Note 156 — Chapter LIV
Reading edition
— The country crossed by these unhappy fugitives is undoubtedly the very “heart of England,” and in spring and summer is one of the gardens of England. As those then flying, on that gloomy November day, from the Avenger of blood, were probably almost all men of strong family affections, and certainly all ardent lovers of their country, how often must the feelings have welled up in their heart, as from some intermittent crystalline spring, so beautifully expressed by the old Latin poet: —
“Linquenda tellus, et domus, et placens Uxor: neque harum, quas colis, arborum Te, praeter invisas cupressos, Ulla brevem dominum sequetur.” — Horace.[A]
Alas! Like many another wrong-doer, before and since, they thought of this too late.
Well-nigh the final glimpse we get of Christopher Wright is from a letter the conspirator, Thomas Bates, wrote to a priest, which is given in Gerard’s “Narrative,” p. 210. Christopher Wright, we are told by Bates, on the morning of the day when the powder exploded at Holbeach House, “flung to Bates, out of a window, £100, and desired him, as he was a Catholic, to give unto his wife, and his brother’s wife, £80, and take £20 himself:” — Wright owing Bates some money.