CHAPTER I.
One of the unsolved problems of English History is the question: “Who wrote the Letter to the Lord Mounteagle?” surely, one of the most momentous documents ever penned by the hand of man, which discovered the Gunpowder Treason, and so saved a King of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland — to say nothing of France — his Royal Consort, his Counsellors, and Senators, from a bloody, cruel, and untimely death.
In every conspiracy there is a knave or a fool, and sometimes, happily, “a repentant sinner.”
Now it is well known that the contrivers of the Gunpowder Treason themselves suspected Francis Tresham — a subordinate conspirator and brother-in-law to Lord Mounteagle — and many historians have rashly jumped to the conclusion that, therefore, Tresham must have been the author.
But, when charged at Barnet by Catesby and Thomas Winter, two of his infuriated fellow-plotters, with having sent the Letter, Tresham so stoutly and energetically denied the charge that his denial saved him from the point of their poniards.
Moreover, the suspected man when a prisoner in the Tower of London, and even when in the act of throwing himself on the King’s mercy, never gave the faintest hint that the Letter was attributable to him. But, on the contrary, actually stated first that he had intended to reveal the treason, and secondly that he had been guilty of concealment.
Now, as a rule, “all that a man hath will he give for his life.” Therefore it is impossible, in the face of this direct testimony of Tresham, to maintain that to him the discovery of the Plot is due: and the force of the argument grounded on Tresham’s being the brother-in-law to Mounteagle, and that the accused man showed an evident desire that the Plot should be postponed, if not altogether abandoned, melts away like snow before the sun.[1][2][A]
[A] See Notes at End of Text, indicated by figures in [ ].