age 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 hit