For I find that the great Sir Francis Walsingham, in a letter dated from “the Court,” the 24th of March,
1585 — six years after the marriage of Thomas Warde, of Mulwaith, to Marjory Slater, and five years before her lamented death — that the great Sir Francis Walsingham, in a letter to the Earl of Leicester, “Lord Lieutenant-General of Her Majesty’s Forces in the Low Countries,” speaks of a “Mr. Warde.”[A]
[A] See the “Leicester Correspondence” (Camden Soc.), p. 187.
Now we know for certain from Winwood’s Memorials[B] that a Mr. Walter Hawkesworth, of the Hawkesworths of Hawkesworth Hall, in the Parish of Otley, in the County of York, was in the diplomatic service of King James I., and that, according to Foster’s “Pedigrees of Yorkshire Families” he was poisoned at Madrid when on an embassy there.
[B] See also Sir Ralph Sadler’s Papers. Edited by Sir Walter Scott.
Hence, is it quite within the bounds of possibility that his remote kinsman, Thomas Warde, of Mulwith, may have been in the diplomatic service of Queen Elizabeth. The Hawkesworths and the Wardes had, in days long gone by, twice formed alliances by marriage, so that the families were distantly akin. Indeed it was from Sir Simon Warde, of Esholt, in the Parish of Otley, and of Givendale, in the Parish of Ripon, that the Hawkesworths of Hawkesworth had by marriage alliance gained the Hawkesworth Estate. — See Foster’s “Pedigrees of Yorkshire Families.”
But is there any evidence that links Thomas Ward (or Warde), of Mulwaith (or Mulwith), and the Ward (or Warde) family in general, of Givendale, Newby and Mulwith, with the Lord Mounteagle?[C]
[C] It will be seen as this narrative further unfolds itself that it is almost certain that Thomas Warde (or Ward) was in the service of the Government as a Catholic diplomat under Walsingham. And, moreover, it will appear probable that the servant Warde (or Ward) “had as much, off” as the master Walsingham.
And, first of all, is there any evidence to show that Marmaduke Ward ever had a brother in London, who lived at Court?
There is.