his
mother as Lord Monteagle, and his father in 1618 as Lord Morley. His
wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Tresham, and his sister Mary
was the wife of Mr Thomas Abington of Hendlip Hall.

The chief interest attaching to Lord Monteagle concerns the famous
letter: and the two questions requiring answer are--Who wrote it? and,
Was the recipient a party to the plot?

The second question, which may be first dealt with, must be answered
almost certainly in the affirmative. Nay, more, Lord Monteagle was not
only a party to the Gunpowder Plot, but there is strong reason to
believe that in conjunction with Lord Salisbury and others, he got up a
counter-plot for its discovery. The laying of the letter before Lord
Salisbury on the night of October 24th [Note 1], was probably not the
first intimation which Salisbury had received, and assuredly not the
first given to Lord Monteagle. The whole catena of circumstances, when
carefully studied, shows that the episode of the letter was a
cleverly-devised countermarch, designed at once to inform the public and
at the same time to give a warning to the conspirators. The party got
up at Hoxton, where Lord Monteagle was not living; the mysterious
delivery of the letter; the placing of it in the hands of Thomas Ward, a
known confidant of the conspirators: these and other circumstances all
tend to one conclusion--that Monteagle was acting a part throughout, and
that it was in reality he who gave warning to them, not they to him. If
the conspirators had taken his warning, they might all have escaped with
their lives; for the vessel designed to bear Fawkes abroad as soon as he
should have fired the mine was lying in the river, and there was
abundant time for them all to have made good their escape, had they not
foolishly tried to retrieve their loss at Dunchurch. This is made more
certain by the fact that the Government were, as Garnet remarked,
"determined to save Lord Monteagle," and that any reference in the
confessions of the prisoners which tended to implicate him was
diligently suppressed. In one examination, the original words ran,
"Being demanded what other persons were privy [to the plot] beside _the
Lord Mounteagle_, Catesby," etcetera. The three words in italics have
been rendered illegible, by a slip of paper being pasted over them, and
a memorandum in red ink made on the back. Time, however, has faded the
red ink, and the words are again visible. (Criminal Tria