The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter Part 12

It appears to me that the moral cert.i.tude 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]

[Footnote 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 a.s.sa.s.sinate 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 a.s.sa.s.sinating 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]

[Footnote 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 observation of 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, b.l.o.o.d.y, irretrievable ruin of all that were so thrice wretchedly bewitched as to have become entangled in them.[A]

[Footnote 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. I _think_ that 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]

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

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, _subsequent_ to 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 certain _objections_ that may be put forward as preliminary objections fatal to the contentions of this Inquiry.

Now, there is an objection which, with a _prima facie_ plausibleness, 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 greater _prima facie_ plausibleness, 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 Caesar, Kt., Sir Francis Bacon, Kt.,[110] and Sir George More, Kt., High Sheriff of Surrey and Suss.e.x, 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 Wright _may_ have used these words in the early part of that November day, and every candid mind must allow that they are _not_ the 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 Martha Wright, 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

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 t.i.tus 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 about _that_, 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

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 been _a good way_ towards being established: a.s.suming 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, if _Mr. Abington_ had told _Williams_ that _he knew his wife had writ the Letter because he saw with his own eyes the lady do it_, then the case would have been _also a good way_ towards being established.

Or, if _Mr. Abington_ had told _Williams_ that _he 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 some _slight way_ towards 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 uncirc.u.mstantial, uncorroborated allegation by Dr. Williams that _some person or another unknown_ (on the most favourable view) _told him_ (Williams) that Mrs. Abington had writ the Letter _merely because her husband said so_, then the case for Mrs. Abington's authorship of the doc.u.ment is _in no way_ towards being established.