Note 66 — Chapter XVI

— M’rgery Slater most probably belonged to a Ripon family, as I find the same Christian name and surname among entries of the “Christenings” in the Ripon Minster Register, a few years after the year 1579. Possibly the child was a niece of “Mistress M’rgery Ward.” “Mistress Warde” may have been a relative of Mr. Cotterell, as I find in the St. Michael-le-Belfrey Register the entry of the burial (1583) of Anne —— who is described as “s’vaunt and cozine to Mr. Cotterell, being about twenty-six years of age.” Now, Mr. Cotterell was probably Mr. James Cotterell, of the Parish of (Old) St. Wilfred, York, a demolished church, whose site is to-day (1901) occupied by the official lodgings of the King’s Judges of Assize when on circuit. For the “subsidy” of 1581, a Mr. James Cotterell of that parish was assessed in “Lande” at £6 13s. 4d. (among the highest of the York assessments). There was a Mr. Cotterell “an Examiner” for the Council of the North in the time of Elizabeth, and I have no doubt that “Mistress Warde’s” late master was this very gentleman. Whether the young woman whom “Thomas Ward, of Mulwaith,” made his wife (evidently direct from the house of her master), on the 29th day of May, 1579, was the equal by birth and by descent of her husband, I do not know. Let us hope, however, that alike in gifts of personal attractiveness and graces of character she was not unworthy of one who came from so truly “gentle” a people as the Wardes, of Mulwith, Givendale, and Newby. If M’gery Slater did hail from Ripon, this “faithful following” of her to York, and from the house of her master, publicly making her, in the face of all the world, his “true and honourable wife, as dear to him as were the ruddy drops that visited his own heart,” bears early witness to an idealism of mind in this Yorkshire gentleman that was thoroughly in keeping with the chivalrous race whence he sprang. I cannot give any personal description of Thomas Warde; but I can of Marmaduke Warde, who was also of Mulwith, or Mulwaith, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and from this picture we may imagine that.