Morning journal and courier., 1891-10-03
MIR. wAKEMAN,s JoURNEYINGs.
A Visit to Ashby St. Ledgers-An Am cient manor-The Former Home of Sir Robert Catesby-Where the tsGuy Hawkes. Gunpowder Plots, Was Coneocted.

l sGuy Hawkes. Gunpowder Plot'' | Was Connected.
 NV. L. Fraser in the October St. Nicholasl he'd tu kun.
 AsHBY ST. LEDGERs, England, Sept. 21. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER: One feels quite A prideful thrill of origi-
 nal discovery if he can hit an object or place in all Europe where the great Amer | ican globe trotter has not already come;
 took nasty glance; photographed every
 body and everything with snap camera or upon his majestic memory; clipped of | piece of the object or shrine for his col | lection; made half dozen notes with a
 stylographic pen for future reference; cut
 his name and the date of his visit upon any available woodwork about the spot, or
 otherwise left his mark; and then with
 "biffl" and "zip!" projected himself me
 teorically through space to the next pleas | ing or hideous object of interest.
 have found one spot in Great Britain where there is at least no local record of the species. The fact is noteworthy one
 and the place itself possesses extrsordina-
 " interest. It is called Ashby St. Ledg- CTS. To be very definite regarding local | ity so distinctive for its So far quite un- known beauties and interest, it is but | tiny "village four miles north from Da- | ventry, sixteen from Northampton, in the
 middivision of the county of Northamp-
 ton, hundred of Fawsley, petty sessional | division, union and county court district
 of Daventry, rural deanery of Daventry,
 archdeaconry of Northampton and dio-
 cese of Peterborough"
 The taxgatherers of the crown have thus
 minutely located the village and parish
 and to make it perfectly accessible to
 those who "do" Ireland, Scotland and
 England in one week or less it should be
 added that Ashby St. Ledgers is but if | teen minutes walk westward from W ilton
 station, on the main line of the London
 and Northwestern railway from London
 to the noted school town of Rugby, and
 that the most noted conspiracy in English
 history, popularly known as "Guy
 Hawkes. Gunpowder Plot" was concocted | within the sunny, slumberous precincts of l its now crumbling and ivy covered walls. To the casual student of history the | chief incidents of the plot may properly
 be recalled. Stripped of their usual bigo-
 ted verbiage, 1t was plan originated by | Sir Robert Catesby, lord of this very man | or, and other malcontents, including | Thomas Percy, Christopher and John Wright, Thomas and Robert Winter, one I Bates, and their braver tool, Guido (or | Guy) Faux Cor Fawkes), representing the enemies of James 1, then recently elevated
 to the throne under the union of the Eng | fish and Scottish crowns, and shortly | thereafter proclaimed king of Great Brit | ain-to remove an obnoxious government l in the concrete, king, lords and commons,
 at single explosion of gunpowder, in-
 stead of by great and protracted waste of gunpowder through prolonged cruel civil war, in which an entire nation is of ten all but destroyed.
 This was probably the conspirators' con siderate and pleasant view of the matter. l They rented fine cellar immediately un- der parliament house and succeeded in concealing within it thirty barrels and four hogsheads of gunpowder, ''covered with | billets and faggots of wood, great iron
 bars, stones," etc., besides young and am
 bilious MT. Hawkes., wrapped in a cloak
 and booted and spurred," and provided | with ia dark lanthorn and a finder boxe | with which to set off the touch-wood, |" | which, communicating with the thirty
 barrels and four hogsheads of gunpowder, l at the instant of the kings converting par | liament, November 5, 1905, was expected
 to give immediate rleief to the political | situation.
 However, by means of an anonymous
 letter to Lord Monteagle, whom some one
 of the conspirstors desired to save, the
 plot was discovered, young MT. Hawkes., | whom the pictures represent as having for | some time neglected his hair and beard,
 was dragged out of his mysterious sur | roundings, spread upon a convenient rack,
 including confession, and shortly after
 hung; while Percy, Catesby, Winter and
 the two Wrights were chased from this
 place through Warwickshire to Holbesch,
 in Staffordshire, where they were all slain, fighting to the death, except Winter. He
 was captured alive, to die on the gallows;
 and sufficient number of others, directly
 or supposititiously connected with this
 mad effort to proclaim the young Princess
 Elizabeth queen in place of James, to ap-
 pease the most fastidious and exacting re-
 ligio political feeling of the time, and
 cause succeeding generations to
 | The Fifth of November
 l Gunpowder, Treason and Plot
 were put to death in the Old Palace yard
 at Westminster and at St. Pauls.
 The manor of St. Ledgers, the former
 home of the arch conspirator, Sir Robert
 Catesby, is one of the most ancient in
 Britain It possesses an eventful history.
 I am indebted for it's romantic narrative
 to my host, Major H. P. Senhouse, its
 present proprietor and lord of the manor.
 Aside from its peculiar interest, in view
 of St. Ledger's individual historic associa-
 tions, it is most curions and fascinating as
 illustrative of the extraordinary recorded, | not traditional, age of innumerabie Eng
 fish estates, their frequent strange vicissi- .tudes, and the almost purely historic vol
 tunes which might be written upon nearly any single piece of entailed manorial property in England.
 The manor was granted by William the
 Conquerer to Hugh de Grentmaisnil over 1! eight hundred years ago, At the time 'Domesday Book" the first tax book of
 England, was prepared Q0S0-6), this Hugh
 de Grentmaisnil held four "hides" of land In Ashby. There were eight acres of meadow, and the whole was. then valued at sixty shillings. This hugh sccompa- nied the conquerer on his expedition to England and was rewarded for his ser : vices with upward of one hundred manors
 in different counties, twenty of which lay , in Northamptonshire. He was associated , with Odo, bishop of Bayeaux, and Will, I : flee of justiciary of England two years af , ter the conquest, and died in 1094, si, days after he had assumed a religious
 habit.
 He was succeeded by his son Robert from whom the estate descended in 1122 tt , Two de Grentmaisnil, his oldest surviving l brother and heir. This Two joined the r concederacy in support of Robert, duke o :! Normandy, in the reign of Henry I, bu the enterprise failing, and being heayil. fined for his delinquency, he applied fol
 protection to Robert, earl of Mellent, on, , of the kings chief counselors, at who's
 suggestion he undertook pilgrimage tt g Jerusalem. For this purpose the ear : loaned him five hundred marks, or abou ,, three hundred and thirty three pounds, fo t which he mortgaged to him all his posses 2 sions in England, by way of security, fo 1. fifteen years, on conditions that it shoult
 be restored to his son Two, whom the ear
 engaged on oath should be married to hi 6 own niece, the daughter of the Earl o :; Warwick. The king ratified his agree s ment, but Two, the father, dying on hi } pilgrimage, the son was deprived of bot s his wife and his inheritance.
 l! Another Hugh de Grentmaisnil, succes n sor of the young Two, appears to have sut T sequently recovered his patrimony, whic