[120] Somers Tracts, Vol. ii. p. 108, footnote.
[121] Gunpowder Plot, pp. 176-8.
CHAPTER VI.
In the summer of the year 1605, Sir Everard Digby spent a week in London, and stayed at the lodgings in the Savoy of his friend Roger Manners,[122] the eldest brother of Sir Oliver Manners, whose conversion to the Catholic faith has been already noticed. This Roger Manners married the daughter and heir of the famous Sir Philip Sydney, and eventually succeeded his father, as fifth Earl of Rutland. Although Sir Everard stayed with Roger Manners, he “commonlie dieted at the Mearmaid in Bred Streete.”[123] He spent much of his time with the excellent Sir Oliver Manners, which was all very well; but, unfortunately, Robert Catesby also “kept him companie”a great deal; without, however, letting him know what was chiefly occupying him in London just at that time. Thomas Winter also came to see Sir Everard whilst he was in London, and his friendship with men who were conspiring to an evil end was endangering Digby without his knowing it. At that time he had no idea that any plot was in existence, although he was doubtless aware that many Catholics were considering what steps could be taken to relieve their condition; and the fact of his staying with Roger Manners proves that he had not come to London with any design of conferring with restless Catholics in a secret or underhand fashion.
After his visit to London, Sir Everard seems to have returned to Gothurst and to have continued his usual innocent country life, with its duties and pleasures. A letter among the Hatfield MS., written to him on the eleventh of June—his eldest boy’s birthday by the way[124]—treats of otter-hunting, and it is likely enough that Sir Everard practised this sport in the Ouse as well as in the other rivers and brooks of Buckinghamshire.
About the end of August, or perhaps early in September, 1605, a large party met at Gothurst, as guests of Sir Everard and Lady Digby, but with an ulterior purpose. To pray for the much-oppressed cause of the Catholic religion in England, for their suffering fellow-religionists, and for themselves, they had agreed to make a pilgrimage together to the famous shrine of St Winefride at Holywell, in Flintshire,[125] which would entail a journey of a hundred and fifty miles.[126] Sir Everard does not appear to have accompanied it; but, among those assembled at Gothurst who were to go on the pilgrimage were his young wife, Miss Anne Vaux, Brooksby and his wife, Thomas Digby, Sir Everard’s brother, who had evidently followed his example and become a Catholic, Sir Francis Lacon and his daughter, Father Garnet, the Provincial of the Jesuits, a lay-brother named Nicholas Owen, who usually accompanied him, and Father Strange, Sir Everard’s chaplain, making, with their servants and others, a party of pilgrims numbering little short of thirty. Later on, Father Darcy and Father Fisher also joined them.[127]
If, as it seems, Sir Everard did not go with the pilgrimage, the reason may have been that he was engaged in endeavouring to negotiate the proposed marriage between young Lord Vaux and a daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, although it seemed early to do so, as the boy was then only about fourteen.
“Riding westward,[128] the party of pilgrims would stop for the night at some Catholic friend’s house, and in the morning the two priests would say Mass. Even at Shrewsbury, when they had to put up at an inn, and at ‘a castle in a holt at Denbighshire,’ the daily Masses were said without interruption, and even the servants were present. At St Winefride’s Well, too, though the inn must have been small for so large a number, the Holy Sacrifice was again offered, and then the ladies went barefoot to the Well.[129] At Holywell they stopped but one night. Returning next day, they slept at a farmhouse seven miles from Shrewsbury, and after that they were again in the circle of their friends.”[130]