HE moment the queen died, Cecil and the other Lords of the Council sneaked out through the back garden gate of the Palace at Richmond at three o'clock in the morning on the 24th of March, 1603, and posted for Scotland to James, whom they hailed as the brightest Jem that had ever adorned the throne. Cecil having long been in correspondence with the Scotch king, had only been waiting to see which way the cat jumped, or, in other words, for the death of the queen, and she had lived so long that he began to think the royal cat had nine lives, whioh delayed her final jump much longer than her minister desired..

Before posting to Scotland, the Lords of the Council had stuck up several posters about London, proclaiming James the First amid those shouts which "the boys" are ever ready to lend to any purpose for which a mob has been got together. The Scotch king was of course glad to exchange the miserable cane-bottomed throne of his own country for the comfortably cushioned seat of English royalty; but he was so wretchedly poor that he could not even start for his new kingdom till it had yielded him enough to pay his passage thither. He tried hard to get possession of the crown jewels for his wife, but the Council would not trust him with the precious treasures. On his way to his new dominions he was received with that enthusiasm which a British mob has always on hand for any new object; but he did not increase in favour upon being seen; for if a good countenance is a letter of recommendation, James carried in his face a few lines that said very little in his favour. His legs were too weak for his body, his eyes too large for their sockets, and his tongue was too big for his mouth; so that his knees knocked without making a hit, his pupils could not be restrained by the lash, while his lingual excrescence caused so many a slip between the cup and the lip, that his aspect was awkward and disagreeable.

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During his journey to London he rode on horseback, but he was such a bungling equestrian that he was thrown by a sagacious animal intent on having his fling at the expense of the sovereign. Besides being ungainly in his person, he did not set it off to the best advantage, for he was exceedingly dirty; and thus he appeared to be looking black at everybody, for his face was encrusted in dust, and though his predecessor, Elizabeth, was very objectionable, he could not boast of coming to the throne with clean hands. Power was such a new toy to him that he could not use it in moderation, and he made knights at the rate of fifty a day, which caused Bacon so far to forget himself as to utter the silly sarcasm, that there would be a surfeit of Sirs, if James proceeded in the manner in which he was beginning.

Conspiracies were soon formed against a monarch so weak, and the ambitious. Raleigh, who had been in his youth a mere street adventurer, thought he could vault over official posts as easily as he had vaulted, over those in the public thoroughfares. His designs being detected, he was deprived of some of the offices he possessed, and among others his monopoly of licensing taverns, and retailing, wines, for which his knowledge of the tobacco business had well fitted him. He plotted with Grey, a Puritan, Markham, a Papist, and Cobham, a Nothingarian, to seize the person of the king; but the tables were turned upon them by the seizure of themselves and their committal to the Tower. Grey, Cobham, and Markham were condemned to die; but just as they had laid their heads on the block, they were axed if they would rather live, and having answered in the affirmative, they were committed to the Tower with Raleigh for the remainder of their lives.

The Puritans having complained of ecclesiastical abuses. James ordered a meeting at Hampton Court between the bishops and their opponents, to talk over their differences. The bishops were allowed the first innings, and they continued running on for several hours, when James took the matter up on the same side, and the Puritans were not allowed to utter a word. After the king had talked himself out of breath, and his hearers out of patience, Doctor Reynolds was permitted to take a turn on behalf of the Puritans; but he was insulted, interrupted, and regularly coughed down before he had spoken twenty words. The king then exclaimed, "Well, Doctor, is that all you have to say?" Upon which the Doctor, being abashed by the unfairness shown towards him, admitted that he was unwilling to proceed. James boasted that he had silenced the Puritans; and so he had, but it was by intimidation and bluster alone that he had succeeded in doing so.

Encouraged by his triumph over a few trembling sectarians, the king called Parliament together, expecting to overcome that body; but he found he had to deal with some very awkward customers. They questioned his rights, refused his salary, and turned coldly from a proposition to unite England with Scotland, which they resisted with a sneering assertion that oil and vinegar would never agree. Doubting whether he would get much good out of Parliament in the temper in which he found it, he abruptly closed the session.

The Catholics, who were subjected to much persecution, became very angry under it, and a gentleman of the name of Catesby, who had changed his opinions some three or four times, stuck to the last set with such fury, that he resolved to assist them at all hazards. His principles had been a mere matter of toss up, but he had settled down into a Papist at last; and conceiving the idea of destroying King, Lords, and Commons, at one blow, he expressed himself on the subject avec explosion, as the French dramatists have it, to Thomas Winter, a gentleman of Worcestershire, who, having been worsted in all his prospects, cottoned at once to the scheme. The Catholics had solicited the mediation of the King of Spain, and Winter passed over to the Netherlands to hear how matters were going on, when he made himself acquainted at Ostend with a fellow named Guido Fawkes, who has been equally misinterpreted by "the boys" and the historians. It has been usual to describe him as a low mercenary who got his name of Fawkes or Forks, from his way of brutally demanding everybody to fork out; but however etymology may encourage such an interpretation of his name, we must denounce it as a cruel libel on his character. * The eagerness of the juvenile mind to adopt any malicious absurdity that is proposed to it, has been exhibited in the boyish extravagance of making Guido Fawkes a man of straw, though there is little doubt that he was a man of substance, and not the mere Will-o'-the-Wisp that constitutes his portrait as we see him drawn on stone along the paved streets of the metropolis. Guido, whose pretended ugliness has made his abbreviated name of Guy synonymous with a frightful object, was a gentleman, though a fanatic, and it is not true that had Fawkes been invited to dinner, it would have been necessary to look after the spoons as well as the Fawkes with unusual vigilance. Catesby invited Winter and Guido to his lodgings, where they were met by Thomas Percy, a distant relation of the Earl of Northumberland, and by John Wright, an obstinate fellow, who would never own himself wrong. Grog and cigars—the latter being a novelty recently imported by Raleigh—were liberally provided, when Catesby suggested that before business could be regularly gone into, an oath of secresy must be administered. With a melodramatic desire to give the affidavit all the advantages of appropriate scenery, it was suggested that a lone house in the fields beyond Clement's Inn should be the spot where the oath should be administered.

In the course of a few days the affidavit had been drawn, perused, settled, and engrossed, when the parties met at the place appointed, and were all sworn in, with due formality. Catesby, acting as a sort of chairman, then proceeded to explain to the meeting his views.

He commenced rather in the shape of innuendos, by hinting that he wished the Parliament further, and he thought he knew a mode of despatching all the Members at once, by a special train. As his associates did not take the hint immediately, he proceeded to expatiate on the expediency of a regular blow up, and getting rid of the whole Parliament "slap bang;" accompanying his observation by dealing on the deal table a tremendous thump, that made a noise resembling the explosion of gunpowder. The action seemed to strike a light in in the eyes of all present, and by putting this and that together, they perceived that Catesby's intention was to act the last scene of the Miller and his Men, beneath the walls of Parliament. Percy, who was a gentleman pensioner—though he seems to have been rather more of the pensioner than the gentleman—had an opportunity of banging about the Court, and watching the movements of his intended victims. The first care of the conspirators was to take a house in the neighbourhood; but no one of the lot, except Percy, had sufficient credit to justify his acceptance as a tenant, by any prudent landlord. At length they got hold of a dwelling by the water side, which was occupied by one Ferris—probably a ferryman—who, for a small consideration, vacated the premises in Percy's favour. The back of the house abutted—by means of a water-butt—on the Parliamentary party wall, and they began picking a hole in the wall as soon as they obtained possession. At every move they renewed their oath of secrecy, as if they were mutually better known than trusted among themselves, and a secret which, even in ordinarily honest hands, is tolerably sure to get wind; was very soon known to twenty people at least, through the leakiness of one or more of the conspirators.

Emboldened by their success, they took a coal shed on the Lambeth side of the river, where one of them, under pretence of going into the potato business, accumulated as large a quantity of coals, coke, and wood, as he could with the small means upon which he was enabled to speculate. The chief scene of their operations was, of course, the house at Westminster, where they laid in a large supply of hard boiled eggs; "the better," says Strype, "to be enabled to hatch their scheme, and to avoid suspicion, by not being compelled to send out for food." The wall offering considerable resistance to their projects it was found advisable to send for the keeper of the potato shed, over the way, to aid in the work, and young Wright, a brother of the same Wright that never would admit himself to be wrong, was admitted to a partnership in the secret.

Vainly did these ninny-hammers go hammering on at the walls of Parliament, which stuck together in a manner very characteristic of bricks, and no impression seemed to be made upon them; while the mine from Lambeth, by means of which they intended under-mining the British Constitution, made scarcely any progress at all. One morning, in the midst of their labours, they were startled by a rumbling noise overhead, when Guido Fawkes, who acted as sentinel, ran to ascertain the cause of the alarming sound. It seemed that one Bright, who carried on the coal business in a cellar immediately below the Parliament, was clearing out his stock, at "an alarming sacrifice," with the intention of moving his business to some more fashionable neighbourhood. Perhaps he was a bad tenant, and being on the eve of ejection, removed his coals in revenge for having got the sack from his landlord; but, at all events, he had a cart into which he was shooting the Wallsend, though he may have had no intention of shooting the moon at the expense of his creditors.

Percy, knowing the cellar must be vacant, went to look at it, and pronounced it the very thing; though it might, naturally, have excited some surprise that one who had hitherto been considered a man of ton should become a man of chaldrons and hundredweights by going into the coal business, on a scale somewhat limited. A tenancy was nevertheless effected, and several barrels of gunpowder were carried into the vault, under the pretence that the small-beer and bloater business was about to be commenced by the new lessee, in a style of unusual liberality.

Guy Fawkes was despatched to Flanders, to obtain adherents to the scheme, but he got no further than to obtain a promise from Owen that he would speak to Stanley, which seems to have been merely equivalent to an extension of the secret, without any beneficial result to the conspirators. On the return of Guido, he found that while he had been extending the secret abroad, his colleagues had been blabbing—of course confidentially—at home, so that the secret was becoming a good deal like an "aside" in a melo-drama, which comes to the ears of every one but the person most interested in being made acquainted with its purport.

Every arrangement was now made for blowing up the Parliament sky-high, when a prorogation, until the 5th of November, was suddenly announced, and the conspirators began to fear that the secret, which had experienced as many extensions as a railway line, had found its way, by some disagreeable deviation, to the ears of the intended victims. The expense of the conspiracy had hitherto been borne by Catesby, who paid for all the hard-boiled eggs, the rent of the coal-cellar, with the wood and the coals that had been had in; for, the rest being soldiers of fortune, which means that they were soldiers of no fortune at all, would not have got credit for even the bull's-eye lanthorn, which has since cut such a conspicuous figure in the history of the period. Catesby had, however, spent so much in new-laid eggs and new-laid gunpowder—for he had to support a numerous train—that he was obliged to take in fresh capital, and Sir Edward Digby, with Francis Tresham, were admitted as shareholders in the dangerous secret. Digby put down £1500 on the allotment of a slice of the mystery to himself, and Francis Tresham, who did not much like the speculation, though he consented to enter into it, gave his cheque for £2000, saying that he considered the money thrown away as completely as if he had wasted it in horse-chestnuts, Venetian grog, or raspberry vinegar. His givings were accompanied by fearful misgivings, and he never expected to see the hour when he should have the honour of being sent up to posterity on the wings of a barrel of gunpowder.

The 5th of November was the day that the conspirators had agreed to immortalize, for the benefit of future dealers in squibs, crackers, Catharine-wheels, and all the other "wheels within wheels," that are so completely in character with this complicated project. They used to take blows on the river preliminary to the great blow they had in their eye, and a house at Erith was their frequent place of rendezvous. They also held consultations at White Webbs—not Webb's the White Bear—near Enfield, and here they arranged that Guido Fawkes, after putting matters in train, should set fire to it, by a slow burning match, which would give him time to escape, though he often said, half jestingly, that to find his match would be exceedingly difficult. As the scheme drew near its intended execution, the "secret" had become so fearfully divided that every one who possessed a share of it had some friend or other he wanted to save; and if each had been allowed to withdraw his man, the residue of the Parliament would scarcely have been worth the powder and shot it had been determined to devote to them. Tresham, for example, was seized with a sudden fit of benevolence towards old Lord Monteagle; while Kay, the seedy and needy gentleman in charge of the house at Lambeth, wanted to save Lord Mordaunt, who had cashed for poor K. an I O U, when the money was of great use to him. Catesby, who was not so tender-hearted, declared it was all very well, but if they were to go on saving and excepting one after the other, there could be no explosion at all, unless they could procure some of that celebrated discriminating gunpowder, which blows up all the villains, in the last scene of a melo-drama, and spares the virtuous characters. He insisted, therefore, on the necessity of leaving the result to a toss-up, in which all would have an equal chance of winning or losing.

Tresham, who combined the wavering of the weathercock with the tremulousness of the tee-to-tum, was still intent on giving a sort of general warning to a number of his friends, and when his blabbing was objected to, he declared the affair had better be put off, as he could find no more money to carry on the conspiracy. Catesby, Winter, and Fawkes objected to delay; whereupon it is supposed that Tresham not only ratted but let the cat out of the bag in a most unwarrantable manner. Lord Monteagle, who had a country box at Hoxton, was giving a petit souper to a few friends on the 26th of October, and he was just finishing the leg of a Welsh rabbit, when his page presented him a letter that had just been left by a tall man who had refused to leave his name or wait for an answer. Lord Monteagle, thinking it might be a bill, desired one of his guests to read it out, when it proved to be a letter written in the characteristic spelling of the period. "I would advyse yowe, as yowe tender yower lyf, to devyse some excuse to shift of vower attendance at this Parleament," said the anonymous scribbler, which threw Monteagle into such alarm that he took the Hoxton 'bus, and went off to Whitehall the same evening to see Cecil. The king was "hunting the fearful hare at Royston," in the most hare-um scare-um style, and it was resolved that nothing could, would, or should be done until the return of the sovereign.

Notwithstanding the letter having been delivered as early as the 26th of October, nothing seems to have been done to stop the conspiracy, for Fawkes went regularly once a day to the cellar, to count the coals, snuff the rushlight, and do any other little odd job that the progress of the conspiracy might require. Cecil and Suffolk having laid their heads together on the subject of the letter, at last fancied they had found the solution of the riddle, which for the convenience of the student, we will throw into the form of a charade, after an approved model.

The "peculiar tea" was gunpowder, the "lawn" or "meadow" was a plot—of grass, and the whole was the Gunpowder Plot, which, though it went off very badly at the time, caused an explosion from which the country has not yet quite recovered. Notwithstanding the solution of the mystery, no steps were taken to bring the matter, to an issue, and Fawkes was permitted to be at large about town, paying his diurnal visits to the cellar without attracting the observation of anyone. Tresham and Winter talked the matter over in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or wandered amid the then romantic scenery of Whetstone Park, to consult on the scheme and its probable completion. The timid Tresham proposed flight, but his fellow conspirators, who were not so flighty, resolved on persevering, and the intrepid Fawkes kept up a regular Cellarius, * by dancing backwards ana forwards about the cellar.

The shilly-shallying of all parties with respect to the gunpowder conspiracy is one of the most remarkable features of the period when it occurred; for we find the plotters, with detection staring them in the face, adhering to their old haunts, while the intended victims though made aware of the plot, were as tardy as possible in taking any steps to baffle it. Fawkes continued his visits to the cellar just as confidently as ever; and one would think that ultimately detection was the object he had in view for he lurked about the premises with such obstinate perseverance that his escape was impossible. At length Suffolk, the Lord Chamberlain, took Monteagle down to the House the day before the opening of Parliament, to see that all was right, and they occupied themselves for several hours in looking under the seats, unpicking the furniture of the throne to see if anyone was concealed inside, and searching into every hole and corner where a conspirator was not likely to secrete himself. Having taken courage from the fact of there being no signs of danger, they determined to go down stairs into the cellar, under pretence of stopping up the rat-holes—for even in those early days rats found their way into the House—and they had no sooner opened the door than they saw in one corner a round substance, which they at first took for a beer barrel. They approached it with the intention of giving it a friendly tap, when the supposed barrel rose up into the height of a water-butt.

Suffolk instantly got behind Monteagle, who stood trembling with fear, when the phantom cask assumed the form of a "tall, desperate fellow," who proved to be Fawkes, and the Chamberlain, affecting a careless indifference, demanded his "name, birth, and parentage." Guido handed his card, bearing the words G. Fawkes, and announced himself as the servant of Mr. Percy, who carried on a trade in coals, coke, and wood, if he could, in the immediate neighbourhood. "Indeed," said Suffolk, "your master has a tolerably large stock on hand, though I think there is something else screened besides the coals, which I see around me." Without adding another word, he and Monteagle ran off, and Fawkes hastened to acquaint Percy with what had happened.

Poor Guido seems to have formed a most feline and most fatal attachment to the place, for nothing could keep him out of the cellar, though he knew he was almost certain of being hauled unceremoniously over the coals, and he went back at two in the morning to the old spot, with his habitual foolhardiness. He had no sooner opened the door than he was seized and pinioned, without his opinion being asked, by a party of soldiers. He made one desperate effort to make light of the whole business, by setting fire to the train, but he had no box of Congreves at hand, and he observed, with bitter boldness, in continuation of a pun which he had made in happier days, that he had at last found his match and lost his Lucifer. Poor Guy Fawkes, having been bound hand and foot, was taken on a stretcher to Whitehall, having been previously searched, when his pocket was found filled with tinder, touch-wood, and other similar rubbish. Behind the door there was a dark lanthorn, or bull's-eye, that had cowed the soldiers at first glance, by its glazed look, but it seemed less terrible on their walking resolutely up to it. Fawkes was taken to the king's bedroom, at Whitehall, and though his limbs were bound and helpless, he spoke with a thick, bold, ropy voice that terrified all around him. His tones had become quite sepulchral, from remaining so long in the vault, and when asked his name, he scraped out from his hoarse throat the words "John Johnson," which came gratingly—as if through a grating——on the ears of the bystanders. He announced himself as John the footman to Mr. Percy, and he threw himself into an attitude—which was rather cramped by his pinions—which he found anything but the sort of pinions that would enable him to soar into the lofty regions of romance to which he had aspired. He nevertheless boldly announced his purpose, with the audacity of a stage villain; and with that sort of magnanimity which lasts, on an average, about five minutes in the guilty breast, he refused to disclose the names of his accomplices.

One of the Scotch courtiers, who had a natural feeling of stinginess, asked how it was that Fawkes had collected so many barrels of gunpowder, when half the quantity would have done. Upon which Fawkes replied, that his principal had desired him to purchase enough to blow the Scotch back to Scotland. "Hoot, awa, mon!" rejoined the Scot; "but ken ye not that ye might have bought half the powder, and put the rest of the siller in your pocket?" Fawkes sternly intimated that though he would have blown up the Parliament, he would not defraud his principal. "Hoot, mon!" cried the Scotchman, who loved his specie under the pretence of loving his species, and who, it is probable, belonged to the Chambers; "Hoot, mon!" he whined, "dinna ye ken that there are times when you mun just throw your preencipal overboard?" *

On the 6th of November Fawkes was sent to the Tower, with instructions to squeeze out of him whatever could be elicited by the screw, which was then the usual method of scrutiny. For four days he would confess nothing at all; but his accomplices began to betray themselves by their own proceedings. Several of them fled; but Tresham exhibited the very height of impudence by coming down to the Council and asking if he could be of any use in the pursuit of the rebels. Nothing but the effrontery of the boots which ran after the stolen shoes, crying "Stop thief," and have never returned to this very hour, can be compared with the coolness of Tresham in offering to aid in effecting the capture of the conspirators.

Catesby and Jack Wright cut right away to Dunchurch, Percy filled his purse, and Christopher Wright packed up his kit, to be in readiness for making off when occasion required, while Keyes made a precipitate bolt out of London the morning after the plot was discovered.

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Rookwood, who had ordered relays of fine horses all along the road, went at full gallop through Highgate, and never slackened his pace till he reached Turvey, in Bedfordshire, where he came tumbling almost topsy-turvy over the inhabitants. Arriving at Ashby, St. Legers, with a lÉgÈrete quite worthy of the race for the St. Leger itself, he had already travelled eighty miles in six hours; but he nevertheless pushed along on his gallant steed—a magnificent dun—who always ran as if he had a commercial dun at his heels, to Dunchurch. Here he found Digby, enjoying his otium cum dig.—with a hunting party round him; but the guests guessed what was in the wind, and fearing they might come in for the blow, had vanished in the night-time. When Digby sat down to breakfast the next day, his circle of friends had dwindled to a triangle, consisting of Catesby, Percy, and Rookwood, who, with their host, now become almost a host in himself, took speedily to horse, and rode a regular steeple-chase to the borders of Staffordshire. Here they arrived on the night of the 7th of November, at Holbeach, where they took possession of a house; but by this time Sir Richard Walsh, the sheriff of Worcester, who had got writs out against them all, was close upon them with his officers.

In the morning their landlord, one Littleton, having been let into their secret, let himself out of his bedroom window through fear, and Digby decamped under pretence of going to buy some eggs to suck for breakfast, as well as to look for some succour. Digby had hardly shut the street door when its bang was echoed by a bang up stairs, occasioned by Catesby, Percy, and Rookwood having endeavoured to dry some gunpowder in a frying pan over the fire. Catesby was burnt and blackened, besides being blown up for having been the chief cause of the accident; and shortly afterwards, to add to their misfortunes, the sheriff, with the posse comitatus, surrounded the dwelling. The conspirators endeavoured to parry with their swords the bullets of their assailants, but this was a hopeless job, and keeping up their spirits as well as they could, they exclaimed at every shot fired on the side of the king, "Here comes another dose of James's powder." Catesby, addressing Thomas Winter, roared out, "Now then, stand by me, Tom!" and Winter, suddenly taking a spring to his friend's side, they were both shot by one musket. Their attendants, not being able to get the bullet out, issued a bullet-in to say they were both dead, and the brothers Wright were not long left to bewail the fate of their accomplices. Percy, who had persevered to the last, got a wound which wound him up, and Rookwood had received such a home-thrust in the stomach from a rusty pike, that the pike rust sadly disagreed with him. Digby, whose feelings had run away with him, was overtaken, caught, and made fast, because he had been too slow, while Keyes came to a dead-lock, and the prisoners being all brought to London, were lodged in the Tower.

Tresham, who had never left town, but was strutting about with all the easy confidence of a man with "nothing out against him," was suddenly nabbed, in spite of his remonstrances, conveyed in exclamations of "What have I done?"

"La! bless me! there must be some mistake!" and other appeals of an ejaculatory but useless character.

Poor Guido Fawkes was examined by Popham, Coke, and Wood, whose names may now for the first time be noticed as appropriate to the business they were entrusted with. Popham is surely emblematical of the series of pops, bangs, and explosions that would have ensued from the Gunpowder Plot; while Coke and Wood are obviously symbolical of the combustibles required for fuel. In vain did these sagacious persons attempt to get anything from Guido, who said "he belonged to the Fawkes and not to the spoons, who might perhaps be made to convict themselves by cross questioning." Popham popped questions in abundance; Coke tried to coax out the truth; and Wood, if he could, would have got at the facts; but neither threats nor promises could prevent Fawkes from showing his metal.

Posterity, in altering his name to Guy Fox, has happily hit upon an appropriately expressed the cunning of his character. He confessed his own share in the business readily enough, but resolutely refused to betray his associates. "I will not acknowledge that Percy is in the plot," he cried; which reminds us of an intimation made by a gentleman just arrested, to his surrounding friends, that "he did not wish the bailiff pumped upon." A nod is as good as a wink in certain cases; and like winking the sheriff's officer was submitted to a course of hydropathic treatment. In the same manner the declaration of Fawkes that "Percy had nothing to do with it—oh, dear no, nothing at all!" was quite enough to put the authorities on the right scent had any such guidance been required.

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Poor Fawkes was so fearfully damaged by the torture he had undergone, that his handwriting was entirely spoiled; and specimens of his mode of signing his name after the torture, contrasted with the copy of his autograph before the cruel infliction, present the reverse of the result which writing-masters of our day boast of producing by their six lessons in penmanship.

Guido Fawkes, however, confessed nothing specifically beyond what the Government already knew, but Tresham and Catesby's servant Bates, a man remarkable for his bÊtise, confessed whatever the authorities required. Tresham being seized with a fatal illness in prison, retracted his confession, which he declared had been extorted or "extortured"—as Strype has it—from him, and he died after placing his recantation in the hands of his wife to be given to Cecil. The surviving conspirators were brought to trial after some delay, and though they all pleaded not guilty, as long as there was a chance of escape, they were no sooner convicted beyond all hope than they began boasting of their offence, and were all "on the high ropes" when they came to the scaffold. Garnet the Jesuit was served up by way of garniture to the horrible banquet that the vengeance of the Protestants required. This brilliant character shone with increased lustre as the time for his execution approached, and however glorious had been his rise, the setting was worthy of Garnet in his very brightest moments.

Besides those who were executed for an avowal, or at least, a proved participation in the Gunpowder Plot, several persons were punished very severely, in the capacity of supplementary victims, who might, or might not, have been implicated in the conspiracy. Lords Mordaunt and Stourton, two Catholic nobles, were fined, respectively, £10,000 and £4000 because they did not happen to be in their places in Parliament, to be blown up, had Fawkes succeeded in accomplishing his object. The Earl of Northumberland was sent to the Tower for a few years, and mulcted of £30,000, because he had made Percy a gentleman pensioner, some years before; but no trouble was taken to show how this could have rendered him afterwards a rebel, nor how Northumberland could be responsible, even if such a result had really arrived. But it was urged by the apologists for this severity, that the Gunpowder Treason would have been fatal alike to the good and the bad, and that as the punishment should correspond with the offence, an indiscriminate dealing out of penalties among the guilty and the innocent was quite allowable.