TREATISE OF EQUIVOCATION.

I can now inform you that the MS. _Treatise of Equivocation_, about
which J.M. inquired (Vol. i., p. 263.), is preserved in the Bodleian
Library (Laud, _Miscellaneous MSS. 655_.). Dodd, in his _Church History_
(vol. ii. pp. 381. 428.), under the names Blackwell and Francis Tresham,
mentions the work by its second title, _A Treatise against Lying and
fraudulent Dissimulation_, and states that the MS. is in the Bodleian.
Through the kindness of Dr. Baudinel, I have seen the tract; and as
there is a certain historical interest attached to it, some information
on the subject may be acceptable to your readers. But it may be as well
first to give the account of its production at the trial of Guy Fawkes
and the conspirators, Jan. 27, 1606. (See _State Trials_, vol. ii. col.
180.) After Coke had introduced under the seventh head of his speech, as
the fourth means for carrying on the plot, "their perfidious and
perjurious equivocating," there follows:--

"And here was showed a Book, written not long before the Queen's
death, at what time Thomas Winter was employed into Spain,
entituled, 'A Treatise of Equivocation,' which book being seen
and allowed by Garnet, the superior of the Jesuits, and
Blackwell, the Archpriest of England, in the beginning thereof
Garnet with his own hand put out those words in the title of
'Equivocation,' and made it thus; 'A Treatise against Lying and
fraudulent Dissimulation.' ... And in the end thereof, Blackwell
besprinkles it with his blessing, saying, 'Tractatus iste valde
doctus, et vere pius et Catholicus est. Certe S. Scripturarum,
patrum, doctorum, scholasticorum, canonistarum, et optimarum
rationum præsidiis plenissime firmat æquitatem æquivocationis;