[B] A certain English periodical, a few years ago, spoke admiringly of Lord Mounteagle’s twentieth century connection, the present Duke of Devonshire, as being one’s beau-ideal of the “you-be-damned” type of Englishman. Probably the same periodical would have found, had it been in existence in the seventeenth century, a similar contentment in the contemplation of the fourth Lord Mounteagle.
By his contemporaries, it is evident that even prior to 1605 Mounteagle was made much of and greatly courted. But less, I opine, on account of the intellectual and moral qualities wherewith he was endowed, than on account of the exalted station of his kith and kin and the general excellency and eminency of his own external graces and gifts of fortune.
So much, then, for the present, concerning the now famous William Parker fourth Baron Mounteagle, whom History has crowned with a wreath of immortals.
CHAPTER IV.
On Saturday, the 26th of October, ten days before the intended meeting of Parliament,[A] Lord Mounteagle, we are told, unexpectedly and without any apparent reason or previous notice, directed a supper to be prepared at his mansion at Hoxton, where he had not been for more than a twelve-month before that date.
[A] Parliament had been prorogued from the 3rd of October to the 5th of November. Lord Mounteagle was one of the Commissioners.
The “Confession” by Thomas Winter, which I regard as genuine, I have also drawn upon freely in my relation of facts. — See Appendix.
It will be well, however, to relate the history of what occurred in the exact words provided for us in a work published by King James’s printer, and put forth as “the authorised version” of the facts that it recorded. The work bears the title — “A Discourse of the late intended Treason,” anno 1605. “The Discourse” says: — “The Lord Mounteagle, sonne and heire to the Lord Morley, being in his own lodging ready to go to supper at seven of the clock at night one of his footmen whom he had sent of an errand over the streete was met by an unknown man of a reasonable tall personage[6] who delivered him a Letter charging him to put it in my Lord his Master’s hands, which my Lord no sooner received but that having broken it up and perceiving the same to be of an unknown and somewhat unlegible hand, and without either date or subscription, did call