scaffold. His Sowship thought it wonderfully
knowing in him to surprise the people by
pardoning these three at the very block; but,
blundering, and bungling, as usual, he had
very nearly over-reached himself. For the
messenger on horseback, who brought the pardon,
came so late, that he was pushed to the
outside of the crowd, and was obliged to shout
and roar out what he came for. The miserable
Cobham did not gain much by being
spared that day. He lived, both as a
prisoner and a beggar, utterly despised, and
miserably poor, for thirteen years, and then
died in an old outhouse belonging to one of
his former servants.

This plot got rid of, and Sir Walter Raleigh
safely shut up in the Tower, his Sowship
held a great dispute with the Puritans on
their presenting a petition to him, and had it
all his own way—not so very wonderful, as
he would talk continually, and would not
hear anybody else—and filled the Bishops
with admiration. It was comfortably settled
that there was to be only one form of
religion, and that all men were to think exactly
alike. But, although this was arranged two
centuries and a half ago, and although the
arrangement was supported by much fining
and imprisonment, I do not find that it is
quite successful, even yet.

His Sowship, having that uncommonly high
opinion of himself as a king, had a very low
opinion of Parliament, as a power that
audaciously wanted to control him. When he
called his first Parliament after he had been
king a year, he accordingly thought he would
take pretty high ground with them, and told
them that he commanded them "as an
absolute king". The Parliament thought these
strong words, and saw the necessity of
upholding their authority. His Sowship had
three children: Prince Henry, Prince Charles,
and the Princess Elizabeth. It would have
been well for one of these, and we shall too
soon see which, if he had learnt a little wisdom
concerning Parliaments from his father's
obstinacy.

Now, the people still labouring under their
old dread of the Catholic religion, this
Parliament revived and strengthened the severe
laws against it. And this so angered ROBERT
CATESBY, a restless Catholic gentleman of an
old family, that he formed one of the most
desperate and terrible designs ever conceived
in the mind of man; no less a scheme than
the Gunpowder Plot.

His object was, when the King, lords, and
commons, should be assembled at the next
opening of Parliament, to blow them up, one
and all, with a great mine of gunpowder.
The first person to whom he confided this
horrible idea was THOMAS WINTER, a
Worcestershire gentleman who had served in the
army abroad, and had been secretly employed
in Catholic projects. While Winter was
yet undecided, and when he had gone over
to the Netherlands, to learn from the Spanish
Ambassador there, whether there was any
hope of Catholics being relieved through the
intercession of the King of Spain with his
Sowship, he found at Ostend a tall, dark,
daring man, whom he had known when they
were both soldiers abroad, and whose name
was GUIDO—or GUY—FAWKES. Resolved to
join the plot, he proposed it to this man,
knowing him to be the man for any desperate
deed, and they came back to England together.
Here, they admitted two other conspirators:
THOMAS PERCY, related to the Earl of
Northumberland, and JOHN WRIGHT, his
brother-in-law. All these met together in a
solitary house in the open fields, which were
then near Clement's Inn, now a closely
blocked-up part of London; and when they
had all taken a great oath of secresy, Catesby
told the rest what his plan was. They then
went up stairs into a garret and received the
Sacrament from FATHER GERARD, a Jesuit,
who is said not to have known actually of the
Gunpowder Plot, but who, I think, must
have had his suspicions that there was
something desperate afoot.

Percy was a Gentleman Pensioner, and as
he had occasional duties to perform about the
Court, then kept at Whitehall, there would
be nothing suspicious in his living at
Westminster. So, having looked well about him,
and having found a house to let, the back of
which joined the Parliament House, he hired
it of a person named FERRIS, for the purpose
of undermining the wall. Having got
possession of this house, the conspirators hired
another on the Lambeth side of the Thames,
which they used as a storehouse for wood,
gunpowder, and other combustible matters.
These were to be removed at night (and
afterwards were removed), bit by bit, to the
house at Westminster; and, that there might
be some trusty person to keep watch over
the Lambeth stores, they admitted another
conspirator, by name ROBERT KAY, a very
poor Catholic gentleman.

All these arrangements had been made
some months, and it was a dark wintry
December night, when the conspirators, who
had been in the meantime dispersed to
avoid observation, met in the house at
Westminster, and began to dig. They had laid in
a good stock of eatables, to avoid going in
and out, and they dug and dug with great
ardour. But, the wall being tremendously
thick, and the work very severe, they took
in CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT, a younger brother
of John Wright, that they might have a
new pair of hands to help. And Christopher
Wright fell to like a fresh man, and they
dug and dug by night and by day, and Fawkes
stood sentinel all the time. And if any
man's heart seemed to fail him. at all, Fawkes
said, "Gentlemen, we have abundance of
powder and shot here, and there is no fear of
our being taken alive, even if discovered". The
same Fawkes, who, in his capacity of sentinel,
was always prowling about, soon picked up