have promised and as much as can be expected, and when I have done, I shall be as willing to die as I am ready to offer my service, and expect not nor desire favour for it, either before the doing it, nor in the doing it, nor after it is done, but refer myself to the resolved course for me. …'
Further proof in favour of my contention that this letter was written from the Tower is supplied by Digby's own words (Paper III.), to the effect that Lord Salisbury had received his letter, 'but if the King should propose such a course, he had no need of me.' The answer to Digby's offer of 'service' was, therefore, in the negative, which is not surprising, when we read his bold, but only too true and just comments on the broken promises of James to the persecuted Romanists in England, made prior to his succession to the southern throne.
That the importance of the matter contained in Digby's letters from the Tower has hitherto been underestimated by writers dealing with the Gunpowder Plot need not be questioned.[1] Had the letters been stopped by the Lieutenant and produced at Garnet's trial they would have established the impossibility of the accused having only heard of the Plot through the medium of the confessional. Digby's statements that he had the very strongest reasons for believing that
- ↑ In the Dictionary of National Biography, the writer of the Memoir of Sir Everard Digby never even once mentions the existence of these letters, and terms Sir Kenelm Digby 'the younger son' of Sir Everard, instead of, as he was, the elder.
