Part 1 (2/2)

(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 G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+p 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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, Amba.s.sador 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 n.o.bleman 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 c.o.ke, 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 c.o.ke 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. c.o.ke, 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.

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