In the King’s Book, after describing Salisbury’s first visit to James in “the privie gallerie” of Whitehall Palace, it is stated that it was arranged that there should be another meeting on the following day, Saturday, the 2nd of November.

The precise words of the Royal Work are these: “It was agreed that he [i.e., Salisbury] should the next day repair to his Highness; which he did in the same privie gallerie, and renewed the memory thereof, the Lord Chamberlaine [i.e., Suffolk] being then present with the King. At what time it was determined that the said Lord Chamberlaine should, according to his custom and office, view all the Parliament Houses.”

This pre-arranged meeting with the King on the Saturday was duly held just one week after the delivery of the Letter, Salisbury and Suffolk the Lord Chamberlaine being present thereat; and I suggest that, most probably, Mounteagle himself was, if not then actually within ear-shot, yet not afar off.

Now it is evident from Lingard’s “History” that Tresham had told Winter that the Government had already intelligence of the existence of “the mine.”[92]

Tresham also told Winter that he (Tresham) knew not how the Government had obtained this knowledge (vol. ix., p. 72).

The inevitable inference, therefore, that reason demands should be drawn from these statements of Tresham is that Mounteagle must have either sent for his brother-in-law, or gone himself to see him, and that Mounteagle then must have told the terrified Tresham that he (Mounteagle) knew for a fact that a mine had been digged,[A] and that the same information probably that very day (Saturday) would be imparted to the King’s Government likewise.[93]

This explanation, moreover, stands unspeakably more to reason than the one which woodenly says that Tresham himself revealed the dread secret respecting the mine to Mounteagle, and that then, out of his own mouth, the unhappy man hazarded self-condemnation in the presence of the astute Winter only one day after his (Tresham’s) life had been in the gravest possible jeopardy at Barnet, near White Webbs, from the poniards of the infuriated Catesby and Winter.[94]