Since writing the above note I find it stated in “The Religion of Shakespeare,” by Henry Sebastian Bowden (Burns & Oates, 1899) — chiefly from the writings of that great Elizabethan scholar, the late Richard Simpson — that “among the chief actors in the so-called Gunpowder Plot were Catesby; the two Bates; John Grant, of Norbrook, near Stratford; Thomas Winter, Grant’s brother-in-law; all Shakespeare’s friends and benefactors” (p. 103); so that my conjecture is, belike, warranted that the poet knew Catesby, Winter, and Grant. Moreover, from the same work, it appears that Shakespeare, through the Ardens and Throckmortons, was connected by family marriages, not only with Catesby, the Winters, and Tresham, but distantly with the Earl of Southampton himself, who was a relative of Lord Mounteagle. Hence it is still more probable that Shakespeare knew Mounteagle personally.
Again, Shakespeare probably was present as one of the King’s players in 1604 at Somerset House, on the occasion of the Constable of Castile’s visit. — See Sidney Lee’s “Life of Shakespeare” (Smith & Elder), p. 233. — If this were so, then it is well-nigh certain that the poet must have there beheld Mounteagle, who would be one of the Lords then present, most probably in attendance on the Queen Consort. The festivities in honour of the Spanish Ambassador Extraordinary wound up with a magnificent banquet at the Palace of Whitehall, when the Earl of Southampton “danced a correnta” with the Queen. This was August 19th, 1604. — Cf. Churton Collins’s “Ephemera Critica” (Constable) as to religion of Shakespeare.
[31] — The name is also spelt Tirwhitt. Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, Lady Ursula Babthorpe’s grandfather, had entertained Henry VIII. at the old Hall at Kettleby. A new Hall was built in the time of James I., but this was pulled down about 1691, I believe. The Tyrwhitts, of Kettleby, were allied to such as the Tailboys, Boroughes, Wymbishes, Monsons, Tournays, Thimbelbies, Thorolds, and other Lincolnshire houses. They were rigidly Roman Catholic. The marriage between Sir William Babthorpe and Ursula Tyrwhitt was one of those marriages “that are made in heaven.” The lovely pathos of the lives of this ideal Yorkshire family is indescribable; beginning with Sir William Babthorpe, who harboured Campion in 1581. It was continued through Sir Ralph Babthorpe, who married that “valiant woman” (the only daughter and heiress of William Birnand, the Recorder of York), Grace Birnand by name, of Brimham, Knaresbrough, and York. Lady Grace Babthorpe’s active and contemplative life was one long singing of Gloria in excelsis. Sir William Babthorpe and Lady Ursula his wife, like their noble parents, Sir Ralph Babthorpe and Lady Grace, “for conscience sake” became voluntary exiles “and with strangers made their home.” Sir William died a captain in the Spanish Army fighting against France. Lady Ursula, his wife, died of the plague at Bruges. They had many children, some of whom were remarkably gifted. Mary Anna Barbara Babthorpe, the grand-daughter of Sir William Babthorpe, and great-great-grand-daughter of the Sir William Babthorpe who harboured Campion, was the Mother-General of the Nuns of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin, one of whose oldest convents, St. Mary’s, is still situated near Micklegate Bar, York, on land given by Sir Thomas Gascoigne, Bart., of Barnbow Hall, near Aberford, in the time of James II. In Ireland the nuns of this order are styled the Loretto Nuns. The story of the Babthorpes is a veritable English “Un Récit d’une sœur.” — See “Life of Mary Ward.” — The Wards
— like the Inglebies, of Ripley; the Constables, of Everingham;[A] the Dawnays, of Sessay; and the Palmes, of Naburn — were related to this “family of saints.” — See also “The Babthorpes, of Babthorpe” (one of whose ancestors carried the sword before King Edward III. on entering Calais in 1347), in the late Rev. John Morris’s “Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers,” first series (Burns & Oates).
For “the Kayes,” of Woodsome, see Canon Hulbert’s “Annals of Almondbury” (Longmans).
“The Venerable” Richard Langley, of Owsthorpe and Grimthorpe, near Pocklington, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, who suffered at the York Tyburn on the 1st December, 1586, for harbouring priests, was great-grandson of one of the Kayes, of Woodsome. (Communicated by Mr. Oswald C. B. Brown, Solicitor, of York.)
[32] — “Greenway’s MS.,” quoted by Jardine, “Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot,” p. 151.
[33] — Hawarde, “Reportes of Star Chamber.”
See “The Fawkeses, of York,” by Robert Davies, sometime Town Clerk of York (Nichols, Westminster, 1850); and the “Life of Guy Fawkes,” by William Camidge (Burdekin, York). Davies was a learned York antiquary.
William Harrington, the elder, first cousin to Edward Fawkes (Guy’s father), and Thomas Grimstone, of Grimston, were both “bound over” by the Privy Council, on the 6th of December, 1581, to appear before the Lord President of the North and the Justices of Assize at the next Assizes at York, for harbouring Edmund Campion. — See “Acts of Privy Council, 1581” (Eyre & Spottiswoode), p. 282. — What was the upshot I do not know.