Now, of course, if Mrs. Habington (or Abington), of Hindlip Hall, near Worcester, where Father Oldcorne was domesticated for sixteen years, actually wrote the Letter, then Father Oldcorne did not. There can be no two opinions about that, even with the most sceptical.
But did she?
I submit that this testimony of Dr. Williams, second,[114] third, or fourth hand possibly, is hopelessly inadequate for the establishing of any such conclusion.
First, let it be noted that, although “the worthy person” to whom Mr. Abington is said to have imparted this tremendous secret — and apparently to none other human creature in the wide world beside — was living in the year 1680 (or thereabouts), his thrice-important name is not divulged by the learned author, neither is the faintest hint given as to where he may have resided.
Accordingly, we cannot submit the now dead but once highly privileged gentleman to the salutary ordeal of cross-examination: a fact which is well-nigh fatal to his credibility for any serious student of true history; with the further consequence that a grave suspicion is, by this very fact alone, at once cast upon the entire story.
Secondly, Dr. Williams does not say that he (Williams) himself had this testimony direct from the unnamed and unidentified witness — “the worthy person still in being” in (or about) the year 1680.
Therefore, this story may have been handed on by wagging, irresponsible, chattering tongues, whose name is legion. With the result that it gained, not lost, in the course of transmission to the mind of Dr. Williams, who has enshrined in the printed page, still to be viewed in the British Museum, the far-fetched tale for the benefit of succeeding ages.