Note 243 — Chapter VI

Moreover, Monteagle's services received most substantial acknowledgment in the form of a grant of £700 a year,[243] equivalent, at least, to ten times that amount in money of the present day.[244] There still exists[245] the draft preamble of the grant making this award, which has been altered and emended with an amount of care which sufficiently testifies to the importance of the matter. In this it is said of the letter that by the knowledge thereof "we had the first and only means to discover that most wicked and barbarous plot"—the words italicised being added as an interlineation by Cecil himself. Nevertheless, it appears certain that this is not, and cannot be, the truth; indeed, historians of all shades equally discountenance the idea. Mr. Jardine[246] considers it "hardly credible that the letter was really the means by which the plot was discovered," and inclines to the belief[247] that the whole story concerning it "was merely a device of the government ... to conceal the means by which their information had been derived." Similarly Mr. J.S. Brewer[248] holds it as certain that this part, at least, of the story is a fiction designed to conceal the truth. Mr. Gardiner, who is less inclined than others to give up the received story, thinks that, to say the least of it, it is highly probable that Monteagle expected the letter before it came.[249]