ge--they knew not where--and might at that very moment be
appealing--they knew not with what effect--to Catholic land-owners and
their tenants, who were, without doubt, exasperated by the recent
enforcement of the penal laws. We may, if we please, condemn the conduct
of the government which had brought the danger of a general Catholic
rising within sight. We cannot deny that, at that particular moment, they
had real cause of alarm. At all events, no immediate steps were taken to
put this part of the King's orders in execution.

Some little information, indeed, was coming in from other witnesses. In
his first examination, on November 5th, Fawkes had stated that in his
absence he locked up the powder, and "one Gibbons' wife who dwells
thereby had the charge of the residue of the house." An examination of
her husband on the 5th, however, only elicited that he, being a porter,
had with two others carried three thousand billets into the vault. On the
6th, Ellen, the wife of Andrew Bright, stated that Percy's servant had,
about the beginning of March, asked her to let the vault to his master,
and that she had consented to abandon her tenancy of it if Mrs.
Whynniard, from whom she held it, would consent. Mrs. Whynniard's consent
having been obtained, Mrs. Bright, or rather Mrs. Skinner--she being a
widow remarried subsequently to Andrew Bright--received two pounds for
giving up the premises.

The important point in this evidence is that the date of March, 1605,
given as that on which Percy entered into possession of the cellar,
showed that Fawkes' statement that he had brought powder into the cellar
at Christmas, 1604, could not possibly be true. On the 7th Mrs. Whynniard
confirmed Mrs. Bright's statement, and also stated that, a year earlier,
in March, 1604, "Mr. Percy began to labor very earnestly with this
examinate and her husband to have the lodging by the Parliament House,
which one Mr. Henry Ferris, of Warwickshire, had long held before, and,
having obtained the said Mr. Ferris' good-will to part from it after long
suit by himself and great entreaty of Mr. Carleton, Mr. Epsley, and other
gentleman belonging to the Earl of Northumberland, affirming him to be a
very honest gentleman, and that they could not have a better tenant, her
husband and she were contented to let him have the said lodging at the
same rent Mr. Ferris paid for it."

Mrs. Whynniard had plainly never heard of the mine; and that the
Government was in