Note 96 — Chapter XXIX

— Ben Jonson was “reconciled” to the Church of Rome either in 1593 or 1594. After, and probably on account of, the Plot he left the Church, whose “exacting claims” he had “on trust” accepted. Possibly it was under the influence of Jonson’s example that Mounteagle wrote the letter to the King, given in the Rev. John Gerard’s “What was the Gunpowder Plot?” p. 256. Mounteagle, however, died in the Church of Rome, and the Article in the “National Dictionary of Biography” says that he had a daughter a nun. Belike, she was a member of the Institute of “The English Virgins,” for the name “Parker” is mentioned in Chambers’ “Life of Mary Ward.”[A] There has been recently (1900) published a smaller “Life of Mary Ward,” by M. Mary Salome (Burns & Oates), with a Preface by Bishop Hedley, O.S.B., which should be read by those not desirous of possessing the more costly work by Mary Catharine Elizabeth Chambers, in 2 vols. (Burns & Oates), with a Preface by the late Henry James Coleridge, S.J. (brother to the late Lord Coleridge). May I express the hope that these two learned authoresses will cause the Ward Papers, at Nymphenburg, near Munich, in Germany (that are extant), to be carefully examined afresh to see if they contain anything about Thomas Warde, Mary’s uncle, and anything further about her connection, through the Throckmortons and Nevilles, the Lord Mounteagle? By so doing, they will cause to be obliged to them all serious students of the Gunpowder Plot, which is of perennial interest and value to human beings, whether governors or governed, by reason of the intellectual, moral, and political lessons that with the truest eloquence — the eloquence of Fact — it teaches mankind for all time.