Note A — Chapter L
Reading edition
The present Lord Vaux of Harrowden, in the course of a most courteous reply to various historical questions the writer ventured to propound to him, says, in a letter dated 15th November, 1901, that his residence, Harrowden Hall, was erected in the year 1719. It will, therefore, not be the self-same mansion as that wherein Fathers Garnet, Gerard, Fisher, Roger Lee, etc., were wont to be harboured by his Lordship’s distinguished ancestors.
None of the grand old English Catholic families, those “honourable people,” if such were ever known to mortal, have a better right than the Lords Vaux of Harrowden, to take as their motto those fine words of Gerald Massey: —
“‘They wrought in Faith,’ and not ‘They wrought in Doubt,’ — Is the proud epitaph that we inscribe Above our glorious dead.”
The name “Vaux of Harrowden” is still to be found in the bead-roll of English Roman Catholic Peers. And, along with such historic names as Norfolk, Mowbray and Stourton, Petre, Arundell of Wardour, Stafford, Clifford of Chudleigh, and Herries, the name “Vaux of Harrowden” was appended to “the Roman Catholic Peers’ Protest,” dated from the House of Lords, 14th February, 1901, addressed to the Earl of Halsbury, Lord High Chancellor of England, anent “the Declaration against Popery,” that Our Most Gracious King Edward VII. was compelled, by Act of Parliament, to utter on the occasion of meeting His Majesty’s first Parliament.