It will be remembered that the Ardens, the relatives of Shakespeare’s mother, were allied to the Throckmortons, and therefore to Francis Throckmorton, the friend of Mary Queen of Scots. It is a remarkable coincidence that the great dramatist was, through both the Ardens and the Throckmortons, connected with those whose quartered remains he may have had in his mind’s eye (in addition to those of the Gunpowder conspirators) when in 1606, in “Macbeth,” he writ of “the hangman’s bloody hands.”

For an account of the Somerville-Arden and the Francis Throckmorton alleged conspiracies against the life of Queen Elizabeth, see Froude’s “History.” For an account of Shakespeare’s family, including the Ardens, see Mrs. C. C. Stope’s recent book (Elliot Stock, 1901).

[155] — In the “Life of Sir Everard Digby,” by “One of his descendants” (Kegan Paul), is to be found a vivid and historically accurate account of the proceedings of November the 5th and afterwards. The conspirators’ line of flight would be nearly parallel with the London and North Western Railway from Euston Station to Rugby.

[156] — The country crossed by these unhappy fugitives is undoubtedly the very “heart of England,” and in spring and summer is one of the gardens of England. As those then flying, on that gloomy November day, from the Avenger of blood, were probably almost all men of strong

family affections, and certainly all ardent lovers of their country, how often must the feelings have welled up in their heart, as from some intermittent crystalline spring, so beautifully expressed by the old Latin poet: —

“Linquenda tellus, et domus, et placens
Uxor: neque harum, quas colis, arborum
Te, praeter invisas cupressos,
Ulla brevem dominum sequetur.” — Horace.[A]

Alas! Like many another wrong-doer, before and since, they thought of this too late.

Well-nigh the final glimpse we get of Christopher Wright is from a letter the conspirator, Thomas Bates, wrote to a priest, which is given in Gerard’s “Narrative,” p. 210. Christopher Wright, we are told by Bates, on the morning of the day when the powder exploded at Holbeach House, “flung to Bates, out of a window, £100, and desired him, as he was a Catholic, to give unto his wife, and his brother’s wife, £80, and take £20 himself:” — Wright owing Bates some money.

[A]

“Land must be left, and home, and charming wife,
And of these trees which you cultivate,
None will follow you, their short-lived owner and lord,
Save the detested cypress.”