God’s Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England (15 page)

There was one incident, however, that left the peer smarting – ‘some unkindness which I conceived of you,’ he later wrote to Montagu’s wife, Elizabeth, ‘which was your somewhat too zealous (I will not otherwise term the same) urging me in matters tending to religion’. Evidently Lady Montagu had thought it a good idea to lecture her guest on the errors of his faith and he had taken offence. The episode had threatened to sour relations between Vaux and the Montagus, but they had parted on cordial terms and he had nothing but praise for Montagu’s son, who had the unenviable task of delivering him up to the Lords of the Council at Leicester House on the Strand.
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On Friday, 18 August 1581, Vaux and Sir Thomas Tresham were ‘required whether they would swear to their knowledge and thinking that Campion the Jesuit was at their houses according to his confession or no’. Campion was still alive at this stage, battling the rack on the other side of town. He would be tried in November and executed the following month. The rumour mill was attempting to grind down his reputation, but nothing was confirmed. Tresham, and in all probability Vaux too, had been told at Apethorpe that the Jesuit had revealed ‘not only all the places where & when he had been since his first arrival in England, but likewise what relief, what letters, yea & what messengers had been sent him by any’. Also that ‘Campion had made a long accusation & was so timorous of torment, or specially of death, that he would do anything before he would endure either the one or the other & that most certainly he would recant & become a Protestant’.
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In this maelstrom of truth and lies, Tresham had preferred to believe – or at least maintain – that it was all slander. He and Vaux resolved to give nothing away that could have implicated or perjured themselves, or indeed could have prejudiced Campion’s position. They refused the oath, neither confirming nor denying the presence of the priest in their houses, ‘and thereupon were committed close prisoners to the Fleet’.
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The prison was a short ride along Fleet Street from Leicester House. If the prisoners were permitted the honour of arriving by boat, it was a quick journey down the Thames to Blackfriars and up the Fleet River, which marked the boundary between Westminster and the City. The river was the epitome of squalid London, its foul waters swallowed the waste of each street, its ‘stinking lanes’ welcomed disease and allowed it to linger. The prison was situated on the east bank and was surrounded by a moat that Londoners were inclined to use as an open lavatory. When the poet Earl of Surrey had been a prisoner there in 1542, he had feared contamination from its ‘pestilent airs’. In the reign of Mary I, Bishop Hooper, imprisoned for his Protestantism, had complained that ‘the stench of the house hath infected me with sundry diseases’.
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Sir Thomas Tresham was quick to join the chorus of disapproval. A fortnight after their committal, he complained of the ‘noisome and moist imprisonment’. He was furious that ‘brawlers, fighters, unthrifty and loose people’ were allowed the liberty of the prison, while he, Vaux and other gentlemen ‘in for their consciences’ had to suffer the indignity of close imprisonment. This was not solitary confinement, but as Vaux wrote in October, ‘none may speak with me, but by warrant in the presence of the warden or his deputy’.
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Nevertheless, the Fleet was, by common consent, the best prison in London and for those who could afford them a few ‘luxuries’ were permitted. Vaux and Tresham both had bedchambers, if sparsely furnished, and each was allowed a servant. They clearly also had access to writing materials, even if Tresham had to scribble a hasty conclusion to one letter, ‘hearing my jailor bustling at my door, who in no wise may be knowing hereof’. They could stretch their legs down their ‘accustomed walking alley along the brick wall in the Fleet
garden’ and they had the honour of dining with the warden, his wife, fellow prisoners and occasional guests from outside. On 3 September, in the presence of Vaux and some other prisoners, Tresham initiated an after-dinner debate on transubstantiation with a visiting Protestant theologian, Dr Lilly, Master of Balliol College, Oxford. It was a ‘friendly controversy’ and when ‘jailor’s restraint (to whose beck I now am taught without all gainsay servilly to bow)’ ordered the prisoners back to their chambers, Lilly lent Tresham a book, which he returned a few days later with a long letter of thanks.
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The following month, Lord Vaux received distressing news from Northamptonshire. His kinsman Robert Mulsho, talking to his servant Carrington, had expressed regret that Vaux should have railed so lewdly and unfairly against the Montagus of Boughton. Apparently Vaux’s cousin, neighbour and, until now, ‘ever reputed good friend’ William Lane had told Lady Montagu that Vaux was a ‘backbiter and defamer’. He had, said Lane, been telling tales about the ‘evil’ treatment he had recently received at Boughton, protesting that he was ‘almost famished for want of necessary relief of entertainment and diet’. Lady Montagu was understandably upset. As soon as the report came to Vaux in the Fleet, he went to Tresham, who drafted a letter for him to send to Lady Montagu disclaiming all the rumours.

‘Good Madam,’ it begins, it is ‘a world’s wonder’ that Lane could ‘so violate the rules of true Christian charity’ as to ‘contrive to add affliction to affliction’ by his slanders ‘against me in my present inexpected and deep disgrace’. Assuring Lady Montagu of his esteem, love and reverence, he asked her to

mark withal the cunning couching of this shameless slander to be now raised in the time of my absence forth of the country, and in my restraint of liberty and close imprisonment here, when by all likelihood I should never have heard thereof. O wicked devise. O devilish drift. Better be the words of a true friend than a Judas kiss of a covert enemy.

The ‘daily experience’ of his adversity had taught Vaux to distinguish between fast and ‘faint friends’, yet he could not conceive a reason for Lane to have become ‘so extreme an enemy to my honour and reputation, as vainly and loosely to suggest things neither spoken, nor once thought of by me’. He protests that he has never been ‘a brabbling
backbiter’, as ‘the testimony of all my neighbours’ will confirm. The Montagus are ‘dear’ friends. ‘I was always welcome’ at Boughton, ‘and so did I hold myself’. There was no truth in the slander: ‘I never said so: nay further I say, I protest I never had any such thought, which I will aver to the face of him whosoever, to his utter shame and reproof, that dareth to gainsay it.’

Had the letter ended there, it would have been so much the better. But Vaux had been offended by Lady Montagu’s credulity and he proceeded to offer a homily on the evils of detraction and the folly of listening to ‘lying lips’. It was a ‘necessary lesson fit for us to learn in these wicked days, that if we frequent the company of lewd and perverse [people], we also shall be perverted’.

The author acknowledged that his letter might be ‘tedious reading’, but felt compelled – now that ‘all unkindness at once should be shuffled forth’ – to lay one more card on the table. This was Lady Montagu’s ‘somewhat too zealous’ attempt to discuss religion with him. Vaux had clearly not forgiven her for what he deemed untimely and inappropriate behaviour, ‘and that in the presence of your husband’. One lecture deserved another:

since St Paul admonisheth that women should learn in silence and in subjection, and that in their houses they themselves should learn by demanding of their husbands, who doth not permit them to teach in their presence but to be in silence. For silence extolleth womanly shamefastness and such comely shamefastness adorneth their age.

‘At which time, Madam,’ the letter finally concludes, ‘if I anything, as haply in reply, I might offend you, I pray pardon thereof, for I had no intention to minister offence to you. And what then passed from you to me, God forgive me, as I therein forgive you.’ Commending himself to the Montagus, Vaux signed off, ‘not doubting but we shall many times meet and be merry’.
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We are none the wiser as to what had ‘then passed’ at Boughton between Lord Vaux and Lady Montagu – perhaps a hearty slanging match – but it was probably the seed of all subsequent rumour and the reason for Lady Montagu’s credulity. Nor do we know if Lord Vaux ever sent this letter or even approved of it in this form. It was conserved among the Tresham Papers at Rushton Hall alongside
another folio containing an alternative paragraph and some biblical extracts on detraction. There is no record of the letter in the Montagu archive. It was written in a very neat hand, possibly Tresham’s. The tone, punctuation, vocabulary and style all bear Tresham’s hallmark, and at the end of the page, under the heading ‘The contents of this letter’, is an outline of the main points. This is written in Tresham’s usual hand and ends, ‘if you think the letter too long, you may leave out any of these 5 points’.
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There can be no doubt, therefore, that Tresham ghosted the letter for Vaux. He provided substance and his inimitable style to Vaux’s sentiments. He may even have influenced those sentiments, but the final decision on what to include or omit lay with Vaux.

This was the first of many subsequent letters drafted by Tresham for his brother-in-law. Although Vaux was senior in age and superior in status, he allowed Tresham to dominate almost every aspect of his life, recognising in him a keener intellect, a sharper head for business, a better way with words and a more complex and combative mindset. Tresham was a leader – self-conscious and self-appointed; Vaux was a follower – unassuming and unspectacular, but no less committed a Catholic.

Their families went back a long way, beyond the Wars of the Roses, and their interests were tied up in a myriad of trusts, testaments, indentures and leases. Their shared faith – and shared suffering in that faith – created a bond that could never be broken. As Tresham would write in 1590, Lord Vaux had ‘loved me longest, esteemed me dearest, and by the space of full twenty-seven years (in matters of greatest weight) most trust in me hath over reposed’.
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In other words, ever since his marriage to Mary Tresham around 1563, Vaux had sought her brother’s guidance. There is an implied weakness in his deference to Tresham. He was impressionable and it seems that imprisonment, poor health and financial hardship would diminish him. Sir John Roper, whose daughter would marry Vaux’s son George, called him ‘the simple Lord Vaux’ in 1590, and there is an interesting reference by Tresham in 1594 to Vaux’s ‘deafness’ – perhaps one reason for his over-reliance on his wife’s brother.
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But Vaux had heard Lady Montagu’s lecture loud and clear in 1581 and his offence at her behaviour – even if subsequently ventriloquised by Tresham – was genuine. As contempt proceedings against Vaux and his fellow prisoners loomed,
he may once again have sought Tresham’s advice, but he knew that when the time would come, he would have to stand up in the Star Chamber and speak for himself.

The time came three months into his imprisonment. On Wednesday, 15 November 1581, the day after Campion had pleaded not guilty at his arraignment, Lord Vaux was tried in the Star Chamber.
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He stood at the bar with Tresham, Sir William Catesby and three others. They faced a phalanx of dignitaries that included Lord Chancellor Bromley, the Earl of Leicester, Sir Walter Mildmay, Sir Francis Knollys and two Chief Justices. The prosecution was led by the Attorney General, John Popham. After an exordium on the Pope’s seditious interference in the Queen’s affairs, Popham accused the defendants of having received the ‘renegate’ Jesuit Edmund Campion into their homes. Further, they had contemptuously refused to swear on oath, or even upon their allegiance or honour, to the veracity of their testimonies provided during earlier interrogations.

According to an eyewitness:

the evidence read in that behalf was a confession of Mr Campion’s at the rack the [blank] of August last etc. before the Lieutenant of the Tower, Norton & Hammon. The content whereof was that he had been at the house of the Lord Vaux sundry times, at Sir Thomas Tresham’s house, at Mr Griffin’s of Northamptonshire, where also the Lady Tresham then was, and at the house of Sir William Catesby, where Sir Thomas Tresham & his lady then was. Also at one time when he was at the Lord Vaux’s, he said that the Lord Compton was there, but not mentioning conference with them or the like.

In corroboration, the letter that Campion had written to Thomas Pounde was produced, ‘wherein he did take notice that by frailty he had confessed of some houses where he had been, which now he repented him, and desired Mr Pounde to beg him pardon of the Catholics therein, saying in this he only rejoiced that he had discovered no things of secret’. These were the secrets of the confessional that Campion would protest at his own trial on 20 November that he would never divulge ‘come rack, come rope’. Campion’s clarification of this point in his letter must surely be seen as an acknowledgement that
he did indeed write it, even though it no longer survives. However, Lord Vaux and his fellow defendants were tried five days before Campion. They probably suspected, or hoped, that the letter and the confession, read aloud but not examined by them, were forgeries. The government could have received information about Campion’s sojourn in Northamptonshire from someone else. Lord Vaux’s experience with the Montagus had shown that there were men in the county who bore him ill will. Even if Vaux suspected that Campion had given his name away, the evidence presented here was vague and, as the Queen’s Counsel admitted, extorted under torture.

As the highest-ranked defendant, Lord Vaux was tried first. Ordered to affirm or deny Campion’s statement, he made ‘an humble & lowly obedience’, but the Earl of Leicester apparently discerned ‘some want of duty or reverence therein’ and pointed it out to the Chancellor.