inued against them, some reckless and
unprincipled men united in a design to blow up the parliament. Percy,
a relation of the Earl of Northumberland, was concerned in the plot,
and many of the other conspirators were men of good families and
fortunes, but were implacable bigots. They hired a cellar, under the
parliament house, which had been used for coals; and there they
deposited thirty-one barrels of gunpowder, waiting several months for
a favorable time to perpetrate one of the most horrid crimes ever
projected. It was resolved that Guy Fawkes, one of the number, should
set fire to the train. They were all ready, and the 5th of November,
1605, was at hand, the day to which parliament was prorogued; but
Percy was anxious to save _his_ kinsman from the impending ruin, Sir
Everard Digby wished to warn some of _his_ friends, and Tresham was
resolved to give _his_ brother-in-law, Lord Mounteagle, a caution. It
seems that this peer received a letter so peculiar, that he carried it
to Cecil, who showed it to the king, and the king detected or
suspected a plot. The result was, that the cellar was explored by the
lord chamberlain, and Guy Fawkes himself was found, with all the
materials for striking a light, near the vault in which the coal and
the gunpowder were deposited. He was seized, interrogated, tortured,
and imprisoned; but the wretch would not reveal the names of his
associates, although he gloried in the crime he was about to commit,
and alleged, as his excuse, that violent diseases required desperate
remedies, the maxim of the Jesuits. But most of the conspirators
revealed their guilt by flight. They might have escaped, had they fled
from the kingdom; but they hastened only into the country to collect
their friends, and head an insurrection, which, of course, was easily
suppressed. The leaders in this plot were captured and executed, and
richly deserved their fate, although it was clear that they were
infatuated. But in all crime there is infatuation. It was suspected
that the Jesuits were at the bottom of the conspiracy; and the whole
Catholic population suffered reproach from the blindness and folly of
a few bigots, from whom no sect or party ever yet has been free. But
there is no evidence that any of the Catholic clergy were even privy
to the intended crime, which was known only to the absolute plotters.
Some Jesuits were indeed suspected, arrested, tortured, and executed;
but no evidence of guilt was brought a