Note 154 — Chapter XLVII
Reading edition
— Father Garnet’s house in Thames Street, London, had been broken up, this place of Jesuit sojourning having become known to the Government. Consequently, Garnet, at the beginning of September, 1605, went down to Gothurst, in Buckinghamshire, the seat of Sir Everard and Lady Digby.
Christopher Wright, it will be remembered, quitted his lodging near Temple Bar, on October the 5th, and, I opine, then went down to Lapworth, or Clopton, near Stratford-on-Avon. Catesby was born at Lapworth.
It will be remembered that the Ardens, the relatives of Shakespeare’s mother, were allied to the Throckmortons, and therefore to Francis Throckmorton, the friend of Mary Queen of Scots. It is a remarkable coincidence that the great dramatist was, through both the Ardens and the Throckmortons, connected with those whose quartered remains he may have had in his mind’s eye (in addition to those of the Gunpowder conspirators) when in 1606, in “Macbeth,” he writ of “the hangman’s bloody hands.”
For an account of the Somerville-Arden and the Francis Throckmorton alleged conspiracies against the life of Queen Elizabeth, see Froude’s “History.” For an account of Shakespeare’s family, including the Ardens, see Mrs. C. C. Stope’s recent book (Elliot Stock, 1901).