Note A — Chapter XIII
Reading edition
The site of Shakespeare’s new residence, which he built and called New Place, at Stratford-on-Avon, had belonged to the Clopton family.
Clopton Bridge and Clopton Hall (or House) are still well known to all visitors to the shrine of Shakespeare. It is to be remembered that Clopton Hall, the property of Lord Carew, whither Ambrose Rookwood repaired for temporary residence soon after Michaelmas, 1605, was by road twenty-three miles from Hindlip Hall, where Father Oldcorne resided.
Ambrose Rookwood and Christopher Wright were particular friends. Rookwood was a man of very tender conscience, which, however, unhappily failed him at the most crucial moment of his life, namely, when he consented to join in the Plot which proved his ruin. But indirectly he probably unknowingly strengthened Christopher Wright’s resolve to reverse the Plot, by revelation. The influence of “associating” (even if of not always “according”) “minds” one upon the other is very subtle but very powerful.