[13] — See “Guy Fawkes,” by Rev. Thomas Lathbury, M.A. (J. W. Parker, 1839), p. 21. Lathbury does not give his authority for this interesting statement respecting this conspirator, Christopher Wright. It is presumed, however, that he had some ground for the statement; for it is antecedently improbable that his “imagination” should have provided so circumstantial an assertion. Then, whence did he derive it?
Query: — Does Greenway’s Narrative make any such statement? Apparently Jardine had a sight of the whole of this invaluable MS., and possibly Lathbury (who appears to have been a clergyman of the Established Church) may have seen it likewise through Canon Tierney, the Editor of “Dodd’s Church History.”
[14] — I am afraid that when the Acts of the High Commission Court that sat in the King’s Manor, in York, under the Presidency of Queen Elizabeth’s kinsman, the Earl of Huntingdon, come to be published, we shall find that “the lads and lassies” of Yorkshire and Lancashire especially were very “backward in coming forward” to greet the rising of the Elizabethan ecclesiastical aurora which it was their special privilege to behold.
Mr. Thomas Graves Law knows about these invaluable historical documents, and I hope that he will undertake their editorship. He is just the man for this grand piece of work. To the people of “New England,” as well as of “Old England,” these records of the York Court of High Commission are of extraordinary interest, because they relate to “Puritan Sectaries” as well as to “Popish Recusants,” Scrooby, so well known in the history of the Pilgrim Fathers, being in the Archdiocese of York.
[15] — So that bad as they were, they were not hoary-headed criminals, if we except Percy who seems to have been prematurely “grey.”
The name of Thomas Percy’s mother appears under “Beverley” as “Elizabeth Percye the widowe of Edward Percye deceased,” in Peacock’s “List of Roman Catholics of Yorkshire in 1604.”
The Percy Arms are in Welwick Church. (Communicated by Miss Burnham, of Plowland, Welwick.)
[16] — I have seen the statement in a letter of the Earl (who was one of the most scientific men of his age) which he wrote after the discovery of the Plot. The letter is in Collins’ “Peerage.” The Earl of Salisbury was Northumberland’s enemy, as Northumberland was looked up to by the popish recusants as a sort of natural leader, though the Earl, on his own
avowal, was no papist. Salisbury’s native perspicacity, however, told him that Northumberland, from every point of view, was alike to the Royal House of Stuart and to the noble house of Salisbury dangerous. For had the oppressed papists “thrown off” the yoke of James in course of time, Salisbury’s life would have been not worth the price of a farthing candle; and the philosophic, nonchalant Northumberland would have thought that the papists’ support was well “worth a Mass,” just as did King Harry of Navarre, the father of Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I., a few years previously. (An ancient portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria is in the possession of the York Merchant Adventurers, York.) Then again, Salisbury had a personal grudge against the proud Percy. For the latter evidently in his heart scorned and rejected Salisbury, not only as a novus homo — a new man — but as belonging to that band of statesmen who had controlled Elizabeth’s policy, and told her not what she ought to do, but what she could do; and whom the great Northern Earl would have been taught from his cradle to spurn at and despise, because they were nothing other than “a low bad lot,” who “were for themselves;” very different indeed from the Earls of Essex, Walter and Robert, and such men as Sir Henry Sidney and his still greater son, Sir Philip Sidney, the darling of the England of his day. Percy indeed once declared that if Percy blood and Cecil blood were both poured into a bowl, the former would refuse to mix with the latter. So, human nature being what it is, no wonder the shrewd and able Salisbury had no love for the “high and mighty” Northumberland, and that carpe diem — seize your opportunity — was Salisbury’s motto as soon as he got the chance. (I know of no stronger proof that, during the past 300 years, in spite of back-waters, the world has made true moral progress than the contrast presented by the present Prime Minister and the present First Lord of the Treasury and their ancestors of “Great Eliza’s golden time” and the days of James Stuart.)
[17] — Robert Catesby held his Chastleton estate in possession from his grandmother. He sold it to pay his ransom after the Essex rebellion. (Dr. Jessopp in Article on “Catesby,” “National Dictionary of Biography.”)