[25] — “The Venerable” Francis Ingleby’s portrait is still to be seen at Ripley Castle, an ideal English home, hard-by the winding Nidd.
[26] — For the facts of Francis Ingleby’s life, see Challoner’s “Missionary Priests,” edited by Thomas G. Law; and “Acts of the English Martyrs” (Burns & Oates), by the Rev. J. H. Pollen, S.J.
[27] — From Father Gerard’s “Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot,” p. 59.
[28] — See the admirably written life of Sir Everard Digby, under the title “The Life of a Conspirator,” by “One of his descendants” (Kegan Paul & Co., 1895). The learned descendant of Sir Everard Digby, however, evidently knows very much more concerning his gallant ancestor than he knows about Guy Fawkes, who (excepting that “accident of an accident” — fortune) was as honourable a character as the high-minded spouse of Mary Mulsho himself — honourable, of course, I mean after their kind. — Jardine’s “Narrative of Gunpowder Plot,” p. 67.
[29] — Sir William Catesby and Sir Thomas Tresham were excellent types of the English gentry of their day. Each was “a fine old English gentleman, one of the olden time.” They had both become “reconciled” Roman Catholics — along with so many of the nobility, gentry, and yeomanry in the Midlands — in 1580-81, through the famous missionary journey of the Jesuit, Robert Parsons, probably forming with Edmund Campion two of the most powerful extempore preachers that ever gave utterance to the English tongue.
We may readily picture to ourselves “the coming of age” of the son and heir of each of these gallant knights and stately dames. And we may easily conceive of the bright hopes that either of the gentlewomen (especially the two sisters), in their close-fitting caps, laced ruffs, and gowns falling in pleated folds, must have cherished in their maternal hearts for an honourable career for the child — the treasured child — of their bosom. Alas! through the evil will of man, for the pathetic vanity of human wishes.
[30] — Jardine, in his “Narrative,” p. 51, says that John Grant’s ancestors are described in several pedigrees as of Saltmarsh, in Worcestershire, and of Snitterfield, in Warwickshire; that Norbrook adjoined Snitterfield, though it is not now considered locally situate therein. Students of Shakespeare will be interested to learn that in the Parish of Snitterfield, near Grant’s ancestral home, the poet’s mother, Mary Arden — herself connected with the Throckmorton family — owned property. Moreover, through his mother, Shakespeare was distantly connected with several of the plotters. For Catesby and Tresham, as well as Lady Wigmore, of Lucton, Herefordshire, were all first cousins to Lady Mounteagle, who was a daughter of Sir Thomas Tresham. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton (the father of Francis Throckmorton, who was executed in
the reign of Elizabeth) having three daughters whom he married to Sir William Catesby, Sir Thomas Tresham, and Sir William Wigmore. — See Jardine’s “Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot,” p. 11; also Foley’s “Records of the Jesuits in England” (Burns & Oates), vol. iv., p. 290.
Probably Shakespeare knew Grant personally, and not only Grant, but Catesby, Percy, the Winters (Robert and Thomas Winter were likewise akin to the Throckmortons), and Tresham. That the bard of Avon knew Lord Mounteagle, the associate of his friend and patron the Earl of Southampton, is even still more probable.
How is it that Shakespeare never in his writings sought to make political capital (as the sinister phrase goes) out of the Gunpowder Plot? For several reasons: first, his heart (if not his head) was with the ancient faith he had learned in the old Warwickshire home; secondly, his large humanity prompted him to sympathise with all that were oppressed. I hold that in this studied silence, this dignified reserve of Shakespeare, we may discern additional proof of the nobleness of the man, supposing that he knew personally any of the plotters. He would not kick friends that were down, when those friends were even traitors. He could not approve their action — far from it. He might have condemned with justice, and with the world’s applause. But upon himself a self-denying ordinance he laid, tempting as it must have been to him to perform the contrary, especially when we recollect the course then followed by his brother-poet — Jonson. But Shakespeare would not “take sword in hand” with the pretence of restoring “equality” between these wrong-doers and their country. He deemed that the ends of justice — exact, strict Justice — were met in “the hangman’s bloody hands” — “Macbeth,” 1606 — and that sufficed for him.