monteagle and letter.
Moreover, Monteagle's services received most substantial acknowledgment in the form of a grant of £700 a year,[243] equivalent, at least, to ten times that amount in money of the present day.[244] There still exists[245] the draft preamble of the grant making this award, which has been altered and emended with an amount of care which sufficiently testifies to the importance of the matter. In this it is said of the letter that by the knowledge thereof "we had the first and only means to discover that most wicked and barbarous plot"—the words italicised being added as an interlineation by Cecil himself. Nevertheless, it appears certain that this is not, and cannot be, the truth; indeed, historians of all shades equally discountenance the idea. Mr. Jardine[246] considers it "hardly credible that the letter was really the means by which the plot was discovered," and inclines to the belief[247] that the whole story concerning it "was merely a device of the government ... to conceal the means by which their information had been derived." Similarly Mr. J.S. Brewer[248] holds it as certain that this part, at least, of the story is a fiction designed to conceal the truth. Mr. Gardiner, who is less inclined than others to give up the received story, thinks that, to say the least of it, it is highly probable that Monteagle expected the letter before it came.[249]
For a right understanding of the point it is necessary to consider the character of the man who plays so important a part in this episode. Lord Monteagle, the eldest son of Lord Morley, ennobled under a title derived through his mother, was, in Mr. Jardine's opinion,[250] "a person precisely adapted for an instrument on such an occasion;" and the description appears even more applicable than was intended. He had been implicated in all the doings of the turbulent section of the English Catholics[251] for several years, having taken part in the rising of Essex, and in the Spanish negotiations, whatever they were, conducted through the instrumentality of Thomas Winter. With Catesby, and others of the conspirators, he was on terms of the closest and most intimate friendship, and Tresham was his brother-in-law. A letter of his to Catesby is still preserved, which, in the opinion of some, affords evidence of his having been actually engaged in the Powder Plot itself;[252] and Mr. Jardine, though dissenting from the view that the letter proves so much, judges it not at all impossible or improbable that he was in fact privy to the conspiracy. It is likewise certain that up to the last moment Monteagle was on familiar terms with the plotters, to whom, a few days before the final catastrophe, he imparted an important piece of information.[253]
At the same time it is evident that Monteagle was in high favour at Court, as is sufficiently evidenced by the fact that he was appointed to be one of the commissioners for the prorogation of October 3rd, a most unusual distinction for one in his position, as also by the pains taken by the government on behalf of his brother, who had shortly before got himself into trouble in France.[254] A still more remarkable circumstance has been strangely overlooked by historians.[255] Monteagle always passed for a Catholic, turbulent indeed and prone to violence, but attached, even fanatically, to his creed, like his friend Catesby and the rest. There remains, however, an undated letter of his to the king,[256] in which he expresses his determination to become a Protestant; and while in fulsome language extolling his Majesty's zeal for his spiritual welfare, speaks with bitterness and contempt of the faith which, nevertheless, he continued to profess to the end of his life, and that without exciting suspicion of his deceit among the Catholics. Not only must this shake our confidence in the genuine nature of any transaction in which such a man played a prominent part, it must likewise suggest a doubt whether others may not in like manner have passed themselves off for what they were not, without arousing suspicion.
The precise facts as to the actual receipt of the famous letter are involved, like every other particular of this history, in the obscurity begotten of contradictory evidence. In the published account,[257] it is stated with great precision that it was received by Monteagle on Saturday, October 26th, being but ten days before the Parliament. In his letter to the ambassadors abroad,[258] Cecil dates its receipt "about eight days before the Parliament should have begun." In the account furnished for the benefit of the King of France,[259] the same authority declares that it came to hand "some four or five days before." A doubt is thus unquestionably suggested as to whether the circumstances of its coming to Monteagle's hands are those traditionally described: for our present purpose, however, it will perhaps be sufficient to follow the story as formally told by authority in the king's own book.
On Saturday, October 26th, ten days before the assembly of Parliament, Monteagle suddenly, and without previous notice, ordered a supper to be prepared at his house at Hoxton "where he had not supped or lain of a twelvemonth and more before that time."[260] While he was at table one of his pages brought him a letter which had been given to him by a man in the street, whose features he could not distinguish, with injunctions to place it in his master's own hands. It is undoubtedly a singular circumstance, which did not escape notice at the time, that the bearer of this missive should have thus been able to find Monteagle at a spot which he was not accustomed to frequent, and the obvious inference was drawn, that the arrival of the letter was expected. On this point, indeed, there is somewhat more than inference to go upon, for in Fulman's MS. collection at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, among some interesting notes concerning the Plot, of which we shall see more, occurs the statement that "the Lord Monteagle knew there was a letter to be sent to him before it came."[261]
Monteagle opened the letter, and, glancing at it, perceived that it bore neither date nor signature, whereupon he handed it to a gentleman of his household, named Ward, to read aloud, an apparently unnatural and imprudent proceeding not easy to explain, but, at least, inconsistent with the conduct of one receiving an obviously important communication in such mysterious circumstances. The famous epistle must be given in its native form.