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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Identification of the Writer of the
+Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605, by William Parker and Francis Tresham and William Vavasour
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605
+
+Author: William Parker
+        Francis Tresham
+        William Vavasour
+
+Release Date: August 24, 2009 [EBook #29777]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANONYMOUS LETTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Jane Hyland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE IDENTIFICATION OF
+THE WRITER OF THE
+ANONYMOUS LETTER TO
+LORD MONTEAGLE IN 1605
+
+    "A strange letter, from a strange hand,
+    by a strange messenger; without date to
+    it, name at it, and (I had almost said)
+    sense in it. A letter which, even when it
+    was opened, was still sealed, such the
+    affected obscurity therein."
+
+               FULLER'S _Church History_, x. 32.
+
+
+LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL,
+HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LTD.
+1916
+
+[Transcriber's note:
+[***] denotes an asterism, that is, a triangle comprising three asterices.
+A carat symbol ^ indicates that the ensuing letters of the word are
+superscript letters.]
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+One of the great mysteries of English history is the anonymous letter to
+Lord Monteagle, warning him not to attend the opening of Parliament,
+appointed for the Fifth of November, 1605, which is popularly supposed
+to have led to the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. The writer's
+identity was carefully concealed by the Government at the time; the
+intention being, as explained by Lord Salisbury, "to leave the further
+judgment indefinite" regarding it. The official statements are,
+therefore, as unsatisfactory as might be expected in a matter that, for
+State reasons, has not been straightforwardly related. The letter,
+however, remaining and in fair preservation, there was always the
+possibility of the handwriting being identified; and this, after the
+lapse of over three hundred years, is now accomplished.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+    PREFACE                                                          v
+
+    SECTION
+
+    I. HISTORICAL ANALYSIS                                           1
+
+    II. THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE LETTER                             5
+
+    III. IDENTIFICATION OF THE HANDWRITING                           9
+
+    IV. THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL'S OPINION OF VAVASOUR'S GUILT          19
+
+    V. FRANCIS TRESHAM'S CONFIDENCE WHEN IN THE TOWER               24
+
+    VI. THE VAVASOURS AS DEPENDANTS OF THE TRESHAM FAMILY           25
+
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF FACSIMILES
+
+
+    1. The anonymous letter as delivered to Lord Monteagle, October 26,
+    1605, warning him not to attend the opening of Parliament
+    appointed for the Fifth of November (From the original letter in
+    the Museum of the Public Record Office)                  _Frontispiece_
+
+    2. A page of the MS. entitled "A Treatise against Lying," etc.,
+    formerly belonging to Francis Tresham, of which the handwriting
+    was attributed by his brother, William Tresham, to William
+    Vavasour. Now in the Bodleian Library. (Laud MSS. 655,
+    folio 44)                                                        [1]
+
+    3. William Vavasour's handwriting in the letter to the Earl of
+    Salisbury, dictated and signed by Francis Tresham when dying in
+    the Tower, December 22, 1605 ("State Papers, Domestic," James I.,
+    ccxvi. 211)                                                      [1]
+
+        Stated by Vavasour to have been written by Mrs. Tresham.
+        On March 24, 1605-6, he confessed that he wrote it and signed
+        a note to it to that effect.
+
+    4. William Vavasour's handwriting in his _untrue_ statement, written in
+    the presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, that No. 3 was
+    written by Mrs. Tresham. Dated March 23, 1605-6 ("State
+    Papers, Domestic," James I., ccxvi. 207)                         [1]
+
+       [***]To avoid detection of his falsehood, he writes a hand
+       quite different from his ordinary writing in Nos. 2 and 3, thus
+       producing a hand which is in itself identical with his former
+       disguised writing as seen in the anonymous letter (No. 1).
+
+    5. George Vavasour's handwriting on the last leaf, which he renewed
+    for Francis Tresham, of the MS. entitled "A Treatise against
+    Lying," etc. (Laud MSS. 655, folio 61)                _To face page 26_
+
+
+
+
+
+The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord
+Monteagle
+
+I
+
+HISTORICAL ANALYSIS
+
+
+Francis Tresham, of Rushton, in Northamptonshire, has recently
+(September 11, 1605) succeeded his father, Sir Thomas Tresham (a great
+sufferer for the Roman Catholic religion), in an inheritance of at least
+five thousand a year, in present money; after having, as he says, spent
+most of his time overburdened with debts and wants, and resolves within
+himself to spend his days quietly. His first cousin, Robert Catesby,
+being hard-up with funds exhausted in financing the scheme known as the
+Gunpowder Plot, seeing in Tresham the chance of obtaining a further
+supply (though previously distrusting him), induces him, in the
+interests of their religion, to join the conspiracy, of which he thus
+becomes the thirteenth, and last, sworn conspirator (October 14, 1605).
+Catesby is careful to impose the oath of secrecy before fully disclosing
+the plot; of which Tresham, on hearing, entirely disapproves, and
+endeavours to dissuade his cousin from, or even to defer it; meanwhile
+offering him the use of his own purse if he will do so. Finding he
+cannot prevail with him, he is very urgent that the Lords Monteagle and
+Stourton, particularly the former, may be warned, each having married
+Tresham's sisters; but Catesby can give no definite assurance. Tresham
+then intends, as he says, to get the conspirators shipped away, and to
+inform the Government by some unknown, or anonymous, means.
+
+Tresham has a serving-man named William Vavasour, who attended Sir
+Thomas Tresham, and who, with his elder brother, George Vavasour (whose
+education Tresham has particularly encouraged), and their sister Muriel
+(gentlewoman to Lady Monteagle who is the daughter of "Muriel" Lady
+Tresham) are favoured dependants of the Tresham family, being the
+children of an old and much valued Catholic servant. Both George and
+William are confidentially employed by Tresham as amanuenses, in
+transcribing religious, or treasonable, treatises of the time.
+
+Lord Monteagle unexpectedly orders a supper to be prepared (October 26,
+1605) at his house at Hoxton (belonging to his brother-in-law Tresham),
+and where he has not been for some months. As he is about to go to
+supper, a letter is handed to him by his footman, to whom it has been
+given in the street by "an unknown man of a reasonable tall personage,"
+who knows that he will find him at so unfrequented a residence.
+Monteagle opens the letter, which is anonymous, pretends he cannot
+understand it, and shows it to his secretary, Thomas Ward, who, he is
+aware, is familiar with some of the conspirators; whom Ward, the next
+evening, tells of the receipt of the letter, which Monteagle at once
+takes to Whitehall, about three miles away, where he finds the Earl of
+Salisbury (Principal Secretary of State) with other lords of the Council
+together assembled, "ready for supper." The Government censor, or
+suppress, the name of the place where the letter was delivered. The
+conspirators and the Jesuit priests, who are involved in the plot
+through the confessional, at once suspect Tresham; and Catesby and
+Winter directly charge him with having betrayed them, which he denies,
+while urging them to escape to France, and giving them money for the
+purpose. Although Tresham is a sworn conspirator, he alone remains
+behind and at large, after Fawkes's arrest (November 4-5, 1605), and
+flight of the others into the country, and offers his services to the
+Government. A week later he is taken to the Tower, where being ill, his
+wife and serving-man, William Vavasour, and a maid servant constantly
+attend him; an indulgence _never under any circumstances_ permitted to
+anyone who was really a prisoner and upon a capital charge there.
+Becoming worse, he dictates a letter for Vavasour to write to Lord
+Salisbury, retracting a statement that he has been induced to make
+respecting Father Garnet, and dies (December 23, 1605). This letter, or
+dying statement, being misunderstood, is considered to be so incredible
+that the writing is particularly inquired into. Vavasour thereupon, in
+the presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, writes an _untrue_
+statement (consequently using a hand quite different from his ordinary
+writing and, _in itself, identical with the writing of the anonymous
+letter_), asserting that his master's dying statement was written by
+Mrs. Tresham (though in every way proper for Vavasour to have written),
+which she at once repudiates and says that Vavasour wrote it. He is then
+examined in the Tower by Chief Justice Popham and Attorney-General Coke,
+when he confesses that he wrote the dying statement at his master's
+dictation; and had denied it "for fear." Fear of what? In case the
+writing should bring into question some other and less innocent letter
+written by him for his master.
+
+Upon Tresham's death in the Tower, the Lieutenant writes to Salisbury
+(December 23, 1605) of the "marvellous" confidence shown by Tresham and
+his friends that had he survived, they feared not the course of justice.
+Later, having left no male issue, his inheritance passes to his brother,
+who is described as of Rushton, when created a baronet on the
+institution of that Order by James the First, the very king whom the
+plotters intended to destroy; and although a baronetcy at that time was
+merely a monetary distinction or transaction, _some_ discrimination was
+no doubt made in the bestowal or disposal of that dignity, which
+probably would not have been conferred upon Catesby's son, who was then
+living, even if he had been able to afford it after the forfeiture of
+his family inheritance.
+
+The Attorney-General, at Father Garnet's trial (March 28, 1606),
+pronounces Vavasour as being, in his opinion, "deeply guilty" in the
+treason; yet he is not even brought to trial, while other serving-men
+are tried and executed; although Lord Salisbury expressly declares that
+he will esteem his life unworthily given him, when he shall be found
+slack in bringing to prosecution and execution ALL who are in any way
+concerned in the treason; and his exertions in the matter are accounted
+to be so successful, that he is rewarded with the Order of the Garter.
+
+Francis Tresham's inheritance remains in the family; and his
+serving-man, the "deeply guilty" William Vavasour, goes free.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: _These facsimiles are issued separately in order to
+facilitate comparison._]
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE LETTER
+
+
+The authentic, or rather the official, story of the delivery of the
+letter, as published by the Government at the time, states that on
+Saturday, October 26, 1605, Lord Monteagle "being in his own lodging,
+ready to go to supper, at seven o'clock[2] at night, one of his footmen
+(whom he had sent on an errand over the street) was met by an unknown
+man, of a reasonable tall personage, who delivered him a letter,
+charging him to put it in my lord his master's hands; which my lord no
+sooner received, but that having broken it open, and perceiving the same
+to be of an unknown and somewhat unlegible hand, and without either date
+or subscription, called one of his men[3] to help him to read it. But no
+sooner did he conceive the strange contents thereof, although he was
+somewhat perplexed what construction to make of it (as whether of a
+matter of consequence, as indeed it was, or whether some foolish devised
+pasquil, by some of his enemies to scare him from his attendance at the
+Parliament), yet did he, as a most dutiful and loyal subject, conclude
+not to conceal it, whatever might come of it, whereupon notwithstanding
+the lateness and darkness of the night in that season of the year, he
+presently repaired to his Majesty's palace at Whitehall, and there
+delivered the same to the Earl of Salisbury, his Majesty's principal
+Secretary."
+
+Neither the official version nor any State paper mentions the place
+where the letter was delivered, which in such a mysterious matter would
+be the first inquiry. "Own lodging" at that time signified a person's
+house. Hoxton is generally stated to have been the place of delivery,[4]
+which was then a single street in the outlying suburb on the great north
+road; at a house which Monteagle is known[5] to have occupied, belonging
+to his brother-in-law, Francis Tresham; and this ownership may have been
+Salisbury's reason for not naming it, which so curious an omission seems
+to imply. The letter is as follows:
+
+    "My Lord out of the loue i beare[6]; to some of youere frends i haue
+    a caer of youer preseruacion therfor i would aduyse yowe as yowe
+    tender youer lyf to deuyse some excuse to shift of youer attendance
+    at this parleament for god and man hathe concurred to punishe the
+    wickednes of this tyme and thinke not slightlye of this
+    aduertisement but retyre youre self into youre contri wheare yowe
+    maye expect the euent in safti for thowghe theare be no apparance of
+    anni stir yet i saye they shall receyue a terrible blowe this
+    parleament and yet they shall not sei who hurts them this cowncel is
+    not to be contemned because it maye do yowe good and can do yowe no
+    harme for the dangere[7] is passed as soon as yowe have burnt the
+    letter and i hope god will give yowe the grace to make good use of
+    it to whose holy proteccion I commend yowe."
+
+    (Addressed)   "To the ryght honorable
+    the lord Monteagle."
+
+It was the opinion of the other conspirators, as well as of the Jesuit
+priests who became involved in the plot through the confessional, that
+the warning letter originated with Francis Tresham, whose sister was
+Lady Monteagle, and another sister had married Lord Stourton; and
+Tresham had been most earnest with Catesby that those two lords,
+particularly Monteagle, should be warned. In each instance, Catesby was
+careful to impose the oath and engage the faith of the conspirator,
+before disclosing the plot; and Tresham, the thirteenth and last, sworn
+conspirator, on hearing the particulars, entirely disapproved of the
+conspiracy, from which he tried to dissuade Catesby, offering him the
+use of his own purse if he would even defer it.[8] Tresham could indeed
+have desired nothing less than to become involved in such a matter. His
+father had recently died, and he had succeeded to a considerable
+property,[9] which alone induced his first cousin Catesby to bring him
+into the plot. As Tresham wrote when in the Tower:[10] "I thank God I am
+owner of such a fortune as is able to afford me what I desire, the
+comfort whereof is so much the sweeter unto me, as I have spent most of
+my time overburthened with debts and wants, and had resolved within
+myself to spend my days quietly."[11] He acknowledged that his
+intentions with regard to the other conspirators were "to ship them away
+that they might have no means left them to contrive any more ... then to
+have taken a course to have given the State advertisement by some
+unknown means."[11] He was consequently the only conspirator who
+remained behind and at large after Fawkes was taken and the others had
+fled. There can be no reasonable doubt that Tresham, though not the
+writer, was the sender of the letter; and upon this hypothesis all
+investigators must go, as there is none other at all likely.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 2: Salisbury, in his letter to Sir Charles Cornwallis,
+Ambassador at Madrid (November 9), gives the hour as six o'clock.]
+
+[Footnote 3: This was his secretary, Thomas Ward, who was known to
+Monteagle as a friend of some of the conspirators (as Monteagle himself
+was), and one of whom, Ward, the next morning told of the receipt of the
+letter. "As a plan concocted by Monteagle and Tresham to stop the plot,
+and at the same time to secure the escape of their guilty friends, the
+little comedy at Hoxton was admirably concocted" ("What Gunpowder Plot
+was," by S.R. Gardiner, D.C.L., 1897, p. 124).]
+
+[Footnote 4: Father John Gerard (1564-1637) gives particulars of the
+delivery of the letter at Hoxton in his contemporary "Narrative of the
+Gunpowder Plot," published in 1872.]
+
+[Footnote 5: "Calendar of Tresham Papers," p. 132.]
+
+[Footnote 6: The word "yowe" (you), here cancelled in the original,
+indicates the writer's first thoughts, and, no doubt, his real meaning.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Various attempts have been made to explain the nature of
+the danger alluded to, which the King and Salisbury at the time, and
+others since, have understood as in allusion to the danger of the plot.
+Jardine describes it as "mere nonsense" ("Gunpowder Plot," 1835, p. 73).
+But the meaning clearly is the danger of the letter being discovered.
+The counsel may do him good, and can do him no harm, except through the
+danger of keeping the letter, which being burnt, the danger is past.
+There is no allusion intended to the danger of the plot, as that, unlike
+the danger of the discovery of the letter, could not be affected by
+burning the letter.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Tresham's statement made when in the Tower ("State Papers,
+Domestic," James I., xvi. 63).]
+
+[Footnote 9: The rental of the Rushton Hall estate alone, as given in
+the "Return of Owners of Lands" in 1873, is £5,044 yearly. The Tresham
+family also owned property at Hoxton and elsewhere.]
+
+[Footnote 10: He died in the Tower six weeks after writing that letter,
+aged thirty-seven.]
+
+[Footnote 11: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi., 63.]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+IDENTIFICATION OF THE HANDWRITING
+
+
+The style of handwriting of the letter, as seen in the facsimile, is not
+in this writer's opinion, from a familiarity of thirty years with old
+scripts, apart from the disguise, the hand that an educated person would
+write at the time, but is essentially a commonplace and, no doubt
+intentionally, rather slovenly style of handwriting. The use of small
+"i's" for the first person seems, in view of modern usage, to suggest an
+illiterate writer; but educated writers, even the King,[12] then
+occasionally lapsed into using them. In the letter, however, they are
+consistently and may have been purposely used, to avert suspicion from
+being the work of an educated person; though an illiterate appearance
+would rather cause such a letter (if genuine) to be disregarded, than to
+deter a nobleman from attending the opening of Parliament, for which
+leave or licence was required.
+
+The handwriting has been variously ascribed, but the direction of this
+inquiry is indicated by the incautious admission made by Sir Edward
+Coke, the Attorney-General at the trial, respecting the real manner in
+which the plot was discovered. Salisbury's careful instructions to the
+Attorney-General for the trial are with the State papers, in which he
+says: "Next, you must in any case, when you speak of the letter which
+was the first ground of discovery, absolutely disclaim that any of
+these" (the conspirators) "wrote it, though you leave the further
+judgment indefinite who else it should be."[13]
+
+Salisbury thus, in effect, requires Coke by absolutely disclaiming that
+any of the conspirators wrote (he does not say "sent") the letter to
+Monteagle, and by which alone the treason was discovered, to declare in
+Court, as upon the authority of the Government, that therefore none of
+the conspirators divulged the plot; which, in any case, could be true
+only so far as the disclosure to the Government was concerned. Coke,
+however, for some reason--perhaps because he was not fully in
+Salisbury's confidence respecting the letter--describes the real manner
+of the discovery, according to his own knowledge. Towards the close of
+his speech for the prosecution, he said: "The last consideration is
+concerning the admirable discovery of this treason, which was by one of
+themselves who had taken the oath and sacrament, as hath been said
+against his own will;[14] the means by a dark and doubtful letter to my
+Lord Monteagle." This, together with Salisbury's statement that none of
+the conspirators wrote the letter, shows that the divulging of the plot
+preceded the sending of the letter,[15] which was not, therefore, as is
+popularly supposed, the means by which the plot was discovered, except
+to the general public.
+
+Hitherto those who have attempted this identification have invariably
+sought amongst such as are likely to have written the letter for a
+handwriting _resembling the disguised writing_, which seems a strange
+method of investigation, as surely the object of a disguised hand[16]
+would be to make the general appearance as unlike the writer's ordinary
+hand as possible? The writing being in a set and rather large character,
+such is the style they have sought for and found, but in a much more
+refined hand and without arriving at any satisfactory result.
+
+It seems, however, reasonable to suspect that this set and rather large
+character may be what principally constitutes the disguise, and that the
+writer's ordinary hand would be different. The manner in which the lines
+are forced upwards at the right side, shows that the writer has had
+difficulty in maintaining the large, set, regular character which would
+push an unpractised hand in that direction.
+
+Among the more prominent peculiarities, as seen in the facsimile (No.
+1), the writer invariably uses the long "s" as an initial letter in the
+ten examples that occur, even when the letter is not a capital. Such
+consistent use was usual in legal but not in private hands, though
+within a word the long "s" was very common. The "t's" are peculiar;
+being made with a twist or short line at foot, crossed midway projecting
+from each side, while a stroke is put on the top as a disguised, or
+elaborated touch. The "w's" finish with a side loop. Some of the "g's"
+show flat tops; the cypher portion being commenced from the left side
+with a stroke along the top. The tails of the "y's" are brought forward.
+The "hanger" portion of the "h's" invariably drags below the line which,
+though not unusual, again indicates in the numerous examples that occur
+the writer's habit; while an unusually broad quill has been used to
+further the disguise.[17]
+
+After the plot was discovered, Fawkes arrested, and the other
+conspirators had escaped into the country, Tresham remained in London
+and even offered his services to the Government. A week later he was
+taken to the Tower where, being ill, his wife also came, and he was
+attended by his serving-man, William Vavasour, and his maid, Joan Syer.
+He was induced "to avoid ill-usage," to say that he thought Father
+Garnet, against whom the Government desired to obtain evidence, had
+written a letter in furtherance of what was known as the Spanish
+Treason, in 1602. Six weeks later, his illness becoming dangerous, he
+dictated to his man Vavasour a letter to Lord Salisbury, retracting his
+statement respecting Garnet, as being more than he really knew;
+declaring upon his salvation that he had not seen him "in sixteen years
+before," clearly meaning before the Spanish Treason in 1602, which is
+the entire subject of his letter and the fact; and not, as the
+Government misunderstood him to mean, before the then time of writing in
+1605. This statement, written by Vavasour (Fascimile No. 3), was signed
+by Tresham, who asked his wife to deliver it personally to Lord
+Salisbury, and within three hours died:[18]
+
+    "I being sent for before yo^r Lordships in the Tow^r, you told me y^t
+    (that) it was Confessed by Mr Winter, y^t he went upon some
+    imploym^{ts} in ye Queens time into Spayne & y^t yo^r L. did nominate
+    to me out of his Confession all the partyes names y^t were acquainted
+    therew^{th} _namely 4 besides himselfe_[19] & yet sayd y^t ther were
+    some left for me to name. I desired yo^r L. y^t I might not answere
+    therunto bycause it was a matter y^t was done in the Queens time and
+    since I had my pardon.
+
+    "Yo^r Lordships wold not accept of y^t answere, _but sayd y^t I should
+    be made to speake therunto. And I might thanke my self If I had beene
+    worse used than I had beene since my Coming to the howse_[19] I told
+    yo^r Lords^p (_to avoyde ill usage_)[19] y^t I thought Mr. Walley[20]
+    was p'cured to write his letter for the furthering of this Jeorney. Now
+    my LL. having bethoughte myselfe of this businesse (being to weake to
+    use my owne hand in writing this) w^{ch} I do deliver here upon my
+    salvacon to be trew as near as I can call to mynde, desiring y^t my
+    form'r Confession may be called in & y^t this may stand for truthe. It
+    was more than I knew y^t Mr. Walley[20] was used herein, & to give your
+    Lords'p p'ofe besids my oathe, I had not seene him in sixteene yere
+    before, nor never had messuadge[21] nor letter from him & to this
+    purpose I desired Mr. Leiftenant to lett me see my Confession who told
+    me I should not unlesse I wold inlarge it w^{ch} he did p'ceive I had
+    no meaning to doe.
+
+    (Signed) Francis Tresame.
+
+    "24 m'ch 1605 [-6].
+    This noate was of my owne
+    hand writing
+    By me Willia' Vavasore."
+
+Tresham's statement being misunderstood to mean that he had not seen
+Garnet for sixteen years,[22] while the Government knew from Tresham
+himself[23] that he had recently been in Garnet's company, was
+considered such awful perjury to commit when dying as to be incredible.
+Coke wrote to Salisbury: "It is true that no man may judge in this case,
+for _inter pontem et fontem_ he might find grace; but it is the most
+fearful example that I ever knew of to be made so evident as now this
+is." Salisbury at the trial said: "Mr. Tresham in his lifetime accused
+you, Garnet, before the lords, yet now upon his salvation, he under his
+hand did excuse you, being at the very point of death, saying he had not
+seen you _in sixteen years_, which matter, I assure you, before you were
+taken shook me very much. But, thanks be to God, since the coming of the
+King, I have known so much of your doctrine and practices, that
+hereafter they shall not much trouble me." The writing of Tresham's
+dying statement was, therefore, particularly, inquired into, and
+Vavasour had to make a written statement respecting his knowledge of it;
+evidently for comparison of the handwriting. This appears to have so
+alarmed him that in his statement (Fascimile No. 4), written in the
+presence of Sir William Waad, Lieutenant of the Tower, he asserted that
+the dying statement was written by Mrs. Tresham, at her husband's
+dictation:
+
+    "I do rememb' y^t my m^r did cause my m^{res} to write a note wherto he
+    did did (_sic_) bid the mayd and me beare witnes y^t he did set his
+    hand unto it, but it was not reade at y^t time but since m^{res}
+    Tressa' did reede it to me and sayd it was y^t noate y^t my m^r did
+    bid us beare witnesse and she comaunded me to carye a letter to S^r
+    Waulter Cope and to desire him to deliver the noate inclosed to my
+    Lorde of Salsburye and further my m^r did say y^t he cold not write
+    him selfe bycause he was not able but he did sett his hande unto it
+    as before I have sayd and this was done some day before his death.
+
+    "(Signed) By me William Vavasor.
+
+    "23. March 1605 [-6].
+    Taken before us:
+    (Signed) W. Waad.
+    Willus Lane."
+
+If for any reason Vavasour did not desire his writing to be brought into
+question, there could be no harm, beyond his falsehood, in naming Mrs.
+Tresham as the writer of that letter, as neither could possibly be
+blamed for writing such a statement for his master. The question arises,
+whether Vavasour would have ventured upon an untrue statement, except
+through panic, unless feeling sure of Mrs. Tresham's support? As Mrs.
+Tresham throughout made no attempt to conceal the truth for Vavasour,
+she may have been unaware of any reason for diverting inquiry from
+himself respecting letters written for his master. Even if Mrs. Tresham
+had been willing to connive at his falsehood, she could not have done
+so; as Salisbury, being convinced that she not only wrote but composed
+her husband's dying statement and induced him to sign to shield Father
+Garnet, was so incensed against her that he declined to see her,[24] or
+even to receive her husband's statement, when she tried to deliver it.
+She was therefore obliged, in view of possible consequences to herself,
+to own[25] that Vavasour wrote the statement at her husband's dictation.
+Vavasour was then examined in the Tower by Chief Justice Popham and by
+Coke, when he confessed[26] that he wrote the dying statement at his
+master's dictation, and had denied it through fear, which could only
+arise from having written some other and less innocent letter for him.
+
+Vavasour, when writing his untrue statement, would avoid using his
+ordinary handwriting, as already appearing in the letter in question
+(No. 3), which he had ascribed to Mrs. Tresham. He, therefore, disguises
+his writing, so far as having to write off-hand and under the
+observation of the Lieutenant of the Tower and an attendant Justice,
+with the consciousness that he is writing what is false, and while
+having to be careful not to reproduce his former disguised hand, as seen
+in the anonymous letter, permits him; and the hand thus produced betrays
+him as the writer of that letter, with which the writing is, in itself,
+identical. The long "s" is invariably used for a word commencing with
+that letter, even when not a capital; there are the same peculiar "t's,"
+though in a less disguised or elaborated form than those of the
+anonymous letter, but there they clearly are; the "w's" have no side
+loops, but in Vavasour's note at foot of No. 3 a conspicuous example is
+seen; there are no "g's";[27] the "y's" are particularly noticeable,
+being in two varieties: Vavasour's ordinary "y," of which the tail is
+tucked back; in the other, the tail is brought forward; and no one can
+fail to see that the latter are by the same hand as those in the letter;
+the "hangers" of the "h's" invariably drag below the line; and
+generally, the writing may throughout be detected as by the same hand
+that wrote the anonymous letter.
+
+The best specimen of Vavasour's handwriting, although not so useful as
+No. 4 for identification purposes, is in the MS. entitled "A Treatise
+against Lying," etc., identified by William Tresham as having been
+transcribed by Vavasour for Francis Tresham, which is now in the
+Bodleian Library (Facsimile No. 2). To anyone familiar with the
+handwriting of the period, Vavasour's writing is the usual law-writer's
+or copyist's hand, such as appears in conveyances and deeds of the
+time,[28] and is not the style of hand that an educated person would
+then write. Each initial "s" is of the long form; each "w" has a side
+loop; the "g's" are flat-topped; and the "h's" come below the line, etc.
+Tresham's dying statement (No. 3) appears to be in a similar but
+smaller[29] and less carefully written hand. Vavasour wrote a neat,
+small hand, which, when disguising, the probability is that he would
+attempt an opposite style. If it were not for the testimony of the
+Lieutenant of the Tower, that the untrue statement (No. 4) was actually
+written in his presence by Vavasour, the writing would not, from the
+general appearance, readily be recognized as by the same hand that wrote
+Tresham's dying statement (No. 3), and so acknowledged by Vavasour. This
+shows that he was naturally clever in disguising his hand, hence his
+employment by Tresham in writing the anonymous letter to Lord Monteagle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Upon the evidence of the handwriting alone, William Vavasour was the
+writer of that letter.[30]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 12: In the "Correspondence of James I. with Sir Robert Cecil"
+(published by the Camden Society in 1861), both the King and the Earl of
+Northumberland occasionally use them (pp. 64, 70, etc.). The latter also
+uses them in his general correspondence.]
+
+[Footnote 13: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xix. 94.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Tresham was throughout the only unwilling conspirator, but
+he did not take the oath sacramentally, only seven or eight of the
+thirteen conspirators did so.]
+
+[Footnote 15: "No wise man could think my lord (Monteagle) to be so weak
+as to take any alarm to absent himself from Parliament upon such a loose
+advertisement" (Letter from Salisbury to Cornwallis, November 9).]
+
+[Footnote 16: Salisbury, in his letter to Cornwallis, particularly
+describes the writing as being "in a hand disguised," and he, like
+Monteagle, would know not only the writer, but how the letter came to be
+written.]
+
+[Footnote 17: In an expert examination of handwriting, the angle at
+which the pen is held, as indicated by the long strokes, and the spacing
+between the lines which a writer naturally uses, have also to be
+considered--being the basis of handwriting, the first movements that are
+made in learning to write, and become each writer's characteristics in
+those respects. In each specimen of William Vavasour's handwriting,
+including the anonymous letter, the long strokes are generally at the
+same angle, and the spacing between the lines (except in No. 3) is
+throughout generally similar, while his brother George's hand is in each
+respect quite different.]
+
+[Footnote 18: "He died this night, about two of the clock after
+midnight, with very great pain; for though his spirits were much spent
+and his body dead, a-lay above two hours in departing" (Lieutenant of
+the Tower to Salisbury, December 23, 1605, "State Papers, Domestic,"
+James I., xvii. 56). Tresham's death, being so opportune for Monteagle,
+if not for Salisbury, has been attributed to poisoning; but Stowe's
+"Annals" (1615, p. 880) states it to have been occasioned by strangury,
+though giving the date of his death incorrectly as November 22. Ten
+years later a subsequent Lieutenant of the Tower was executed for
+poisoning a State prisoner.]
+
+[Footnote 19: The portion printed in italics was underlined by Coke for
+_omission_ when the statement was read at the trial. The "4 besides
+himself," having reference to Monteagle, was therefore suppressed; the
+other suppressions in the statement were made for obvious and unfair
+reasons.]
+
+[Footnote 20: "Walley" was one of Father Garnet's aliases.]
+
+[Footnote 21: This is very suggestive of a law-writer's spelling of
+"message" (messuage and tenement).]
+
+[Footnote 22: When Garnet returned from Rome in 1585, as Superior of the
+Jesuits in England, he made the Treshams' acquaintance, being a
+prominent Roman Catholic family, when Francis was eighteen. Garnet was
+not their confessor, and the acquaintance had dropped for at least
+sixteen years before the Spanish Treason in 1602. Garnet's statement,
+made (March 23, 1605-6) after Tresham's death, is: "I knew him about 18
+years ago, but since discontinued my acquaintance until the time between
+his trouble in my lord of Essex's tumult and the Queen's death"
+(1602-3). Garnet would have neither motive nor inclination to shield
+Tresham, whose betrayal of the plot had brought Garnet to the Tower. He
+might otherwise have discerned Tresham's real meaning in his statement
+of "sixteen years before," which the contemporary Jesuit Father Gerard
+correctly interprets as before 1602 in his narrative of the plot. It was
+not Garnet's complicity in the Spanish Treason in the previous reign
+(for which he had his pardon) that the Government cared about, and that
+so shook Salisbury, but simply Tresham's dying statement being
+misunderstood to mean that he had not seen Garnet for the past sixteen
+years, which is all that the present writer is concerned with.]
+
+[Footnote 23: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi. 62.]
+
+[Footnote 24: So he said at the trial: "She came to see me, but I spared
+either to speak with her or hear her." But Mrs. Tresham in her
+examination said that, "in respect of her sorrow and heaviness," she
+"was enforced to send it"; and in her note enclosing the dying statement
+to Sir Walter Cope for delivery, she wrote: "My sorrows are such that I
+am altogether unfit to come abroad; wherefore I would entreat you to
+deliver it yourself unto my lord, that I may have my husband's desire
+fulfilled therein" ("State Papers, Domestic," James I., ccxvi. 211).]
+
+[Footnote 25: Examination of Mrs. Tresham (_ibid._, ccxvi. 209).]
+
+[Footnote 26: Examination of William Vavasour (_ibid._, ccxvi. 207).]
+
+[Footnote 27: Vavasour, in his authentic and ordinary writing, used
+flat-topped "g's," as seen in the anonymous letter, as well as in No. 2,
+ascribed to him.]
+
+[Footnote 28: The deed of Robert Catesby's marriage settlement with
+Katherine, eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh, of Stoneleigh (1592), in
+the possession of T.W. Whitmore-Jones; Esq., of Chastleton House, Oxon,
+is in a similar legal hand, with precisely the same peculiarities of
+"s," "g," "w," "h," etc. A law-writer's hand to-day is in a
+"copper-plate" style, which, although most suitable for the purpose, is
+not the kind of hand that an educated person would write whose business
+was not copying, and there was then a similar distinction between them.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Apparently owing to restrictions of space and paper.]
+
+[Footnote 30: The original letter is framed and exhibited upon a
+pedestal in the Museum of the Public Record Office. The facsimile has,
+therefore, had to be made from a negative taken of the letter as seen
+through glass, while the other facsimiles have the advantage of being
+made from negatives taken of documents unglazed.]
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL'S OPINION OF VAVASOUR'S GUILT
+
+
+The Attorney-General in his speech for the prosecution at Father
+Garnet's trial (March 28, 1606), as given in the official report,
+alluding to Tresham's dying statement, said: "Upon his death-bed he
+commanded Vavasour his man, _whom I think deeply guilty in this
+treason_, to write a letter to the Earl of Salisbury."
+
+Henry Garnet's trial was purposely held at the City Guildhall, instead
+of Westminster Hall, the usual trial place where the conspirators had
+been tried, in order to make the occasion as imposing, and his case as
+exemplary, as possible, on account of his position as Superior of the
+Jesuits in England.[31] The King was privately present, and there was a
+most distinguished assembly of ambassadors, nobility, and others.
+
+Before this audience, the Attorney-General, whose opinion determines or
+considerably influences a prosecution for high treason, states in Court
+that a person who is not even present nor arraigned is in his opinion
+"deeply guilty" in the most infamous treason ever attempted, and for
+which the conspirators had already been executed: so "heinous, horrible
+and damnable"[32] was it considered, that the authorities had even
+proposed to devise some specially severe form of torture for the
+perpetrators to undergo, in addition to the usual terrible penalty for
+high treason.[33]
+
+Coke, who it will be remembered was the most eminent counsel and the
+greatest jurist of the time, however desirous he would be of bringing to
+light everything connected with such a treason upon the occasion, would
+scarcely, as legally representing the Crown in his capacity of the
+King's Attorney-General, express so extremely damaging an opinion
+without sufficient reason. There is something in his mind concerning
+Vavasour,[34] respecting whom he is not satisfied; and it can only be
+Vavasour's having written, not the letter to Salisbury--as that could
+not possibly implicate him, nor render him "deeply guilty" in a treason
+_which had been discovered and ended six weeks before the letter to
+Salisbury was written_--but that other and most treasonable letter to
+Monteagle, for there was nothing else against him in the matter.[35]
+Coke evidently knows, or suspects, that Vavasour wrote the warning
+letter; and he cannot understand why he is not brought to trial.[36] He
+therefore expresses his opinion of Vavasour's guilt as strongly as
+possible, and even describes him with what for an Attorney-General in
+ordinary circumstances would be a singular redundancy of legal
+expression, as being "deeply guilty" in the treason.[37] No one would
+know better than the Attorney-General that in high treason itself the
+law makes no distinction whatever of degrees of guilt, nor can there
+even be an accessory: once participant, whatever the part played may be,
+all alike are principals.
+
+Coke's statement in Court has been officially in print for over three
+hundred years, yet no investigator seems to have noticed it and so have
+been led to inquire what was done to Vavasour?--by which alone a clue
+might have been obtained to the writer of the letter.[38] Although
+Vavasour was publicly stated by the Attorney-General to be "deeply
+guilty" in a treason of which Salisbury wrote: "I shall esteem my life
+unworthily given me when I shall be found slack in searching to the
+bottom of the dregs of this foul poison, or lack resolution to further
+to my small power the prosecution and execution of ALL those whose
+hearts and hands can appear foul in this savage practise"[39]--yet he
+was not even brought to trial, while other serving-men were tried and
+executed.[40]
+
+It is questionable whether Salisbury, unless agreeing with Coke's
+opinion of Vavasour's guilt, would have allowed the allusion to appear
+in the official report of the trial, prepared by himself and sanctioned
+by the King;[41] as, if innocent of the treason, an intolerable
+injustice would have been done to Vavasour by the publication, which
+probably neither the King nor Salisbury would have permitted, in making
+a senseless attack upon the reputation of an innocent man, who would
+certainly have protested.
+
+Without, however, assuming too advanced ideas of justice for the time,
+it is unlikely that so capable a person as Salisbury appears to have
+been,[42] could fail to perceive that the publication of the
+Attorney-General's opinion of Vavasour's guilt must, in the absence of
+any prosecution, call attention to Vavasour, and thus furnish a clue to
+the writer of the letter. Salisbury, though generally fair-minded, might
+not trouble himself about Vavasour's reputation, but he would about his
+own, which would be affected by his failure, after his strongly
+expressed determination, in bringing to justice ALL who were concerned
+in such a treason; and this would still apply, even if Coke's published
+allusion to Vavasour's guilt was merely counsel's rhetoric. Coke,
+however, at the moment when making that allusion, was not declaiming
+upon the treason, but simply stating a fact about Tresham, with the King
+listening; and in alluding to Vavasour, he expresses what is in his
+mind--"_whom I think deeply guilty in this treason_": evidently his
+deliberate opinion, which he would have every opportunity of forming,
+as, with the exception of Salisbury and the conspirators, he would know
+more of the workings of the plot than anyone. Salisbury's chief concern,
+apparently, was at all costs to keep Vavasour silent, which he did;
+while his anxiety "to leave the further judgment indefinite" respecting
+the writer of the letter, plainly shows that the matter would not bear
+inquiry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The only possible conclusion, therefore, is that Vavasour wrote the
+anonymous letter to Lord Monteagle, which the identity of the
+handwriting absolutely confirms.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 31: "My Sovereign determined that your trial should be in this
+honourable assembly. For who is Garnet that he should be called hither,
+or we should trouble ourselves in this Court with him? which I protest
+were sufficient for the greatest Cardinal in Rome, if in this case he
+should be tried. No, Mr. Garnet, it is not for your cause that you are
+called hither, but to testify to the world the foulness of your fact,
+the errors of your religion," etc. Lord Salisbury's Speech at the Trial.
+(Gerard). When at the trial, rebuking Garnet for untruthfulness in his
+previous examination before the Council, Salisbury said: "You stiffly
+denied it upon your soul, reiterating it with so many detestable
+execrations, _as our hair stood upright_" (Jardine).]
+
+[Footnote 32: The Act for the Attainder of the Conspirators ("Statutes
+of the Realm," 3 James I., c. 2). Coke himself characterized the treason
+at the trial as "beyond all examples, whether in fact or fiction, even
+of the tragic poets who did beat their wits to represent the most
+fearful and horrible murders." And in the prayer to be used in the
+Anniversary Service for the Fifth of November it is described as having
+been attempted "in a most barbarous and savage manner, beyond the
+examples of former ages. From this unnatural conspiracy, not our merit,
+but Thy mercy; not our foresight, but Thy providence, delivered us,"
+etc.]
+
+[Footnote 33: In the previous century, in a case where a more severe
+penalty was desired to be inflicted, the offender was, by Act of
+Parliament, publicly _boiled alive_ ("Statutes of the Realm," 22 Henry
+VIII., c. 9).]
+
+[Footnote 34: Coke worked hard for some months in thoroughly preparing
+the evidence for the trial, so that little would escape him. As he wrote
+to Salisbury: "If your lordship knew what pains have been taken herein,
+your lordship would pity the old attorney" (Hatfield MSS.).]
+
+[Footnote 35: Vavasour's falsehood respecting Mrs. Tresham had nothing
+to do with the treason. Coke seems to mention Vavasour's guilt as if
+antecedent to the writing of the letter to Salisbury.]
+
+[Footnote 36: This work is merely the identification of the writer of
+the anonymous letter only, and makes no attempt to answer the much more
+difficult question of what the arrangement was between Salisbury and
+Monteagle, or between Monteagle and Tresham, respecting the sending of
+the letter; but with regard to Coke, it is unlikely, from what is known
+of their intercourse and their frequent differences in court, that he
+would be admitted to any particular confidence with Salisbury in the
+matter.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Vavasour's concealment of guilty knowledge as the writer
+of the warning letter would probably be only misprision of treason,
+unless Coke knew or suspected that he was directly concerned in the
+treason.]
+
+[Footnote 38: The present writer does not owe the identification to that
+clue, which was not met with until after Vavasour had been identified as
+the writer of the letter.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Letter to the Earl of Dunfermline, Lord Chancellor of
+Scotland. December 1, 1605 ("State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvii.
+2). Salisbury was created K.G. with almost regal pomp for his services
+in the matter. "Tuesday the 20th of May (1606), at Windsor, were
+installed Knights of the Garter, Robert, Earl of Salisbury, who set
+forward from his house in the Strand, being almost as honourably
+accompanied and with as great train of lords, knights, gentlemen, and
+officers of the Court, with others besides his peculiar servants very
+richly attired, and bravely mounted, as was the King when he rid in
+state through London" (Stowe's "Annals," 1615, p. 883).]
+
+[Footnote 40: Bates, Catesby's serving-man, at London; others in the
+country.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Although known as the "King's book," the report of the
+trial was evidently compiled by Salisbury and corrected by the King.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Salisbury's statesmanship is evinced by the advice he
+wrote to James (I.) when King of Scotland, and impatiently awaiting
+Queen Elizabeth's demise: "Your best approach towards your greatest end,
+is by your Majesty's clear and temperate courses, to secure the heart of
+the highest, to whose sex and quality nothing is so improper as either
+needless expostulations, or over much curiosity in her own actions. The
+first showing unquietness in yourself; the second challenging some
+untimely interest in hers; both which, as they are best forborne when
+there is no cause, so be it far from me (if there shall be cause), to
+persuade you to receive wrongs and be silent" ("Secret Correspondence,"
+Camden Society, 1860, p. 7).]
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+FRANCIS TRESHAM'S CONFIDENCE WHEN IN THE TOWER
+
+
+Upon Tresham's death in the Tower (December 23, 1605), the Lieutenant
+wrote to Salisbury: "I find his friends were marvellous confident if he
+had escaped this sickness, and have given out in this place that they
+feared not the course of justice."[43] As the late Dr. Gardiner
+observed: "This confidence they could only have derived from himself,
+and it could only have been founded on one ground."
+
+Had Tresham's committal to the Tower been otherwise than a mere
+formality, or "a farce," neither his wife nor his servants would under
+any circumstances have been permitted to attend or even see him whatever
+the state of his health might have been; and had he survived, nothing
+serious would have been done to him,[44] any more than was done to his
+"deeply guilty" servant Vavasour.
+
+Tresham, though dreading, as he said, "the infamous brand of an
+accuser,"[45] was as evidently the Informer to the Government, either
+directly or indirectly through Monteagle, as his servant Vavasour was
+the writer of the letter.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 43: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvii. 58.]
+
+[Footnote 44: He left no male issue, and was succeeded in the family
+property by his next brother Lewis, who was created a baronet June 29,
+1611, one of the second batch of baronets made on the institution of
+that Order the previous May 22 by James I.]
+
+[Footnote 45: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi. 63.]
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE VAVASOURS AS DEPENDANTS OF THE TRESHAM FAMILY
+
+
+The Tresham Papers[46] contain much information respecting the Vavasours
+as dependants of that family. Sir Thomas Tresham had a bailiff or
+collector, named Thomas Vavasour, an old and much valued Catholic
+servant,[47] who had, with perhaps other children, two sons, George and
+William, and a daughter, Muriel. George, who had been educated, was in
+June, 1596, sent up by his father with a letter to Sir Thomas, then in
+town, in order that he might be entered at one of the Inns of Court, as
+Sir Thomas might advise: "Mr. Francis Tresham has encouraged him in this
+kind of study and the cost already bestowed must not be lost. He knows
+he has nothing else to trust to but his learning, nor does he seem so
+fit for anything else."[48] He was accordingly admitted to the Inner
+Temple in November of that year,[49] where Lewis Tresham (Sir Thomas's
+second son) had been admitted the previous November, and to whom there
+is an allusion of George Vavasour acting as tutor.[50] William Vavasour,
+the other son, was servant to Sir Thomas, and though not so educated as
+his brother George, was not a livery-servant or footman,[51] but appears
+to have held a similar or superior position with Sir Thomas, to that
+which Bates, who kept his own man,[52] held with Catesby, a kind of
+secretary-valet of the time.[53] After Sir Thomas's death he served his
+eldest son Francis Tresham in the same capacity; while the sister Muriel
+Vavasour, who bore the same (then uncommon) Christian name as Lady
+Tresham, and may have been her god-daughter, became "gentlewoman without
+livery" at £5 yearly[54] to Lady Monteagle, who was Lady Tresham's
+daughter. Both George Vavasour and his brother William were
+confidentially employed by Francis Tresham as amanuenses, where secrecy
+was necessary in transcribing religious or political treatises, such as
+were then circulated amongst Roman Catholics, and, being treasonable,
+dared not be printed.
+
+On December 1, 1605, the Attorney-General, while investigating the
+conspiracy, obtained two MS. volumes which had been found in George
+Vavasour's chambers in the Inner Temple. One, officially described as a
+"quarto" volume, though an octavo (8-1/4 x 5-3/4), entitled
+"A Treatise against Lying,"[55] was stated by George Vavasour, on
+examination[56] to have been lent him by Francis Tresham to copy,[57]
+and the copy he had made was contained in the folio, the other MS.
+found. He denied any knowledge of the handwriting in the "quarto"
+volume, except that he had recopied the last page (61), in order to
+replace a torn leaf, bearing in Latin the Imprimatur of George
+Blackwell, Archpriest of the English Jesuits. William Tresham (Francis
+Tresham's youngest brother), on being examined by Coke, said that he
+thought the "quarto" MS. was in William Vavasour's handwriting, who was
+formerly his father's servant, and since serving his eldest brother in
+the Tower.[58] William Tresham may have seen Vavasour so employed at
+home and would know his writing; while George Vavasour might not wish to
+bring his brother into question. The folio MS. has disappeared, but the
+"quarto" copy, as ascribed to William Vavasour, is now with Archbishop
+Laud's MSS. (No. 655) in the Bodleian Library, and was published in
+1851.
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE No. 1.
+
+The anonymous letter as delivered to Lord Monteagle, October 26, 1605,
+warning him not to attend the opening of Parliament appointed for the
+Fifth of November. (From the original letter in the Museum of the Public
+Record Office.)]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE No. 2.
+
+A page of the MS. intitled "A Treatise against Lying, &c.", formerly
+belonging to Francis Tresham, of which the handwriting was attributed by
+his brother, William Tresham, to William Vavasour. Now in the Bodleian
+Library. (Laud MSS. 655, folio 44.)]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE No. 3.
+
+William Vavasour's handwriting in the letter to the Earl of Salisbury,
+dictated and signed by Francis Tresham, when dying in the Tower.
+December 22, 1605. (State Papers, Domestic. James I. ccxvi. 211.)
+
+Stated by Vavasour to have been written by Mrs. Tresham. On March 24,
+1605-6, he confessed that he wrote it, and signed a note to it to that
+effect.]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE No. 4.
+
+William Vavasour's handwriting in his _untrue_ statement written in the
+presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, that No. 3 was written by Mrs.
+Tresham. Dated March 23, 1605-6. (State Papers, Domestic. James I.
+ccxvi. 207.)
+
+[***]To avoid detection of his falsehood, he writes a hand quite
+different from his ordinary writing in Nos. 2 and 3, thus producing a
+hand which is in itself identical with his former disguised writing as
+seen in the anonymous letter (No. 1).]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE No. 5.
+
+George Vavasour's handwriting on the last leaf, which he renewed for
+Francis Tresham, of the MS. intitled "A Treatise against Lying, &c."
+(Laud MSS. 655, folio 61.)]
+
+George Vavasour's handwriting upon the last leaf of the MS. (Facsimile
+No. 5) shows a much more refined and educated hand than his brother's,
+from which the writing is in every respect different. A small "s" is
+invariably used in commencing a word with that letter; the "t's " are
+quite different; the "w" finishes with an inner, not an outer loop; the
+"g's" have no flat tops; and the "hangers" of the "h's" do not descend
+below the line. The writing is evidently an educated hand for the time,
+and cannot readily be imagined as using small "i's" for the first
+person, such as are used in, and seem to accord so well with, the much
+less educated handwriting of the warning letter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+WILLIAM VAVASOUR, the Tresham family serving-man, is thus not only
+conclusively proved to have written the anonymous letter to Lord
+Monteagle, but most probably was also the "unknown man of a reasonable
+tall personage" who is so quaintly described in the Government story as
+having delivered the letter.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 46: Calendared by the Historical MSS. Commission. "Report on
+MSS. in various Collections, vol. iii., 1904. The MSS. of T.B.
+Clarke-Thornhill, Esq., of Rushton Hall, by Mrs. R.C. Lomas." These
+important family papers were preserved and discovered in a curious
+manner. In 1828, when making alterations at Rushton Hall, on removing a
+partition wall, they were found with some theological books in a large
+bundle wrapped in a sheet, which had been built into a recess in the
+wall. As the papers, commencing in 1576, with a few of earlier date, end
+in November, 1605, they were probably thus hidden away on Tresham's
+arrest.]
+
+[Footnote 47: "Calendar," p. 59.]
+
+[Footnote 48: _Ibid._, p. 89.]
+
+[Footnote 49: "Students admitted to the Inner Temple, 1547-1660"
+(1877).]
+
+[Footnote 50: "Calendar of Tresham Papers," p. 90.]
+
+[Footnote 51: His name does not appear in the list of Sir Thomas's ten
+livery servants as retained while the establishment was at Hoxton before
+Monteagle's tenancy, of which the accounts are with the Tresham Papers.
+Under the stable charges is the keep of a horse for Thomas Vavasour, the
+father (_ibid._, pp. 47, 50).]
+
+[Footnote 52: "Examination of Christopher Story, Thomas Bates's man"
+("State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi. 28, 1).]
+
+[Footnote 53: It will be remembered that Salisbury in the official story
+describes Ward, who was Monteagle's secretary, as "one of his men."]
+
+[Footnote 54: Each of the other female attendants and servants, even
+"Mawdlyn the Frenchwoman" at £10 yearly, have a livery ("Calendar of
+Tresham Papers," p. 50).]
+
+[Footnote 55: The manuscript was originally entitled "A Treatise upon
+Equivocation," which was altered by Father Garnet into "A treatise
+against Lying & fraudule't dissimulatio'. Newly overseen by ye Authour &
+published for the defence of Innocency, & for the Instructio' of
+Ignora'ts." It purports to show when equivocation may "lawfully" be
+used, and may have been compiled by Garnet, as the title-page and the
+annotations throughout are in his handwriting. The folio manuscript by
+George Vavasour was evidently a fair copy of the revised "quarto," and
+Tresham's reason for having it made.]
+
+[Footnote 56: "Examination of George Vavasour, of the Inner Temple,
+Gent., December 9, 1605" ("State Papers, Domestic," James I., ccxvi.
+151).]
+
+[Footnote 57: He also confessed having transcribed the treatise "De
+Officio Principis Christiani" (Further examination, December 13, 1605,
+_ibid._, ccxvi. 155). Coke alluded to these manuscripts at the trial as
+"certain heretical, damnable and treasonable books discovered." He said:
+"There is in Tresham's book, 'De Officio Principis,' an easier and more
+expedite way than all these to fetch the crown off the head of any king
+christened whatsoever, which is this that: '_Princeps indulgendo
+hæreticis, amittit regnum._'--If any prince shall but tolerate or favour
+heretics, he loseth his kingdom." This shows the confidential nature of
+the Vavasours' employment as amanuenses by Tresham in such matters.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Examination of William Tresham, December 9, 1605 ("State
+Papers, Domestic," James I., xvii. 23).]
+
+
+
+THE END
+
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Identification of the Writer of
+the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605, by William Parker and Francis Tresham and William Vavasour
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+    .poem span.i4     {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Identification of the Writer of the
+Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605, by William Parker and Francis Tresham and William Vavasour
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605
+
+Author: William Parker
+        Francis Tresham
+        William Vavasour
+
+Release Date: August 24, 2009 [EBook #29777]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANONYMOUS LETTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Jane Hyland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2>THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE WRITER OF THE ANONYMOUS LETTER TO LORD MONTEAGLE IN 1605<br /><br /><br /></h2>
+
+
+<p style="margin-left:15em; margin-right:15em;">
+"A strange letter, from a strange hand,
+by a strange messenger; without date to
+it, name at it, and (I had almost said)
+sense in it. A letter which, even when it
+was opened, was still sealed, such the
+affected obscurity therein."</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:22em"><span class="smcap">Fuller's</span> <i>Church History</i>, x. 32.</p>
+
+
+<h4><br /><br />LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL,<br />HAMILTON, KENT &amp; CO., LTD.<br />1916<br /><br /><br /></h4>
+<p><span class='pagenum'></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100%;"><br />
+<a name="Frontispiece" id="Frontispiece"></a>
+<img src="images/illo1.jpg"  style="width: 40%;" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="link"><a href="images/illo1.jpg">View larger image</a></span><br />
+<span class="caption"><br />FACSIMILE No. 1.<br />
+
+
+The anonymous letter as delivered to Lord Monteagle, October 26, 1605, warning him not to attend
+the opening of Parliament appointed for the Fifth of November. (From the original letter in the
+Museum of the Public Record Office.)</span><br /><br /><br /><br />
+</div>
+
+
+<h3>PREFACE</h3>
+
+
+<p>One of the great mysteries of English history is the anonymous
+letter to Lord Monteagle, warning him not to attend the opening
+of Parliament, appointed for the Fifth of November, 1605, which
+is popularly supposed to have led to the discovery of the Gunpowder
+Plot. The writer's identity was carefully concealed by
+the Government at the time; the intention being, as explained
+by Lord Salisbury, "to leave the further judgment indefinite"
+regarding it. The official statements are, therefore, as unsatisfactory
+as might be expected in a matter that, for State reasons,
+has not been straightforwardly related. The letter, however,
+remaining and in fair preservation, there was always the possibility
+of the handwriting being identified; and this, after the
+lapse of over three hundred years, is now accomplished.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg iii-v]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></h3>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="contents">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><span class="smcap">page</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Preface</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_v">v</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">section</span></td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>I.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Historical Analysis</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>II.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Official Story of the Letter</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_5">5</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>III.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Identification of the Handwriting</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>IV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Attorney-General's Opinion of Vavasour's Guilt</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>V.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Francis Tresham's Confidence when in the Tower</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>VI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Vavasours as Dependants of the Tresham Family</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi-vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>LIST OF FACSIMILES</h3>
+
+
+<p>
+1. The anonymous letter as delivered to Lord Monteagle, October 26,
+1605, warning him not to attend the opening of Parliament
+appointed for the Fifth of November (From the original letter in
+the Museum of the Public Record Office)<span style="margin-left:5em;"><a href="#Frontispiece"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></span><br />
+<br />
+2. A page of the MS. entitled "A Treatise against Lying," etc.,
+formerly belonging to Francis Tresham, of which the handwriting
+was attributed by his brother, William Tresham, to William
+Vavasour. Now in the Bodleian Library. (Laud MSS. 655,
+folio 44)<a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a><br />
+<br />
+3. William Vavasour's handwriting in the letter to the Earl of Salisbury,
+dictated and signed by Francis Tresham when dying in the Tower,
+December 22, 1605 ("State Papers, Domestic," James I., ccxvi. 211)<a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a><br />
+</p>
+<p style="margin-left:2em">Stated by Vavasour to have been written by Mrs. Tresham.
+On March 24, 1605-6, he confessed that he wrote it and signed
+a note to it to that effect.</p>
+<p>
+4. William Vavasour's handwriting in his <i>untrue</i> statement, written in
+the presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, that No. 3 was
+written by Mrs. Tresham. Dated March 23, 1605-6 ("State
+Papers, Domestic," James I., ccxvi. 207)<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a><br />
+</p>
+<p style="margin-left:2em">***To avoid detection of his falsehood, he writes a hand
+quite different from his ordinary writing in Nos. 2 and 3, thus
+producing a hand which is in itself identical with his former
+disguised writing as seen in the anonymous letter (No. 1).</p>
+<p>
+5. George Vavasour's handwriting on the last leaf, which he renewed
+for Francis Tresham, of the MS. entitled "A Treatise against
+Lying," etc. (Laud MSS. 655, folio 61)<span style="margin-left:28em;"><i>To face page <a href="#Page_26">26</a></i></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii-ix]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>These facsimiles are issued separately in order to facilitate comparison.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>The Identification of the Writer of the
+Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle</h2>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<h3>HISTORICAL ANALYSIS</h3>
+
+
+<p>Francis Tresham, of Rushton, in Northamptonshire, has recently
+(September 11, 1605) succeeded his father, Sir Thomas Tresham
+(a great sufferer for the Roman Catholic religion), in an inheritance
+of at least five thousand a year, in present money; after
+having, as he says, spent most of his time overburdened with
+debts and wants, and resolves within himself to spend his days
+quietly. His first cousin, Robert Catesby, being hard-up with
+funds exhausted in financing the scheme known as the Gunpowder
+Plot, seeing in Tresham the chance of obtaining a further
+supply (though previously distrusting him), induces him, in the
+interests of their religion, to join the conspiracy, of which he thus
+becomes the thirteenth, and last, sworn conspirator (October 14,
+1605). Catesby is careful to impose the oath of secrecy before
+fully disclosing the plot; of which Tresham, on hearing, entirely
+disapproves, and endeavours to dissuade his cousin from, or even
+to defer it; meanwhile offering him the use of his own purse if he
+will do so. Finding he cannot prevail with him, he is very urgent
+that the Lords Monteagle and Stourton, particularly the former,
+may be warned, each having married Tresham's sisters; but
+Catesby can give no definite assurance. Tresham then intends, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span>
+he says, to get the conspirators shipped away, and to inform the
+Government by some unknown, or anonymous, means.</p>
+
+<p>Tresham has a serving-man named William Vavasour, who
+attended Sir Thomas Tresham, and who, with his elder brother,
+George Vavasour (whose education Tresham has particularly encouraged),
+and their sister Muriel (gentlewoman to Lady Monteagle
+who is the daughter of "Muriel" Lady Tresham) are favoured
+dependants of the Tresham family, being the children of an old and
+much valued Catholic servant. Both George and William are
+confidentially employed by Tresham as amanuenses, in transcribing
+religious, or treasonable, treatises of the time.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Monteagle unexpectedly orders a supper to be prepared
+(October 26, 1605) at his house at Hoxton (belonging to his
+brother-in-law Tresham), and where he has not been for some
+months. As he is about to go to supper, a letter is handed to
+him by his footman, to whom it has been given in the street by
+"an unknown man of a reasonable tall personage," who knows
+that he will find him at so unfrequented a residence. Monteagle
+opens the letter, which is anonymous, pretends he cannot understand
+it, and shows it to his secretary, Thomas Ward, who, he is
+aware, is familiar with some of the conspirators; whom Ward,
+the next evening, tells of the receipt of the letter, which Monteagle
+at once takes to Whitehall, about three miles away, where
+he finds the Earl of Salisbury (Principal Secretary of State) with
+other lords of the Council together assembled, "ready for supper."
+The Government censor, or suppress, the name of the place where
+the letter was delivered. The conspirators and the Jesuit priests,
+who are involved in the plot through the confessional, at once
+suspect Tresham; and Catesby and Winter directly charge him
+with having betrayed them, which he denies, while urging them
+to escape to France, and giving them money for the purpose.
+Although Tresham is a sworn conspirator, he alone remains behind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+and at large, after Fawkes's arrest (November 4-5, 1605), and
+flight of the others into the country, and offers his services to the
+Government. A week later he is taken to the Tower, where
+being ill, his wife and serving-man, William Vavasour, and a
+maid servant constantly attend him; an indulgence <i>never
+under any circumstances</i> permitted to anyone who was really
+a prisoner and upon a capital charge there. Becoming worse,
+he dictates a letter for Vavasour to write to Lord Salisbury,
+retracting a statement that he has been induced to
+make respecting Father Garnet, and dies (December 23, 1605).
+This letter, or dying statement, being misunderstood, is considered
+to be so incredible that the writing is particularly inquired
+into. Vavasour thereupon, in the presence of the Lieutenant of
+the Tower, writes an <i>untrue</i> statement (consequently using a hand
+quite different from his ordinary writing and, <i>in itself, identical
+with the writing of the anonymous letter</i>), asserting that his
+master's dying statement was written by Mrs. Tresham (though in
+every way proper for Vavasour to have written), which she at once
+repudiates and says that Vavasour wrote it. He is then examined
+in the Tower by Chief Justice Popham and Attorney-General
+Coke, when he confesses that he wrote the dying statement at his
+master's dictation; and had denied it "for fear." Fear of what?
+In case the writing should bring into question some other and
+less innocent letter written by him for his master.</p>
+
+<p>Upon Tresham's death in the Tower, the Lieutenant writes
+to Salisbury (December 23, 1605) of the "marvellous" confidence
+shown by Tresham and his friends that had he survived,
+they feared not the course of justice. Later, having left no male
+issue, his inheritance passes to his brother, who is described as of
+Rushton, when created a baronet on the institution of that Order
+by James the First, the very king whom the plotters intended to
+destroy; and although a baronetcy at that time was merely a
+monetary distinction or transaction, <i>some</i> discrimination was no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+doubt made in the bestowal or disposal of that dignity, which
+probably would not have been conferred upon Catesby's son, who
+was then living, even if he had been able to afford it after the
+forfeiture of his family inheritance.</p>
+
+<p>The Attorney-General, at Father Garnet's trial (March 28,
+1606), pronounces Vavasour as being, in his opinion, "deeply
+guilty" in the treason; yet he is not even brought to trial, while
+other serving-men are tried and executed; although Lord
+Salisbury expressly declares that he will esteem his life unworthily
+given him, when he shall be found slack in bringing to
+prosecution and execution ALL who are in any way concerned in
+the treason; and his exertions in the matter are accounted to be
+so successful, that he is rewarded with the Order of the Garter.</p>
+
+<p>Francis Tresham's inheritance remains in the family; and his
+serving-man, the "deeply guilty" William Vavasour, goes free.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<h3>THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE LETTER</h3>
+
+
+<p>The authentic, or rather the official, story of the delivery
+of the letter, as published by the Government at the time,
+states that on Saturday, October 26, 1605, Lord Monteagle
+"being in his own lodging, ready to go to supper, at seven
+o'clock<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> at night, one of his footmen (whom he had sent on an
+errand over the street) was met by an unknown man, of
+a reasonable tall personage, who delivered him a letter,
+charging him to put it in my lord his master's hands; which
+my lord no sooner received, but that having broken it open,
+and perceiving the same to be of an unknown and somewhat
+unlegible hand, and without either date or subscription, called
+one of his men<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> to help him to read it. But no sooner did
+he conceive the strange contents thereof, although he was
+somewhat perplexed what construction to make of it (as whether
+of a matter of consequence, as indeed it was, or whether some
+foolish devised pasquil, by some of his enemies to scare him
+from his attendance at the Parliament), yet did he, as a most
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>dutiful and loyal subject, conclude not to conceal it, whatever
+might come of it, whereupon notwithstanding the lateness and
+darkness of the night in that season of the year, he presently
+repaired to his Majesty's palace at Whitehall, and there
+delivered the same to the Earl of Salisbury, his Majesty's
+principal Secretary."</p>
+
+<p>Neither the official version nor any State paper mentions
+the place where the letter was delivered, which in such a
+mysterious matter would be the first inquiry. "Own lodging"
+at that time signified a person's house. Hoxton is generally
+stated to have been the place of delivery,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> which was then
+a single street in the outlying suburb on the great north road;
+at a house which Monteagle is known<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> to have occupied,
+belonging to his brother-in-law, Francis Tresham; and this
+ownership may have been Salisbury's reason for not naming
+it, which so curious an omission seems to imply. The letter
+is as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"My Lord out of the loue i beare<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>; to some of youere
+frends i haue a caer of youer preseruacion therfor i would aduyse
+yowe as yowe tender youer lyf to deuyse some excuse to shift of
+youer attendance at this parleament for god and man hathe
+concurred to punishe the wickednes of this tyme and thinke not
+slightlye of this aduertisement but retyre youre self into youre
+contri wheare yowe maye expect the euent in safti for thowghe
+theare be no apparance of anni stir yet i saye they shall receyue
+a terrible blowe this parleament and yet they shall not sei who
+hurts them this cowncel is not to be contemned because it maye
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>do yowe good and can do yowe no harme for the dangere<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> is
+passed as soon as yowe have burnt the letter and i hope god
+will give yowe the grace to make good use of it to whose holy
+proteccion I commend yowe."</p>
+
+<p>
+(Addressed)<span style="margin-left:10em;">"To the ryght honorable</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left:15em;"> the lord Monteagle."</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>It was the opinion of the other conspirators, as well as of
+the Jesuit priests who became involved in the plot through the
+confessional, that the warning letter originated with Francis
+Tresham, whose sister was Lady Monteagle, and another sister
+had married Lord Stourton; and Tresham had been most
+earnest with Catesby that those two lords, particularly Monteagle,
+should be warned. In each instance, Catesby was careful to
+impose the oath and engage the faith of the conspirator, before
+disclosing the plot; and Tresham, the thirteenth and last, sworn
+conspirator, on hearing the particulars, entirely disapproved of
+the conspiracy, from which he tried to dissuade Catesby, offering
+him the use of his own purse if he would even defer it.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>
+Tresham could indeed have desired nothing less than to become
+involved in such a matter. His father had recently died, and
+he had succeeded to a considerable property,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> which alone
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>induced his first cousin Catesby to bring him into the plot. As
+Tresham wrote when in the Tower:<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> "I thank God I am
+owner of such a fortune as is able to afford me what I desire,
+the comfort whereof is so much the sweeter unto me, as I
+have spent most of my time overburthened with debts and
+wants, and had resolved within myself to spend my days
+quietly."[11] He acknowledged that his intentions with regard
+to the other conspirators were "to ship them away that they
+might have no means left them to contrive any more ... then
+to have taken a course to have given the State advertisement
+by some unknown means."<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> He was consequently the only
+conspirator who remained behind and at large after Fawkes was
+taken and the others had fled. There can be no reasonable
+doubt that Tresham, though not the writer, was the sender of
+the letter; and upon this hypothesis all investigators must go,
+as there is none other at all likely.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p><div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Salisbury, in his letter to Sir Charles Cornwallis, Ambassador at Madrid
+(November 9), gives the hour as six o'clock.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> This was his secretary, Thomas Ward, who was known to Monteagle as a
+friend of some of the conspirators (as Monteagle himself was), and one of whom,
+Ward, the next morning told of the receipt of the letter. "As a plan concocted
+by Monteagle and Tresham to stop the plot, and at the same time to secure the
+escape of their guilty friends, the little comedy at Hoxton was admirably
+concocted" ("What Gunpowder Plot was," by S.R. Gardiner, D.C.L., 1897,
+p. 124).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Father John Gerard (1564-1637) gives particulars of the delivery of the
+letter at Hoxton in his contemporary "Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot,"
+published in 1872.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> "Calendar of Tresham Papers," p. 132.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> The word "yowe" (you), here cancelled in the original, indicates the
+writer's first thoughts, and, no doubt, his real meaning.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Various attempts have been made to explain the nature of the danger
+alluded to, which the King and Salisbury at the time, and others since, have
+understood as in allusion to the danger of the plot. Jardine describes it as
+"mere nonsense" ("Gunpowder Plot," 1835, p. 73). But the meaning clearly
+is the danger of the letter being discovered. The counsel may do him good, and
+can do him no harm, except through the danger of keeping the letter, which
+being burnt, the danger is past. There is no allusion intended to the danger of
+the plot, as that, unlike the danger of the discovery of the letter, could not be
+affected by burning the letter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Tresham's statement made when in the Tower ("State Papers, Domestic,"
+James I., xvi. 63).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> The rental of the Rushton Hall estate alone, as given in the "Return of
+Owners of Lands" in 1873, is &pound;5,044 yearly. The Tresham family also owned
+property at Hoxton and elsewhere.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> He died in the Tower six weeks after writing that letter, aged thirty-seven.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi., 63.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<h3>IDENTIFICATION OF THE HANDWRITING</h3>
+
+
+<p>The style of handwriting of the letter, as seen in the facsimile, is
+not in this writer's opinion, from a familiarity of thirty years with old
+scripts, apart from the disguise, the hand that an educated person
+would write at the time, but is essentially a commonplace and,
+no doubt intentionally, rather slovenly style of handwriting. The
+use of small "i's" for the first person seems, in view of modern
+usage, to suggest an illiterate writer; but educated writers, even
+the King,<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> then occasionally lapsed into using them. In the
+letter, however, they are consistently and may have been purposely
+used, to avert suspicion from being the work of an
+educated person; though an illiterate appearance would rather
+cause such a letter (if genuine) to be disregarded, than to deter a
+nobleman from attending the opening of Parliament, for which
+leave or licence was required.</p>
+
+<p>The handwriting has been variously ascribed, but the direction
+of this inquiry is indicated by the incautious admission made
+by Sir Edward Coke, the Attorney-General at the trial, respecting
+the real manner in which the plot was discovered. Salisbury's
+careful instructions to the Attorney-General for the trial are
+with the State papers, in which he says: "Next, you must in any
+case, when you speak of the letter which was the first ground of
+discovery, absolutely disclaim that any of these" (the conspir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>ators)
+"wrote it, though you leave the further judgment indefinite
+who else it should be."<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>Salisbury thus, in effect, requires Coke by absolutely disclaiming
+that any of the conspirators wrote (he does not say "sent") the
+letter to Monteagle, and by which alone the treason was discovered,
+to declare in Court, as upon the authority of the Government,
+that therefore none of the conspirators divulged the plot; which,
+in any case, could be true only so far as the disclosure to the
+Government was concerned. Coke, however, for some reason&mdash;perhaps
+because he was not fully in Salisbury's confidence
+respecting the letter&mdash;describes the real manner of the discovery,
+according to his own knowledge. Towards the close of his speech
+for the prosecution, he said: "The last consideration is concerning
+the admirable discovery of this treason, which was by one of
+themselves who had taken the oath and sacrament, as hath been
+said against his own will;<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> the means by a dark and doubtful letter
+to my Lord Monteagle." This, together with Salisbury's statement
+that none of the conspirators wrote the letter, shows that
+the divulging of the plot preceded the sending of the letter,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a>
+which was not, therefore, as is popularly supposed, the means by
+which the plot was discovered, except to the general public.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto those who have attempted this identification have
+invariably sought amongst such as are likely to have written the
+letter for a handwriting <i>resembling the disguised writing</i>, which
+seems a strange method of investigation, as surely the object of
+a disguised hand<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> would be to make the general appearance as
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>unlike the writer's ordinary hand as possible? The writing being
+in a set and rather large character, such is the style they have
+sought for and found, but in a much more refined hand and
+without arriving at any satisfactory result.</p>
+
+<p>It seems, however, reasonable to suspect that this set and
+rather large character may be what principally constitutes the
+disguise, and that the writer's ordinary hand would be different.
+The manner in which the lines are forced upwards at the right
+side, shows that the writer has had difficulty in maintaining the
+large, set, regular character which would push an unpractised
+hand in that direction.</p>
+
+<p>Among the more prominent peculiarities, as seen in the facsimile
+(No. 1), the writer invariably uses the long "s" as an
+initial letter in the ten examples that occur, even when the letter
+is not a capital. Such consistent use was usual in legal but not
+in private hands, though within a word the long "s" was very
+common. The "t's" are peculiar; being made with a twist or
+short line at foot, crossed midway projecting from each side,
+while a stroke is put on the top as a disguised, or elaborated
+touch. The "w's" finish with a side loop. Some of the "g's"
+show flat tops; the cypher portion being commenced from the
+left side with a stroke along the top. The tails of the "y's" are
+brought forward. The "hanger" portion of the "h's" invariably
+drags below the line which, though not unusual, again indicates
+in the numerous examples that occur the writer's habit; while
+an unusually broad quill has been used to further the disguise.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p><p>After the plot was discovered, Fawkes arrested, and the other
+conspirators had escaped into the country, Tresham remained in
+London and even offered his services to the Government. A
+week later he was taken to the Tower where, being ill, his wife
+also came, and he was attended by his serving-man, William
+Vavasour, and his maid, Joan Syer. He was induced "to avoid
+ill-usage," to say that he thought Father Garnet, against whom
+the Government desired to obtain evidence, had written a letter
+in furtherance of what was known as the Spanish Treason, in
+1602. Six weeks later, his illness becoming dangerous, he
+dictated to his man Vavasour a letter to Lord Salisbury, retracting
+his statement respecting Garnet, as being more than he really
+knew; declaring upon his salvation that he had not seen him
+"in sixteen years before," clearly meaning before the Spanish
+Treason in 1602, which is the entire subject of his letter and the
+fact; and not, as the Government misunderstood him to mean,
+before the then time of writing in 1605. This statement,
+written by Vavasour (Fascimile No. 3), was signed by Tresham,
+who asked his wife to deliver it personally to Lord Salisbury, and
+within three hours died:<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I being sent for before yo<sup>r</sup> Lordships in the Tow<sup>r</sup>, you
+told me y<sup>t</sup> (that) it was Confessed by Mr Winter, y<sup>t</sup> he
+went upon some imploym<sup>ts</sup> in ye Queens time into Spayne
+&amp; y<sup>t</sup> yo<sup>r</sup> L. did nominate to me out of his Confession all the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>partyes names y<sup>t</sup> were acquainted therew<sup>th</sup> <i>namely 4 besides
+himselfe</i><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> &amp; yet sayd y<sup>t</sup> ther were some left for me to name.
+I desired yo<sup>r</sup> L. y<sup>t</sup> I might not answere therunto bycause it was
+a matter y<sup>t</sup> was done in the Queens time and since I had my
+pardon.</p>
+
+<p>"Yo<sup>r</sup> Lordships wold not accept of y<sup>t</sup> answere, <i>but sayd y<sup>t</sup> I
+should be made to speake therunto. And I might thanke my self If I
+had beene worse used than I had beene since my Coming to the
+howse</i><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> I told yo<sup>r</sup> Lords<sup>p</sup>
+(<i>to avoyde ill usage</i>)<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> y<sup>t</sup> I thought Mr.
+Walley<a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> was p'cured to write his letter for the furthering of this
+Jeorney. Now my LL. having bethoughte myselfe of this
+businesse (being to weake to use my owne hand in writing this)
+w<sup>ch</sup> I do deliver here upon my salvacon to be trew as near as I
+can call to mynde, desiring y<sup>t</sup> my form'r Confession may be called
+in &amp; y<sup>t</sup> this may stand for truthe. It was more than I knew
+y<sup>t</sup> Mr. Walley<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> was used herein, &amp; to give your Lords'p p'ofe
+besids my oathe, I had not seene him in sixteene yere before,
+nor never had messuadge<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> nor letter from him &amp; to this purpose
+I desired Mr. Leiftenant to lett me see my Confession who
+told me I should not unlesse I wold inlarge it w<sup>ch</sup> he did p'ceive
+I had no meaning to doe.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:30em">(Signed) Francis Tresame.</p>
+<p>"24 m'ch 1605 [-6].<br />
+This noate was of my owne<br />
+hand writing<br />
+By me Willia' Vavasore."<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p><p>Tresham's statement being misunderstood to mean that he had
+not seen Garnet for sixteen years,<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> while the Government knew
+from Tresham himself<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> that he had recently been in Garnet's
+company, was considered such awful perjury to commit when
+dying as to be incredible. Coke wrote to Salisbury: "It is true
+that no man may judge in this case, for <i>inter pontem et fontem</i> he
+might find grace; but it is the most fearful example that I ever
+knew of to be made so evident as now this is." Salisbury at the
+trial said: "Mr. Tresham in his lifetime accused you, Garnet,
+before the lords, yet now upon his salvation, he under his hand
+did excuse you, being at the very point of death, saying he had
+not seen you <i>in sixteen years</i>, which matter, I assure you, before
+you were taken shook me very much. But, thanks be to God, since
+the coming of the King, I have known so much of your doctrine
+and practices, that hereafter they shall not much trouble me." The
+writing of Tresham's dying statement was, therefore, particularly,
+inquired into, and Vavasour had to make a written statement respecting
+his knowledge of it; evidently for comparison of the handwriting.
+This appears to have so alarmed him that in his statement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+(Fascimile No. 4), written in the presence of Sir William Waad,
+Lieutenant of the Tower, he asserted that the dying statement
+was written by Mrs. Tresham, at her husband's dictation:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I do rememb' y<sup>t</sup> my m<sup>r</sup> did cause my m<sup>res</sup> to write a note
+wherto he did did (<i>sic</i>) bid the mayd and me beare witnes y<sup>t</sup>
+he did set his hand unto it, but it was not reade at y<sup>t</sup> time but
+since m<sup>res</sup> Tressa' did reede it to me and sayd it was y<sup>t</sup> noate y<sup>t</sup>
+my m<sup>r</sup> did bid us beare witnesse and she comaunded me to carye
+a letter to S<sup>r</sup> Waulter Cope and to desire him to deliver the
+noate inclosed to my Lorde of Salsburye and further my m<sup>r</sup> did
+say y<sup>t</sup> he cold not write him selfe bycause he was not able but
+he did sett his hande unto it as before I have sayd and this was
+done some day before his death.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:25em">"(Signed) By me William Vavasor.</p>
+<p>
+"23. March 1605 [-6].<br />
+Taken before us:<br />
+(Signed) W. Waad.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Willus Lane."<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>If for any reason Vavasour did not desire his writing to be
+brought into question, there could be no harm, beyond his falsehood,
+in naming Mrs. Tresham as the writer of that letter, as
+neither could possibly be blamed for writing such a statement
+for his master. The question arises, whether Vavasour would
+have ventured upon an untrue statement, except through panic,
+unless feeling sure of Mrs. Tresham's support? As Mrs. Tresham
+throughout made no attempt to conceal the truth for Vavasour,
+she may have been unaware of any reason for diverting inquiry
+from himself respecting letters written for his master. Even if
+Mrs. Tresham had been willing to connive at his falsehood, she
+could not have done so; as Salisbury, being convinced that she
+not only wrote but composed her husband's dying statement and
+induced him to sign to shield Father Garnet, was so incensed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+against her that he declined to see her,<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> or even to receive her
+husband's statement, when she tried to deliver it. She was
+therefore obliged, in view of possible consequences to herself,
+to own<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> that Vavasour wrote the statement at her husband's
+dictation. Vavasour was then examined in the Tower by Chief
+Justice Popham and by Coke, when he confessed<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> that he
+wrote the dying statement at his master's dictation, and had
+denied it through fear, which could only arise from having
+written some other and less innocent letter for him.</p>
+
+<p>Vavasour, when writing his untrue statement, would avoid
+using his ordinary handwriting, as already appearing in the letter
+in question (No. 3), which he had ascribed to Mrs. Tresham.
+He, therefore, disguises his writing, so far as having to write
+off-hand and under the observation of the Lieutenant of the
+Tower and an attendant Justice, with the consciousness that
+he is writing what is false, and while having to be careful not
+to reproduce his former disguised hand, as seen in the anonymous
+letter, permits him; and the hand thus produced betrays him
+as the writer of that letter, with which the writing is, in itself,
+identical. The long "s" is invariably used for a word commencing
+with that letter, even when not a capital; there are
+the same peculiar "t's," though in a less disguised or elaborated
+form than those of the anonymous letter, but there they clearly
+are; the "w's" have no side loops, but in Vavasour's note at
+foot of No. 3 a conspicuous example is seen; there are no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+"g's";<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> the "y's" are particularly noticeable, being in two
+varieties: Vavasour's ordinary "y," of which the tail is tucked
+back; in the other, the tail is brought forward; and no one
+can fail to see that the latter are by the same hand as those in
+the letter; the "hangers" of the "h's" invariably drag below
+the line; and generally, the writing may throughout be detected
+as by the same hand that wrote the anonymous letter.</p>
+
+<p>The best specimen of Vavasour's handwriting, although not
+so useful as No. 4 for identification purposes, is in the MS.
+entitled "A Treatise against Lying," etc., identified by William
+Tresham as having been transcribed by Vavasour for Francis
+Tresham, which is now in the Bodleian Library (Facsimile
+No. 2). To anyone familiar with the handwriting of the period,
+Vavasour's writing is the usual law-writer's or copyist's hand,
+such as appears in conveyances and deeds of the time,<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> and
+is not the style of hand that an educated person would then
+write. Each initial "s" is of the long form; each "w" has
+a side loop; the "g's" are flat-topped; and the "h's" come
+below the line, etc. Tresham's dying statement (No. 3) appears
+to be in a similar but smaller<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> and less carefully written hand.
+Vavasour wrote a neat, small hand, which, when disguising, the
+probability is that he would attempt an opposite style. If it
+were not for the testimony of the Lieutenant of the Tower,
+that the untrue statement (No. 4) was actually written in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+presence by Vavasour, the writing would not, from the general
+appearance, readily be recognized as by the same hand that
+wrote Tresham's dying statement (No. 3), and so acknowledged
+by Vavasour. This shows that he was naturally clever in
+disguising his hand, hence his employment by Tresham in
+writing the anonymous letter to Lord Monteagle.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Upon the evidence of the handwriting alone, William
+Vavasour was the writer of that letter.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> In the "Correspondence of James I. with Sir Robert Cecil" (published by
+the Camden Society in 1861), both the King and the Earl of Northumberland
+occasionally use them (pp. 64, 70, etc.). The latter also uses them in his general
+correspondence.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xix. 94.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Tresham was throughout the only unwilling conspirator, but he did not take
+the oath sacramentally, only seven or eight of the thirteen conspirators did so.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> "No wise man could think my lord (Monteagle) to be so weak as to take
+any alarm to absent himself from Parliament upon such a loose advertisement"
+(Letter from Salisbury to Cornwallis, November 9).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Salisbury, in his letter to Cornwallis, particularly describes the writing as
+being "in a hand disguised," and he, like Monteagle, would know not only the
+writer, but how the letter came to be written.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> In an expert examination of handwriting, the angle at which the pen is
+held, as indicated by the long strokes, and the spacing between the lines which a
+writer naturally uses, have also to be considered&mdash;being the basis of handwriting,
+the first movements that are made in learning to write, and become each writer's
+characteristics in those respects. In each specimen of William Vavasour's handwriting,
+including the anonymous letter, the long strokes are generally at the
+same angle, and the spacing between the lines (except in No. 3) is throughout
+generally similar, while his brother George's hand is in each respect quite
+different.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> "He died this night, about two of the clock after midnight, with very great
+pain; for though his spirits were much spent and his body dead, a-lay above two
+hours in departing" (Lieutenant of the Tower to Salisbury, December 23, 1605,
+"State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvii. 56). Tresham's death, being so opportune
+for Monteagle, if not for Salisbury, has been attributed to poisoning; but
+Stowe's "Annals" (1615, p. 880) states it to have been occasioned by strangury,
+though giving the date of his death incorrectly as November 22. Ten years
+later a subsequent Lieutenant of the Tower was executed for poisoning a State
+prisoner.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> The portion printed in italics was underlined by Coke for <i>omission</i> when the
+statement was read at the trial. The "4 besides himself," having reference to
+Monteagle, was therefore suppressed; the other suppressions in the statement
+were made for obvious and unfair reasons.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> "Walley" was one of Father Garnet's aliases.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> This is very suggestive of a law-writer's spelling of "message" (messuage
+and tenement).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> When Garnet returned from Rome in 1585, as Superior of the Jesuits in
+England, he made the Treshams' acquaintance, being a prominent Roman Catholic
+family, when Francis was eighteen. Garnet was not their confessor, and the
+acquaintance had dropped for at least sixteen years before the Spanish Treason
+in 1602. Garnet's statement, made (March 23, 1605-6) after Tresham's death, is:
+"I knew him about 18 years ago, but since discontinued my acquaintance until
+the time between his trouble in my lord of Essex's tumult and the Queen's
+death" (1602-3). Garnet would have neither motive nor inclination to shield
+Tresham, whose betrayal of the plot had brought Garnet to the Tower. He
+might otherwise have discerned Tresham's real meaning in his statement of
+"sixteen years before," which the contemporary Jesuit Father Gerard correctly
+interprets as before 1602 in his narrative of the plot. It was not Garnet's complicity
+in the Spanish Treason in the previous reign (for which he had his pardon)
+that the Government cared about, and that so shook Salisbury, but simply Tresham's
+dying statement being misunderstood to mean that he had not seen Garnet for
+the past sixteen years, which is all that the present writer is concerned with.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi. 62.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> So he said at the trial: "She came to see me, but I spared either to speak
+with her or hear her." But Mrs. Tresham in her examination said that, "in
+respect of her sorrow and heaviness," she "was enforced to send it"; and in her
+note enclosing the dying statement to Sir Walter Cope for delivery, she wrote:
+"My sorrows are such that I am altogether unfit to come abroad; wherefore I
+would entreat you to deliver it yourself unto my lord, that I may have my
+husband's desire fulfilled therein" ("State Papers, Domestic," James I., ccxvi. 211).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Examination of Mrs. Tresham (<i>ibid.</i>, ccxvi. 209).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Examination of William Vavasour (<i>ibid.</i>, ccxvi. 207).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Vavasour, in his authentic and ordinary writing, used flat-topped "g's," as
+seen in the anonymous letter, as well as in No. 2, ascribed to him.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> The deed of Robert Catesby's marriage settlement with Katherine, eldest
+daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh, of Stoneleigh (1592), in the possession of T.W.
+Whitmore-Jones; Esq., of Chastleton House, Oxon, is in a similar legal hand, with
+precisely the same peculiarities of "s," "g," "w," "h," etc. A law-writer's hand
+to-day is in a "copper-plate" style, which, although most suitable for the purpose,
+is not the kind of hand that an educated person would write whose business was
+not copying, and there was then a similar distinction between them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Apparently owing to restrictions of space and paper.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> The original letter is framed and exhibited upon a pedestal in the Museum
+of the Public Record Office. The facsimile has, therefore, had to be made
+from a negative taken of the letter as seen through glass, while the other
+facsimiles have the advantage of being made from negatives taken of documents
+unglazed.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<h3>THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL'S OPINION OF
+VAVASOUR'S GUILT</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Attorney-General in his speech for the prosecution at
+Father Garnet's trial (March 28, 1606), as given in the official
+report, alluding to Tresham's dying statement, said: "Upon his
+death-bed he commanded Vavasour his man, <i>whom I think
+deeply guilty in this treason</i>, to write a letter to the Earl of
+Salisbury."</p>
+
+<p>Henry Garnet's trial was purposely held at the City Guildhall,
+instead of Westminster Hall, the usual trial place where
+the conspirators had been tried, in order to make the occasion
+as imposing, and his case as exemplary, as possible, on account
+of his position as Superior of the Jesuits in England.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> The
+King was privately present, and there was a most distinguished
+assembly of ambassadors, nobility, and others.</p>
+
+<p>Before this audience, the Attorney-General, whose opinion
+determines or considerably influences a prosecution for high<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+treason, states in Court that a person who is not even present
+nor arraigned is in his opinion "deeply guilty" in the most
+infamous treason ever attempted, and for which the conspirators
+had already been executed: so "heinous, horrible and damnable"<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a>
+was it considered, that the authorities had even proposed
+to devise some specially severe form of torture for the perpetrators
+to undergo, in addition to the usual terrible penalty for high
+treason.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
+
+<p>Coke, who it will be remembered was the most eminent
+counsel and the greatest jurist of the time, however desirous
+he would be of bringing to light everything connected with such
+a treason upon the occasion, would scarcely, as legally representing
+the Crown in his capacity of the King's Attorney-General,
+express so extremely damaging an opinion without
+sufficient reason. There is something in his mind concerning
+Vavasour,<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> respecting whom he is not satisfied; and it can
+only be Vavasour's having written, not the letter to Salisbury&mdash;as
+that could not possibly implicate him, nor render him
+"deeply guilty" in a treason <i>which had been discovered and
+ended six weeks before the letter to Salisbury was written</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>&mdash;but
+that other and most treasonable letter to Monteagle, for there
+was nothing else against him in the matter.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> Coke evidently
+knows, or suspects, that Vavasour wrote the warning letter; and
+he cannot understand why he is not brought to trial.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> He
+therefore expresses his opinion of Vavasour's guilt as strongly as
+possible, and even describes him with what for an Attorney-General
+in ordinary circumstances would be a singular redundancy
+of legal expression, as being "deeply guilty" in the treason.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a>
+No one would know better than the Attorney-General that in
+high treason itself the law makes no distinction whatever of
+degrees of guilt, nor can there even be an accessory: once participant,
+whatever the part played may be, all alike are principals.</p>
+
+<p>Coke's statement in Court has been officially in print for over
+three hundred years, yet no investigator seems to have noticed
+it and so have been led to inquire what was done to Vavasour?&mdash;by
+which alone a clue might have been obtained to the writer of
+the letter.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> Although Vavasour was publicly stated by the
+Attorney-General to be "deeply guilty" in a treason of which
+Salisbury wrote: "I shall esteem my life unworthily given me
+when I shall be found slack in searching to the bottom of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+dregs of this foul poison, or lack resolution to further to my small
+power the prosecution and execution of ALL those whose hearts
+and hands can appear foul in this savage practise"<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a>&mdash;yet he was
+not even brought to trial, while other serving-men were tried and
+executed.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is questionable whether Salisbury, unless agreeing with
+Coke's opinion of Vavasour's guilt, would have allowed the allusion
+to appear in the official report of the trial, prepared by himself and
+sanctioned by the King;<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> as, if innocent of the treason, an
+intolerable injustice would have been done to Vavasour by the
+publication, which probably neither the King nor Salisbury would
+have permitted, in making a senseless attack upon the reputation
+of an innocent man, who would certainly have protested.</p>
+
+<p>Without, however, assuming too advanced ideas of justice for
+the time, it is unlikely that so capable a person as Salisbury appears
+to have been,<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> could fail to perceive that the publication of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+Attorney-General's opinion of Vavasour's guilt must, in the
+absence of any prosecution, call attention to Vavasour, and thus
+furnish a clue to the writer of the letter. Salisbury, though
+generally fair-minded, might not trouble himself about Vavasour's
+reputation, but he would about his own, which would be affected
+by his failure, after his strongly expressed determination, in
+bringing to justice ALL who were concerned in such a treason;
+and this would still apply, even if Coke's published allusion to
+Vavasour's guilt was merely counsel's rhetoric. Coke, however,
+at the moment when making that allusion, was not declaiming
+upon the treason, but simply stating a fact about Tresham, with
+the King listening; and in alluding to Vavasour, he expresses
+what is in his mind&mdash;"<i>whom I think deeply guilty in this
+treason</i>": evidently his deliberate opinion, which he would
+have every opportunity of forming, as, with the exception of
+Salisbury and the conspirators, he would know more of the
+workings of the plot than anyone. Salisbury's chief concern,
+apparently, was at all costs to keep Vavasour silent, which
+he did; while his anxiety "to leave the further judgment
+indefinite" respecting the writer of the letter, plainly shows that
+the matter would not bear inquiry.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The only possible conclusion, therefore, is that Vavasour wrote
+the anonymous letter to Lord Monteagle, which the identity of
+the handwriting absolutely confirms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> "My Sovereign determined that your trial should be in this honourable
+assembly. For who is Garnet that he should be called hither, or we should
+trouble ourselves in this Court with him? which I protest were sufficient for the
+greatest Cardinal in Rome, if in this case he should be tried. No, Mr. Garnet, it
+is not for your cause that you are called hither, but to testify to the world the
+foulness of your fact, the errors of your religion," etc. Lord Salisbury's Speech
+at the Trial. (Gerard). When at the trial, rebuking Garnet for untruthfulness
+in his previous examination before the Council, Salisbury said: "You stiffly denied
+it upon your soul, reiterating it with so many detestable execrations, <i>as our hair
+stood upright</i>" (Jardine).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> The Act for the Attainder of the Conspirators ("Statutes of the Realm,"
+3 James I., c. 2). Coke himself characterized the treason at the trial as "beyond
+all examples, whether in fact or fiction, even of the tragic poets who did beat
+their wits to represent the most fearful and horrible murders." And in the
+prayer to be used in the Anniversary Service for the Fifth of November it is
+described as having been attempted "in a most barbarous and savage manner,
+beyond the examples of former ages. From this unnatural conspiracy, not
+our merit, but Thy mercy; not our foresight, but Thy providence, delivered
+us," etc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> In the previous century, in a case where a more severe penalty was desired
+to be inflicted, the offender was, by Act of Parliament, publicly <i>boiled alive</i>
+("Statutes of the Realm," 22 Henry VIII., c. 9).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Coke worked hard for some months in thoroughly preparing the evidence
+for the trial, so that little would escape him. As he wrote to Salisbury: "If your
+lordship knew what pains have been taken herein, your lordship would pity the
+old attorney" (Hatfield MSS.).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Vavasour's falsehood respecting Mrs. Tresham had nothing to do with the
+treason. Coke seems to mention Vavasour's guilt as if antecedent to the writing
+of the letter to Salisbury.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> This work is merely the identification of the writer of the anonymous letter
+only, and makes no attempt to answer the much more difficult question of what
+the arrangement was between Salisbury and Monteagle, or between Monteagle
+and Tresham, respecting the sending of the letter; but with regard to Coke, it is
+unlikely, from what is known of their intercourse and their frequent differences
+in court, that he would be admitted to any particular confidence with Salisbury in
+the matter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Vavasour's concealment of guilty knowledge as the writer of the warning
+letter would probably be only misprision of treason, unless Coke knew or suspected
+that he was directly concerned in the treason.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> The present writer does not owe the identification to that clue, which
+was not met with until after Vavasour had been identified as the writer of the
+letter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Letter to the Earl of Dunfermline, Lord Chancellor of Scotland. December 1,
+1605 ("State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvii. 2). Salisbury was created K.G.
+with almost regal pomp for his services in the matter. "Tuesday the 20th of
+May (1606), at Windsor, were installed Knights of the Garter, Robert, Earl of
+Salisbury, who set forward from his house in the Strand, being almost as honourably
+accompanied and with as great train of lords, knights, gentlemen, and officers of
+the Court, with others besides his peculiar servants very richly attired, and bravely
+mounted, as was the King when he rid in state through London" (Stowe's
+"Annals," 1615, p. 883).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Bates, Catesby's serving-man, at London; others in the country.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Although known as the "King's book," the report of the trial was evidently
+compiled by Salisbury and corrected by the King.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Salisbury's statesmanship is evinced by the advice he wrote to James (I.)
+when King of Scotland, and impatiently awaiting Queen Elizabeth's demise:
+"Your best approach towards your greatest end, is by your Majesty's clear and
+temperate courses, to secure the heart of the highest, to whose sex and quality
+nothing is so improper as either needless expostulations, or over much curiosity
+in her own actions. The first showing unquietness in yourself; the second
+challenging some untimely interest in hers; both which, as they are best forborne
+when there is no cause, so be it far from me (if there shall be cause), to
+persuade you to receive wrongs and be silent" ("Secret Correspondence," Camden
+Society, 1860, p. 7).</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<h3>FRANCIS TRESHAM'S CONFIDENCE WHEN IN
+THE TOWER</h3>
+
+
+<p>Upon Tresham's death in the Tower (December 23, 1605), the
+Lieutenant wrote to Salisbury: "I find his friends were marvellous
+confident if he had escaped this sickness, and have given
+out in this place that they feared not the course of justice."<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a>
+As the late Dr. Gardiner observed: "This confidence they could
+only have derived from himself, and it could only have been
+founded on one ground."</p>
+
+<p>Had Tresham's committal to the Tower been otherwise than
+a mere formality, or "a farce," neither his wife nor his servants
+would under any circumstances have been permitted to attend or
+even see him whatever the state of his health might have been;
+and had he survived, nothing serious would have been done to
+him,<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> any more than was done to his "deeply guilty" servant
+Vavasour.</p>
+
+<p>Tresham, though dreading, as he said, "the infamous brand of
+an accuser,"<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> was as evidently the Informer to the Government,
+either directly or indirectly through Monteagle, as his servant
+Vavasour was the writer of the letter.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p><div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvii. 58.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> He left no male issue, and was succeeded in the family property by his
+next brother Lewis, who was created a baronet June 29, 1611, one of the second
+batch of baronets made on the institution of that Order the previous May 22 by
+James I.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi. 63.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h3>
+
+<h3>THE VAVASOURS AS DEPENDANTS OF THE
+TRESHAM FAMILY</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Tresham Papers<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> contain much information respecting the
+Vavasours as dependants of that family. Sir Thomas Tresham
+had a bailiff or collector, named Thomas Vavasour, an old and
+much valued Catholic servant,<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> who had, with perhaps other
+children, two sons, George and William, and a daughter, Muriel.
+George, who had been educated, was in June, 1596, sent up by
+his father with a letter to Sir Thomas, then in town, in order that
+he might be entered at one of the Inns of Court, as Sir Thomas
+might advise: "Mr. Francis Tresham has encouraged him in this
+kind of study and the cost already bestowed must not be lost.
+He knows he has nothing else to trust to but his learning, nor does
+he seem so fit for anything else."<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> He was accordingly admitted
+to the Inner Temple in November of that year,<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> where Lewis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+Tresham (Sir Thomas's second son) had been admitted the previous
+November, and to whom there is an allusion of George
+Vavasour acting as tutor.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> William Vavasour, the other son,
+was servant to Sir Thomas, and though not so educated as his
+brother George, was not a livery-servant or footman,<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> but appears
+to have held a similar or superior position with Sir Thomas, to
+that which Bates, who kept his own man,<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> held with Catesby, a
+kind of secretary-valet of the time.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> After Sir Thomas's death
+he served his eldest son Francis Tresham in the same capacity;
+while the sister Muriel Vavasour, who bore the same (then uncommon)
+Christian name as Lady Tresham, and may have been
+her god-daughter, became "gentlewoman without livery" at &pound;5
+yearly<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> to Lady Monteagle, who was Lady Tresham's daughter.
+Both George Vavasour and his brother William were confidentially
+employed by Francis Tresham as amanuenses, where secrecy
+was necessary in transcribing religious or political treatises, such
+as were then circulated amongst Roman Catholics, and, being
+treasonable, dared not be printed.</p>
+
+<p>On December 1, 1605, the Attorney-General, while investigating
+the conspiracy, obtained two MS. volumes which had
+been found in George Vavasour's chambers in the Inner Temple.
+One, officially described as a "quarto" volume, though an octavo
+(8&frac14; x 5&frac34;), entitled "A Treatise against Lying,"<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>was stated by
+George Vavasour, on examination<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> to have been lent him by
+Francis Tresham to copy,<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> and the copy he had made was contained
+in the folio, the other MS. found. He denied any
+knowledge of the handwriting in the "quarto" volume, except
+that he had recopied the last page (61), in order to replace a torn
+leaf, bearing in Latin the Imprimatur of George Blackwell,
+Archpriest of the English Jesuits. William Tresham (Francis
+Tresham's youngest brother), on being examined by Coke, said
+that he thought the "quarto" MS. was in William Vavasour's
+handwriting, who was formerly his father's servant, and since
+serving his eldest brother in the Tower.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> William Tresham
+may have seen Vavasour so employed at home and would know
+his writing; while George Vavasour might not wish to bring his
+brother into question. The folio MS. has disappeared, but the
+"quarto" copy, as ascribed to William Vavasour, is now with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+Archbishop Laud's MSS. (No. 655) in the Bodleian Library, and
+was published in 1851.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100%;"><br />
+
+<img src="images/illo2.jpg"  style="width: 40%;" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="link"><a href="images/illo2.jpg">View larger image</a></span><br />
+<span class="caption"><br />FACSIMILE No. 2.<br />
+
+A page of the MS. intitled &quot;A Treatise against Lying, &amp;c.&quot;, formerly belonging to Francis Tresham,
+of which the handwriting was attributed by his brother, William Tresham, to William Vavasour.
+Now in the Bodleian Library. (Laud MSS. 655, folio 44.)</span>
+<br /><br /></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100%;"><br />
+<img src="images/illo3.jpg"  style="width: 40%;" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="link"><a href="images/illo3.jpg">View larger image</a></span><br />
+<span class="caption"><br />FACSIMILE No. 3.<br />
+
+William Vavasour&#39;s handwriting in the letter to the Earl of Salisbury, dictated and signed by Francis
+Tresham, when dying in the Tower. December 22, 1605.
+(State Papers, Domestic. James I. ccxvi. 211.)<br /><br />
+
+Stated by Vavasour to have been written by Mrs. Tresham. On March 24, 1605-6,
+he confessed that he wrote it, and signed a note to it to that effect.</span>
+<br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100%;"><br />
+<img src="images/illo4.jpg"  style="width: 40%;" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="link"><a href="images/illo4.jpg">View larger image</a></span><br />
+<span class="caption"><br />FACSIMILE No. 4.<br />
+
+William Vavasour&#39;s handwriting in his untrue statement written in the presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower,
+that No. 3 was written by Mrs. Tresham. Dated March 23, 1605-6. (State Papers, Domestic. James I. ccxvi. 207.)<br /><br />
+
+***To avoid detection of his falsehood, he writes a hand quite different from his ordinary writing in Nos. 2 and 3, thus producing
+a hand which is in itself identical with his former disguised writing as seen in the anonymous letter (No. 1).</span>
+<br /><br /></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100%;"><br />
+<img src="images/illo5.jpg"  style="width: 40%;" alt="" title="" /><br />
+<span class="link"><a href="images/illo5.jpg">View larger image</a></span><br />
+<span class="caption"><br />FACSIMILE No. 5.<br />
+
+George Vavasour&#39;s handwriting on the last leaf, which he renewed for Francis Tresham, of the MS.
+intitled &quot;A Treatise against Lying, &amp;c.&quot; (Laud MSS. 655, folio 61.)</span>
+<br /><br /></div>
+
+<p>George Vavasour's handwriting upon the last leaf of the MS.
+(Facsimile No. 5) shows a much more refined and educated
+hand than his brother's, from which the writing is in every
+respect different. A small "s" is invariably used in commencing
+a word with that letter; the "t's " are quite different; the "w"
+finishes with an inner, not an outer loop; the "g's" have no flat
+tops; and the "hangers" of the "h's" do not descend below the
+line. The writing is evidently an educated hand for the time,
+and cannot readily be imagined as using small "i's" for the first
+person, such as are used in, and seem to accord so well with, the
+much less educated handwriting of the warning letter.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>WILLIAM VAVASOUR, the Tresham family serving-man,
+is thus not only conclusively proved to have written the
+anonymous letter to Lord Monteagle, but most probably was
+also the "unknown man of a reasonable tall personage" who is so
+quaintly described in the Government story as having delivered
+the letter.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Calendared by the Historical MSS. Commission. "Report on MSS. in
+various Collections, vol. iii., 1904. The MSS. of T.B. Clarke-Thornhill, Esq., of
+Rushton Hall, by Mrs. R.C. Lomas." These important family papers were
+preserved and discovered in a curious manner. In 1828, when making alterations
+at Rushton Hall, on removing a partition wall, they were found with some
+theological books in a large bundle wrapped in a sheet, which had been built
+into a recess in the wall. As the papers, commencing in 1576, with a few of
+earlier date, end in November, 1605, they were probably thus hidden away on
+Tresham's arrest.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> "Calendar," p. 59.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 89.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> "Students admitted to the Inner Temple, 1547-1660" (1877).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> "Calendar of Tresham Papers," p. 90.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> His name does not appear in the list of Sir Thomas's ten livery servants
+as retained while the establishment was at Hoxton before Monteagle's
+tenancy, of which the accounts are with the Tresham Papers. Under the
+stable charges is the keep of a horse for Thomas Vavasour, the father (<i>ibid.</i>,
+pp. 47, 50).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> "Examination of Christopher Story, Thomas Bates's man" ("State Papers,
+Domestic," James I., xvi. 28, 1).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> It will be remembered that Salisbury in the official story describes Ward,
+who was Monteagle's secretary, as "one of his men."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Each of the other female attendants and servants, even "Mawdlyn the
+Frenchwoman" at &pound;10 yearly, have a livery ("Calendar of Tresham Papers,"
+p. 50).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> The manuscript was originally entitled "A Treatise upon Equivocation,"
+which was altered by Father Garnet into "A treatise against Lying &amp; fraudule't
+dissimulatio'. Newly overseen by ye Authour &amp; published for the defence of
+Innocency, &amp; for the Instructio' of Ignora'ts." It purports to show when
+equivocation may "lawfully" be used, and may have been compiled by Garnet,
+as the title-page and the annotations throughout are in his handwriting. The
+folio manuscript by George Vavasour was evidently a fair copy of the revised
+"quarto," and Tresham's reason for having it made.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> "Examination of George Vavasour, of the Inner Temple, Gent., December 9,
+1605" ("State Papers, Domestic," James I., ccxvi. 151).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> He also confessed having transcribed the treatise "De Officio Principis
+Christiani" (Further examination, December 13, 1605, <i>ibid.</i>, ccxvi. 155). Coke
+alluded to these manuscripts at the trial as "certain heretical, damnable and
+treasonable books discovered." He said: "There is in Tresham's book, 'De
+Officio Principis,' an easier and more expedite way than all these to fetch the
+crown off the head of any king christened whatsoever, which is this that:
+'<i>Princeps indulgendo h&aelig;reticis, amittit regnum.</i>'&mdash;If any prince shall but tolerate or
+favour heretics, he loseth his kingdom." This shows the confidential nature of
+the Vavasours' employment as amanuenses by Tresham in such matters.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Examination of William Tresham, December 9, 1605 ("State Papers,
+Domestic," James I., xvii. 23).</p></div></div>
+
+
+
+<p class="center">THE END</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">PRINTED BY
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Identification of the Writer of the
+Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605, by William Parker and Francis Tresham and William Vavasour
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605
+
+Author: William Parker
+        Francis Tresham
+        William Vavasour
+
+Release Date: August 24, 2009 [EBook #29777]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANONYMOUS LETTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Jane Hyland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE IDENTIFICATION OF
+THE WRITER OF THE
+ANONYMOUS LETTER TO
+LORD MONTEAGLE IN 1605
+
+    "A strange letter, from a strange hand,
+    by a strange messenger; without date to
+    it, name at it, and (I had almost said)
+    sense in it. A letter which, even when it
+    was opened, was still sealed, such the
+    affected obscurity therein."
+
+               FULLER'S _Church History_, x. 32.
+
+
+LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL,
+HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LTD.
+1916
+
+[Transcriber's note:
+[***] denotes an asterism, that is, a triangle comprising three asterices.
+A carat symbol ^ indicates that the ensuing letters of the word are
+superscript letters.]
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+One of the great mysteries of English history is the anonymous letter to
+Lord Monteagle, warning him not to attend the opening of Parliament,
+appointed for the Fifth of November, 1605, which is popularly supposed
+to have led to the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. The writer's
+identity was carefully concealed by the Government at the time; the
+intention being, as explained by Lord Salisbury, "to leave the further
+judgment indefinite" regarding it. The official statements are,
+therefore, as unsatisfactory as might be expected in a matter that, for
+State reasons, has not been straightforwardly related. The letter,
+however, remaining and in fair preservation, there was always the
+possibility of the handwriting being identified; and this, after the
+lapse of over three hundred years, is now accomplished.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+    PREFACE                                                          v
+
+    SECTION
+
+    I. HISTORICAL ANALYSIS                                           1
+
+    II. THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE LETTER                             5
+
+    III. IDENTIFICATION OF THE HANDWRITING                           9
+
+    IV. THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL'S OPINION OF VAVASOUR'S GUILT          19
+
+    V. FRANCIS TRESHAM'S CONFIDENCE WHEN IN THE TOWER               24
+
+    VI. THE VAVASOURS AS DEPENDANTS OF THE TRESHAM FAMILY           25
+
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF FACSIMILES
+
+
+    1. The anonymous letter as delivered to Lord Monteagle, October 26,
+    1605, warning him not to attend the opening of Parliament
+    appointed for the Fifth of November (From the original letter in
+    the Museum of the Public Record Office)                  _Frontispiece_
+
+    2. A page of the MS. entitled "A Treatise against Lying," etc.,
+    formerly belonging to Francis Tresham, of which the handwriting
+    was attributed by his brother, William Tresham, to William
+    Vavasour. Now in the Bodleian Library. (Laud MSS. 655,
+    folio 44)                                                        [1]
+
+    3. William Vavasour's handwriting in the letter to the Earl of
+    Salisbury, dictated and signed by Francis Tresham when dying in
+    the Tower, December 22, 1605 ("State Papers, Domestic," James I.,
+    ccxvi. 211)                                                      [1]
+
+        Stated by Vavasour to have been written by Mrs. Tresham.
+        On March 24, 1605-6, he confessed that he wrote it and signed
+        a note to it to that effect.
+
+    4. William Vavasour's handwriting in his _untrue_ statement, written in
+    the presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, that No. 3 was
+    written by Mrs. Tresham. Dated March 23, 1605-6 ("State
+    Papers, Domestic," James I., ccxvi. 207)                         [1]
+
+       [***]To avoid detection of his falsehood, he writes a hand
+       quite different from his ordinary writing in Nos. 2 and 3, thus
+       producing a hand which is in itself identical with his former
+       disguised writing as seen in the anonymous letter (No. 1).
+
+    5. George Vavasour's handwriting on the last leaf, which he renewed
+    for Francis Tresham, of the MS. entitled "A Treatise against
+    Lying," etc. (Laud MSS. 655, folio 61)                _To face page 26_
+
+
+
+
+
+The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord
+Monteagle
+
+I
+
+HISTORICAL ANALYSIS
+
+
+Francis Tresham, of Rushton, in Northamptonshire, has recently
+(September 11, 1605) succeeded his father, Sir Thomas Tresham (a great
+sufferer for the Roman Catholic religion), in an inheritance of at least
+five thousand a year, in present money; after having, as he says, spent
+most of his time overburdened with debts and wants, and resolves within
+himself to spend his days quietly. His first cousin, Robert Catesby,
+being hard-up with funds exhausted in financing the scheme known as the
+Gunpowder Plot, seeing in Tresham the chance of obtaining a further
+supply (though previously distrusting him), induces him, in the
+interests of their religion, to join the conspiracy, of which he thus
+becomes the thirteenth, and last, sworn conspirator (October 14, 1605).
+Catesby is careful to impose the oath of secrecy before fully disclosing
+the plot; of which Tresham, on hearing, entirely disapproves, and
+endeavours to dissuade his cousin from, or even to defer it; meanwhile
+offering him the use of his own purse if he will do so. Finding he
+cannot prevail with him, he is very urgent that the Lords Monteagle and
+Stourton, particularly the former, may be warned, each having married
+Tresham's sisters; but Catesby can give no definite assurance. Tresham
+then intends, as he says, to get the conspirators shipped away, and to
+inform the Government by some unknown, or anonymous, means.
+
+Tresham has a serving-man named William Vavasour, who attended Sir
+Thomas Tresham, and who, with his elder brother, George Vavasour (whose
+education Tresham has particularly encouraged), and their sister Muriel
+(gentlewoman to Lady Monteagle who is the daughter of "Muriel" Lady
+Tresham) are favoured dependants of the Tresham family, being the
+children of an old and much valued Catholic servant. Both George and
+William are confidentially employed by Tresham as amanuenses, in
+transcribing religious, or treasonable, treatises of the time.
+
+Lord Monteagle unexpectedly orders a supper to be prepared (October 26,
+1605) at his house at Hoxton (belonging to his brother-in-law Tresham),
+and where he has not been for some months. As he is about to go to
+supper, a letter is handed to him by his footman, to whom it has been
+given in the street by "an unknown man of a reasonable tall personage,"
+who knows that he will find him at so unfrequented a residence.
+Monteagle opens the letter, which is anonymous, pretends he cannot
+understand it, and shows it to his secretary, Thomas Ward, who, he is
+aware, is familiar with some of the conspirators; whom Ward, the next
+evening, tells of the receipt of the letter, which Monteagle at once
+takes to Whitehall, about three miles away, where he finds the Earl of
+Salisbury (Principal Secretary of State) with other lords of the Council
+together assembled, "ready for supper." The Government censor, or
+suppress, the name of the place where the letter was delivered. The
+conspirators and the Jesuit priests, who are involved in the plot
+through the confessional, at once suspect Tresham; and Catesby and
+Winter directly charge him with having betrayed them, which he denies,
+while urging them to escape to France, and giving them money for the
+purpose. Although Tresham is a sworn conspirator, he alone remains
+behind and at large, after Fawkes's arrest (November 4-5, 1605), and
+flight of the others into the country, and offers his services to the
+Government. A week later he is taken to the Tower, where being ill, his
+wife and serving-man, William Vavasour, and a maid servant constantly
+attend him; an indulgence _never under any circumstances_ permitted to
+anyone who was really a prisoner and upon a capital charge there.
+Becoming worse, he dictates a letter for Vavasour to write to Lord
+Salisbury, retracting a statement that he has been induced to make
+respecting Father Garnet, and dies (December 23, 1605). This letter, or
+dying statement, being misunderstood, is considered to be so incredible
+that the writing is particularly inquired into. Vavasour thereupon, in
+the presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, writes an _untrue_
+statement (consequently using a hand quite different from his ordinary
+writing and, _in itself, identical with the writing of the anonymous
+letter_), asserting that his master's dying statement was written by
+Mrs. Tresham (though in every way proper for Vavasour to have written),
+which she at once repudiates and says that Vavasour wrote it. He is then
+examined in the Tower by Chief Justice Popham and Attorney-General Coke,
+when he confesses that he wrote the dying statement at his master's
+dictation; and had denied it "for fear." Fear of what? In case the
+writing should bring into question some other and less innocent letter
+written by him for his master.
+
+Upon Tresham's death in the Tower, the Lieutenant writes to Salisbury
+(December 23, 1605) of the "marvellous" confidence shown by Tresham and
+his friends that had he survived, they feared not the course of justice.
+Later, having left no male issue, his inheritance passes to his brother,
+who is described as of Rushton, when created a baronet on the
+institution of that Order by James the First, the very king whom the
+plotters intended to destroy; and although a baronetcy at that time was
+merely a monetary distinction or transaction, _some_ discrimination was
+no doubt made in the bestowal or disposal of that dignity, which
+probably would not have been conferred upon Catesby's son, who was then
+living, even if he had been able to afford it after the forfeiture of
+his family inheritance.
+
+The Attorney-General, at Father Garnet's trial (March 28, 1606),
+pronounces Vavasour as being, in his opinion, "deeply guilty" in the
+treason; yet he is not even brought to trial, while other serving-men
+are tried and executed; although Lord Salisbury expressly declares that
+he will esteem his life unworthily given him, when he shall be found
+slack in bringing to prosecution and execution ALL who are in any way
+concerned in the treason; and his exertions in the matter are accounted
+to be so successful, that he is rewarded with the Order of the Garter.
+
+Francis Tresham's inheritance remains in the family; and his
+serving-man, the "deeply guilty" William Vavasour, goes free.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: _These facsimiles are issued separately in order to
+facilitate comparison._]
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE LETTER
+
+
+The authentic, or rather the official, story of the delivery of the
+letter, as published by the Government at the time, states that on
+Saturday, October 26, 1605, Lord Monteagle "being in his own lodging,
+ready to go to supper, at seven o'clock[2] at night, one of his footmen
+(whom he had sent on an errand over the street) was met by an unknown
+man, of a reasonable tall personage, who delivered him a letter,
+charging him to put it in my lord his master's hands; which my lord no
+sooner received, but that having broken it open, and perceiving the same
+to be of an unknown and somewhat unlegible hand, and without either date
+or subscription, called one of his men[3] to help him to read it. But no
+sooner did he conceive the strange contents thereof, although he was
+somewhat perplexed what construction to make of it (as whether of a
+matter of consequence, as indeed it was, or whether some foolish devised
+pasquil, by some of his enemies to scare him from his attendance at the
+Parliament), yet did he, as a most dutiful and loyal subject, conclude
+not to conceal it, whatever might come of it, whereupon notwithstanding
+the lateness and darkness of the night in that season of the year, he
+presently repaired to his Majesty's palace at Whitehall, and there
+delivered the same to the Earl of Salisbury, his Majesty's principal
+Secretary."
+
+Neither the official version nor any State paper mentions the place
+where the letter was delivered, which in such a mysterious matter would
+be the first inquiry. "Own lodging" at that time signified a person's
+house. Hoxton is generally stated to have been the place of delivery,[4]
+which was then a single street in the outlying suburb on the great north
+road; at a house which Monteagle is known[5] to have occupied, belonging
+to his brother-in-law, Francis Tresham; and this ownership may have been
+Salisbury's reason for not naming it, which so curious an omission seems
+to imply. The letter is as follows:
+
+    "My Lord out of the loue i beare[6]; to some of youere frends i haue
+    a caer of youer preseruacion therfor i would aduyse yowe as yowe
+    tender youer lyf to deuyse some excuse to shift of youer attendance
+    at this parleament for god and man hathe concurred to punishe the
+    wickednes of this tyme and thinke not slightlye of this
+    aduertisement but retyre youre self into youre contri wheare yowe
+    maye expect the euent in safti for thowghe theare be no apparance of
+    anni stir yet i saye they shall receyue a terrible blowe this
+    parleament and yet they shall not sei who hurts them this cowncel is
+    not to be contemned because it maye do yowe good and can do yowe no
+    harme for the dangere[7] is passed as soon as yowe have burnt the
+    letter and i hope god will give yowe the grace to make good use of
+    it to whose holy proteccion I commend yowe."
+
+    (Addressed)   "To the ryght honorable
+    the lord Monteagle."
+
+It was the opinion of the other conspirators, as well as of the Jesuit
+priests who became involved in the plot through the confessional, that
+the warning letter originated with Francis Tresham, whose sister was
+Lady Monteagle, and another sister had married Lord Stourton; and
+Tresham had been most earnest with Catesby that those two lords,
+particularly Monteagle, should be warned. In each instance, Catesby was
+careful to impose the oath and engage the faith of the conspirator,
+before disclosing the plot; and Tresham, the thirteenth and last, sworn
+conspirator, on hearing the particulars, entirely disapproved of the
+conspiracy, from which he tried to dissuade Catesby, offering him the
+use of his own purse if he would even defer it.[8] Tresham could indeed
+have desired nothing less than to become involved in such a matter. His
+father had recently died, and he had succeeded to a considerable
+property,[9] which alone induced his first cousin Catesby to bring him
+into the plot. As Tresham wrote when in the Tower:[10] "I thank God I am
+owner of such a fortune as is able to afford me what I desire, the
+comfort whereof is so much the sweeter unto me, as I have spent most of
+my time overburthened with debts and wants, and had resolved within
+myself to spend my days quietly."[11] He acknowledged that his
+intentions with regard to the other conspirators were "to ship them away
+that they might have no means left them to contrive any more ... then to
+have taken a course to have given the State advertisement by some
+unknown means."[11] He was consequently the only conspirator who
+remained behind and at large after Fawkes was taken and the others had
+fled. There can be no reasonable doubt that Tresham, though not the
+writer, was the sender of the letter; and upon this hypothesis all
+investigators must go, as there is none other at all likely.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 2: Salisbury, in his letter to Sir Charles Cornwallis,
+Ambassador at Madrid (November 9), gives the hour as six o'clock.]
+
+[Footnote 3: This was his secretary, Thomas Ward, who was known to
+Monteagle as a friend of some of the conspirators (as Monteagle himself
+was), and one of whom, Ward, the next morning told of the receipt of the
+letter. "As a plan concocted by Monteagle and Tresham to stop the plot,
+and at the same time to secure the escape of their guilty friends, the
+little comedy at Hoxton was admirably concocted" ("What Gunpowder Plot
+was," by S.R. Gardiner, D.C.L., 1897, p. 124).]
+
+[Footnote 4: Father John Gerard (1564-1637) gives particulars of the
+delivery of the letter at Hoxton in his contemporary "Narrative of the
+Gunpowder Plot," published in 1872.]
+
+[Footnote 5: "Calendar of Tresham Papers," p. 132.]
+
+[Footnote 6: The word "yowe" (you), here cancelled in the original,
+indicates the writer's first thoughts, and, no doubt, his real meaning.]
+
+[Footnote 7: Various attempts have been made to explain the nature of
+the danger alluded to, which the King and Salisbury at the time, and
+others since, have understood as in allusion to the danger of the plot.
+Jardine describes it as "mere nonsense" ("Gunpowder Plot," 1835, p. 73).
+But the meaning clearly is the danger of the letter being discovered.
+The counsel may do him good, and can do him no harm, except through the
+danger of keeping the letter, which being burnt, the danger is past.
+There is no allusion intended to the danger of the plot, as that, unlike
+the danger of the discovery of the letter, could not be affected by
+burning the letter.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Tresham's statement made when in the Tower ("State Papers,
+Domestic," James I., xvi. 63).]
+
+[Footnote 9: The rental of the Rushton Hall estate alone, as given in
+the "Return of Owners of Lands" in 1873, is L5,044 yearly. The Tresham
+family also owned property at Hoxton and elsewhere.]
+
+[Footnote 10: He died in the Tower six weeks after writing that letter,
+aged thirty-seven.]
+
+[Footnote 11: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi., 63.]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+IDENTIFICATION OF THE HANDWRITING
+
+
+The style of handwriting of the letter, as seen in the facsimile, is not
+in this writer's opinion, from a familiarity of thirty years with old
+scripts, apart from the disguise, the hand that an educated person would
+write at the time, but is essentially a commonplace and, no doubt
+intentionally, rather slovenly style of handwriting. The use of small
+"i's" for the first person seems, in view of modern usage, to suggest an
+illiterate writer; but educated writers, even the King,[12] then
+occasionally lapsed into using them. In the letter, however, they are
+consistently and may have been purposely used, to avert suspicion from
+being the work of an educated person; though an illiterate appearance
+would rather cause such a letter (if genuine) to be disregarded, than to
+deter a nobleman from attending the opening of Parliament, for which
+leave or licence was required.
+
+The handwriting has been variously ascribed, but the direction of this
+inquiry is indicated by the incautious admission made by Sir Edward
+Coke, the Attorney-General at the trial, respecting the real manner in
+which the plot was discovered. Salisbury's careful instructions to the
+Attorney-General for the trial are with the State papers, in which he
+says: "Next, you must in any case, when you speak of the letter which
+was the first ground of discovery, absolutely disclaim that any of
+these" (the conspirators) "wrote it, though you leave the further
+judgment indefinite who else it should be."[13]
+
+Salisbury thus, in effect, requires Coke by absolutely disclaiming that
+any of the conspirators wrote (he does not say "sent") the letter to
+Monteagle, and by which alone the treason was discovered, to declare in
+Court, as upon the authority of the Government, that therefore none of
+the conspirators divulged the plot; which, in any case, could be true
+only so far as the disclosure to the Government was concerned. Coke,
+however, for some reason--perhaps because he was not fully in
+Salisbury's confidence respecting the letter--describes the real manner
+of the discovery, according to his own knowledge. Towards the close of
+his speech for the prosecution, he said: "The last consideration is
+concerning the admirable discovery of this treason, which was by one of
+themselves who had taken the oath and sacrament, as hath been said
+against his own will;[14] the means by a dark and doubtful letter to my
+Lord Monteagle." This, together with Salisbury's statement that none of
+the conspirators wrote the letter, shows that the divulging of the plot
+preceded the sending of the letter,[15] which was not, therefore, as is
+popularly supposed, the means by which the plot was discovered, except
+to the general public.
+
+Hitherto those who have attempted this identification have invariably
+sought amongst such as are likely to have written the letter for a
+handwriting _resembling the disguised writing_, which seems a strange
+method of investigation, as surely the object of a disguised hand[16]
+would be to make the general appearance as unlike the writer's ordinary
+hand as possible? The writing being in a set and rather large character,
+such is the style they have sought for and found, but in a much more
+refined hand and without arriving at any satisfactory result.
+
+It seems, however, reasonable to suspect that this set and rather large
+character may be what principally constitutes the disguise, and that the
+writer's ordinary hand would be different. The manner in which the lines
+are forced upwards at the right side, shows that the writer has had
+difficulty in maintaining the large, set, regular character which would
+push an unpractised hand in that direction.
+
+Among the more prominent peculiarities, as seen in the facsimile (No.
+1), the writer invariably uses the long "s" as an initial letter in the
+ten examples that occur, even when the letter is not a capital. Such
+consistent use was usual in legal but not in private hands, though
+within a word the long "s" was very common. The "t's" are peculiar;
+being made with a twist or short line at foot, crossed midway projecting
+from each side, while a stroke is put on the top as a disguised, or
+elaborated touch. The "w's" finish with a side loop. Some of the "g's"
+show flat tops; the cypher portion being commenced from the left side
+with a stroke along the top. The tails of the "y's" are brought forward.
+The "hanger" portion of the "h's" invariably drags below the line which,
+though not unusual, again indicates in the numerous examples that occur
+the writer's habit; while an unusually broad quill has been used to
+further the disguise.[17]
+
+After the plot was discovered, Fawkes arrested, and the other
+conspirators had escaped into the country, Tresham remained in London
+and even offered his services to the Government. A week later he was
+taken to the Tower where, being ill, his wife also came, and he was
+attended by his serving-man, William Vavasour, and his maid, Joan Syer.
+He was induced "to avoid ill-usage," to say that he thought Father
+Garnet, against whom the Government desired to obtain evidence, had
+written a letter in furtherance of what was known as the Spanish
+Treason, in 1602. Six weeks later, his illness becoming dangerous, he
+dictated to his man Vavasour a letter to Lord Salisbury, retracting his
+statement respecting Garnet, as being more than he really knew;
+declaring upon his salvation that he had not seen him "in sixteen years
+before," clearly meaning before the Spanish Treason in 1602, which is
+the entire subject of his letter and the fact; and not, as the
+Government misunderstood him to mean, before the then time of writing in
+1605. This statement, written by Vavasour (Fascimile No. 3), was signed
+by Tresham, who asked his wife to deliver it personally to Lord
+Salisbury, and within three hours died:[18]
+
+    "I being sent for before yo^r Lordships in the Tow^r, you told me y^t
+    (that) it was Confessed by Mr Winter, y^t he went upon some
+    imploym^{ts} in ye Queens time into Spayne & y^t yo^r L. did nominate
+    to me out of his Confession all the partyes names y^t were acquainted
+    therew^{th} _namely 4 besides himselfe_[19] & yet sayd y^t ther were
+    some left for me to name. I desired yo^r L. y^t I might not answere
+    therunto bycause it was a matter y^t was done in the Queens time and
+    since I had my pardon.
+
+    "Yo^r Lordships wold not accept of y^t answere, _but sayd y^t I should
+    be made to speake therunto. And I might thanke my self If I had beene
+    worse used than I had beene since my Coming to the howse_[19] I told
+    yo^r Lords^p (_to avoyde ill usage_)[19] y^t I thought Mr. Walley[20]
+    was p'cured to write his letter for the furthering of this Jeorney. Now
+    my LL. having bethoughte myselfe of this businesse (being to weake to
+    use my owne hand in writing this) w^{ch} I do deliver here upon my
+    salvacon to be trew as near as I can call to mynde, desiring y^t my
+    form'r Confession may be called in & y^t this may stand for truthe. It
+    was more than I knew y^t Mr. Walley[20] was used herein, & to give your
+    Lords'p p'ofe besids my oathe, I had not seene him in sixteene yere
+    before, nor never had messuadge[21] nor letter from him & to this
+    purpose I desired Mr. Leiftenant to lett me see my Confession who told
+    me I should not unlesse I wold inlarge it w^{ch} he did p'ceive I had
+    no meaning to doe.
+
+    (Signed) Francis Tresame.
+
+    "24 m'ch 1605 [-6].
+    This noate was of my owne
+    hand writing
+    By me Willia' Vavasore."
+
+Tresham's statement being misunderstood to mean that he had not seen
+Garnet for sixteen years,[22] while the Government knew from Tresham
+himself[23] that he had recently been in Garnet's company, was
+considered such awful perjury to commit when dying as to be incredible.
+Coke wrote to Salisbury: "It is true that no man may judge in this case,
+for _inter pontem et fontem_ he might find grace; but it is the most
+fearful example that I ever knew of to be made so evident as now this
+is." Salisbury at the trial said: "Mr. Tresham in his lifetime accused
+you, Garnet, before the lords, yet now upon his salvation, he under his
+hand did excuse you, being at the very point of death, saying he had not
+seen you _in sixteen years_, which matter, I assure you, before you were
+taken shook me very much. But, thanks be to God, since the coming of the
+King, I have known so much of your doctrine and practices, that
+hereafter they shall not much trouble me." The writing of Tresham's
+dying statement was, therefore, particularly, inquired into, and
+Vavasour had to make a written statement respecting his knowledge of it;
+evidently for comparison of the handwriting. This appears to have so
+alarmed him that in his statement (Fascimile No. 4), written in the
+presence of Sir William Waad, Lieutenant of the Tower, he asserted that
+the dying statement was written by Mrs. Tresham, at her husband's
+dictation:
+
+    "I do rememb' y^t my m^r did cause my m^{res} to write a note wherto he
+    did did (_sic_) bid the mayd and me beare witnes y^t he did set his
+    hand unto it, but it was not reade at y^t time but since m^{res}
+    Tressa' did reede it to me and sayd it was y^t noate y^t my m^r did
+    bid us beare witnesse and she comaunded me to carye a letter to S^r
+    Waulter Cope and to desire him to deliver the noate inclosed to my
+    Lorde of Salsburye and further my m^r did say y^t he cold not write
+    him selfe bycause he was not able but he did sett his hande unto it
+    as before I have sayd and this was done some day before his death.
+
+    "(Signed) By me William Vavasor.
+
+    "23. March 1605 [-6].
+    Taken before us:
+    (Signed) W. Waad.
+    Willus Lane."
+
+If for any reason Vavasour did not desire his writing to be brought into
+question, there could be no harm, beyond his falsehood, in naming Mrs.
+Tresham as the writer of that letter, as neither could possibly be
+blamed for writing such a statement for his master. The question arises,
+whether Vavasour would have ventured upon an untrue statement, except
+through panic, unless feeling sure of Mrs. Tresham's support? As Mrs.
+Tresham throughout made no attempt to conceal the truth for Vavasour,
+she may have been unaware of any reason for diverting inquiry from
+himself respecting letters written for his master. Even if Mrs. Tresham
+had been willing to connive at his falsehood, she could not have done
+so; as Salisbury, being convinced that she not only wrote but composed
+her husband's dying statement and induced him to sign to shield Father
+Garnet, was so incensed against her that he declined to see her,[24] or
+even to receive her husband's statement, when she tried to deliver it.
+She was therefore obliged, in view of possible consequences to herself,
+to own[25] that Vavasour wrote the statement at her husband's dictation.
+Vavasour was then examined in the Tower by Chief Justice Popham and by
+Coke, when he confessed[26] that he wrote the dying statement at his
+master's dictation, and had denied it through fear, which could only
+arise from having written some other and less innocent letter for him.
+
+Vavasour, when writing his untrue statement, would avoid using his
+ordinary handwriting, as already appearing in the letter in question
+(No. 3), which he had ascribed to Mrs. Tresham. He, therefore, disguises
+his writing, so far as having to write off-hand and under the
+observation of the Lieutenant of the Tower and an attendant Justice,
+with the consciousness that he is writing what is false, and while
+having to be careful not to reproduce his former disguised hand, as seen
+in the anonymous letter, permits him; and the hand thus produced betrays
+him as the writer of that letter, with which the writing is, in itself,
+identical. The long "s" is invariably used for a word commencing with
+that letter, even when not a capital; there are the same peculiar "t's,"
+though in a less disguised or elaborated form than those of the
+anonymous letter, but there they clearly are; the "w's" have no side
+loops, but in Vavasour's note at foot of No. 3 a conspicuous example is
+seen; there are no "g's";[27] the "y's" are particularly noticeable,
+being in two varieties: Vavasour's ordinary "y," of which the tail is
+tucked back; in the other, the tail is brought forward; and no one can
+fail to see that the latter are by the same hand as those in the letter;
+the "hangers" of the "h's" invariably drag below the line; and
+generally, the writing may throughout be detected as by the same hand
+that wrote the anonymous letter.
+
+The best specimen of Vavasour's handwriting, although not so useful as
+No. 4 for identification purposes, is in the MS. entitled "A Treatise
+against Lying," etc., identified by William Tresham as having been
+transcribed by Vavasour for Francis Tresham, which is now in the
+Bodleian Library (Facsimile No. 2). To anyone familiar with the
+handwriting of the period, Vavasour's writing is the usual law-writer's
+or copyist's hand, such as appears in conveyances and deeds of the
+time,[28] and is not the style of hand that an educated person would
+then write. Each initial "s" is of the long form; each "w" has a side
+loop; the "g's" are flat-topped; and the "h's" come below the line, etc.
+Tresham's dying statement (No. 3) appears to be in a similar but
+smaller[29] and less carefully written hand. Vavasour wrote a neat,
+small hand, which, when disguising, the probability is that he would
+attempt an opposite style. If it were not for the testimony of the
+Lieutenant of the Tower, that the untrue statement (No. 4) was actually
+written in his presence by Vavasour, the writing would not, from the
+general appearance, readily be recognized as by the same hand that wrote
+Tresham's dying statement (No. 3), and so acknowledged by Vavasour. This
+shows that he was naturally clever in disguising his hand, hence his
+employment by Tresham in writing the anonymous letter to Lord Monteagle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Upon the evidence of the handwriting alone, William Vavasour was the
+writer of that letter.[30]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 12: In the "Correspondence of James I. with Sir Robert Cecil"
+(published by the Camden Society in 1861), both the King and the Earl of
+Northumberland occasionally use them (pp. 64, 70, etc.). The latter also
+uses them in his general correspondence.]
+
+[Footnote 13: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xix. 94.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Tresham was throughout the only unwilling conspirator, but
+he did not take the oath sacramentally, only seven or eight of the
+thirteen conspirators did so.]
+
+[Footnote 15: "No wise man could think my lord (Monteagle) to be so weak
+as to take any alarm to absent himself from Parliament upon such a loose
+advertisement" (Letter from Salisbury to Cornwallis, November 9).]
+
+[Footnote 16: Salisbury, in his letter to Cornwallis, particularly
+describes the writing as being "in a hand disguised," and he, like
+Monteagle, would know not only the writer, but how the letter came to be
+written.]
+
+[Footnote 17: In an expert examination of handwriting, the angle at
+which the pen is held, as indicated by the long strokes, and the spacing
+between the lines which a writer naturally uses, have also to be
+considered--being the basis of handwriting, the first movements that are
+made in learning to write, and become each writer's characteristics in
+those respects. In each specimen of William Vavasour's handwriting,
+including the anonymous letter, the long strokes are generally at the
+same angle, and the spacing between the lines (except in No. 3) is
+throughout generally similar, while his brother George's hand is in each
+respect quite different.]
+
+[Footnote 18: "He died this night, about two of the clock after
+midnight, with very great pain; for though his spirits were much spent
+and his body dead, a-lay above two hours in departing" (Lieutenant of
+the Tower to Salisbury, December 23, 1605, "State Papers, Domestic,"
+James I., xvii. 56). Tresham's death, being so opportune for Monteagle,
+if not for Salisbury, has been attributed to poisoning; but Stowe's
+"Annals" (1615, p. 880) states it to have been occasioned by strangury,
+though giving the date of his death incorrectly as November 22. Ten
+years later a subsequent Lieutenant of the Tower was executed for
+poisoning a State prisoner.]
+
+[Footnote 19: The portion printed in italics was underlined by Coke for
+_omission_ when the statement was read at the trial. The "4 besides
+himself," having reference to Monteagle, was therefore suppressed; the
+other suppressions in the statement were made for obvious and unfair
+reasons.]
+
+[Footnote 20: "Walley" was one of Father Garnet's aliases.]
+
+[Footnote 21: This is very suggestive of a law-writer's spelling of
+"message" (messuage and tenement).]
+
+[Footnote 22: When Garnet returned from Rome in 1585, as Superior of the
+Jesuits in England, he made the Treshams' acquaintance, being a
+prominent Roman Catholic family, when Francis was eighteen. Garnet was
+not their confessor, and the acquaintance had dropped for at least
+sixteen years before the Spanish Treason in 1602. Garnet's statement,
+made (March 23, 1605-6) after Tresham's death, is: "I knew him about 18
+years ago, but since discontinued my acquaintance until the time between
+his trouble in my lord of Essex's tumult and the Queen's death"
+(1602-3). Garnet would have neither motive nor inclination to shield
+Tresham, whose betrayal of the plot had brought Garnet to the Tower. He
+might otherwise have discerned Tresham's real meaning in his statement
+of "sixteen years before," which the contemporary Jesuit Father Gerard
+correctly interprets as before 1602 in his narrative of the plot. It was
+not Garnet's complicity in the Spanish Treason in the previous reign
+(for which he had his pardon) that the Government cared about, and that
+so shook Salisbury, but simply Tresham's dying statement being
+misunderstood to mean that he had not seen Garnet for the past sixteen
+years, which is all that the present writer is concerned with.]
+
+[Footnote 23: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi. 62.]
+
+[Footnote 24: So he said at the trial: "She came to see me, but I spared
+either to speak with her or hear her." But Mrs. Tresham in her
+examination said that, "in respect of her sorrow and heaviness," she
+"was enforced to send it"; and in her note enclosing the dying statement
+to Sir Walter Cope for delivery, she wrote: "My sorrows are such that I
+am altogether unfit to come abroad; wherefore I would entreat you to
+deliver it yourself unto my lord, that I may have my husband's desire
+fulfilled therein" ("State Papers, Domestic," James I., ccxvi. 211).]
+
+[Footnote 25: Examination of Mrs. Tresham (_ibid._, ccxvi. 209).]
+
+[Footnote 26: Examination of William Vavasour (_ibid._, ccxvi. 207).]
+
+[Footnote 27: Vavasour, in his authentic and ordinary writing, used
+flat-topped "g's," as seen in the anonymous letter, as well as in No. 2,
+ascribed to him.]
+
+[Footnote 28: The deed of Robert Catesby's marriage settlement with
+Katherine, eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh, of Stoneleigh (1592), in
+the possession of T.W. Whitmore-Jones; Esq., of Chastleton House, Oxon,
+is in a similar legal hand, with precisely the same peculiarities of
+"s," "g," "w," "h," etc. A law-writer's hand to-day is in a
+"copper-plate" style, which, although most suitable for the purpose, is
+not the kind of hand that an educated person would write whose business
+was not copying, and there was then a similar distinction between them.]
+
+[Footnote 29: Apparently owing to restrictions of space and paper.]
+
+[Footnote 30: The original letter is framed and exhibited upon a
+pedestal in the Museum of the Public Record Office. The facsimile has,
+therefore, had to be made from a negative taken of the letter as seen
+through glass, while the other facsimiles have the advantage of being
+made from negatives taken of documents unglazed.]
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL'S OPINION OF VAVASOUR'S GUILT
+
+
+The Attorney-General in his speech for the prosecution at Father
+Garnet's trial (March 28, 1606), as given in the official report,
+alluding to Tresham's dying statement, said: "Upon his death-bed he
+commanded Vavasour his man, _whom I think deeply guilty in this
+treason_, to write a letter to the Earl of Salisbury."
+
+Henry Garnet's trial was purposely held at the City Guildhall, instead
+of Westminster Hall, the usual trial place where the conspirators had
+been tried, in order to make the occasion as imposing, and his case as
+exemplary, as possible, on account of his position as Superior of the
+Jesuits in England.[31] The King was privately present, and there was a
+most distinguished assembly of ambassadors, nobility, and others.
+
+Before this audience, the Attorney-General, whose opinion determines or
+considerably influences a prosecution for high treason, states in Court
+that a person who is not even present nor arraigned is in his opinion
+"deeply guilty" in the most infamous treason ever attempted, and for
+which the conspirators had already been executed: so "heinous, horrible
+and damnable"[32] was it considered, that the authorities had even
+proposed to devise some specially severe form of torture for the
+perpetrators to undergo, in addition to the usual terrible penalty for
+high treason.[33]
+
+Coke, who it will be remembered was the most eminent counsel and the
+greatest jurist of the time, however desirous he would be of bringing to
+light everything connected with such a treason upon the occasion, would
+scarcely, as legally representing the Crown in his capacity of the
+King's Attorney-General, express so extremely damaging an opinion
+without sufficient reason. There is something in his mind concerning
+Vavasour,[34] respecting whom he is not satisfied; and it can only be
+Vavasour's having written, not the letter to Salisbury--as that could
+not possibly implicate him, nor render him "deeply guilty" in a treason
+_which had been discovered and ended six weeks before the letter to
+Salisbury was written_--but that other and most treasonable letter to
+Monteagle, for there was nothing else against him in the matter.[35]
+Coke evidently knows, or suspects, that Vavasour wrote the warning
+letter; and he cannot understand why he is not brought to trial.[36] He
+therefore expresses his opinion of Vavasour's guilt as strongly as
+possible, and even describes him with what for an Attorney-General in
+ordinary circumstances would be a singular redundancy of legal
+expression, as being "deeply guilty" in the treason.[37] No one would
+know better than the Attorney-General that in high treason itself the
+law makes no distinction whatever of degrees of guilt, nor can there
+even be an accessory: once participant, whatever the part played may be,
+all alike are principals.
+
+Coke's statement in Court has been officially in print for over three
+hundred years, yet no investigator seems to have noticed it and so have
+been led to inquire what was done to Vavasour?--by which alone a clue
+might have been obtained to the writer of the letter.[38] Although
+Vavasour was publicly stated by the Attorney-General to be "deeply
+guilty" in a treason of which Salisbury wrote: "I shall esteem my life
+unworthily given me when I shall be found slack in searching to the
+bottom of the dregs of this foul poison, or lack resolution to further
+to my small power the prosecution and execution of ALL those whose
+hearts and hands can appear foul in this savage practise"[39]--yet he
+was not even brought to trial, while other serving-men were tried and
+executed.[40]
+
+It is questionable whether Salisbury, unless agreeing with Coke's
+opinion of Vavasour's guilt, would have allowed the allusion to appear
+in the official report of the trial, prepared by himself and sanctioned
+by the King;[41] as, if innocent of the treason, an intolerable
+injustice would have been done to Vavasour by the publication, which
+probably neither the King nor Salisbury would have permitted, in making
+a senseless attack upon the reputation of an innocent man, who would
+certainly have protested.
+
+Without, however, assuming too advanced ideas of justice for the time,
+it is unlikely that so capable a person as Salisbury appears to have
+been,[42] could fail to perceive that the publication of the
+Attorney-General's opinion of Vavasour's guilt must, in the absence of
+any prosecution, call attention to Vavasour, and thus furnish a clue to
+the writer of the letter. Salisbury, though generally fair-minded, might
+not trouble himself about Vavasour's reputation, but he would about his
+own, which would be affected by his failure, after his strongly
+expressed determination, in bringing to justice ALL who were concerned
+in such a treason; and this would still apply, even if Coke's published
+allusion to Vavasour's guilt was merely counsel's rhetoric. Coke,
+however, at the moment when making that allusion, was not declaiming
+upon the treason, but simply stating a fact about Tresham, with the King
+listening; and in alluding to Vavasour, he expresses what is in his
+mind--"_whom I think deeply guilty in this treason_": evidently his
+deliberate opinion, which he would have every opportunity of forming,
+as, with the exception of Salisbury and the conspirators, he would know
+more of the workings of the plot than anyone. Salisbury's chief concern,
+apparently, was at all costs to keep Vavasour silent, which he did;
+while his anxiety "to leave the further judgment indefinite" respecting
+the writer of the letter, plainly shows that the matter would not bear
+inquiry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The only possible conclusion, therefore, is that Vavasour wrote the
+anonymous letter to Lord Monteagle, which the identity of the
+handwriting absolutely confirms.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 31: "My Sovereign determined that your trial should be in this
+honourable assembly. For who is Garnet that he should be called hither,
+or we should trouble ourselves in this Court with him? which I protest
+were sufficient for the greatest Cardinal in Rome, if in this case he
+should be tried. No, Mr. Garnet, it is not for your cause that you are
+called hither, but to testify to the world the foulness of your fact,
+the errors of your religion," etc. Lord Salisbury's Speech at the Trial.
+(Gerard). When at the trial, rebuking Garnet for untruthfulness in his
+previous examination before the Council, Salisbury said: "You stiffly
+denied it upon your soul, reiterating it with so many detestable
+execrations, _as our hair stood upright_" (Jardine).]
+
+[Footnote 32: The Act for the Attainder of the Conspirators ("Statutes
+of the Realm," 3 James I., c. 2). Coke himself characterized the treason
+at the trial as "beyond all examples, whether in fact or fiction, even
+of the tragic poets who did beat their wits to represent the most
+fearful and horrible murders." And in the prayer to be used in the
+Anniversary Service for the Fifth of November it is described as having
+been attempted "in a most barbarous and savage manner, beyond the
+examples of former ages. From this unnatural conspiracy, not our merit,
+but Thy mercy; not our foresight, but Thy providence, delivered us,"
+etc.]
+
+[Footnote 33: In the previous century, in a case where a more severe
+penalty was desired to be inflicted, the offender was, by Act of
+Parliament, publicly _boiled alive_ ("Statutes of the Realm," 22 Henry
+VIII., c. 9).]
+
+[Footnote 34: Coke worked hard for some months in thoroughly preparing
+the evidence for the trial, so that little would escape him. As he wrote
+to Salisbury: "If your lordship knew what pains have been taken herein,
+your lordship would pity the old attorney" (Hatfield MSS.).]
+
+[Footnote 35: Vavasour's falsehood respecting Mrs. Tresham had nothing
+to do with the treason. Coke seems to mention Vavasour's guilt as if
+antecedent to the writing of the letter to Salisbury.]
+
+[Footnote 36: This work is merely the identification of the writer of
+the anonymous letter only, and makes no attempt to answer the much more
+difficult question of what the arrangement was between Salisbury and
+Monteagle, or between Monteagle and Tresham, respecting the sending of
+the letter; but with regard to Coke, it is unlikely, from what is known
+of their intercourse and their frequent differences in court, that he
+would be admitted to any particular confidence with Salisbury in the
+matter.]
+
+[Footnote 37: Vavasour's concealment of guilty knowledge as the writer
+of the warning letter would probably be only misprision of treason,
+unless Coke knew or suspected that he was directly concerned in the
+treason.]
+
+[Footnote 38: The present writer does not owe the identification to that
+clue, which was not met with until after Vavasour had been identified as
+the writer of the letter.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Letter to the Earl of Dunfermline, Lord Chancellor of
+Scotland. December 1, 1605 ("State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvii.
+2). Salisbury was created K.G. with almost regal pomp for his services
+in the matter. "Tuesday the 20th of May (1606), at Windsor, were
+installed Knights of the Garter, Robert, Earl of Salisbury, who set
+forward from his house in the Strand, being almost as honourably
+accompanied and with as great train of lords, knights, gentlemen, and
+officers of the Court, with others besides his peculiar servants very
+richly attired, and bravely mounted, as was the King when he rid in
+state through London" (Stowe's "Annals," 1615, p. 883).]
+
+[Footnote 40: Bates, Catesby's serving-man, at London; others in the
+country.]
+
+[Footnote 41: Although known as the "King's book," the report of the
+trial was evidently compiled by Salisbury and corrected by the King.]
+
+[Footnote 42: Salisbury's statesmanship is evinced by the advice he
+wrote to James (I.) when King of Scotland, and impatiently awaiting
+Queen Elizabeth's demise: "Your best approach towards your greatest end,
+is by your Majesty's clear and temperate courses, to secure the heart of
+the highest, to whose sex and quality nothing is so improper as either
+needless expostulations, or over much curiosity in her own actions. The
+first showing unquietness in yourself; the second challenging some
+untimely interest in hers; both which, as they are best forborne when
+there is no cause, so be it far from me (if there shall be cause), to
+persuade you to receive wrongs and be silent" ("Secret Correspondence,"
+Camden Society, 1860, p. 7).]
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+FRANCIS TRESHAM'S CONFIDENCE WHEN IN THE TOWER
+
+
+Upon Tresham's death in the Tower (December 23, 1605), the Lieutenant
+wrote to Salisbury: "I find his friends were marvellous confident if he
+had escaped this sickness, and have given out in this place that they
+feared not the course of justice."[43] As the late Dr. Gardiner
+observed: "This confidence they could only have derived from himself,
+and it could only have been founded on one ground."
+
+Had Tresham's committal to the Tower been otherwise than a mere
+formality, or "a farce," neither his wife nor his servants would under
+any circumstances have been permitted to attend or even see him whatever
+the state of his health might have been; and had he survived, nothing
+serious would have been done to him,[44] any more than was done to his
+"deeply guilty" servant Vavasour.
+
+Tresham, though dreading, as he said, "the infamous brand of an
+accuser,"[45] was as evidently the Informer to the Government, either
+directly or indirectly through Monteagle, as his servant Vavasour was
+the writer of the letter.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 43: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvii. 58.]
+
+[Footnote 44: He left no male issue, and was succeeded in the family
+property by his next brother Lewis, who was created a baronet June 29,
+1611, one of the second batch of baronets made on the institution of
+that Order the previous May 22 by James I.]
+
+[Footnote 45: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi. 63.]
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE VAVASOURS AS DEPENDANTS OF THE TRESHAM FAMILY
+
+
+The Tresham Papers[46] contain much information respecting the Vavasours
+as dependants of that family. Sir Thomas Tresham had a bailiff or
+collector, named Thomas Vavasour, an old and much valued Catholic
+servant,[47] who had, with perhaps other children, two sons, George and
+William, and a daughter, Muriel. George, who had been educated, was in
+June, 1596, sent up by his father with a letter to Sir Thomas, then in
+town, in order that he might be entered at one of the Inns of Court, as
+Sir Thomas might advise: "Mr. Francis Tresham has encouraged him in this
+kind of study and the cost already bestowed must not be lost. He knows
+he has nothing else to trust to but his learning, nor does he seem so
+fit for anything else."[48] He was accordingly admitted to the Inner
+Temple in November of that year,[49] where Lewis Tresham (Sir Thomas's
+second son) had been admitted the previous November, and to whom there
+is an allusion of George Vavasour acting as tutor.[50] William Vavasour,
+the other son, was servant to Sir Thomas, and though not so educated as
+his brother George, was not a livery-servant or footman,[51] but appears
+to have held a similar or superior position with Sir Thomas, to that
+which Bates, who kept his own man,[52] held with Catesby, a kind of
+secretary-valet of the time.[53] After Sir Thomas's death he served his
+eldest son Francis Tresham in the same capacity; while the sister Muriel
+Vavasour, who bore the same (then uncommon) Christian name as Lady
+Tresham, and may have been her god-daughter, became "gentlewoman without
+livery" at L5 yearly[54] to Lady Monteagle, who was Lady Tresham's
+daughter. Both George Vavasour and his brother William were
+confidentially employed by Francis Tresham as amanuenses, where secrecy
+was necessary in transcribing religious or political treatises, such as
+were then circulated amongst Roman Catholics, and, being treasonable,
+dared not be printed.
+
+On December 1, 1605, the Attorney-General, while investigating the
+conspiracy, obtained two MS. volumes which had been found in George
+Vavasour's chambers in the Inner Temple. One, officially described as a
+"quarto" volume, though an octavo (8-1/4 x 5-3/4), entitled
+"A Treatise against Lying,"[55] was stated by George Vavasour, on
+examination[56] to have been lent him by Francis Tresham to copy,[57]
+and the copy he had made was contained in the folio, the other MS.
+found. He denied any knowledge of the handwriting in the "quarto"
+volume, except that he had recopied the last page (61), in order to
+replace a torn leaf, bearing in Latin the Imprimatur of George
+Blackwell, Archpriest of the English Jesuits. William Tresham (Francis
+Tresham's youngest brother), on being examined by Coke, said that he
+thought the "quarto" MS. was in William Vavasour's handwriting, who was
+formerly his father's servant, and since serving his eldest brother in
+the Tower.[58] William Tresham may have seen Vavasour so employed at
+home and would know his writing; while George Vavasour might not wish to
+bring his brother into question. The folio MS. has disappeared, but the
+"quarto" copy, as ascribed to William Vavasour, is now with Archbishop
+Laud's MSS. (No. 655) in the Bodleian Library, and was published in
+1851.
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE No. 1.
+
+The anonymous letter as delivered to Lord Monteagle, October 26, 1605,
+warning him not to attend the opening of Parliament appointed for the
+Fifth of November. (From the original letter in the Museum of the Public
+Record Office.)]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE No. 2.
+
+A page of the MS. intitled "A Treatise against Lying, &c.", formerly
+belonging to Francis Tresham, of which the handwriting was attributed by
+his brother, William Tresham, to William Vavasour. Now in the Bodleian
+Library. (Laud MSS. 655, folio 44.)]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE No. 3.
+
+William Vavasour's handwriting in the letter to the Earl of Salisbury,
+dictated and signed by Francis Tresham, when dying in the Tower.
+December 22, 1605. (State Papers, Domestic. James I. ccxvi. 211.)
+
+Stated by Vavasour to have been written by Mrs. Tresham. On March 24,
+1605-6, he confessed that he wrote it, and signed a note to it to that
+effect.]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE No. 4.
+
+William Vavasour's handwriting in his _untrue_ statement written in the
+presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, that No. 3 was written by Mrs.
+Tresham. Dated March 23, 1605-6. (State Papers, Domestic. James I.
+ccxvi. 207.)
+
+[***]To avoid detection of his falsehood, he writes a hand quite
+different from his ordinary writing in Nos. 2 and 3, thus producing a
+hand which is in itself identical with his former disguised writing as
+seen in the anonymous letter (No. 1).]
+
+[Illustration: FACSIMILE No. 5.
+
+George Vavasour's handwriting on the last leaf, which he renewed for
+Francis Tresham, of the MS. intitled "A Treatise against Lying, &c."
+(Laud MSS. 655, folio 61.)]
+
+George Vavasour's handwriting upon the last leaf of the MS. (Facsimile
+No. 5) shows a much more refined and educated hand than his brother's,
+from which the writing is in every respect different. A small "s" is
+invariably used in commencing a word with that letter; the "t's " are
+quite different; the "w" finishes with an inner, not an outer loop; the
+"g's" have no flat tops; and the "hangers" of the "h's" do not descend
+below the line. The writing is evidently an educated hand for the time,
+and cannot readily be imagined as using small "i's" for the first
+person, such as are used in, and seem to accord so well with, the much
+less educated handwriting of the warning letter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+WILLIAM VAVASOUR, the Tresham family serving-man, is thus not only
+conclusively proved to have written the anonymous letter to Lord
+Monteagle, but most probably was also the "unknown man of a reasonable
+tall personage" who is so quaintly described in the Government story as
+having delivered the letter.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 46: Calendared by the Historical MSS. Commission. "Report on
+MSS. in various Collections, vol. iii., 1904. The MSS. of T.B.
+Clarke-Thornhill, Esq., of Rushton Hall, by Mrs. R.C. Lomas." These
+important family papers were preserved and discovered in a curious
+manner. In 1828, when making alterations at Rushton Hall, on removing a
+partition wall, they were found with some theological books in a large
+bundle wrapped in a sheet, which had been built into a recess in the
+wall. As the papers, commencing in 1576, with a few of earlier date, end
+in November, 1605, they were probably thus hidden away on Tresham's
+arrest.]
+
+[Footnote 47: "Calendar," p. 59.]
+
+[Footnote 48: _Ibid._, p. 89.]
+
+[Footnote 49: "Students admitted to the Inner Temple, 1547-1660"
+(1877).]
+
+[Footnote 50: "Calendar of Tresham Papers," p. 90.]
+
+[Footnote 51: His name does not appear in the list of Sir Thomas's ten
+livery servants as retained while the establishment was at Hoxton before
+Monteagle's tenancy, of which the accounts are with the Tresham Papers.
+Under the stable charges is the keep of a horse for Thomas Vavasour, the
+father (_ibid._, pp. 47, 50).]
+
+[Footnote 52: "Examination of Christopher Story, Thomas Bates's man"
+("State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi. 28, 1).]
+
+[Footnote 53: It will be remembered that Salisbury in the official story
+describes Ward, who was Monteagle's secretary, as "one of his men."]
+
+[Footnote 54: Each of the other female attendants and servants, even
+"Mawdlyn the Frenchwoman" at L10 yearly, have a livery ("Calendar of
+Tresham Papers," p. 50).]
+
+[Footnote 55: The manuscript was originally entitled "A Treatise upon
+Equivocation," which was altered by Father Garnet into "A treatise
+against Lying & fraudule't dissimulatio'. Newly overseen by ye Authour &
+published for the defence of Innocency, & for the Instructio' of
+Ignora'ts." It purports to show when equivocation may "lawfully" be
+used, and may have been compiled by Garnet, as the title-page and the
+annotations throughout are in his handwriting. The folio manuscript by
+George Vavasour was evidently a fair copy of the revised "quarto," and
+Tresham's reason for having it made.]
+
+[Footnote 56: "Examination of George Vavasour, of the Inner Temple,
+Gent., December 9, 1605" ("State Papers, Domestic," James I., ccxvi.
+151).]
+
+[Footnote 57: He also confessed having transcribed the treatise "De
+Officio Principis Christiani" (Further examination, December 13, 1605,
+_ibid._, ccxvi. 155). Coke alluded to these manuscripts at the trial as
+"certain heretical, damnable and treasonable books discovered." He said:
+"There is in Tresham's book, 'De Officio Principis,' an easier and more
+expedite way than all these to fetch the crown off the head of any king
+christened whatsoever, which is this that: '_Princeps indulgendo
+haereticis, amittit regnum._'--If any prince shall but tolerate or favour
+heretics, he loseth his kingdom." This shows the confidential nature of
+the Vavasours' employment as amanuenses by Tresham in such matters.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Examination of William Tresham, December 9, 1605 ("State
+Papers, Domestic," James I., xvii. 23).]
+
+
+
+THE END
+
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