What invests this document with singular importance is the fact that we hear of it again. In April, 1606, it was quoted for the benefit of Parliament by the Attorney General, Sir E. Coke, and explicitly as having reference to the Gunpowder Plot, forming part of the evidence adduced by him to secure the attainder of persons accused of being partakers in that treason.[206] It thus affords a proof, on the authority of the government itself, that eighteen months before the conspiracy was "discovered," intelligence regarding it had been received and was being attended to. [Illustration: A VIEW OF THE HOUSE OF PEERS, 1755.] This is, however, by no means the only information of which we find traces. Amongst the Cecil papers at Hatfield is a letter dated December 20th, 1605, addressed to the Earl of Salisbury by one Thomas Coe, who claims to have previously forwarded to his Majesty "the primary intelligence of these late dangerous treasons," upon which communication the historian Lodge observes,[207] "It should seem then that the famous letter transmitted to James by Lord Monteagle, for the right construction of which that Prince's penetration hath been so highly extolled by some historians, was not the only previous intelligence communicated to him of the Gunpowder Treason." Meanwhile the officers of the government, in all parts, appear to have been no less alert than was their wont. On the 9th of January, 1604-5, for instance, Sir Thomas Parry writes from Paris,[208] inclosing a note from an informer at Dieppe, concerning an English Catholic returning from Italy and Spain with letters for Fathers Garnet and Oldcorne, and a cipher of three lines for a lawyer at Douay, and although the messenger has contrived to give him the slip, he is able to send particulars concerning his personal appearance, and the locality in London where he is likely to be found. On the 25th of the same month, Cecil replies to Parry[209] concerning priests and their doings, and makes the valuable admission that their proceedings are always known to him by means of false brethren, though, he adds, these informers always add to their intelligence "sophistications" of their own, a fact which must not be lost sight of in studying the reports of such folk. We hear particularly of informations supplied by the priests Bagshawe and Cecil, by Captain Turner, Charles Paget, and sundry others.