Tresham has a serving-man named William Vavasour, who attended Sir Thomas Tresham, and who, with his elder brother, George Vavasour (whose education Tresham has particularly encouraged), and their sister Muriel (gentlewoman to Lady Monteagle who is the daughter of "Muriel" Lady Tresham) are favoured dependants of the Tresham family, being the children of an old and much valued Catholic servant. Both George and William are confidentially employed by Tresham as amanuenses, in transcribing religious, or treasonable, treatises of the time. Lord Monteagle unexpectedly orders a supper to be prepared (October 26, 1605) at his house at Hoxton (belonging to his brother-in-law Tresham), and where he has not been for some months. As he is about to go to supper, a letter is handed to him by his footman, to whom it has been given in the street by "an unknown man of a reasonable tall personage," who knows that he will find him at so unfrequented a residence. Monteagle opens the letter, which is anonymous, pretends he cannot understand it, and shows it to his secretary, Thomas Ward, who, he is aware, is familiar with some of the conspirators; whom Ward, the next evening, tells of the receipt of the letter, which Monteagle at once takes to Whitehall, about three miles away, where he finds the Earl of Salisbury (Principal Secretary of State) with other lords of the Council together assembled, "ready for supper." The Government censor, or suppress, the name of the place where the letter was delivered. The conspirators and the Jesuit priests, who are involved in the plot through the confessional, at once suspect Tresham; and Catesby and Winter directly charge him with having betrayed them, which he denies, while urging them to escape to France, and giving them money for the purpose. Although Tresham is a sworn conspirator, he alone remains behind and at large, after Fawkes's arrest (November 4-5, 1605), and flight of the others into the country, and offers his services to the Government. A week later he is taken to the Tower, where being ill, his wife and serving-man, William Vavasour, and a maid servant constantly attend him; an indulgence _never under any circumstances_ permitted to anyone who was really a prisoner and upon a capital charge there. Becoming worse, he dictates a letter for Vavasour to write to Lord Salisbury, retracting a statement that he has been induced to make respecting Father Garnet, and dies (December 23, 1605). This letter, or dying statement, being misunderstood, is considered to be so incredible that the writing is particularly inquired into. Vavasour thereupon, in the presence of the Lieutenant of the Tower, writes an _untrue_ statement (consequently using a hand quite different from his ordinary writing and, _in itself, identical with the writing of the anonymous letter_), asserting that his master's dying statement was written by Mrs. Tresham (though in every way proper for Vavasour to have written),