The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter Part 6

The remark of Mrs. Rookwood to which I have referred is given in Gerard's "_Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot_," p. 219. Thomas Winter, Rookwood, Keyes, and Fawkes were drawn on their hurdles from the Tower to the Yard of the old Palace of Westminster over against the Parliament House.

"As they were drawn upon the Strand, Mr. Rookwood had provided that he should be admonished when he came over against the lodging where his wife lay: and being come unto the place, he opened his eyes (which before he kept shut to attend better to his prayers), and seeing her stand in a window to see him pa.s.s by, he raised himself as well as he could up from the hurdle, and said aloud unto her: 'Pray for me, pray for me,' She answered him also aloud: 'I will; and be of good courage and offer thyself wholly to G.o.d. I for my part do as freely restore thee to G.o.d as he gave thee to me,'"

This was Friday, the 31st day of January, 1605-6.

On the previous day in St. Paul's Churchyard had been likewise hanged, cut down alive, drawn, and quartered, Sir Everard Digby, Robert Winter, John Grant, and Thomas Bates.

Catesby, John Wright, and Christopher Wright had been slain at Holbeach on the 8th of November previously.

Thomas Percy died of wounds there received the next day.

Father Tesimond had proceeded to Huddington, doubtless mainly in the hope, let us trust, of stirring up in the hearts of these desperate creatures sorrow--that great natural sacrament--for their awful crimes that, not in vain, had cried to Heaven for vengeance! For truly the guilty suffer and the blood-guilty man shall not live out half his days.

CHAPTER XV.

Now there is a sentence in the Letter whose wording is peculiar, but which, I submit, is pre-eminently a wording likely to be used by two natives of Yorks.h.i.+re.

I mean the sentence, "I would aduyse yowe as yowe _tender_ your lyf to deuys some excuse to _s.h.i.+ft off_ youer attendance at this parleament,"

meaning thereby, "I would advise you as you _have a care_ for your life to devise some excuse to _put off_[60] your attendance at this parliament."

Once more, a comparison of the Letter sent to Lord Mounteagle with a Declaration not only signed by Father Oldcorne but entirely in his handwriting, dated the 12th of March, 1605-6,[61] reveals this remarkable fact that there is, first, a general similarity between the penmans.h.i.+p of both doc.u.ments; and, secondly, there is a particular similarity in the case of the following letters:--the small c/s, l/s, i/s, b/s, w/s, r/s, long s/s (as initials), and short s/s (as terminals); also the m/s and n/s are not inconsistent with being written by one and the same hand. The handwriting in the Letter is, for the most part, not in round hand, but in roman character. The letters do not all lean at the same angle to the horizontal. Evidently the writer had endeavoured "painfully" to disguise his handwriting, but conscientious carefulness and a disciplined will emphatically characterise both doc.u.ments.[62] See Appendix.

Now Thomas Ward, the gentleman-servant of Lord Mounteagle, was, I maintain, the intermediary--the diplomatic intermediary--through whom Christopher Wright (_ex hypothesi_) acted in communication with Mounteagle. And this, with the express knowledge and consent of Father Edward Oldcorne, who was, almost certainly, well acquainted with Thomas Ward.[63]

In short, the revelation was a curvilinear triangular movement.

CHAPTER XVI.

Mounteagle, we are told, knew there was a Letter to be sent to him before it came.[64]

Lingard says the conspirators suspected that Tresham had sent the Letter, and that there was a "secret understanding between him and Lord Mounteagle,[A] _or at least the gentleman who was employed to read the Letter at the table_." (The italics are mine.)

[Footnote A: It is to be recollected that the conspirators themselves suspected that there was a secret understanding, at least between the gentleman-servant of Mounteagle and Tresham, whom they thought was the revealing conspirator.--See Greenway's MS., quoted by Lingard.]

In a letter dated 19th November, 1605, of a certain Sir Edward Hoby to Sir Thomas Edmondes, the King's Amba.s.sador at Brussels, after giving an account of the discovery of the Plot, Hoby says:--"Such as are apt to interpret all things to the worst will not believe other but that Mounteagle might in a policy cause this letter to be sent, fearing the discovery already of the letter, the rather that one Thomas Ward, a princ.i.p.al man about him, is suspected to be accessory to the conspiracy."

Now there is evidence which creates a moral certainty that Christopher Wright and a certain Thomas Ward (or Warde, for the name was spelt either way at that time) were closely allied by virtue of at least one marriage (if not indeed more than one) subsisting between certain (virtually undoubted) relatives of theirs then living.

Christopher Wright's sister, Ursula, was (as has been already mentioned) the wife of one Marmaduke Ward (or Warde), of Mulwith, in the Parish of Ripon, in the County of York.

A lady of high family named Winefrid Wigmore, the daughter of Sir William Wigmore, of Lucton, in the County of Herefords.h.i.+re, says, in her "_Life of Mary Ward_," the gifted daughter of Marmaduke Ward and Ursula, his wife: "Mary Ward was the eldest daughter of Mr. Marmaduke Ward, of Givendale, in the County of York. Mulwith and Newby were Manor-houses of his."[65]

Now in the Parish Register, which was published in the year 1899, belonging to the Church of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, in the City of York, is to be found the following remarkable entry: "_Weddinges 1579.--Thomas Warde of Mulwaith in the p'ishe of Rippon, and M'rgery Slater, S'vant to Mr. Cotterell, maried xxixth day of May._"[66]

But for only eleven years (lacking nine days) were Thomas Warde and Margery his wife destined to be united in the bonds of wedlock. For the Register of Ripon Minster records "_the burial_," under date "_May the 20th, 1590, of Marjory wife of Thomas Warde of Mulwaith_."[67]

They do not seem to have been blessed with offspring. At any rate there are no names of any children of these two spouses entered in the Register of Christenings still kept at Ripon Minster. Although, of course, there may have been such baptized at home[A] "secretly," or even at some other church than at the chapel of the Skelton Chapelry, or than in Ripon Minster, the mother church of the great Parish of Ripon.

[Footnote A: But see Supplementum III. _postea_, and the evidence there given; evidence which is also interesting as showing how, at any rate sometimes, "the oracle was worked," with reference to that curious historical problem, the apparent baptism of the children of papists by the minister of the parish church. In Ireland, I have been told, at one time the authorities of the then establishment accepted the mere "allegation"

that certain rites had been complied with by the popish clergy.

Dr. Elze is grossly wrong in arguing that _because_ Shakespeare's name is found in the Register of Christenings in the parish church of Stratford-on-Avon, _therefore_ Shakespeare's father was a Protestant. Such a conclusion founded on such proof is simply ludicrous.--See Elze's "_Life of Shakespeare_" (Bell & Sons), p. 457. One really is disposed to distrust many of the _conclusions_ of "German learning" when Elze argues like this.

To my mind, much of "the critical" work (so called in a certain department) may be hereafter found to be full of flaws from building on too _narrow a foundation_ of evidence. How little man can know of the Past which affords him evidence to hang even a dog on with absolute, as distinct from moral, cert.i.tude! (I wish especially not to be thought to imply any disrespect towards the great German people, whose love for him who is for all nations and all time fills me with the profoundest admiration. But Truth is no respecter of persons when it detects errors, or the probabilities of errors, on the part of such as should be "masters of those that know.")

For even the Rigmaydens, of Woodacre Hall, Garstang (harbourers of Campion in 1581), in the most Catholic part of Lancas.h.i.+re, _apparently_ had at least some of their children baptised at the parish church.--See Colonel Fishwick's "_Parish of Garstang_" (Chetham Soc.)]

CHAPTER XVII.

Now we know that Marmaduke Warde was of Mulwaith (or Mulwith) in the year 1585. For the "_Life_" of his daughter Mary expressly states that she was born at Mulwith in that year. And if _a_ Thomas Warde was of Mulwaith (or Mulwith) only six years prior to 1585, and again of Mulwith in 1590, when he lost his wife, the inevitable inference is that the said Marmaduke Warde and the said Thomas Warde belonged to one and the same family, and that, in all probability, they were akin to each other as brothers.[68]

Again, the Register of Ripon Minster records on the 6th day of October, 1589, the baptism of Edward,[A] the son of a certain Christopher Wright, of Bondgate, Ripon.

[Footnote A: If this Edward Wright is the same as a certain Prebendary Edward Wright, of Ripon Minster, who received his nomination from King James I. on the 26th of March, 1613, then at least one cousin of Mary Ward must have conformed to the Established Church.--See "_Memorials of Ripon_," in 3 vols. (Surtees Society.)

He would be about 23 years of age when the royal favour was thus vouchsafed to him.

An Edward Wright was Mayor of Ripon in the year 1635.--Gent's "_Ripon_."--Probably the son of Prebendary Edward Wright.

Another cousin of Mary Warde, I find, had likewise conformed--a Dr. Warde, the Master of Sidney Suss.e.x College, Cambridge. He belonged, I think, to the Wardes, of Durham, descended from a brother of Sir Christopher Ward.]

On the 23rd day of July, 1594, of Eliza, daughter of Christopher Wright, of Newbie.[69]

The baptism on the 12th day of July, 1596, of Francis, son of Christopher Wright, of Newbie.

And furthermore, on the 3rd day of February, 1601, the baptism of Marmaduke, the son of Christopher Wright, of Skelton.

Now, when we recollect that _a_ Marmaduke Warde was certainly brother-in-law to _a_ Christopher Wright; and when we recollect that we have proof that _a_ Thomas Warde and _a_ Marmaduke Warde were, respectively, of Mulwaith (or Mulwith) in the Parish of Ripon, and that _a_ Christopher Wright was of Bondgate, Newbie, and Skelton, all likewise in the Parish of Ripon; and when we further recollect that these three gentlemen were of these several places in the closing decades of the years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, only one conclusion is forced upon the mind of even the most sceptical, namely, that the said three gentlemen must have known, and been known to, one another personally, without the shadow of any reasonable doubt.

And again; that between those years, 1589 and 1590 inclusive, the said _Thomas Warde_ and the said _Christopher Wright_ had known each other intimately, by meeting within the bounds of the Parish of Ripon,--nay even within the chapelry of Skelton--is surely one of the likeliest things in the world.

Furthermore, it is possible that the Thomas Warde, of Mulwaith (or Mulwith), was in the diplomatic service of Queen Elizabeth in the Netherlands, along with Queen Elizabeth's well-known diplomatist and Treasurer of the Chamber, Sir Thomas Heneage, the step-father of Lord Southampton, Lord Mounteagle's friend, as well as Shakespeare's patron.

For I find that the great Sir Francis Walsingham, in a letter dated from "the Court," the 24th of March, 1585--six years _after_ the marriage of Thomas Warde, of Mulwaith, to Marjory Slater, and five years _before_ her lamented death--that the great Sir Francis Walsingham, in a letter to the Earl of Leicester, "Lord Lieutenant-General of Her Majesty's Forces in the Low Countries," speaks of _a_ "Mr. Warde."[A]

[Footnote A: See the "_Leicester Correspondence_" (Camden Soc.), p. 187.]

Now we know for certain from Winwood's Memorials[B] that a Mr. Walter Hawkesworth, of the Hawkesworths of Hawkesworth Hall, in the Parish of Otley, in the County of York, was in the diplomatic service of King James I., and that, according to Foster's "_Pedigrees of Yorks.h.i.+re Families_" he was poisoned at Madrid when on an emba.s.sy there.