I need not labour this point; but in a note I will relate certain facts concerning her to whom Christopher Wright owed the gifts of life and nurture, which will sufficiently tell what manner of woman that Elizabethan Yorkshire mother was, in respect of courage, humanity, and devotedness to her ideals.[103] I furthermore opine that, although it was the personal dawning consciousness of Christopher Wright himself that _primarily_ prompted the happy step of recourse to Father Edward Oldcorne,[104] yet Christopher Wright, in my judgment, already had confided the just scruples of his conscience to the ear, not of a “superior” judicial Priest, but of an “equal” counselling Layman. That Layman, I hold, was Thomas Ward, who, belike, heightened and strengthened his connection’s laudable resolve.[105] Now, if such were the case, I do not doubt that Father Oldcorne, that skilled, tried “minister of a mind diseased,” the duties of whose vocation urged him, with persistent force, promiscuously “to work good unto all men,” voluntarily offered to pen the immortal Letter; _provided he were released from the obligations of that solemn secrecy imposed by “the seal of the Confessional”: released by the Penitent himself, in whom alone resided the prerogative of granting or withholding such a release_. CHAPTER XXXII. Again; I think that probably Thomas Ward had either at Hindlip, Evesham or elsewhere at least one interview with the great Jesuit himself——“the gradely Jesuit,” as the good, simple-hearted Lancashire Catholics would style him——in order that Father Oldcorne might receive from Ward in person satisfactory assurance that, with certainty, when the Letter had been prepared it would be delivered directly by Ward himself, or indirectly by him, through Mounteagle, to the Government authorities. Nay, to make assurance doubly sure, it is even possible that Father Oldcorne may have insisted on a _second Letter_ being penned and sent to _another nobleman at the Court_, the Earl of Northumberland, a man of ancient lineage and great name, with whom Ward, through the Gascoignes, would be distantly connected.[106] It appears to me that the moral certitude is so strong that Thomas Ward was brother to Marmaduke Ward, of Mulwith, Newby, and Givendale, that it seems practically almost the mere extravagance of caution to express a doubt of it.[A] [Footnote A: It will be remembered that we have evidence that William Ward, a son of Marmaduke Ward, _had an uncle who lived at Court_. This evidence is of the greatest value and importance in identifying Thomas Ward, the secretary and friend of Lord Mounteagle, and should be continually borne in mind by all my readers.