Note 89 — Chapter XXVI

— From the “Authorised Discourse,” or “King’s Book,” we learn that the King returned from Royston on Thursday, the 31st day of October; that on Friday, All Hallows Day, Salisbury showed James the Letter in the “gallerie” of the palace at Whitehall. On the following day, Saturday, the 2nd of November, Salisbury and the Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Chamberlain, saw the King in the same “gallerie,” when it was arranged that the Chamberlain should view all the Parliament Houses both above and below. This “viewing” or “perusing” of the vault or cellar under the House of Lords took place on the following Monday afternoon by Suffolk and Mounteagle, when they saw Fawkes, who styled himself “John Johnson,” servant to Thomas Percy, who had hired the house adjoining the Parliament House and the aforesaid cellar also.

Now, Mounteagle, almost certainly, must have known that there would be this second conference with the King, on this Saturday, and from what Mounteagle (ex hypothesi) had said to Tresham about “the mine,” Tresham would have concluded that what Mounteagle knew, Salisbury would be soon made to know, and, through Salisbury’s speeches, the King. My opinion is that Mounteagle saw and spoke to Tresham between the conference of the King, Suffolk, and Salisbury (Mounteagle being made acquainted with, by either Suffolk or Salisbury, if he were not actually an auditor of, all that had passed), and the meeting with Winter in Lincoln’s Inn Walks, on the night of that same Saturday, November the 2nd.