Note 102 — Chapter XXX

— Sir William Stanley, of Hooton (in that strip of Cheshire between the Mersey and the Dee), was not seen by Fawkes between Easter and the end of August, 1605, when Fawkes went over to Flanders for the last time in his career so adventurous and so pathetic. Sir William knew nothing of the Gunpowder Plot. It was said that he surrendered Deventer in pursuance of the counsel of Captain Roland Yorke, who to the Spaniards had himself surrendered Zutphen Sconce. These surrenders to the Spaniards on the part of two English gentlemen were strange pieces of business, and one would like the whole question to be thoroughly and severely searched into again. As to Roland Yorke, see Camden’s “Queen Elizabeth.”

Captain Roland Yorke, like his patron Sir William Stanley, was an able soldier. He held a position of command in the Battle of Zutphen, in which the Bayard of English chivalry, Sir Philip Sidney, received his death wound. — See the “Earl of Leicester’s Correspondence” (Camden Soc.). — Sidney’s widow (the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham) afterwards married Robert second Earl of Essex. She became a Roman Catholic, like her kinsman, the gifted and engaging Father Walsingham, S.J. Frances Walsingham, the only child of Sir Francis Walsingham, became a Catholic, I think, through her third marriage with Richard De Burgh fourth Earl of Clanricarde, afterwards Earl of St. Albans. He was also known as Richard of Kinsale and Lord Dunkellin. He was an intimate friend of the Earl of Essex and of Father Gerard, S.J., the friend of Mary Ward.

It would be interesting if Major Hume, or some other authority on the reign of Queen Elizabeth, could ascertain whether or not there was a Thomas Warde in the diplomatic service during the “Eighties” of her reign. Certainly there was a Thomas Warde in the service of the Government then. I am almost sure that the “Mr. Warde” mentioned by Walsingham, in his letter to the Earl of Leicester, must have been this Thomas Warde, and one and the same man with Thomas Warde, of Mulwaith (or Mulwith). It is to be remembered, too, that the Gunpowder conspirator, Thomas Winter, had served in the Queen’s forces against the Spanish King for a time. The names Rowland Yorke, Thomas Vavasour, Sir Thomas Heneage, and Thomas Winter are very suggestive of the circle in which a Warde, of Mulwith, Newby, and Givendale, would move. Besides, there was a family connection between the Parkers, Poyntzes, and Heneages. — See “Visitation of Essex, 1612” (Harleian Soc.), under “Poyntz.”

Moreover, it must be continually borne in mind that Father Tesimond (alias Greenway), in his hitherto unprinted MS., declares that Mounteagle was related to some of the plotters. “Greenway’s MS.,” according to Jardine’s “Narrative,” p. 92, also says that Thomas Ward was an intimate friend of several of the conspirators, and suspected to have been an accomplice in the treason. That would imply that Ward was suspected to have had at least a knowledge of the treason.