A NEW GUY FAWKES DISCOVERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11843, 21 December 1901, Page 2 (Supplement)

A NEW GUY FAWKES DISCOVERY.

WHAT A LUCKY COLLECTOR FOUND

ON A - BOOKSTALL. At the Record Office they still have the original copy or the depositions which Guy Fawkes, after he had been tortured, signed with a trembling hand, and until recently this ill-scrawled signature of the conspirator was supposed to be the only one in existence.

But lying unrecognised among a , dusty heap of documents in a second-hand bookseller's shop a lucky collector has lately discovered another parchment signed by Guy Fawkes.

" Turning over these old documents I came across a dirty sheet of parchment folded into a packet a few inches v square," says Mr. A. Relph, who made the discovery. " I opened it and found it was an indenture of sale conveying some, lauded property in Ciiston, Yorkshire, to Anne Skipseye, and it was signed ' Guye Fawkes.' The bookseller attached little value to the documents, and I bought them all for a few shillings. '

" Then I took this indenture to the British Museum. At first they thought it was a forgery, for during the greater part of his life Fawkes signed himself ' Guido,' but closer examination assured them that it was genuine, and that the signature was that of the -plotter himself."

This is one of the most extraordinary "finds" made for many years. The bookseller does not know how the indenture came into his possession, and its present owner, who thus picked it up for a mere song, values it at £1500.

It is possible that in this indenture we have the last trace of Guy's doings as a Yorkshireman. In 1591, when he came of age, he began to turn his inheritance into coin, and this document shows how he disposed of some of it. Soon after August, 1592, the date this deed bears, he must have left Yorkshire, for in 1593 he was in the ranks of the Spaniards in Flanders. The desperate man who came back a dozen years later is written down as a Spaniard in many little history bocks, and Guy signs " Guido" to the depositions taken after lie had been tortured.