Note 18 — The Identification of the Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle

"He died this night, about two of the clock after midnight, with very great pain; for though his spirits were much spent and his body dead, a-lay above two hours in departing" (Lieutenant of the Tower to Salisbury, December 23, 1605, "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvii. 56). Tresham's death, being so opportune for Monteagle, if not for Salisbury, has been attributed to poisoning; but Stowe's "Annals" (1615, p. 880) states it to have been occasioned by strangury, though giving the date of his death incorrectly as November 22. Ten years later a subsequent Lieutenant of the Tower was executed for poisoning a State prisoner.