CHAPTER XIII
SIR EVERARD DIGBY'S LETTERS FROM THE TOWER
OF intense interest and importance is the correspondence, that has been preserved to us, of Sir Everard Digby when a prisoner in the Tower of London. He found means, probably by bribing his gaolers, to smuggle letters out of the Tower of London without detection. These letters were scribbled on scraps of paper, and were generally left unaddressed and unsigned, whilst they were often written with lemon juice in lieu of ordinary ink. They were not discovered until seventy years after his death, when they were found amongst the papers of his famous son, Sir Kenelm, and were published by a contemporary writer,[1] from whose original edition I reprint them below.
These letters have been ignored, as much as possible, by Jesuit writers, for the good reason that they reveal, on the whole, their favourite, Digby, in a not very pleasant light.
- ↑ They were printed in the Appendix to Thomas Barlow's (Bishop of Lincoln) account of the Gunpowder Treason, published at the Bishop's Head, St. Paul's Churchyard, February, 1679. In a later edition, published in 1850, no less than five of the letters are omitted.
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