Mary Habington

Mary Habington or Abington, née Parker was an English recusant. Antiquarian writers thought that she was the author of the anonymous letter to her brother William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle which warned of the Gunpowder Plot.[1] This theory is dismissed by modern historians.[2]

Family background

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She was the eldest daughter of Edward Parker, 12th Baron Morley and Elizabeth Stanley, a daughter of William Stanley, 3rd Baron Monteagle.[3] Around the year 1593, she married Thomas Habington (1560–1647) of Hindlip Hall, a son of Queen Elizabeth's cofferer John Habington and his wife, Catharine Wykes.[4] She signed her letters "Mary Abington".[5]

Career

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Monteagle letter

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Elizabethan Hindlip Hall

The suggestion that Mary Habington wrote the anonymous letter to her brother in October 1605, hinting at the Gunpowder plot, first appears at the end of the 17th-century, in Gilbert Burnet's A Collection of Several Tracts (1685), attributed to an account of the plot given by her husband Thomas Habington in 1645 to a "worthy person".[6] The suggestion that Mary was the author was attributed to William Dugdale in Anthony à Wood's Athenae Oxonienses published in 1691.[7] Simon Archer was a mutual aquaintaince of Habington and Dugdale.[8] Elsewhere in the same work, Wood attributes the letter to Francis Tresham.[9] In 1781, a historian of Worcestershire, Treadway Russell Nash wrote that Mary Habington's authorship of the letter was a local tradition. It has also been suggested that Mary Habington dictated the letter to her friend Anne Vaux.[10]

The centrality of the letter to the discovery of the cellar, gunpowder, and plot, and the official narrative has often been doubted.[11] Some writers, including Antonia Fraser, see the letter as a kind of fake, a political ruse engineered by the Earl of Salisbury.[12] Nevertheless, Hindlip Hall came to be celebrated, as it was believed that, "as much of the plot was there hatch'd, so it was from thence that it came to be prevented".[13]

Hindlip Hall

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In January 1606, Mary Habington and Anne Vaux were at Hindlip Hall.[14] The house was raided by Henry Bromley of Holt Castle, a magistrate searching for Catholic priests.[15] She accepted the authority of his warrant. Four priests were staying in the house, after travelling from Coughton Court and Evesham before Christmas.[16] They hid in carefully concealed priest holes in the long gallery behind panelling, and built into the chimneys of the house. Bromley and his men stayed at Hindlip, hoping to starve them out of their hiding places. Mary Habington and Anne Vaux were able to supply them with drinks and caudle using a quill or straw from a gentlewoman's bedchamber.[17]

Thomas Habington had been away visiting Sir John Talbot at Pepperhill (at Albrighton).[18] Talbot was the father-in-law of the conspirator Robert Winter. When he returned to Hindlip, he swore there were no priests in the house. Bromley arrested him.[19] Nicholas Owen and Ralph Ashley tried to escape from their hiding place in the gallery but were captured, and six days later Henry Garnet and Edward Oldcorne were discovered and surrendered to Bromley.[20] Their hiding place was accessed by a trapdoor under the brick hearth of the room above.[21]

Mary Habington remained at Hindlip during the searches. Bromley wrote that he "could by no means persuade the Gentlewoman of the house to depart the house, without I should have carried her". He noted that the captives asked for their linen which her maid had washed.[22]

The prisoners were taken first to Holt Castle, and then to the Tower of London. Their number included Edward Jarrett, described as a servant to Dorothy Habington (a sister-in-law of Mary Habington, said to have been converted by Oldcorne).[23] During their examinations and interrogations, Nicholas Owen said that Garnet and Edward Hall (an alias of Oldcorne) usually dined at Hindlip with Thomas and Mary Habington. Owen acted as Garnet's servant, lighting his fire and other tasks.[24]

Mary Habington went to London with Anne Vaux,[25] and, according to John Gerard, met her captive husband.[26] She thought her brother Lord Monteagle would be able to secure his early release. Habington is said to have replied that his family's support for the mother of James VI and I, Mary, Queen of Scots, would count in his favour. His brother, Edward Habington, had been executed for his part in the Babington Plot in 1586.[27][28] King James was anxious to prosecute the Gunpowder plotters, but was curious about the Babington Plot, and commissioned portraits of six of the 1586 conspirators from Robert Peake.[29]

Thomas Habington was put on trial, his property was forfeited, and given to Sir John Dromond (John Drummond of Hawthornden, a royal usher), though Habington seems to have continued to live at Hindlip. When he made his will in 1642, Mary Habington was still alive.[30]

Portraits

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A portrait at Hindlip said to be hers was engraved for Treadway Russell Nash's Collections for the history of Worcestershire.[31] Nash mentioned in an Archaeologia article a portrait at Hindlip of Elizabeth Stanley, Lady Morley, Mary Habington's mother. A picture of Robert Winter was displayed at Woollas Hall in Eckington.[32] Nash and Edmond Malone mention that the Hindlip collection in the 18th-century included a portrait said to be of the conspirator Thomas Percy.[33]

Children

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Her children included:[34]

  • William Habington, who married Lucy Herbert, a daughter of William Herbert, 1st Baron Powis
  • Anthony Habington
  • Frances Habington, who married John Braithwaite
  • Mary Habington, who married Walter Compton
  • Elizabeth Habington, who married Francis Fountain

References

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  1. ^ "Historical Particulars Regarding the Gunpowder Plot", The Gentleman's Magazine, (March 1835), p. 253.
  2. ^ John Amphlett, A Survey of Worcestershire, 1 (Oxford, 1894), p. 9.
  3. ^ George K. Stanton, Rambles and researches among Worcestershire churches (London, 1886), p. 87.
  4. ^ Jan Broadway, "Thomas Habington: Recusancy and the Gentry of Early Stuart Worcestershire", Midland History, 29:1 (2004), p. 3. doi:10.1179/mdh.2004.29.1.1
  5. ^ Aileen M. Hodgson & Michael Hodgetts, Little Malvern Letters, 1 (Boydell, 2013), p. 124 no. 103.
  6. ^ Gilbert Burnet, "A History of Gunpowder Treason", A Collection of Several Tracts (London: Richard Chiswell, 1685), pp. 19-20 (first ed. 1679).
  7. ^ John Sherren Brewer, The Church History of Britain by Thomas Fuller, 5 (Oxford, 1845), p. 348 fn: Philip Bliss, Athenae Oxonienses, 3 (London, 1817), p. 224
  8. ^ Susan M. Cogan, "Social Networks in Post-Reformation Warwickshire", Christopher Dyer, Changing Approaches to Local History: Warwickshire History and Its Historians (Woodbridge, 2022), p. 144.
  9. ^ Anthony à Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, 1 (London, 1691), p. 282
  10. ^ "Gunpowder Plot: Letter to Lord Monteagle", Gentleman's Magazine, 9:2 (1828), pp. 601–602.
  11. ^ Stephen Alford, All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil (Allen Lane, 2024), p. 311: Samuel Rawson Gardiner, What Gunpowder Plot Was (Longmans, 1897), pp. 115–116, 123.
  12. ^ Antonia Fraser, The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605 (Arrow, 1999), p. 156.
  13. ^ Gilbert Burnet, "A History of Gunpowder Treason", A Collection of Several Tracts (London: Richard Chiswell, 1685), p. 19
  14. ^ Nadine Akkerman & Pete Langman, Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade (Yale, 2024), p. 175.
  15. ^ John Humphreys, "The Habingtons of Hindlip and the Gunpowder Plot", Transactions of the Birmingham and Midlands Institute, 31 (1905), pp. 47–66.
  16. ^ Philip Caraman, Henry Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot (Longmans, 1964), pp. 330–331, 336: Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar State Papers Domestic, 1603–1610 (London, 1857), pp. 295–297.
  17. ^ Jessie Childs, God's Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England (Oxford, 2014), pp. 325–332.
  18. ^ Kenneth Allott, Poems of William Habington (London, 1948), pp. xvi: Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar State Papers Domestic, 1603–1610 (London, 1857), p. 293.
  19. ^ Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar State Papers Domestic, 1603–1610 (London, 1857), p. 283.
  20. ^ C. Don Gilbert, "Thomas Habington's Account of the 1606 Search at Hindlip", British Catholic History, 25:3 (May 2001), pp. 415–422. doi:10.1017/S0034193200030272
  21. ^ Henry Foulis, The History of Romish Treasons (London, 1671), p. 698.
  22. ^ Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar State Papers Domestic, 1603–1610 (London, 1857), p. 283 citing TNA SP 14/18 f.48 (modernised here) and SP 14/18 f.68.
  23. ^ Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar State Papers Domestic, 1603–1610 (London, 1857), p. 284: John Morris, Condition of Catholics under James I (London, 1871), p. 283: M. S. Giuseppi, HMC Salisbury Hatfield, 18 (London, 1940), p. 35: Henry Foley, Records of the English province of the Society of Jesus, 4 (London 1878), pp. 76–77.
  24. ^ Mary Anne Everett Green, Calendar State Papers Domestic, 1603–1610 (London, 1857), p. 295.
  25. ^ Nadine Akkerman & Pete Langman, Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade (Yale, 2024), p. 179.
  26. ^ Kenneth Allott, Poems of William Habington (London, 1948), p. xvii.
  27. ^ John Amphlett, A Survey of Worcestershire, 1 (Oxford, 1894), p. 13.
  28. ^ John Morris, Condition of Catholics under James I (London, 1871), p. 267.
  29. ^ Neil Younger, "Robert Peake (c1551—1619) and the Babington Plot", The British Art Journal, 14:2 (Autumn 2013), pp. 65–67.
  30. ^ John Amphlett, A Survey of Worcestershire, 1 (Oxford, 1894), p. 18.
  31. ^ T. R. Nash, Collections for the history of Worcestershire, 1 (1781), facing p. 590: John Amphlett, A Survey of Worcestershire, 1 (Oxford, 1895), facing p. 292, More O'Farrell collection.
  32. ^ T. R. Nash, "Death-Warrant of Humphrey Littleton", Archaeologia, 15 (London, 1806), p. 137.
  33. ^ Arthur Tillotson, The Percy Letters (Louisiana State University, 1944), p. 156.
  34. ^ A. T. Butler, Visitation of Worcestershire, 1634 (London, 1938), p. 44.
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