By a remarkable coincidence, on the 16th day of October, 1900, there were presented to Pope Leo XIII., at Rome, on the occasion of the English Pilgrimage, the Rev. Philip Fletcher, M.A., and Lister Drummond, Esq., barrister-at-law, representatives respectively of the families of both Fletcher and Lister.
[45] — That Thomas Percy (of the Percies, of Beverley, not of Scotton, I feel certain), the eldest of the conspirators, must have been a Roman Catholic as a young man is plain from the fact that Marmaduke Ward, brother-in-law to John Wright and Christopher Wright, had a designment “to match” his gifted and beautiful eldest daughter, Mary, with Thomas Percy who, however, singularly enough married Martha Wright, Mary Ward’s aunt. — See “Life of Mary Ward,” by Mary Catherine Elizabeth Chambers (Burns & Oates, 1882), vol. i., pp. 12 and 13. — Percy, being agent for his kinsman, the Earl of Northumberland, would frequently reside at the Percy palace at Topcliffe, which was only distant twelve miles or so of pleasant riding across a breezy, charming country to Mulwith and Newby. Sampson Ingleby, uncle to the Winters, succeeded Thomas Percy as the Earl’s agent in Yorkshire. Sampson Ingleby was a
very trusty man. A photograph of a painting of him is in Hailstone’s “Yorkshire Worthies,” taken from a painting at Ripley Castle.
Edmund Neville Earl of Westmoreland, de jure, was afterwards one of the many unsuccessful suitors for the hand of Mary Ward. — See her “Life,” vol. i. — The Government would have liked to implicate Neville in the Gunpowder Plot, but utterly failed to do so. He eventually became a Priest of the Society of Jesus. He petitioned James to restore to him the Neville estates, but without avail; so that historic Middleham and Kirbymoorside (in Yorkshire), and Raby and Brancepeth (in Durham), finally passed from the once proud house of Neville, one of whom was the well-known Warwick, the King-maker, owing to the chivalrous, ill-fated Rising of 1569. This Rising first broke out at Topcliffe, between Ripon and Thirsk, where the Earl of Northumberland was then sojourning at his palace, the site of which is pointed out to this day. Topcliffe is situated on the waters of the River Swale, which (like the East Riding river, the Derwent) is sacred to St. Paulinus, the disciple of St. Augustine, the disciple of St. Gregory the Great, the most unselfish, disinterested friend the English and Yorkshire people ever had.
The first Pilgrimage of Grace, under Robert Aske, of Aughton, broke out on the banks of the Derwent. Hence, each of “the holy rivers” of Yorkshire inspired a crusade — a thing worth memory.
Mr. Thomas P. Cooper, of York (author of “York: the History of its Walls and Castles”), kindly refers me to “Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII., 1537,” p. 87, for evidence tending to prove that Robert Aske was executed “on the height of the castle dungeon,” where the High Sheriff of Yorkshire had jurisdiction, and not the Sheriffs of the City of York.
This would be Clifford’s Tower, not The Pavement, where Aske is sometimes said to have met his fate. I think Mr. Cooper has, most probably, settled the point by his discovery of this important letter of “the old Duke of Norfolk” to Thomas Cromwell.
[46] — Father Gerard’s “Narrative of Gunpowder Plot” in “Conditions of Catholics under James I.” Edited by Father Morris, S.J. (Longmans, 1872).
[47] — The “very imperfect proof” to which I refer is contained in a certain marriage entry in the Registers at Ripon Minster. The date is “10th July, 1588” (the year and month of the Spanish Armada), and seems to me to be as follows: “Xpofer Wayde et Margaret Wayrde.” Now, “Margaret” was a family name of the Wardes, of Givendale, Newby, and Mulwith, and
the clergyman making the entry may have written “Wayde” instead of Wright. We cannot tell. Therefore, alone, it is a mere scintilla of evidence to show that Christopher Wright married a Warde, of Mulwith.