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: 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, 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 uncircumstantial, 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
document is _in no way_ towards 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 a _continuous_ tradition 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, _shared_ her 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 of _him_ that _merely delivered_ this
Letter of Letters, what should have been the guerdon of _her_ that
actually _penned_ the 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 that _either_ she _or_ Mr. 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]
[Footnote 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
happened _before and after_ the 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.
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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]