In a letter dated 19th November, 1605, of a certain Sir Edward Hoby to Sir Thomas Edmondes, the King’s Ambassador at Brussels, after giving an account of the discovery of the Plot, Hoby says:——“Such as are apt to interpret all things to the worst will not believe other but that Mounteagle might in a policy cause this letter to be sent, fearing the discovery already of the letter, the rather that one Thomas Ward, a principal man about him, is suspected to be accessory to the conspiracy.” Now there is evidence which creates a moral certainty that Christopher Wright and a certain Thomas Ward (or Warde, for the name was spelt either way at that time) were closely allied by virtue of at least one marriage (if not indeed more than one) subsisting between certain (virtually undoubted) relatives of theirs then living. Christopher Wright’s sister, Ursula, was (as has been already mentioned) the wife of one Marmaduke Ward (or Warde), of Mulwith, in the Parish of Ripon, in the County of York. A lady of high family named Winefrid Wigmore, the daughter of Sir William Wigmore, of Lucton, in the County of Herefordshire, says, in her “_Life of Mary Ward_,” the gifted daughter of Marmaduke Ward and Ursula, his wife: “Mary Ward was the eldest daughter of Mr. Marmaduke Ward, of Givendale, in the County of York. Mulwith and Newby were Manor-houses of his.”[65] Now in the Parish Register, which was published in the year 1899, belonging to the Church of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, in the City of York, is to be found the following remarkable entry: “_Weddinges 1579.——Thomas Warde of Mulwaith in the p’ishe of Rippon, and M’rgery Slater, S’vant to Mr. Cotterell, maried xxixth day of May._”[66] But for only eleven years (lacking nine days) were Thomas Warde and Margery his wife destined to be united in the bonds of wedlock. For the Register of Ripon Minster records “_the burial_,” under date “_May the 20th, 1590, of Marjory wife of Thomas Warde of Mulwaith_.”[67] They do not seem to have been blessed with offspring. At any rate there are no names of any children of these two spouses entered in the Register of Christenings still kept at Ripon Minster. Although, of course, there may have been such baptized at home[A] “secretly,” or even at some other church than at the chapel of the Skelton Chapelry, or than in Ripon Minster, the mother church of the great Parish of Ripon. [Footnote A: But see Supplementum III. _postea_, and the evidence there given; evidence which is also interesting as showing how, at any rate sometimes, “the oracle was worked,” with reference to that curious historical problem, the apparent baptism of the children of papists by the minister of the parish church. In Ireland, I have been told, at one time the authorities of the then establishment accepted the mere “allegation” that certain rites had been complied with by the popish clergy.