Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/300

270 Why, indeed, may we ask, in our perplexity, was Warde permitted to go unpunished? Why, too, was he not asked if he knew who it was that delivered the letter at his patron's house? Why was he never cross-examined as to his supposed intimacy with certain of the Jesuit priests? These are questions which seem to me to bear considerably upon the complicity of Lord Mounteagle in the plot, and his secret understanding with Lord Salisbury.

Thomas Warde was a Roman Catholic, a gentleman of good family, and no mere 'page' or 'domestic,' as he has been described by certain writers. He evidently was very well posted up in his patron's plans; for when Mounteagle suddenly resolved to have supper at his house at Hoxton, he specially took Warde with him, which there was no necessity to do. That Warde, before the receipt of the letter, was fully cognizant of Catesby's proceedings cannot be doubted, when we read of his conferences with Winter after the receipt of the letter. In all probability he must have known who wrote the letter, if he did not even write it himself. He was, as we have seen, talked of at the time as having been privy to the Plot, yet he was not arrested. Evidently, he must have known as much as Lord Mounteagle knew. One was just as much as the other responsible for staging the Hoxton comedy. The pair drew up, certainly with Tresham, and, as we shall see, probably with another party also, the contents of