Secondly, Dr. Williams does not say that he (Williams) himself had this testimony direct from the unnamed and unidentified witness——“the worthy person still in being” in (or about) the year 1680. Therefore, this story may have been handed on by wagging, irresponsible, chattering tongues, whose name is legion. With the result that it gained, not lost, in the course of transmission to the mind of Dr. Williams, who has enshrined in the printed page, still to be viewed in the British Museum, the far-fetched tale for the benefit of succeeding ages. CHAPTER XXXV. Now, if Dr. Williams solemnly had said that he knew Mrs. Abington personally, and that she (Mrs. Abington) had told him (Williams) with her own lips that she had writ the Letter, the case would have been _a good way_ towards being established: assuming the lady to have been intellectually and morally capable at the time when she made such statement, and Williams himself a man whose word could be relied on. Or, if _Mr. Abington_ had told _Williams_ that _he knew his wife had writ the Letter because he saw with his own eyes the lady do it_, then the case would have been _also a good way_ towards being established. Or, if _Mr. Abington_ had told _Williams_ that _he believed his wife had writ the Letter because she had told him (Abington) she had done so immediately after she alleged she had performed the meritorious deed_, the case would have been some _slight way_ towards being established. But when the only shred or patch of evidence we have to support the stupendous article of belief that Mrs. Abington accomplished the immortal feat is an uncircumstantial, uncorroborated allegation by Dr. Williams that _some person or another unknown_ (on the most favourable view) _told him_ (Williams) that Mrs. Abington had writ the Letter _merely because her husband said so_, then the case for Mrs. Abington’s authorship of the document is _in no way_ towards being established. And, therefore, the story falls to the ground. And, therefore, it should be, in reason, henceforward consigned to the limbo of exploded myths and idle tales. It is true that Dr. Nash in his work on Worcestershire,[115] written in the eighteenth century and published in 1780, declares that “Tradition in this county says that she [_i.e._, Mrs. Abington] was the person who wrote the Letter to her brother, which discovered the Gunpowder Plot.” But then, obviously, this alleged tradition is absolutely worthless, unless it can be shown to have been a _continuous_ tradition from the year 1605 down to the time when Nash was writing his “_History_.” For if the tradition sprang up at a later date, for the purposes of true history its value as a tradition is plainly nothing.