiquary, especially in regard to his own County of Worcestershire, within the confines of which he was ordered by the King to remain for the rest of his days. — See Jardine’s “Narrative,” p. 212.[A]
[A]The splendid Elizabethan mansion known as Hindlip Hall, four miles from Worcester, with a large and magnificent prospect of the surrounding country, was demolished early in the nineteenth century. A picture of this mansion is in the Rev. Ethelred Taunton’s book, “The Jesuits in England” (Methuen & Co.). The present Hindlip Hall is the seat of the Lord Hindlip.
[A]The splendid Elizabethan mansion known as Hindlip Hall, four miles from Worcester, with a large and magnificent prospect of the surrounding country, was demolished early in the nineteenth century. A picture of this mansion is in the Rev. Ethelred Taunton’s book, “The Jesuits in England” (Methuen & Co.). The present Hindlip Hall is the seat of the Lord Hindlip.
In these circumstances, Dr. Nash’s alleged tradition cannot possibly outweigh the inferences that the facts known and inferred concerning the Plot all tend to establish. For these inferences, both in respect of what happenedbefore and afterthe penning of the Letter, all go to show this: that the conjectures, surmises, and suggestions of this Essay are indeed probable to the degree of moral certitude.
And I respectfully submit these same conjectures, surmises, and suggestions cannot be upset, still less broken, by knowledge commensurate with zeal.
Jardine mentions the singular hypothesis that this famous Letter was penned by the Honourable Anne Vaux, at the dictation of the Honourable Mrs. Abington.
Now, the Honourable Anne Vaux was one of the daughters of the Lord Vaux of Harrowden, in Northamptonshire, at whose house Father Henry Garnet (the chief of the Jesuits in England) lived for many years, from 1586, when Garnet returned to England from Rome. Anne Vaux and her sister, the Honourable Eleanor Brookesby, were high-minded women who lived at White Webbs, Stoke Pogis,[A]Wandsworth, and other places of Jesuit resort, rendering, along with Edward Brookesby,[B]Esquire (the husband of Eleanor Brookesby), the members of the Jesuit Society in England signally devoted service.
[A]The mansion-house at Stoke Pogis, where the Dowager Lady Vaux lived for a time along with Miss Anne Vaux, had been built by Elizabeth’s favourite Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton. If this was the manor-house of Stoke Pogis, then Gray, the author of the immortal “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” sojourned at the place.
[A]The mansion-house at Stoke Pogis, where the Dowager Lady Vaux lived for a time along with Miss Anne Vaux, had been built by Elizabeth’s favourite Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton. If this was the manor-house of Stoke Pogis, then Gray, the author of the immortal “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” sojourned at the place.
[B]Edward Brookesby was of Arundel House, Shouldby, Leicestershire. Frances Brookesby (his sister, probably, and one of Queen Anne’s Maids of Honour), became a devoted friend of Mary Ward. — See “Life of Mary Ward,” vol. ii., p. 23.
[B]Edward Brookesby was of Arundel House, Shouldby, Leicestershire. Frances Brookesby (his sister, probably, and one of Queen Anne’s Maids of Honour), became a devoted friend of Mary Ward. — See “Life of Mary Ward,” vol. ii., p. 23.
This was especially so in the case of the Honourable Anne Vaux, who spent and was herself spent in behalf of labours wherein the English Jesuits busied themselves for, as they thought, the greater glory of God and the greater good of man.
Jardine, however, after comparing the Letter with many letters and papers at the then State Paper Office, which are undoubtedly in the Honourable Anne Vaux’s handwriting, says, “I am quite unable to discover the alleged identity of the handwriting.”[117]
Now, regard being had to the fact that “there is seldom smoke except there be, at least, some little fire, the question arises: Is it possible to account, on rational grounds, for any such statement of the worthy person still in being in 1680 as Dr. Williams credits him with?
(Nash’s evidence, in the absence of proof of acontinuoustradition, is not one whit more worthy of credence than Dr. Williams’ impalpability.)
It is possible.
For, it is well within the bounds of rational probability that what Mr. Abington said to some person or persons unknown (assuming that he ever said anything whatever) wasnotthat his wife“had writ the Letter,” but thathis wife “knew, or thought she knew, who had writ the Letter.”
The way in which to test the matter is this: Supposing, for the sake of argument, that my hypothesis be true, and that Father Oldcornedidactually pen that Letter which was the instrument, not only of the temporal salvation of Mrs. Abington’s brother, the Lord Mounteagle, but also of her father, the Lord Morley, together with many others of her kinsfolk, friends, and acquaintance, as well as of her lawful Sovereign and His Royal Consort,is it, or is it not, probable that Mrs. Abington would guess, in some way or another, the mighty secret?
It is probable.
For let it be remembered who and what Mrs. Abington was.
The Honourable Mary Parker, the daughter of Edward Parker Lord Morley and the Honourable Elizabeth Stanley, was the mother of William Abington, the well-known poet[118]of that name, who was born, in fact, on or about the 5th of November, 1605.
Therefore Mrs. Abington was the mother of a son who was a man of distinguished intellectual parts.
Moreover, seeing that usually it is from the mother that a son’s capabilities are derived rather than from the father, it is more, rather than less, likely that Mrs. Abington herself was a naturally clear-minded, acute, discerning woman, gifted with that marvellous faculty which constitutes cleverness in a woman — sympathetic, imaginative insight.
Now if this were so, Mrs. Abington’s native perspicacity would be surely potent enough to enable her to form a judgment, at once penetrating and accurate, in reference to such a thing as the penmanship of the great Letter — a document which had come home, as events had proved, with such peculiar closeness to her own “business and bosom.”[119]
In these circumstances, may the Lady of Hindlip not, in after days, when the tragic scenes of those fateful years 1605 and 1606 had become a sad, pathetic memory merely, have recalled to mind certain special aspects in the play of the countenance, in the tone of the voice, aye, in the general mien of Father Edward Oldcorne that she had noted shortly from and after the Michaelmas of that unhappy year 1605, forming evidence whence she might draw her own shrewd, wise conclusions?
May not this honourable woman — honourable by nature as well as by name — have recollected thatshehad then observed that the holy man sought more than hitherto had been his wont the retirement of his “secret chamber?” That, at that period, he seemed more than ever absorbed, nay hidden, in thought?
May she not have recalled that at that “last” Christmastide, too, he, who was by nature so severely yet sweetly just, and the humblest among men, had shown himself disposed to judge those wicked wrong-doers with a mildness and a leniency that assuredly, perforce, betokened — what? I answer, a consciousness of some high prerogative, some kingly right, abiding in him, whereby he waswarrantedin thus speaking.
Again; did he notthenmanifest a disposition, remarkable even inhim, to act in diametrical opposition to the ordinary way of men, which is so well expressed by the sarcastic, cynical, yet only too true saying, that “the world is ready enough to laugh with a man, but it leaves him to weep alone.” And this, when “a compassionate silence” (save in extraordinary circumstances) was the utmost that Justice and Charity alike would prompt even a Priest and a Jesuit (nay, even a Priest and a Jesuit of the type of Edward Oldcorne) to display towards the wretched, erring victims of that “ineluctabile fatum,” that resistless decree of the Universe — “The guilty suffer.”
Now, I submit, with sure confidence for an affirmative answer, to the judgment of my candid readers — of my candid readers that know something ofhumannature, its workings, its windings, and its ways — the question: Whether or not it is not merely possible, but probable, that Mrs. Abingtondivined that stupendous secret, through and by means of the subtle, yet all-potent,mental sympathy, which must have subsisted betwixt herself and the disciplined, exalted, stately soul, who, asa Priest — aye! as a very Prophet — this high-born lady, or at least her spouse, had “counted it all honour and all joy” to have harboured, as a beloved spiritual Father, “elect and precious,” for no less than sixteen years?[120]
Let us finally consider the Evidence and the deductions and suggestions therefrom which tend to prove thatsubsequentto the dictating of the Letter by the contrite, repentant Christopher Wright,and subsequentto the penning of the Document by the deserving, beneficent Edward Oldcorne, each of these two Englishmen, aye! these two Yorkshiremen,were conscious of having performedthe several functions that these pages have attributed unto them.
Let us take, then, the case of Christopher Wright first.
Now, the Evidence that tends to show that Christopher Wright was conscious of having been the revealing plotter and dictating conspirator[121]has been already mainly set forth, but let me recapitulate the same.
It is as follows: —
(1) That either Thomas Winter must have gone in search of Christopher Wright, or Christopher Wright must have gone in search of Thomas Winter, in order that it might be possible for Stowe to record on p. 880 of his “Chronicle” the following allegation of facts: —
“T. Winter, the next day after the delivery of the Letter, told Christopher Wright that he understood of an obscure letter delivered to the Lord Mounteagle, advising him not to appear at the Parliament House the first day, and that the Lord Mounteagle had nosooner read it, but instantly carried it to the Earle of Salisbury, which newes was presently made known unto the rest, who after divers conferences agreed to see further trial, but, howsoever, Percy resolved to stay the last houre.”[122]
(2) Poulson says, in his account of the Wrights, of Plowland (or Plewland) Hall, in his “History of Holderness,” vol. ii., p. 57, that Christopher Wright “was the first who ascertained that the plot was discovered.”
(3) Christopher Wright was possibly being harboured by Thomas Ward in or near Lord Mounteagle’s town-house in the Strand during a part of Monday night, the 4th of November, and during the early hours of Tuesday, the 5th.
Or, if Christopher Wright were not being so harboured, then it is almost certain he must have been taking such brief repose as he did take at the inn known by the name of “the Mayden heade in St. Gyles.”[A]For there is evidence to prove that this conspirator’s horse was being stabled at that hostelry in the afternoon of Monday, the 4th of November.
[A]The Strand is not far from the Church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. This well-known church has now two district churches, Christ Church, Endell Street, and Holy Trinity, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. (Communicated by Mr. J. A. Nicholson, Solicitor, York.) In 1891 the population of St. Giles’s Parish was 15,281.
[A]The Strand is not far from the Church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. This well-known church has now two district churches, Christ Church, Endell Street, and Holy Trinity, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. (Communicated by Mr. J. A. Nicholson, Solicitor, York.) In 1891 the population of St. Giles’s Parish was 15,281.
This we know from the testimony of William Grantham, servant to Joseph Hewett, deposed to on the 5th of November, 1605,[B]taken before Sir John Popham, the Lord Chief Justice of England.
[B]See Appendix.
[B]See Appendix.
Moreover, the Lord Chief Justice Popham[C]reportedto Lord Salisbury on the 5th of November as follows: “Christopher Wright, as I thyncke, lay this last night in St. Gyles.” — “Gunpowder Plot Book,” Part I., No. 10.
[C]Of the Leyborne-Pophams, of Littlecote, Co. Wilts.
[C]Of the Leyborne-Pophams, of Littlecote, Co. Wilts.
(4) Again; from the following passage in “Thomas Winter’s Confession” it is evident that Christopher Wright, at a very early hour in the morning of Tuesday, November 5th, must have beenin very close proximity to Mounteagle’s residence, in order to ascertain so accurately — either directly, through the evidence of his own senses, or indirectly, through the evidence of the senses of some other person (presumably of Thomas Ward) — whattheretook place a few hours after Fawkes’s midnight apprehension by Sir Thomas Knevet.
Thomas Winter says: —
“About five o’clock being Tuesday came the younger Wright to my chamber and told me that, a nobleman[A]called the Lord Mounteagle, saying, ‘Rise and come along to Essex House, for I am going to call up my Lord of Northumberland,’ saying withal ‘the matter is discovered.’
[A]It was Edward Somerset Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse, I believe, an ancestor, lineal or collateral, of the Duke of Beaufort. Worcester was a Catholic.
[A]It was Edward Somerset Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse, I believe, an ancestor, lineal or collateral, of the Duke of Beaufort. Worcester was a Catholic.
“‘Go back, Mr. Wright,’ quoth I, ‘and learn what you can at Essex Gate.’
“Shortly he returned and said, ‘Surely all is lost,[123]for Leyton is got on horseback at Essex door, and as he parted, he asked if their Lordships would have any more with him, and being answered “No,” he rode as fast up Fleet Street as he can ride.’
“‘Go you then,’ quoth I, ‘to Mr. Percy, for sure it is for him they seek, and bid him be gone: I will stay and see the uttermost.’”
(5) Furthermore; Lathbury, writing in the year 1839,[A]asserts that Christopher Wright’s advice was that each conspirator “should betake himself to flight in a different direction from any of his companions.”[124]