[A] The days of the week and the dates of the month run parallel for the years 1605 and 1901. Thus both the 26ths of October are on a Saturday. What was the condition of the moon on that memorable Saturday night?
That Lord Mounteagle had imparted to Thomas Ward almost all, if not quite all, that had passed between Lord Salisbury and himself on the delivery to the latter of the peerless document to my mind is clear from the fact that the faithful Ward, the very next day (Sunday) repaired to Thomas Winter, one of the principal conspirators, and told Winter that the Letter was in the hands of Salisbury! — “Winter’s Confession.”
Assuming that Thomas Ward was a Ward of Mulwith, he would be a family connection of Thomas Winter as well as of Christopher Wright through Ursula Ward and Inglebies, of Ripley, in Nidderdale.
Now, what is proved by this very significant fact of Thomas Ward’s so unerringly darting off to Thomas Winter, one of the prime movers in this conspiracy of wholesale slaughter, when he (Ward) had all the adult male inhabitants of London and Westminster to make his selection from?
Plainly this: that the revealing conspirator (whoever he was) must have “primed” Thomas Ward by previously telling Thomas Ward that Thomas Winter was one of the chiefest of those involved in the conspiracy.
Again; as Winter had been formerly in Mounteagle’s service (a circumstance doubtless well known to the revealing conspirator), that revealing conspirator would naturally, nay inevitably, bid Ward put himself not only into speedy communication with Mounteagle, in order to reach Salisbury, the principal servant of the King, but, this done, also into speedy communication with Thomas Winter, one of the chief promoters of the baleful enterprise, in order that by dint of Winter’s powerful influence the general body of the latter’s co-conspirators might be warned, and not merely warned, but haply prevailed upon to take to their heels in instant flight.
Thus the great end aimed at by the curvilinear triangular movement — wherein (ex hypothesi) the Penman, Father Oldcorne, as well as the go-between, Thomas Ward, and the revealing Christopher Wright, was a party and responsible actor — would be, with clear-eyed, sure-footed, absolute certitude, secured and accomplished — nothing being left to the perilous contingencies of purblind, stumbling, limited chance.