(By the way, when are the letters of the late Dr. Lingard likely to be published? Lingard, after Wiseman, was the greatest man Ushaw has produced, and his letters would be interesting reading; for Lingard must have known many of the most considerable personages of his day. Lingard died at Hornby, near Lancaster, not far from Hornby Castle, the seat of the once famous Lord Mounteagle.)
Brother Raphael (or Ralph) Ashley, was possibly akin to the Ashleys, of Goule Hall, in the Township of Cliffe, in the Parish of Hemingbrough, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, or to the Ashleys, of Todwick, near Sheffield, in the south-east of Yorkshire. He came to England along with Father Oswald Tesimond, in 1597. — See “Father Tesimond’s landing in England,” in Morris’s “Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers,” first series (Burns & Oates). — If Ashley were a Yorkshireman, one can easily understand his being the chosen companion of the two Yorkshire Jesuits, Oldcorne and Tesimond.
This Jesuit lay-brother was acquainted with London; and as, Qui facit per alium facit per se, it was pre-eminently likely that Oldcorne would employ his confidential servant to perform so weighty a mission as the one I have attributed unto him.
Again, since “he who acts through another acts through himself,” it is unnecessary for me to treat at large in the Text concerning my supposal respecting the part that Brother Ralph Ashley played in the great drama of the Gunpowder Plot. Ashley being identified with his master, Father Oldcorne, shares, in his degree, his master’s merits and praise.
Professor J. A. Froude thought that Ralph Waldo Emerson was of the same stock as Brother Ralph Emerson. It is quite possible. For after the Gunpowder Plot, I opine that the younger Catholics in many cases became Puritans, and in some cases, later on, Quakers.
[59] — Notwithstanding the endless chain of the causation of human acts and human events, man’s strongest and clearest knowledge tells him that he is “master of his fate,” nay, that “he is fated to be free,” inasmuch as at any moment man can open the flood-gates that are betwixt him and an Infinite Ocean of Pure Unconditioned Freedom:
can open those flood-gates, and in that Ocean can lave at will, and so render himself a truly emancipated creature.
The antinomies of Thought and Life do not destroy nor make void the Facts of Thought and Life. Antinomies surround man on every side, and one of the great ends of life is to know the same, and to act regardful of that knowledge.
[60] — The copy in the “Authorised Discourse” gives “shift off,” not “shift of” as in the original. Doubtless “shift off” was the expression intended. It is still occasionally used in the country districts about York. The word “tender,” in the sense of “take care of” or “have a care of,” is to-day quite common in that neighbourhood (1901).
[61] — “Gunpowder Plot Books,” vol. ii., p. 202.