The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter, Being a Proof, with Moral Certitude, of the Authorship of the Document: Together with Some Account of the Whole Thirteen Gunpowder Conspirators, Including Guy FawkesSpink, Henry
History
The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter, Being a Proof, with Moral Certitude, of the Authorship of the Document: Together with Some Account of the Whole Thirteen Gunpowder Conspirators, Including Guy Fawkes
Spink, Henry
Gunpowder Plot, 1605; Monteagle, William Parker, Baron, 1574 or 1575-1622
[Footnote 4:——The Earl of Arundel and Lord William Howard were
half-brothers. (Lord William Howard was “the Belted Will Howard,” renowned
in Border story as the scourge of the lawless moss-trooper. For a
description of this remarkable man see Sir Walter Scott’s “Lay of the Last
Minstrel.”) The half-brothers were both the sons of that unfortunate
nobleman, Thomas fourth Duke of Norfolk, who in 1572 was beheaded for
aspiring to the hand of Mary Queen of Scots. Lord Arundel died in the
Tower of London in 1595, “a Martyr-in-will for the Ancient Faith.” Though
their father was a strong Protestant (being a pupil of John Fox, the
author of Fox’s “_Book of Martyrs_”) both his sons, Philip and William,
became strong Roman Catholics, as did his daughter, Margaret Lady
Sackville. Philip Howard Earl of Arundel, losing his father when only
fifteen years old, was, at an early age, drawn within the vortex of the
gaieties of the Court of his kinswoman Queen Elizabeth. However, in the
year 1581, while still a mere courtier and votary of pleasure, it happened
he was present, we are told, at “the disputation in the Tower of London in
1581, concerning divers points of religion betwixt Fr. Edmond Campion of
the Society of Jesus and some other Priests of the one part; Charke, Fulk,
Whitaker, and some other Protestant Ministers of the other.” We are
further told by his biographer, an unknown Jesuit writer of the
seventeenth century, “By that he saw and heard there, he easily perceived
on which side the Truth and true Religion was, tho’ at that time, nor
untill a year or two after, he neither did nor intended to embrace and
follow it: and after he did intend it a good while passed before he did
execute it. For, as himself signify’d in a letter which he afterwards writ
in the time of his imprisonment in the Tower to Fr. Southwell, he resolved
to become Catholic long before he could resolve to live as a Catholic, and
thereupon he defer’d the former until he had an intent and resolute
purpose to perform the latter. The which (being aided by a special grace
of God) he made walking one day alone in the Gallery of his Castle at
Arundel, where after a long and great conflict within himself, lifting up
his eies and hands to Heaven, he firmly resolved to become a member of
God’s Church, and to frame his life accordingly.”
Sir Robert Howard, in the reign of Henry VI., married the Lady Margaret
Mowbray, daughter of Thomas De Mowbray Duke of Norfolk, and
grand-daughter, maternally, of Richard Fitzalan Earl of Arundel (“_Law
Times_,” 9th November, 1901). The motto of the Howards Dukes of Norfolk
is, “_Virtus sola invicta_”——“Virtue alone unconquered.” The motto of the
Howards Earls of Carlisle is, “_Volo sed non valeo_”——“I am willing, but I
am not able.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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