A HISTORY OF RUTLAND by a gendeman of Whitwell, John Flower, and a farmer of Edith Weston, George Warde. The search was apparently vain ; but Flower and Warde had to appear before the Privy Council.*' In 1590 John Digby of Seaton was imprisoned in the Tower, in all probability as a recusant and harbourer of priests ; and he was only released upon bond of >r 1,000, undertaken by his brother. Sir Everard Digby of Stoke Dry« It was not until 1598 that the young Sir Everard Digby, now in possession of his father's estates, became an open and avowed recusant.** His marriage with a lady who had no recusant relatives, and his own love for the pleasures of court and country, had kept his thoughts from dwelling much on the religious controversies of the day. But Lord Vaux's house at Harrowden, where Father Gerard and other Jesuits had their head quarters, lay on the high road between the property of Sir Everard at Stoke Dry, and that of Lady Digby in Buckinghamshire : and it was here that both wife and husband first fell into ' St. Peter's net.' It is a romantic story, with a most tragic ending. Father Gerard was an ardent missionary, with a won- derful power of winning souls : and one great source of his success lay in the fact that at that time the ' religion established by law ' made so little appeal to the heart. Sir Everard and his wife were won separately, she in the country, and he finally in London ; and then Gerard wisely left them to find out in their own way that they were in possession of the same perilous secret. The events which followed a few years later are only too well known. Sir Everard joined in the Powder Plot under the personal influence of Catesby, ' for whose love and friendship,' as he said upon his trial, ' he would have adventured his life and fortune,' even had there been no other cause ; and apparently without the knowledge of Gerard, whom he exculpated in the most positive terms, saying, ' I never durst tell him of it, for fear he would draw me out of it.' He died steadily mantaining that he had indeed offended against the laws of the realm, but not against the laws of God ; inasmuch as the object of the plot had been the ending of persecution and the good of souls.*' The same strange obliquity of reasoning, the same persistency of self-justification, appear again a few years later in his gifted but eccentric son Sir Kenelm. That the national church was also capable of kindling devotion and generosity, even at this most unattractive period of her history, is seen from such bequests as that of Anne Lady Harrington in 161 6. She purchased
- ' Acts ofP.C. (New Ser.), 1581-2, pp. 259, 362, 387. The name of Janewife of John Flower appears
on the Recusant Roll of 1591. (P.R.O. Recusant Roll, 34. Eliz. no. I.) " Acts of P.C. (New Ser.), 1590, p. 333. He m.iy also be referred to ibid, xv, 362. He was described as an entertainer of priests, and examined in connexion with the Powder Plot in April 1606. Cal. S.P. Dom. 1603— 10, p. 313. The Recusant Roll referred to in the last note gives the name of James Digby of LidJington, probably a member of the same family. •* The statements of Father Gerard in his autobiography are somewhat contradictory. He says in his Narrative of the Plot that Sir Everard was ' always Catholicly affected, and heir unto the piety of his parents ... for they were ever the most noted and known Catholics in that country ; ' and yet in his story of the conversion, from which the above account is abstracted, he says : ' Not one of this family was a Catholic, nor even inclined to the Catholic faith.' It is, however, probable that in the latter passage he is referring to the family of Lady Digby, for he implies a few paragraphs later that Sir Everard was quite favourably disposed to Romanism : the main hindrance for him was his love of the pleasures of youth. He could not at this time have been more than twenty years of age ; for he was only twenty-six at his execution. For the whole story see Morris, Condition of Catholics, 88, 138, &c.
- ' Ibid. 216-7 ; ^^^ Gardiner, Hist, of Engl. 1603-16, i ; also Jardine, True His!, of the Gunpouder Plot.
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