FOOTNOTES:

[43] "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvii. 58.

[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.

[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 (8¼ x 5¾), 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.

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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.)

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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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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).

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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.