ion Catesby at once bestirred himself; and at the
close of 1604 the lucky discovery of a cellar beneath the Parliament
House facilitated the execution of this plan. Barrels of gunpowder were
placed in the cellar, and the little group waited patiently for the
fifth of November 1605, when the Houses were again summoned to assemble.
In the interval their plans widened into a formidable conspiracy. It was
arranged that on the destruction of the king and the Parliament the
Catholics should rise, seize the young princes, use the general panic
to make themselves masters of the realm, and call for aid from the
Spaniards in Flanders. With this view Catholics of greater fortune, such
as Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham, were admitted to Catesby's
confidence, and supplied money for the larger projects he designed. Arms
were bought in Flanders, horses were held in readiness, a meeting of
Catholic gentlemen was brought about under show of a hunting party to
serve as the beginning of a rising. Wonderful as was the secrecy with
which the plot was concealed, the family affection of Tresham at the
last moment gave a clue to it by a letter to Lord Monteagle, his
relative, which warned him to absent himself from the Parliament on the
fatal day; and further information brought about the discovery of the
cellar and of Guido Fawkes, who was charged with its custody. The
hunting party broke up in despair, the conspirators, chased from county
to county, were either killed or sent to the block; and Garnet, the
Provincial of the English Jesuits, was brought to trial and executed.
Though he had shrunk from all part in the plot, its existence had been
made known to him by way of confession by another Jesuit, Greenway; and
horror-stricken as he represented himself to have been, he had kept the
secret and left the Parliament to its doom.

[Sidenote: The Impositions.]

The failure of such a plot necessarily gives strength to a government;
and for the moment the Parliament was drawn closer to the king by the
deliverance from a common peril. When the Houses again met in 1606 they
listened in a different temper to the demand for a subsidy. The needs of
the Treasury indeed were great. Elizabeth had left behind her a war
expenditure, and a debt of four hundred thousand pounds. The first
ceased with the peace, but the debt remained; and the prodigality of
James was fast raising the charges of the Crown in time of peace to as
high a level as they had