It will be remembered that Thomas Percy, who married Martha Wright, Ursula Warde’s sister, was one of those who waited upon James VI. of Scotland before Elizabeth’s death, in order to obtain from him a promise of toleration for the unhappy Catholics. James, the English Catholics declared, did then promise toleration, and they considered that they had been tricked by the “weasel Scot.” Fonblanque, in his “_Annals of the House of Percy_,” vol. ii., p. 254 (Clay & Sons), thinks that Percy was a man of action rather than of words, and that the reason he entered into the Plot was that he was stung by the reproaches of the disappointed Catholics, whom he had given to understand James intended to tolerate, and that his vanity (or rather, I should say, self-love) was likewise wounded at the recollection of the proved fruitlessness of his mission or missions into Scotland. I think this is a very likely explanation. For, according to “Winter’s Confession”——see Gardiner’s “_Gunpowder Plot_” (Longmans), and Gerard’s three recent works (Osgood & Co. and Harper Bros.)——Thomas Percy seems to have shown a stupendous determination “to see the Plot through,” a fact which I have always been very much struck with. But if, in addition to other motives, Percy had the incentive of “injured pride,” we have an explanation of his extraordinarily ferocious anger and spirit of revenge. For well does the Latin poet of “the tale of Troy divine” insist with emphasis on the fact that it was “the _despised_ beauty”——“_spretæque_ injuria _formæ_”——of Juno, the goddess, that spurred her to such deathless hatred against the ill-starred house of Priam. What a knowledge of the springs of human action does not this portray!] [Footnote A: Were Sir Ralph and Sir Thomas Gray of the Grays (or Greys), of Chillingham, Northumberland? It may be remarked that, about the year 1597-98, Marmaduke Ward and his wife and some of his family went to live in Northumberland, maybe at Alnwick; and as Thomas Percy was connected with Marmaduke Ward, it is at least possible that Marmaduke Ward went himself into Scotland on the mission to King James VI. in the company of his brother-in-law, Thomas Percy. But the Wards may have gone to Chillingham about 1597-9, and not to Alnwick. Sir Thomas Gray, of Chillingham, married Lady Catherine Neville, one of the four daughters of Charles Neville sixth Earl of Westmoreland, whose wife was Lady Jane Howard, daughter of Henry Howard Earl of Surrey. Lady Margaret Neville was married to Sir Nicholas Pudsey, of Bolton-in-Bowland, Yorkshire, I think. Lady Anne Neville was married to David Ingleby, of Ripley, a cousin of Marmaduke Ward and of Ursula Wright. Lady Margaret Neville conformed to the Establishment, but afterwards, I believe, the lady relapsed to popery.——See the “_Hutton Correspondence_” (Surtees Soc.), and “_Sir Ralph Sadler’s Papers_,” Edited by Sir Walter Scott.]