September, 1605. This view is also held by Father John Gerard, S.J., in his 'What Was the Gunpowder Plot?' I, however, humbly beg to agree with Mrs. Everett Green (Editor, Dom. S. P. James I.), that this letter must have been despatched from the Tower early in December, 1605, and penned, therefore, whilst Digby was a prisoner. The whole tone of the text seems to bear upon the recent plot and the terrible position of the writer, who, in evident reference to his impending fate, says, 'I shall be as willing to die as I am ready,' etc., and signs himself, 'Your Lordship's poor Bedesman, Ev. Digby.' Father Gerard's statement that it cannot have been written by a prisoner, because 'it was sealed with a crest or coat-of-arms,' is absurd in the extreme. Digby was lodged like a gentleman in the Tower, finding means to write to his friends, to buy good food, and to wear fine clothes; why, therefore, in the name of common sense, should he have been deprived of the use of so simple and usual an article in those days as a signet ring, or ordinary seal? Moreover, only as recently as November 23, he had been allowed to write direct to Salisbury, asking, inter alia, that the royal clemency might be extended to his family.
'. . . I do assure myself that His Holiness may be drawn to manifest so contrary a disposition of excommunicating the King that he will proceed with the same course against all such as shall go about to disturb the King's quiet and happy
