Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/301

Rh the celebrated letter. Some very powerful motive latent in the background must have saved him from punishment over the matter of his giving warning to Winter, and that motive must have originated from the Government's fear of 'showing up' Lord Mounteagle. Master and man had played their game together, and to punish Thomas Warde would be to ruin Lord Mounteagle. But that Warde was ever implicated so deeply in the Plot as to have taken the binding oath of secrecy as one of the conspirators is unlikely in the extreme. His tongue would, in that event, have been tied, so far as his communicating with Mounteagle was concerned; and had he taken the oath, and broken it, as Tresham did, then he would have at once been suspected by Catesby and Winter, and would not up to the last have remained on friendly terms with the latter. He must be included among that little list of people who, though not enrolled among the working conspirators, were aware of what was going on a list which included such persons as Garnet, Greenway, Baynham, Mounteagle, and (perhaps) Oldcorne.

Warde, in giving warning to the conspirators, first of the letter's arrival at Hoxton, secondly, of its delivery to Lord Salisbury, and thirdly, of its inspection by the King, naturally calculated that the conspirators would take the 'tip' and seek safety in flight. He could never have conjectured