After a halt of about two hours for refreshments and the procuring of more arms, the insurgents once more slipped their feet into the stirrups, and on they rode for Huddington, near Droitwich, where they arrived at two o’clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, the 6th. Sentinels were posted at the passage of every way at Huddington, possibly by the order of John Winter, half-brother to Robert and Thomas Winter. Here they were joined by Thomas Winter, who had come down from London with the latest news; also by the Jesuit, Father Tesimond, whom Catesby hailed with joy. They rested for a good few hours at Huddington; and, as we have seen already, at about three o’clock in the morning of Thursday all the gentlemen assisted at Father Nicholas Hart’s Mass, went to Confession, and received, at the Jesuit’s, hands, what most of them from their childhood had been taught to believe was “the Bread of Angels,” and “the Food of Immortality.”[B] [Footnote B: Certainly Man’s nature _needs_ these things; but the question is: Can it get them? “Aye, there’s the rub.”] Before daybreak of Thursday the fugitives were on the march north-westward again. For “there is no rest for the wicked.” The rebels made for Whewell Grange, the seat of the Lord Windsor, one of the numerous Worcestershire Catholic families. At Whewell Grange the traitors helped themselves to a large store of arms and armour. Then they sped on towards Holbeach House, near Stourbridge, in Staffordshire. Their number was then about sixty all told, although earlier in the march it had increased to about a hundred. In two days they had traversed about sixty miles, “over bad and broken roads, in rainy and inclement weather.” To the dire disappointment of Catesby, Sir Everard Digby, and the rest, John Talbot, of Grafton, drove Thomas Winter and Stephen Littleton from his door when they sought his aid for the rebellion.[A] [Footnote A: See Jardine’s “_Narrative_,” p. 112, to which I am indebted for this account; also Handy’s evidence, Jardine’s “_Criminal Trials_,” vol. ii., pp. 165, 166.] And Sir Everard was constrained to avow that of the wealthy Catholic gentry “not one man came to take our part though we had expected so many.”[B] [Footnote B: Jardine’s “_Narrative_,” p. 112. Holbeach House is no longer standing.] CHAPTER LIV. The High Sheriffs of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, with their _posse comitatus_, were in pursuit of the fugitives, who arrived at Holbeach House at ten of the clock on Thursday night. At Holbeach they prepared to make their last stand. And alack! never more were the brothers John and Christopher Wright destined to behold Lapworth, Twigmore, Ripon, Skelton, Newby, Mulwith, York, or Plowland,[A] nor any of those scenes around which must have clung so many endearing associations and sacred memories.[156] [Footnote A: For an account of recent visits to Mulwith and Plowland, see Supplementum IV. and Supplementum V.