[62] — It is impossible to describe the emotions that welled up in the heart of the writer as he gazed on this small, faded, and fading document: emotions of awe and gratitude, blended with veneration and reverence, for the maker of this lever — this sheet-anchor — of the temporal salvation of so many human creatures, who had been barbarously appointed to die by those that had forgotten what spirit they were of.
The writer was favoured by the sight of the original Letter on Friday, the 5th day of October, 1900, at about half-past two o’clock in the afternoon. He desires to place on record his sense of obligation for the courteous civility with which he was treated by the authorities at the Record Office, London, on this occasion.
[63] — Oldcorne, being a Jesuit, would from time to time go to White Webbs, Morecrofts (near Uxbridge), Erith-on-the-Thames, Stoke Pogis, Thames Street (London), and other places of Jesuit resort where Mounteagle and Ward had the entrée. Again, he must have known well the Vaux family of Harrowden, and all the circle that Mounteagle and Ward would move in. Again, if Ward were married in York, in 1579, he may have met Oldcorne as a Catholic medical student of promise in the ancient city.
Along with a dear brother, a young Yorkshireman, in London, I visited White Webbs, by Enfield Chase, on Saturday, the 6th October, 1900. The old house known as Dr. Hewick’s House, where the conspirators met, is now no longer standing; but the spacious park, with its umbrageous oak trees, meandering streams, tangled thickets, and pleasant
paths, is almost unchanged, I should fancy, since it was the rendezvous of the Gunpowder traitors, concerning whom the utmost one can say is that they were not for themselves; and that Nemesis in this life justly punished them, and drove them to make meet expiation and atonement, before the face of all men, for their infamous offences. Thereby Destiny enabled the men to restore equality between the State they had so wronged, in act and in desire, and themselves; and a happy thing for the men, as well as for others, that Destiny did so enable them whilst there was yet time.
(In October, 1900, I was informed that the present mansion, known as White Webbs, belongs to the Lady Meúx.)
[64] — Known by Edmund Church, Esq., his confidant.
[65] — See “Life of Mary Ward,” vol. i., p. 1.
[66] — M’rgery Slater most probably belonged to a Ripon family, as I find the same Christian name and surname among entries of the “Christenings” in the Ripon Minster Register, a few years after the year 1579. Possibly the child was a niece of “Mistress M’rgery Ward.” “Mistress Warde” may have been a relative of Mr. Cotterell, as I find in the St. Michael-le-Belfrey Register the entry of the burial (1583) of Anne —— who is described as “s’vaunt and cozine to Mr. Cotterell, being about twenty-six years of age.” Now, Mr. Cotterell was probably Mr. James Cotterell, of the Parish of (Old) St. Wilfred, York, a demolished church, whose site is to-day (1901) occupied by the official lodgings of the King’s Judges of Assize when on circuit. For the “subsidy” of 1581, a Mr. James Cotterell of that parish was assessed in “Lande” at £6 13s. 4d. (among the highest of the York assessments). There was a Mr. Cotterell “an Examiner” for the Council of the North in the time of Elizabeth, and I have no doubt that “Mistress Warde’s” late master was this very gentleman. Whether the young woman whom “Thomas Ward, of Mulwaith,” made his wife (evidently direct from the house of her master), on the 29th day of May, 1579, was the equal by birth and by descent of her husband, I do not know. Let us hope, however, that alike in gifts of personal attractiveness and graces of character she was not unworthy of one who came from so truly “gentle” a people as the Wardes, of Mulwith, Givendale, and Newby. If M’gery Slater did hail from Ripon, this “faithful following” of her to York, and from the house of her master, publicly making her, in the face of all the world, his “true and honourable wife, as dear to him as were the ruddy drops that
visited his own heart,” bears early witness to an idealism of mind in this Yorkshire gentleman that was thoroughly in keeping with the chivalrous race whence he sprang. I cannot give any personal description of Thomas Warde; but I can of Marmaduke Warde, who was also of Mulwith, or Mulwaith, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and from this picture we may imagine that.