THE GUNPOWDER PLOT

 

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THE GUNPOWDER PLOT

A contemporary engraving of eight of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators

1605: This year on the fifth of November was discovered that horrid plot, commonly called Gunpowder Treason; by which Catesby and some few others his accomplices designed to have blown up the parliament house; which, though it were indeed a most wicked and detestable enterprise (for which the conspirators were justly punished) is most unjustly urged against catholics in general. For why should the wickedness of a handful of men, whose doings were both then, and ever since, abhorred by the whole body of catholics, both at home and abroad, be laid to the charge of such as had no more hand in the guilt, than the apostles had in the treason of Judas?

'Tis more than probable that this was originally a ministerial plot, set on foot by Cecil, then secretary of state. "Some have been of opinion," says the author of the Political Grammar, lately published, p. 46. "that the gunpowder plot in the reign of James the First was of the same alloy (a ministerial plot), and the awkward manner in which the letter was sent to lord Mounteagle, the night before the execution, seems to confirm it, but much more the papers of the then minister, which have but lately appeared, by which the whole affair is brought to light. For it is evident by those papers that the minister was acquainted with the conspirators' journal from the beginning; so that he might have easily stifled the design in its infancy; but that would not quadrate with his principal design, which was to divert king James from making any approaches towards popery, (to which he seemed to be inclinable in the minister's opinion) by engaging some papists in a desperate and horrid plot to destroy beth king and parliament. This was the original of that affair, which has filled the kingdom with astonishment for above a whole century." So far this author, who is not the only one, nor the first by a great many, who has been of this opinion, since Mr Osborn has informed the world long ago, p. 34, that this plot was, as he terms it, a neat device of the secretary; and king James the First himself was so sensible of it, that he used to call the 5th of November, Cecil's holiday.

Source: Bishop Richard Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, Volume 2

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