Other pieces of evidence against Percy may be dismissed with equal assurance. We are told, for instance,[194] that Salisbury found a difficulty in tracing Percy's movements before the day on which Parliament was to have been blown up; whereas, ten days before, the same Percy had received a pass issued by the Commissioners of the North, as posting to court for the King's especial service. The order, however, is signed, not by the Commissioners of the North as a body, but by two of their number, and was dated at Seaton Delaval in Northumberland.[195] As Percy's business is known to have been the bringing up the Earl of Northumberland's rents, and he might have pleaded that it was his duty to be in his place as Gentleman Pensioner at the meeting of Parliament, two gentlemen living within hail of Alnwick were likely enough to stretch a point in favour of the servant of the great earl. In any case it was most unlikely that they should have thought it necessary to acquaint the Secretary of State with the terms in which a posting order had been couched. The supposition that Salisbury sent secret orders to the sheriff of Worcestershire not to take Percy alive is sufficiently disposed of, as the Edinburgh Reviewer has remarked, by Sheriff Walsh's own letter, and by the extreme improbability that if Salisbury had known Percy to have been a government spy he would have calculated on his being such a lunatic as to join the other conspirators in their flight, apparently for the mere pleasure of getting himself shot.[196] It may be added that it is hard to imagine how Salisbury could know beforehand in what county the rebels would be taken, and consequently to what sheriff he should address his compromising communication. As to the suggestion that there was something hidden behind the failure of the King's messenger to reach the sheriff with orders to avoid killing the chief conspirators, on the ground that 'the distance to be covered was about 112 miles, and there were three days to do it in, for not till November 8 were the fugitives surrounded,' it may fairly be answered, in the first place, that the whereabouts of the conspirators was not known at Westminster till the Proclamation for their arrest was issued on the 7th, and in the second place, that as the sheriff was constantly on the move in pursuit, it must have been hard to catch him in the time which sufficed to send a message to a fixed point at Westminster.[197] It is needless to argue that Catesby was not the informer. The evidence is of the slightest, depending on the alleged statement by a servant,[198] long ago dead when it was committed to paper, and even Father Gerard appears hardly to believe that the charge is tenable.