and so was made unfairly to convict
himself out of his own mouth. He said, upon his trial, that he had done
all he could to prevent the deed, and that he could not make public what
had been told him in confession--though I am afraid he knew of the plot
in other ways. He was found guilty and executed, after a manful defence,
and the Catholic Church made a saint of him; some rich and powerful
persons, who had had nothing to do with the project, were fined and
imprisoned for it by the Star Chamber; the Catholics, in general, who had
recoiled with horror from the idea of the infernal contrivance, were
unjustly put under more severe laws than before; and this was the end of
the Gunpowder Plot.

SECOND PART

His Sowship would pretty willingly, I think, have blown the House of
Commons into the air himself; for, his dread and jealousy of it knew no
bounds all through his reign. When he was hard pressed for money he was
obliged to order it to meet, as he could get no money without it; and
when it asked him first to abolish some of the monopolies in necessaries
of life which were a great grievance to the people, and to redress other
public wrongs, he flew into a rage and got rid of it again. At one time
he wanted it to consent to the Union of England with Scotland, and
quarrelled about that. At another time it wanted him to put down a most
infamous Church abuse, called the High Commission Court, and he
quarrelled with it about that. At another time it entreated him not to
be quite so fond of his archbishops and bishops who made speeches in his
praise too awful to be related, but to have some little consideration for
the poor Puritan clergy who were persecuted for preaching in their own
way, and not according to the archbishops and bishops; and they
quarrelled about that. In short, what with hating the House of Commons,
and pretending not to hate it; and what with now sending some of its
members who opposed him, to Newgate or to the Tower, and now telling the
rest that they must not presume to make speeches about the public affairs
which could not possibly concern them; and what with cajoling, and
bullying, and fighting, and being frightened; the House of Commons was
the plague of his Sowship's existence. It was pretty firm, however, in
maintaining its rights, and insisting that the Parliament should make the
laws, and not the King by his own single proclamations (which he tried
hard to do); and his Sowship was so