Sir Everard Digby, his uncle (Sir Robert Digby, of Coleshill), Stephen Littleton, Humphrey Littleton, and many others were awaiting their arrival at Dunchurch, in an inn.
The six fugitive conspirators, all bespattered with the mire of November high roads, with dejected looks and jaded aspect, arrived in due time to tell their tale.
Soon Sir Robert Digby departed with one of his sons, then Humphrey Littleton, and speedily many others of the hunting party.
It was determined by the ringleaders to make for Wales; for the Catholics of the Principality were then very strong,[A] and the Counties of Warwick, Worcester, and Stafford were to be traversed, from all of which valuable reinforcements were expected.
[A] It is a curious fact that in the reign of Elizabeth, Father Weston, S.J., specially spoke of Wales, along with the counties bordering on Scotland, as being firm in its attachment to the Church of Rome. It was the lack of a Welsh College in Rome which, causing the supply of priests to fail, gradually caused the interesting Cymric people to lose the Faith which they of all the inhabitants of the British Isles were the first to embrace.
It is to be remembered, however, that there has always been a remnant in a few of the valleys of Wales faithful to the See of Rome; and Dr. Owen Lewis, the Bishop of Cassano, a Welshman, aided Cardinal Allen to found Douay College, in 1568. Several of the Martyrs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, too, were Welsh.
At the English College at Rome the Welsh and the English students had violent and, to read of, amusing quarrels. Evidently the Welsh, students looked down upon their Anglo-Saxon compeers as belonging to a comparatively inferior race.
About ten o’clock on Tuesday night the full
company, now about thirty strong, set out for Norbrook,[A] the house of John Grant.
[A] At Warwick, en route for Norbrook, they took some horses out of a stable near the Castle, and left their own steeds in exchange therefor. They arrived at Warwick at about three o’clock on Wednesday morning.