of his own senses, how firmly James’s Executive was certainly established, must have clearly perceived that, at that time Catholic stirs against the Government could be fated to have only one unhappy issue and disgraceful termination, namely, the utter, bloody, irretrievable ruin of all that were so thrice wretchedly bewitched as to have become entangled in them.[A]
[A] It is to be borne in mind that hereafter proof may be forthcoming that Christopher Wright married Margaret Ward, the sister of Marmaduke and Thomas Ward. I think that they had another sister named Ann Ward, who married a Marmaduke Swales. — (See Ripon Registers). There was an old county family called Swales at Staveley Hall, near Farnham and Scotton. They were Roman Catholics. They are the same, I opine, as the Swales (or Swale) family, of South Stainley, between Ripley and Ripon, whose descendants are of the ancient faith in Yorkshire to this day.
The late Sir James Swale, Bart., of Rudfarlington, near Knaresbrough, I conclude, likewise belonged to the same race. I was introduced in the year 1898 to this fine specimen of an old Yorkshire Catholic by my friend, Charles Allanson, Esq., of Harrogate — himself of an old West Riding family that “had never lost the Faith.”
And this the rather, when it is remembered that, the names of John and Christopher Wright were already unfavourably known to the Government; since during Elizabeth’s reign, in the year 1596, they, together with Catesby, Tresham, and others, had been put under arrest by the Crown authorities, who feared that on the death of Elizabeth these “young bloods” would, at what they deemed to be “the psychological moment” for the execution of their revolutionary designs, lead, sword in hand, the oppressed recusants in some wild, fierce dash for liberty.[109]
CHAPTER XXXIII.
We have now considered the Evidence leading up to the commission of the respective acts that this Inquiry, at an earlier part, has attributed severally to Christopher Wright and Father Oldcorne, who stand, as it were, at the angular points in the base of that triangular movement of revelation, at whose vertex is Thomas Ward (or Warde), the entirely trustworthy friend and diplomatic intermediary common to both the repentant conspirator and the beneficent Priest of the Society of Jesus.
But before proceeding with the Evidence and the deductions and suggestions therefrom, which tend to prove that, subsequent to the dictating of the Letter by Christopher Wright and the penning of the same by Father Oldcorne, these two Yorkshiremen were conscious of having performed the several parts attributed unto them, let us deal with certain objections that may be put forward as preliminary objections fatal to the contentions of this Inquiry.
Now, there is an objection which, with a primâ facie plausibleness, may be advanced against the hypothesis that Christopher Wright was the dictating, repentant, revealing conspirator, through whom primarily the Plot was frustrated and overthrown.