Now, the Honourable Anne Vaux was one of the daughters of the Lord Vaux of Harrowden, in Northamptonshire, at whose house Father Henry Garnet (the chief of the Jesuits in England) lived for many years, from 1586, when Garnet returned to England from Rome. Anne Vaux and her sister, the Honourable Eleanor Brookesby, were high-minded women who lived at White Webbs, Stoke Pogis,[A] Wandsworth, and other places of Jesuit resort, rendering, along with Edward Brookesby,[B] Esquire (the husband of Eleanor Brookesby), the members of the Jesuit Society in England signally devoted service.
[A] The mansion-house at Stoke Pogis, where the Dowager Lady Vaux lived for a time along with Miss Anne Vaux, had been built by Elizabeth’s favourite Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton. If this was the manor-house of Stoke Pogis, then Gray, the author of the immortal “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” sojourned at the place.
[B] Edward Brookesby was of Arundel House, Shouldby, Leicestershire. Frances Brookesby (his sister, probably, and one of Queen Anne’s Maids of Honour), became a devoted friend of Mary Ward. — See “Life of Mary Ward,” vol. ii., p. 23.
This was especially so in the case of the Honourable Anne Vaux, who spent and was herself spent in behalf of labours wherein the English Jesuits busied themselves for, as they thought, the greater glory of God and the greater good of man.
Jardine, however, after comparing the Letter with many letters and papers at the then State Paper Office, which are undoubtedly in the Honourable Anne Vaux’s handwriting, says, “I am quite unable to discover the alleged identity of the handwriting.”[117]
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Now, regard being had to the fact that “there is seldom smoke except there be, at least, some little fire, the question arises: Is it possible to account, on rational grounds, for any such statement of the worthy person still in being in 1680 as Dr. Williams credits him with?
(Nash’s evidence, in the absence of proof of a continuous tradition, is not one whit more worthy of credence than Dr. Williams’ impalpability.)