urself 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 at