Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/285

CHAPTER XXII
THE LIEUTENANT OF THE TOWER

I

'THAT beast Waad,' as Sir Walter Ralegh called him, had been appointed Lieutenant^[1] of the Tower about eleven weeks before the capture of Guy Faukes at Westminster. Prior to his appointment, however, he had held several very important diplomatic and political posts. He had faithfully served William Cecil, the great Lord Burleigh,^[2] and was destined, in the matter of the Powder Plot, to serve with equal fidelity his son, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. Sir William Waad, under Elizabeth, had been Secretary to Sir Francis Walsingham, and afterwards Clerk of the Privy Council. He had been sent on frequent diplomatic missions to Madrid, Paris, and the Low Countries. In 1588 he was elected a member of Parliament, and in 1601 represented Preston, where his Protestant zeal made him very

1. Lord Ronald Gower, in his history of the Tower of London, aptly remarks that 'Ralegh's feelings towards the new Lieutenant appear to have resembled those of Napoleon to Sir Hudson Lowe.'
2. Especially in regard to obtaining evidence against the Queen of Scots.

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