[A] This was the celebrated Sir Fulk Greville, the friend and biographer of Sir Philip Sidney. Greville was afterwards created Lord Brooke. His tomb, with a famous inscription, is in the church of St. Mary, Warwick.
Now, from the “Life of Mary Ward,” vol. i., p. 91, it is evident, first, that Marmaduke Warde got into no trouble of any kind, notwithstanding that for a fortnight he had been actually dwelling under the roof-tree of one of the principal conspirators, and when apprehended was even in the act of taking a horse from Lapworth to Huddington, the mansion of Robert Winter, one Gunpowder traitor and armed rebel, who was also the brother of another Gunpowder traitor and armed rebel — the latter, indeed, being among the very chiefest of the traitors and rebels.
It is evident, secondly, that on reaching London town the Master of Newbie, in the County of York, lodged in Baldwin’s Gardens, Holborn, apparently as a matter of course.
Moreover, the marvel of the whole thing is enhanced by the fact, first, that Marmaduke Ward’s name is bracketed along with Richard Yorke (a follower of Robert Winter) and Robert Key (doubtless Robert Keyes), the Gunpowder traitor, who was arrested in Warwickshire by himself and not in the company of the others (it is supposed he had been to Turvey, in Bedfordshire, to see his wife and children at Lord Mordaunt’s, and was making his way towards Holbeach); and by the fact,
secondly, that the said Marmaduke Ward, Richard Yorke, and Robert Key are specially described as “suspected persons usually resorting to Mr. Winter, Mr. Grant, and Mr. Rookwood’s.”[A]
[A] See add. MS. 5874, fo. 322, British Museum. See also Appendix for the list of suspected persons usually resorting to Mr. Winter’s, Mr. Grant’s, and Mr. Rookwood’s.
Mr. Winter’s house would be Huddington, in Worcestershire; Mr. Grant’s, Norbrook, in Warwickshire; Mr. Rookwood’s would be Clopton Hall (or House), Stratford-on-Avon. Mabie’s “Life of Shakespeare” (Macmillan, 1901), p. 393, contains a picture of the dining-hall at Clopton.
Now the inferences that I draw from these two truly astounding circumstances are these following: — That Marmaduke Warde must have had literally “a friend at Court,” or his lodging when he reached the great Metropolis, as a matter of course, would have been not — emphatically not — Baldwin’s Gardens, Holborn, but, of a surety, the Tower of London.
That this “friend” must have been very closely allied to him in some way or another.
And that this “friend” must have been a very powerful friend indeed, especially when one remembers the punishment that was inflicted after the Plot had become a mere bubble-burst by the Court of Star Chamber upon Marmaduke Warde’s own connection (through the Gascoignes), Henry Earl of Northumberland,[82] and upon the Lords Montague, Mordaunt, and Stourton, the latter of whom had married a daughter of good Sir Thomas Tresham; and the prosecution of Marmaduke Warde’s other connection, Sir John Yorke, of Gowthwaite Hall, in Nidderdale, as late as the year 1612, on a charge of complicity in the Plot.[83]