The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605 — John Shaqi
The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605Monteagle, William Parker, Baron
History
The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle in 1605
Monteagle, William Parker, Baron
Gunpowder Plot, 1605; Monteagle, William Parker, Baron, 1574 or 1575-1622
The Tresham Papers[46] contain much information respecting the Vavasours
as dependants of that family. Sir Thomas Tresham had a bailiff or
collector, named Thomas Vavasour, an old and much valued Catholic
servant,[47] who had, with perhaps other children, two sons, George and
William, and a daughter, Muriel. George, who had been educated, was in
June, 1596, sent up by his father with a letter to Sir Thomas, then in
town, in order that he might be entered at one of the Inns of Court, as
Sir Thomas might advise: "Mr. Francis Tresham has encouraged him in this
kind of study and the cost already bestowed must not be lost. He knows
he has nothing else to trust to but his learning, nor does he seem so
fit for anything else."[48] He was accordingly admitted to the Inner
Temple in November of that year,[49] where Lewis Tresham (Sir Thomas's
second son) had been admitted the previous November, and to whom there
is an allusion of George Vavasour acting as tutor.[50] William Vavasour,
the other son, was servant to Sir Thomas, and though not so educated as
his brother George, was not a livery-servant or footman,[51] but appears
to have held a similar or superior position with Sir Thomas, to that
which Bates, who kept his own man,[52] held with Catesby, a kind of
secretary-valet of the time.[53] After Sir Thomas's death he served his
eldest son Francis Tresham in the same capacity; while the sister Muriel
Vavasour, who bore the same (then uncommon) Christian name as Lady
Tresham, and may have been her god-daughter, became "gentlewoman without
livery" at £5 yearly[54] to Lady Monteagle, who was Lady Tresham's
daughter. Both George Vavasour and his brother William were
confidentially employed by Francis Tresham as amanuenses, where secrecy
was necessary in transcribing religious or political treatises, such as
were then circulated amongst Roman Catholics, and, being treasonable,
dared not be printed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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