unded on one ground."

Had Tresham's committal to the Tower been otherwise than a mere
formality, or "a farce," neither his wife nor his servants would under
any circumstances have been permitted to attend or even see him whatever
the state of his health might have been; and had he survived, nothing
serious would have been done to him,[44] any more than was done to his
"deeply guilty" servant Vavasour.

Tresham, though dreading, as he said, "the infamous brand of an
accuser,"[45] was as evidently the Informer to the Government, either
directly or indirectly through Monteagle, as his servant Vavasour was
the writer of the letter.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 43: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvii. 58.]

[Footnote 44: He left no male issue, and was succeeded in the family
property by his next brother Lewis, who was created a baronet June 29,
1611, one of the second batch of baronets made on the institution of
that Order the previous May 22 by James I.]

[Footnote 45: "State Papers, Domestic," James I., xvi. 63.]

VI

THE VAVASOURS AS DEPENDANTS OF THE TRESHAM FAMILY

The Tresham Papers[46] contain much information respecting the Vavasours
as dependants of that family. Sir Thomas Tresham had a bailiff or
collector, named Thomas Vavasour, an old and much valued Catholic
servant,[47] who had, with perhaps other children, two sons, George and
William, and a daughter, Muriel. George, who had been educated, was in
June, 1596, sent up by his father with a letter to Sir Thomas, then in
town, in order that he might be entered at one of the Inns of Court, as
Sir Thomas might advise: "Mr. Francis Tresham has encouraged him in this
kind of study and the cost already bestowed must not be lost. He knows
he has nothing else to trust to but his learning, nor does he seem so
fit for anything else."[48] He was accordingly admitted to the Inner
Temple in November of that year,[49] where Lewis Tresham (Sir Thomas's
second son) had been admitted the previous November, and to whom there
is an allusion of George Vavasour acting as tutor.[50] William Vavasour,
the other son, was servant to Sir Thomas, and though not so educated as
his brother George, was not a livery-servant or footman,[51] but appears
to have held a similar or superior position with Sir Thomas, to that
which Bates, who kept his own man,[52] held with Catesby, a kind of
secretary-valet of the time.[53] After Sir Thomas's death he served his
eldest son Francis