Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/306

276 another, Could she have written to Mounteagle with the knowledge, or the tacit approval of Father Garnet?

It is quite possible that Anne Vaux, terrified by her discovery of what was intended to be done at Westminster sought advice from Garnet. It is also most likely that she interviewed Tresham on the subject. Tresham may then have recommended her as a fitting person to write the epistle; for her handwriting, disguised, would not be familiar to the Lords of the Council. That there is something to be said in favour of the theory of her penmanship is forthcoming in the fact that hers is the only handwriting of which specimens are preserved in the Record Office, that can be claimed in any respect to resemble the caligraphy of Mounteagle's mysterious correspondent.

As to the further question whether Father Garnet advised her, sub rosâ, to communicate with Mounteagle, the supposition that he may have done so does not appear so improbable, when we consider the terrible position in which Garnet found himself during the six weeks prior to the date fixed for the explosion. To the difficulties of his position full justice has not been done by Protestant writers.

For him, the Superior of his Order in England, and the recipient of a most terrible secret, the outlook was by no means pleasant. If the Plot failed, he knew that the Jesuits would be the first