![]() ![]() Shakespeare would have known Grant their families had done business together. ![]() Grant lived just four miles away at his manor in Norbrook, halfway to Stratford-upon-Avon. Benock, recognizing the potential threat, wrote immediately to Harington, informing him that “this night all my great horses are taken out of my stable” and that “it cannot be but some great rebellion is at hand.” Benock had recognized one of the horse thieves, a gentleman named John Grant, known locally as a recusant, and described the others as “Papists” as well. The man in charge of the Warwick stables, Mr. ![]() Thirteen miles away in Coombe Abbey, King James and Queen Anne’s nine-year-old daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was being raised in the household of Lord Harington (for royal children did not live with their parents). Though eighty miles away, the seemingly unrelated incident caught the attention of the authorities, for these were no ordinary horses, such as the geldings usually employed for travel on England’s roads, but rather warhorses each “worth some threescore pound.” The location of the theft was also troubling. A report reached court the day after the Gunpowder Plot was discovered, before news of that near disaster had reached much of the country, describing the theft of ten horses from a stable in Warwick in the early hours of November 6. ![]()
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