Part 2 (2/2)

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 circ.u.mstances 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 inst.i.tution 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 G.o.d-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), ent.i.tled ”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 c.o.ke, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FACSIMILE No. 2.

A page of the MS. int.i.tled ”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.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.]

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