Note A — Part II.

“The Life of Archbishop Usher” by Barnard (1656), however, does not bear out the statement of the Author of the Article on “Usher” in the “National Dictionary of Biography.” For Barnard says that the Jesuit who debated at Drayton, in Northamptonshire, with Archbishop Usher, was called “Beaumond,” but that his real name was Rookwood, and that he was a brother of Ambrose Rookwood, the Gunpowder plotter. The debate was arranged by Lord Mordaunt (afterwards the Earl of Peterborough), to the end that his wife, the Lady Mordaunt, a daughter of the Earl of Nottingham, might become convinced of the soundness of the exacting claims of the Church of Rome. The upshot was that not only was the Lady Mordaunt not convinced, but that the Lord Mordaunt himself became a Protestant! The topics for discussion were: — Transubstantiation, Invocation of Saints, Images, and the Visibility of the Church. According to Barnard, Beaumond at the third day of meeting sent to excuse himself, saying, “That all the arguments he had framed within his own head, and thought he had them as perfect as his ‘Pater noster,’ he had forgotten and could not recover them again; that he believed it was the just judgment of God upon him thus to desert him in the defence of His cause for the undertaking of himself to dispute with a man of that eminency and learning without the licence of his superior.”

If it were a Rookwood, probably it was Robert (S.J.)