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Tyler, or a Jack Cade. I knew also the state of Spain well; his weakness, and poorness, and humbleness at this time. I knew that he was discouraged and dishonoured. I knew that six times we had repulsed his forces, thrice in Ireland, thrice at sea, and once at Cadiz on his own coast. Thrice had I served against him myself at sea, wherein for my country's sake I had expended of my own properties 4000l. I knew that where before-time he was wont to have forty great sails at least in his ports, now he had not past six or seven; and for sending to his Indies he was driven to hire strange vessels;-a thing contrary to the institutions of his proud ancestors, who forbad, in case of any necessity, that the king of Spain should make their case known to strangers. I knew that of five-and-twenty millions he had from his Indies, he had scarce any left; nay, I knew his poorness at this time to be such that the Jesuits, his imps, were fain to beg at the church doors; his pride so abated, as, notwithstanding his former high terms, he was glad to congratulate the king, my master, on his accession, and now cometh creeping unto him for peace." With such a power the king of England might have concluded an honourable peace, without sacrificing the principle for which Elizabeth had fought for twenty years. She would not have forsaken the United Provinces, for any temptation which the Most Catholic king could have held out to shake her good faith and her constancy.

Previous to the accession of James, the sovereign, in the unaltered style of ancient feudal assumption, had the title of "King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland." On the 24th of October, 1604, James was proclaimed "King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland." We cannot reflect upon him for retaining the absurd title of king of France, for the folly was kept up for two centuries longer. His vanity was abundantly gratified in being king of Great Britain and Ireland-an absolute king, as he believed; and not only a king, but a master of all learning, and especially of theological learning, of whom his Chancellor declared, at the Hampton Court conference, that never since our Saviour's time had the king and the priest been so wonderfully united in the same person. He was not altogether so royal a personage as Elizabeth, or her majestic father. His figure was ungainly; his habits were slovenly; he was by nature a coward. Not deficient in a certain talent which he rarely put to a right use-"the wisest fool in Christendom,”— he had no sense of that public responsibility which attached to his high office. He was a king for himself alone. He estimated the

cost of war as the principal inducement to remain at peace. But the wise economy which was opposed to the martial tendencies of the people that he was called to govern, was not an economy for the public good. He wasted his revenues upon silly baubles for personal ornaments, and in lavish grants to unworthy favourites. He almost wholly neglected the business of the state; for he was hunting, bolstered up on an ambling palfrey; or he was writing pedantic treatises which nobody read; or he was going in progress, to be flattered and feasted; or he was moving by easy journeys from his palace of Richmond to his palace of Windsor, or in triumphal procession in his state-barge from Greenwich to Whitehall. There were some refinements in his court, for the plays that were acted before him were often those of Shakspere; and at a later period Jonson wrote "Masques at Court," and Inigo Jones supplied the decorations. In a short time the palace became a scene of profligacy, in which even the mask of decency was not attempted to be put on. Yet this was the king who was to try his hand at making England an absolute monarchy by divine right. Lord Thomas Howard, who had been a powerful instrument in forwarding the accession of James, wrote to Harrington, "Your queen did talk of her subjects' love and good affection, and in good truth she aimed well. Our king talketh of his subjects' fear and subjection, and herein I think he doth well too,—as long as it holdeth good."

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CHAPTER XIV.

The Gunpowder Plot.-Lord Mounteagle receives a letter.--Salisbury is made acquainted with the letter.-Its interpretation.-Search under the Parliament House.-Seizure of Fawkes.-The other Conspirators.-The preparations during eighteen previous months. Their proceedings after the discovery.-They resist the sheriff.-Some killed, others taken prisoners.-Feelings of the Roman Catholics.-Ben Jonson.Trial of Fawkes and others.-Garnet the Jesuit.-His conviction. His doctrine of Equivocation.

IN the last week of October, 1605, the king was contemplating "his return from his hunting exercise at Royston, upon occasion of the drawing near of the parliament time, which had been twice prorogued already." * Whilst James was at his favourite sports, hunting according to a more discreet fashion than that of the old Norman kings, his "little beagle," for so he called Robert Cecil, now earl of Salisbury, was diligently carrying forward the business of the State. Salisbury was at his post at Whitehall on the night of the 26th of October, when his wonted meditations upon the difficulty of providing money for his extravagant master and his rapacious followers, were disturbed by the demand for an audience of a Catholic peer, lord Mounteagle. The position of this nobleman, who had been called to the House of Peers in the parliament of 1604, was a very equivocal one. He was the son of a Protestant peer, lord Morley; but, when very young, married a daughter of sir Thomas Tresham, who was a pervert to Rome under the guidance of missionary priests, and, during the reign of Elizabeth, a most uncompromising recusant. Lord Morley's son then became involved with several leading Roman Catholics in the conspiracy of Essex, and in their invitations to the king of Spain to invade England and to depose the queen. Upon the accession of James, when the king was either balancing the advantages of being Catholic or Protestant, or holding out to the Papists professions of toleration which he had no intention of accomplishing, Mounteagle was a satisfied recipient of court favours, whilst the severities against re

"A discourse of the Manner of the Discovery of the late intended Treason," &c. Published officially. Reprinted in "Harleian Miscellany."

cusants had been renewed, and the Roman Catholics in general were becoming hopeless of power, or even of indulgence. A strange incident had occurred on that night of the 26th of October, when Mounteagle broke in upon the quiet of the secretary of state. The catholic peer had a house at Hoxton, from which he had been absent a month, when he suddenly arrived that evening to supper. Very opportune was the return, as we learn from the official "Discourse: Being in his own lodging ready to go to supper, at seven of the clock at night, one of his footmen, whom he had sent of an errand over the street, was met by a man of a reasonable tall personage, who delivered him a letter, charging him to put it in my lord his master's hands; which my lord no sooner received, but that, having broken it up, and perceiving the same to be of an unknown and somewhat unlegible hand, and without either date or superscription, did call one of his men unto him, for helping him to read it.” It appears from another account, that the letter was read aloud, of course in the presence of the lord's attendants. It was as follows:

"My lord out of the love i beare to some of youer frendz i have a caer of youer preservacion therefor i would advyse yowe as yowe tender youer lyf to devyse some exscuse to shift of your attendance at this parleament for god and man hathe concurred to punishe the wickednes of this tyme and thinke not slightlye of this advertisment but retyere youre selfe into youre contri wheare yowe maye expect the event in safti for thowghe theare be no apparance of anni stir yet i saye they shall receyve a terrible blowe this parleament and yet they shall not seie who hurts them this cowncel is not to be contemned because it maye do yowe good and can do yowe no harme for the dangere is passed as soon as yowe have burnt the letter and i hope god will give yowe the grace to mak good use of it to whose holy proteccion i comend yowe." The letter is addressed To the right honourable the lord Mowteagle.'

There have been many conjectures as to the writer of this extraordinary letter. One probable guess is that Francis Tresham, the brother-in-law of Mounteagle, gave him this warning to save his own life, though in such obscure terms as should not lead to discovery of the conspiracy in which Tresham and others of Mounteagle's friends were engaged. Greenway, the Jesuit, whose relation of the plot, although written to exculpate himself and others, contains many curious details, gives in his manuscript what seems "to have been the opinion of the conspirators themselves. They attributed it

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to Tresham, and suspected a secret understanding between him and lord Mounteagle, or at least the gentleman who was employed to read the letter at table. They were convinced that Tresham had no sooner given his consent than he repented of it, and sought to break up the plot without betraying his associates." * The circumstances indicate that there was a got-up scene enacted in the house of lord Mounteagle at Hoxton. The unexpected return of the lord of the house; the page met in the street by a man of tall person; the reading aloud of the letter, which the page had received as one of great importance to be delivered to his master's own hand ;these are all suspicious incidents. Whether the visit of Mounteagle to Salisbury, notwithstanding the lateness and darkness of the night in that season of the year,"† was a part of the same well arranged mystery, may be reasonably doubted. Mr. Jardine says, "Many considerations tend to confirm the truth of Father Greenway's suggestion, that the whole story of the letter was merely a device of the government to cover Tresham's treachery, or, for some other state reason, to conceal the true source from which their information had been derived." According to Dr. Lingard's account of Greenway's relation, he makes no such suggestion as that "the letter was merely a device of the government." It could have been no object of the government that the conspirators should escape. Thomas Winter, one of those actively concerned in the plot, had been a confidential attendant upon Mounteagle; and Thomas Ward, the man who read the letter aloud at Mounteagle's supper, went the next morning to Winter and urged him to fly. We can understand how Mounteagle might have sought to cover his previous knowledge of the plot by having a letter openly delivered which would convey to him the intimation of some dangerous design; and we can also understand how the very unusual course of causing a letter to be read aloud would have been adopted, that his old friends should have a hint to look after their own safety. But it appears unlikely that Salisbury should have been concerned in a device so calculated to defeat the discovery of some impending danger. It would be unsafe to affirm that the letter sent to Mounteagle gave the first intimation to the govern

* Dr. Lingard's "History," vol. ix. p. 69, 8vo ed. Dr. Lingard brought Greenway's MS. from Rome, and first made it known in his "History."

"Discourse," &c.

"Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot," 1857. This admirable narrative is an expanded and corrected re-publication of Mr. Jardine's Introduction to "Criminal Trials," vol. ii.