From the absence of any allusion to the Powder Plot and its "discovery," it appears certain that this letter must have been written previously to it.
On August 1st, 1609, Sir Wm. Waad wrote to Salisbury that the disorders of Lord Monteagle's house were an offence to the country. At this period he appears to have been suspected of concealing Catholic students from St. Omers. [Calendar of State Papers.]
APPENDIX I. [(p. 140).]
Epitaph in St. Anne's, Aldersgate. [Maitland, London (1756), p. 1065.]
"Peter Heiwood, younger son of Peter Heiwood, one of the Counsellors of Jamaica, ... Great Grandson to Peter Heiwood of Heywood in the County Palestine of Lancaster; who apprehended Guy Faux with his dark Lanthorn; and for his zealous prosecution of Papists, as Justice of Peace, was stabbed in Westminster-Hall by John James, a Dominican Friar, An. Dom. 1640. Obiit Novem. 2. 1701.
Reader, if not a Papist bred
Upon such Ashes gently tread."
It is to be presumed that the person who died in 1701 is not the same who was stabbed in 1640, or who discovered Guy Faukes in 1605.
The Dominican records contain no trace of any member of the Order named John James, nor does so remarkable an event as the stabbing of a Justice of Peace in Westminster Hall appear to be chronicled elsewhere.