Chapter 2

"Yo^r Lordships wold not accept of y^t answere, _but sayd y^t I should be made to speake therunto. And I might thanke my self If I had beene worse used than I had beene since my Coming to the howse_[19] I told yo^r Lords^p (_to avoyde ill usage_)[19] y^t I thought Mr. Walley[20] was p'cured to write his letter for the furthering of this Jeorney. Now my LL. having bethoughte myselfe of this businesse (being to weake to use my owne hand in writing this) w^{ch} I do deliver here upon my salvacon to be trew as near as I can call to mynde, desiring y^t my form'r Confession may be called in & y^t this may stand for truthe. It was more than I knew y^t Mr. Walley[20] was used herein, & to give your Lords'p p'ofe besids my oathe, I had not seene him in sixteene yere before, nor never had messuadge[21] nor letter from him & to this purpose I desired Mr. Leiftenant to lett me see my Confession who told me I should not unlesse I wold inlarge it w^{ch} he did p'ceive I had no meaning to doe.

(Signed) Francis Tresame.

"24 m'ch 1605 [-6]. This noate was of my owne hand writing By me Willia' Vavasore."

Tresham's statement being misunderstood to mean that he had not seen Garnet for sixteen years,[22] while the Government knew from Tresham himself[23] that he had recently been in Garnet's company, was considered such awful perjury to commit when dying as to be incredible. Coke wrote to Salisbury: "It is true that no man may judge in this case, for _inter pontem et fontem_ he might find grace; but it is the most fearful example that I ever knew of to be made so evident as now this is." Salisbury at the trial said: "Mr. Tresham in his lifetime accused you, Garnet, before the lords, yet now upon his salvation, he under his hand did excuse you, being at the very point of death, saying he had not seen you _in sixteen years_, which matter, I assure you, before you were taken shook me very much. But, thanks be to God, since the coming of the King, I have known so much of your doctrine and practices, that hereafter they shall not much trouble me." The writing of Tresham's dying statement was, therefore, particularly, inquired into, and Vavasour had to make a written statement respecting his knowledge of it; evidently for comparison of the handwriting. This appears to have so alarmed him that in his statement (Fascimile No. 4), written in the presence of Sir William Waad, Lieutenant of the Tower, he asserted that the dying statement was written by Mrs. Tresham, at her husband's dictation:

"I do rememb' y^t my m^r did cause my m^{res} to write a note wherto he did did (_sic_) bid the mayd and me beare witnes y^t he did set his hand unto it, but it was not reade at y^t time but since m^{res} Tressa' did reede it to me and sayd it was y^t noate y^t my m^r did bid us beare witnesse and she comaunded me to carye a letter to S^r Waulter Cope and to desire him to deliver the noate inclosed to my Lorde of Salsburye and further my m^r did say y^t he cold not write him selfe bycause he was not able but he did sett his hande unto it as before I have sayd and this was done some day before his death.

"(Signed) By me William Vavasor.

"23. March 1605 [-6]. Taken before us: (Signed) W. Waad. Willus Lane."

If for any reason Vavasour did not desire his writing to be brought into question, there could be no harm, beyond his falsehood, in naming Mrs. Tresham as the writer of that letter, as neither could possibly be blamed for writing such a statement for his master. The question arises, whether Vavasour would have ventured upon an untrue statement, except through panic, unless feeling sure of Mrs. Tresham's support? As Mrs. Tresham throughout made no attempt to conceal the truth for Vavasour, she may have been unaware of any reason for diverting inquiry from himself respecting letters written for his master. Even if Mrs. Tresham had been willing to connive at his falsehood, she could not have done so; as Salisbury, being convinced that she not only wrote but composed her husband's dying statement and induced him to sign to shield Father Garnet, was so incensed against her that he declined to see her,[24] or even to receive her husband's statement, when she tried to deliver it. She was therefore obliged, in view of possible consequences to herself, to own[25] that Vavasour wrote the statement at her husband's dictation. Vavasour was then examined in the Tower by Chief Justice Popham and by Coke, when he confessed[26] that he wrote the dying statement at his master's dictation, and had denied it through fear, which could only arise from having written some other and less innocent letter for him.

Vavasour, when writing his untrue statement, would avoid using his ordinary handwriting, as already appearing in the letter in question (No. 3), which he had ascribed to Mrs. Tresham. He, therefore, disguises his writing, so far as having to write off-hand and under the observation of the Lieutenant of the Tower and an attendant Justice, with the consciousness that he is writing what is false, and while having to be careful not to reproduce his former disguised hand, as seen in the anonymous letter, permits him; and the hand thus produced betrays him as the writer of that letter, with which the writing is, in itself, identical. The long "s" is invariably used for a word commencing with that letter, even when not a capital; there are the same peculiar "t's," though in a less disguised or elaborated form than those of the anonymous letter, but there they clearly are; the "w's" have no side loops, but in Vavasour's note at foot of No. 3 a conspicuous example is seen; there are no "g's";[27] the "y's" are particularly noticeable, being in two varieties: Vavasour's ordinary "y," of which the tail is tucked back; in the other, the tail is brought forward; and no one can fail to see that the latter are by the same hand as those in the letter; the "hangers" of the "h's" invariably drag below the line; and generally, the writing may throughout be detected as by the same hand that wrote the anonymous letter.

The best specimen of Vavasour's handwriting, although not so useful as No. 4 for identification purposes, is in the MS. entitled "A Treatise against Lying," etc., identified by William Tresham as having been transcribed by Vavasour for Francis Tresham, which is now in the Bodleian Library (Facsimile No. 2). To anyone familiar with the handwriting of the period, Vavasour's writing is the usual law-writer's or copyist's hand, such as appears in conveyances and deeds of the time,[28] and is not the style of hand that an educated person would then write. Each initial "s" is of the long form; each "w" has a side loop; the "g's" are flat-topped; and the "h's" come below the line, etc. Tresham's dying statement (No. 3) appears to be in a similar but smaller[29] and less carefully written hand. Vavasour wrote a neat, small hand, which, when disguising, the probability is that he would attempt an opposite style. If it were not for the testimony of the Lieutenant of the Tower, that the untrue statement (No. 4) was actually written in his presence by Vavasour, the writing would not, from the general appearance, readily be recognized as by the same hand that wrote Tresham's dying statement (No. 3), and so acknowledged by Vavasour. This shows that he was naturally clever in disguising his hand, hence his employment by Tresham in writing the anonymous letter to Lord Monteagle.

* * * * *

Upon the evidence of the handwriting alone, William Vavasour was the writer of that letter.[30]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 13: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xix. 94.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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).]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 20: "Walley" was one of Father Garnet's aliases.]

[Footnote 21: This is very suggestive of a law-writer's spelling of "message" (messuage and tenement).]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 23: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi. 62.]

[Footnote 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).]

[Footnote 25: Examination of Mrs. Tresham (_ibid._, ccxvi. 209).]

[Footnote 26: Examination of William Vavasour (_ibid._, ccxvi. 207).]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 29: Apparently owing to restrictions of space and paper.]

[Footnote 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 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).]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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).]

[Footnote 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.).]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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).]

[Footnote 40: Bates, Catesby's serving-man, at London; others in the country.]

[Footnote 41: Although known as the "King's book," the report of the trial was evidently compiled by Salisbury and corrected by the King.]

[Footnote 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