James' minister, the Earl of Salisbury, to justify the harshness of
the Government toward Catholics.

Father Gerard's book, _What was the Gunpowder Plot?_ is the strongest
argument yet produced in favor of this view; but the fact remains
undenied and undeniable that some sort of plot existed. We present
here the latest summarizing of the matter (1897) by the standard
English historian, Gardiner, confining the account almost wholly to
Fawkes' own confessions.

Before examining the evidence, it will be well to remind my readers what
the so-called traditional story of the plot is, or, rather, the story
which has been told by writers who have in the present century availed
themselves of the manuscript treasures now at our disposal, and which are
for the most part in the Public Record Office. With this object I cannot
do better than borrow the succinct narrative of the _Edinburgh
Review_.[1]

[1] January, 1897, p. 192.

"Early in 1604 the three men, Robert Catesby, John Wright, and Thomas
Winter, meeting in a house at Lambeth, resolved on a Powder Plot,
though, of course, only in outline. By April they had added to their
number Wright's brother-in-law, Thomas Percy, and Guy Fawkes, a
Yorkshire man of respectable family, but actually a soldier of
fortune, serving in the Spanish army in the Low Countries, who was
specially brought over to England as a capable and resolute man.
Later on they enlisted Wright's brother Christopher, Winter's brother
Robert, Robert Keyes, and a few more; but all, with the exception of
Thomas Bates, Catesby's servant, men of family and for the most part
of competent fortune, though Keyes is said to have been in straitened
circumstances, and Catesby to have been impoverished by a heavy fine
levied on him as a recusant.[2]

[2] This is a mistake. The fine of three thousand pounds was
imposed for his part in the Essex rebellion.

"Percy, a second cousin of the Earl of Northumberland, then captain
of the Gentleman Pensioners, was admitted by him into that body
in--it is said--an irregular manner, his relationship to the earl
passing in lieu of the usual oath of fidelity. The position gave him
some authority and license near the court, and enabled him to hire a
house, or part of a house, adjoining the House of Lords. From the
cellar of this house they proposed to burrow