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 Ambassador 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
principal 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 Herefordshire, 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. Elzé 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 Elzé’s “_Life
of Shakespeare_” (Bell & Sons), p. 457. One really is disposed to distrust
many of the _conclusions_ of “German learning” when Elzé 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, certitude! (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 Lancashire, _apparently_ had at
least some of their children baptised at the parish church.——See Colonel
Fishwick’s “_Parish of Garstang_” (Chetham Soc.)]