Letters to the Editor

i:etterg to tfje Cbitor To the Editor: To the Editor: Warren Hope's article on "Lear's I read with interest Dr. John Cordelia, Oxford's Susan, and Baker's comment (see ER 5:2) on my Manningham's Diary" (ER 5:2) sugestion that the celebrated brought The Poems of Lady Mary Monteagle letter, which gave the first Wroth to mind (Josephine A. Roberts, official intimation to the English gov ed. Louisiana University Press, 1983). ernment of the Gunpowder Plot, "was Lady Mary was a good friend of almost certainly written by the Earl of Susan Vere, Countess Montgomery. Salisbury." As he says, Dr. Mark One of the poems is called "The NichoUs "suspects that Thomas Percy Countesse of Montgomery's Urania." wrote the letter," but NichoUs, a care In the preface of the book, there is a ful scholar, admits, "It was widely little epitaph written at the time of believed at the time that Percy had Lady Susan's death in 1629 by Will written the letter to Monteagle. Just iam Browne of Tavistock (the Dowa why the conviction was so strong is ger Countess of Pembroke was his now a littie difficult to say, but we pationess): have seen how in King's Book, Monteagle no sooner heard Thomas Though we trust the earth with thee.Percy' s name mentioned in connec We will not thy memory. tion with the Westminster vault than Mines of brass or marble shall he suspected, by reason of Percy's Speak nought of thy funeral. 'backwardness in religion' and their They are verier dust than thee old friendship that the letter had come And do beg a history. from him" (Investigating Gunpowder In thy name there is a tomb Plot, p. 175). If the world can give it room. There is no good reason for sup For a Vere and Herbert's wife posing that Percy wrote the letter; not Outspeaks all tombs, outiives all if we take the handwriting of the letter life. into account, which is still extant in the Public Record Office in London, Sincerely, like most of the records in the case Isabel Holden which have survived, or more cor- Northampton, Massachusetts rectiy, been allowed to survive. The most lucid treatment of this subject first appeared on page 17 of the Ob server magazine, a London-based Sunday newspaper, in its issue of November 5, 1967. The late Colin Letters- Cross, the journalistprimarily respon Paris, he admitted in what could only sible, took along to the Record Office have been a moment of inadvertence Joan Cambridge, a leading grapholo that Monteagle's letter was written gist whose expertise is in the solution "in a hand disguised" (see F. Edwards, of legal problems arising from dis Guy Fawkes, the Real Story of the puted handwriting and signatures. He GunpowderPlot?, London, 1969,188; insisted on my absence lest the con quoting from Winwood' s Memorials, clusions of the lady be in any way n, 171). So it was. But how could he prejudiced. Having no personal inter know? There was no problem if he est in the settlement of the problem, had written it himself. Cecil was very she was asked to compare the hands of coy about references to whoever might the principal suspects as writers of the have written it. When he gave the letter—Francis Tresham, Henry Gar instructions to the Attorney General, net and Robert Cecil, all of whose Sir Edward Coke, as to how he should hands bear a certain resemblance. conduct the trial of the plotters, he Examples of the hands were given in warned him to stay away from any the article together with an enlarge mention of the authorship of the letter. ment of two words, "frend" and "Absolutely disclaim that any of these "frends," taken from Cecil's normal wrote it, though you leave the further writings and the Monteagle letter, re judgement indefinite who else it should spectively. One cannot reproduce here be" (ibid, 210; quoted from PRO, all her reaons, but Ms. Cambridge London, SP 14, vol. 19, f.222 r/v). concluded, "examination of original As for the assurance, "there is no documents written and signed by Rob need to accuse Salisbury of hypocrisy ert Cecil shows that his natural graphic in these letters," I agree that hypocrisy movement, normal pressure pattern is not perhaps the best or most precise and character of stroke allow of the word to use as a simple judgment in possibility that he wrote the Monteagle connection with the activity of either letter. Further to this, examination of Cecil, William the father or Robert his spontaneous letter-forms, particu the son. The Cecils were completely larly "h," "s," and "e," indicate defi and utterly sincere in their determina nite similarities with those in the tion to keep theirpolitical ascendancy, Monteagle letter... So on aggregate and while they made a good thing for there is sufficient evidence to support themselves out of this, it would be an opinion that in all probability Cecil unjust to suppose they did not believe himself wrote the Monteagle warn- they were serving the country's inter ing. ests as well. But to get rival influences NichoUs indicated further candi out of the way, they would stop at dates on page 214 of his book but does nothing. So William Cecil got rid of not take the evidence given here into the good Anglican Thomas Howard, consideration. When Cecil wrote his fourth Duke of Norfolk, by implicat dispatch of November 9 to to Sir Tho ing him in the Ridolfi Plot (see my The mas Parry, English ambassador in Marvellous Chance, London, 1968) -Elizabethan Review- and son Robert did as much for Henry lished by the Folio Society can stand Percy, the ninth Earl of North as a scholarly aid in its own right. Both umberland, not as convinced in his NichoUs and Eraser made use of it. I Anglicanism as Howard, but certainly have in preparation a larger work on not a papist. (The sincerity of the the subject since nothing published so Cecils was proved at its most savage, far is adequate, although I am not of course, in their treatment of papists, naive enough to suppose that any especially priests.) thing I shall write will end all contro On this and the whole subject, the versy. Too much of the evidence is work of an American scholar, George missing for anyone ever to be able to Blacker Morgan, deserves to be better claim absolute certainty—unless some known. Unfortunately for its wider dramatic discovery is made in the dissemination, The Great English cellars of the solicitors or behind the Treason... was printed privately in a paneling somewhere, as in the case of limited edition at Oxford in two vol the Clarke-Thornhill manuscripts. umes in 1931 and 1932. Morgan This is sufficientiy unlikely but the thought the plot was genuine but his unlikely can happen. Nevertheless, book was by no means a whitewash many of the difficulties not resolved job. He comments on Robert Cecil, by Dr. NichoUs's book, or for that "although Salisbury completely sup matter the latest work on the subject pressed that information about [Tho by the Lady Antonia Eraser, have al mas] Percy's embezzlement, yet he ready been taken up in my article made a most cleverly unscrupulous published in Recusant History, "Still and deadly use of that letter and of Investigating The Gunpowder Plot" others which the earl wrote to his (vol. 21, pp. 305-346). Perhaps I should steward, in regard to the money, so add by way of footnote that I enjoy that they formed, without being pro good personal relations with both duced in any court, the earl's chief scholars, for nothing is more foolish condemnation in the Star Chamber: or unprofessional than to entertain though Salisbury knew that the weak animosity toward those who disagree earl was as innocent as a child in the with one. plot" (op. cit, II, p. 34; cf. Stow, Joan Cambridge, I am sure, would Annals, p. 884). And again, "Salisbury hardly agree with Dr. Baker that "hand even brought it against the earl that he writing analysis is an art, not a sci had a footman in his employement ence. It is not used forensically in the who had served Francis Tresham; al identification of persons, as are fin though the eari showed that the man gerprints." But surely it is. To attempt had left Tresham's service two years to establish identity in the case of before the plot" (ibid, footnote 2). characters involved in the Gunpow The subject is vast and compli der Plot does not entail dealing "with cated and I am not satisfied with my all the hands in Elizabethan England." own work on the subject so far, al- Nevertheless, it would be unfair to say tiiough the Tesimond nanative pub thatthe objiciantdoes not have a point. Letters- The idenfication of hands is some I was not present when she made her thing of a minefield. I made a mistake examination of the Tresham and myself in attempting to identify the Bmninge letters in the Public Record writer of one letter in the course of Office. She published her findings in Guy Fawkes, the Real Story... ? This Appendix 3 to The Gunpowder Plot, mistake has been acknowledged since Folio Society, London 1973,250-254. in two or three places in print. But The first appendix dealth with my even after the caution acquired, one thesis that Tresham escaped from the hopes, after another thirty years study Tower (231-246).

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