FOOTNOTES:
[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.
[13] "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xix. 94.
[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.
[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).
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[20] "Walley" was one of Father Garnet's aliases.
[21] This is very suggestive of a law-writer's spelling of "message" (messuage and tenement).
[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.
[23] "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi. 62.
[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).
[25] Examination of Mrs. Tresham (ibid., ccxvi. 209).
[26] Examination of William Vavasour (ibid., ccxvi. 207).
[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.
[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.
[29] Apparently owing to restrictions of space and paper.
[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.