Note 58 — Chapter XIV

— I am of opinion that one of Father Oldcorne’s servants, Ralph Ashley by name, a Jesuit lay-brother, was the person that actually conveyed the Letter to the page who was in the street adjoining Lord Mounteagle’s Hoxton residence, on the evening of Saturday, the 26th of October, 1605. My reason for being of the opinion that Ralph Ashley conveyed the Letter will be seen hereafter, in due course of this Inquiry.

The page’s evidence went to show that the deliverer of the Letter was a tall man, or a reasonably tall man. There is nothing inconsistent in this account of the height of the Letter-carrier with what we know of the size of Ashley, which is negative knowledge merely. I mean we are not told anywhere that he was of short stature, as we are told in the case (1) of the Jesuit lay-brother, Brother Ralph Emerson, a native of the County of Durham, and the servant of Edmund Campion — see Simpson’s “Life of Campion” — whom the genial orator playfully called “his little man” — “homulus”; and in the case (2) of the Jesuit lay-brother, Brother Nicholas Owen, the servant of Garnet, who was affectionately termed “little John” by the Catholics in whose castles, manor-houses, and halls, up and down the country, he constructed most ingenious secret places for the hiding of priests.

Ralph Ashley had acted in some humble capacity at the English Catholic College of Valladolid, which had been founded in Spain from Rheims, through the generosity of noble-hearted Spanish Catholics, among whom was that majestic soul, Dona Luisa de Carvajal. — See her “Life,” by the late Lady Georgiana Fullerton (Burns & Oates). — See also “The Life of the Venerable John Roberts, O.S.B.,” by the Rev. Bede Camm, O.S.B. (Sands & Co.) — Father Roberts founded the Benedictine College at Douay, still in existence. Cardinal Allen’s secular priests’ College is now used as a French Barracks. Ushaw College, Durham, and St. Edmund’s College, Ware, are the lineal successors of Cardinal Allen’s College at Douay.

(By the way, when are the letters of the late Dr. Lingard likely to be published? Lingard, after Wiseman, was the greatest man Ushaw has produced, and his letters would be interesting reading; for Lingard must have known many of the most considerable personages of his day. Lingard died at Hornby, near Lancaster, not far from Hornby Castle, the seat of the once famous Lord Mounteagle.)

Brother Raphael (or Ralph) Ashley, was possibly akin to the Ashleys, of Goule Hall, in the Township of Cliffe, in the Parish of Hemingbrough, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, or to the Ashleys, of Todwick, near Sheffield, in the south-east of Yorkshire. He came to England along with Father Oswald Tesimond, in 1597. — See “Father Tesimond’s landing in England,” in Morris’s “Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers,” first series (Burns & Oates). — If Ashley were a Yorkshireman, one can easily understand his being the chosen companion of the two Yorkshire Jesuits, Oldcorne and Tesimond.

This Jesuit lay-brother was acquainted with London; and as, Qui facit per alium facit per se, it was pre-eminently likely that Oldcorne would employ his confidential servant to perform so weighty a mission as the one I have attributed unto him.

Again, since “he who acts through another acts through himself,” it is unnecessary for me to treat at large in the Text concerning my supposal respecting the part that Brother Ralph Ashley played in the great drama of the Gunpowder Plot. Ashley being identified with his master, Father Oldcorne, shares, in his degree, his master’s merits and praise.

Professor J. A. Froude thought that Ralph Waldo Emerson was of the same stock as Brother Ralph Emerson. It is quite possible. For after the Gunpowder Plot, I opine that the younger Catholics in many cases became Puritans, and in some cases, later on, Quakers.