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 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.