were my subjects, and we have our faculties also for Ireland, for the most part. I pray you procure them a general grant for their comfort.”
The letter and the post scriptum are alike unsigned. The letter and the post scriptum are still in existence, and, I believe, are preserved in London in the archives of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster.
I am indebted for my copy to the work entitled, “A True Account of the Gunpowder Plot,” by “Vindicator” (Dolman), 1851 — taken from Tierney’s Edition of “Dodd’s Church History.”
The Claude referred to in the post scriptum is Father Claude Aquaviva, the then General of the Jesuits, who lived in Rome.
(Irish Catholics will not fail to notice the interest this afflicted, much-tried Englishman took in their case on the 21st October, 1605.)
Father Gerard says in his “Narrative of the Plot,” p. 269: “Father Oldcorne his indictment was so framed that one might see they much desired to have withdrawn him within the compass of some participation in this late Treason; to which effect they first did seem to suppose it as likely that he should send letters up and down to prepare men’s minds for the insurrection.”
Again; respecting Ralph Ashley, the Jesuit lay-brother and servant of Father Oldcorne, Gerard says, on p. 271: “Ralph was also indicted and condemned upon supposition that he had carried letters to and fro about this conspiracy.”
Now, my deliberate conjectures are these: That Edward Oldcorne had indeed sent “Letters” which his servant Ralph Ashley had carried concerning “this conspiracy.” That one of those Letters was sent and carried to Henry
Garnet. And another to William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle.
On the 12th of March, 1605-6, Father Garnet, when a prisoner in the Tower of London, before the Lord Chief Justice Popham, Sir Edward Coke, Sir William Waade (Lieutenant of the Tower), and John Corbett, “confessed that Father Parsons wrote to him certain letters last summer [i.e., 1605] which he received about Michaelmas last, wherein he requested this examinat to advertise him what plotts the Catholiques of England had then in hand; whereunto for that this examinat was on his journey he made no answere.”