FOOTNOTES:
[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).
[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.
[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).
[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.).
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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).
[40] Bates, Catesby's serving-man, at London; others in the country.
[41] Although known as the "King's book," the report of the trial was evidently compiled by Salisbury and corrected by the King.
[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.