Now the inferences that I draw from these two truly astounding circumstances are these following:——That Marmaduke Warde must have had literally “a friend at Court,” or his lodging when he reached the great Metropolis, as a matter of course, would have been not——emphatically _not_——Baldwin’s Gardens, Holborn, but, of a surety, the Tower of London. That this “friend” must have been very closely allied to him in some way or another. And that this “friend” must have been a very powerful friend indeed, especially when one remembers the punishment that was inflicted after the Plot had become a mere bubble-burst by the Court of Star Chamber upon Marmaduke Warde’s own connection (through the Gascoignes), Henry Earl of Northumberland,[82] and upon the Lords Montague, Mordaunt, and Stourton, the latter of whom had married a daughter of good Sir Thomas Tresham; and the prosecution of Marmaduke Warde’s other connection, Sir John Yorke, of Gowthwaite Hall, in Nidderdale, as late as the year 1612, on a charge of complicity in the Plot.[83] Now, from all these three inferences, surely the further inference is inevitable, that the probabilities are so high as to amount to moral certitude, that Thomas Warde and Marmaduke Warde were each allied, in blood, to William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle. And “probability” that amounts to moral certitude is, as every-day experience, as well as philosophy, tells us, “the very guide of life.” Therefore the historical Inquirer henceforward is warranted in reason in pursuing his inquiries into this matter on the following assumption, at the very least, namely, that Christopher Wright, Marmaduke Warde, Thomas Warde, and Lord Mounteagle had common family ties subsisting between them in the year 1605. And, consequently, upon such an assumption the Inquirer may justifiably build his hypothesis respecting the revelation of the Gunpowder Treason Plot.[84] CHAPTER XXI. But, it may be asked, is there any Evidence, however remote, to show how it is possible that Mounteagle may have been brought into personal contact with his morally certain kinsman, Thomas Warde (or Ward)? There is. For it is to be remembered that although Mounteagle seems to have spent most of his time in London and Essex, his grandmother, Elizabeth Lady Morley, the wife of Henry Parker Lord Morley, was, as we have seen, of the then well-nigh princely house of the Stanleys Earls of Derby, she being, in fact, a daughter of Edward Stanley Earl of Derby, as was Margaret Lady Poyntz, the wife of Sir Nicholas Poyntz,[A] of Iron Acton, in the County of Gloucester, the father of Edward Poyntz, Esquire, the relative of the Wardes of Yorkshire.