GUNPOWDER PLOT, To r•., was a fanatical project on the part of a few Roman Catholics to destroy the king, lords, and commons on the meeting of parliament on Nov. 5, 1605. James I. had succeeded Elizabeth two years before, and his government had exercised great severities against the Roman Catholics, not merely denying them religious toleration, but confiscating their property. A few ruined and exasperated men banded together to overthrow the government. The originator of the plot was Hobert Catesby, a man of fortune, which he had impaired by youthful extravagance, and who communicated his idea to Thomas Winter, who Has horrified at first, but after a time began to approve and further it. For this end he enlisted into the conspiracy Guy Fawkes, a soldier of fortune, of considerable military experience, and a most deter mined and fearless character. Catesby enlisted other two, by name Wright. and Percy —the latter a relation of the earl of Northumberland. They hired a house and garden contiguous to the parliament house, and commenced their mine, part working when the others slept, and the rubbish being buried during night. One day they were alarmed by a noise after they had with much labor pierced the wall three yards thick, Fawkes learned that this noise proceeded front a cellar under the house of lords, which would soon be vacant. He hired it, and barrels of gunpowder were placed in it, and stones anti billets of wood placed over them, for the double purpose of concealment and to act as destructive missiles when the gunpowder was fired. In the interval, a brother of Wright and a brother of Winter had been added to the conspirators, so they were now seven. But they wanted money; and to supply it, two others were induced to enter this fanatical copartnery, and these were sir Everard Dighy of Gatehurst, in Bucking hamshire, a young gentleman of large estates; and Francis Tresham, a follower of Essex, like Catesby and Percy, but. unlike them, a selfish unenthusiastic man—not a man at all suitable for conspiracy, except that he had £2,000 to contribute. Their plan was finally arranged for the reassembling of parliament, which was to take place on Nov. 5. Guy Fawkes was to fire the mine (if the gunpowder in the cellar may be so called), and then flee to Flanders by a ship provided with Tresham's money, and waiting ready on the Thames. All the Roman Catholic peers and others whom it was expedient to preserve were to be prevented from going to the parliament house by some pretended message or other, on the morning of the day. After all was ready, lord 31ountengle
was at supper at his country-house at Hoxton, where he very seldom was. As he sat, a page handed him a letter received from a stranger, advising him "to devise sonic excuse to shift off your attendance at this parliament, for God and man bath concurred to punish the wickedness of this time." That this letter was written by or for Tresham, who was lord Mouuteagle's brother-in-law, there can be little doubt. That he desired to save him was certainly one reason for writing it; that he desired to save the conspira tors, or at least to allow them to escape, is very probable; and that they might have escaped, but for the fanatical hopes of Catesby, is all but certain. It is also probable that lord Mounteagle had been fully informed of the whole matter by Tresham, and that the supper in the country and the letter were mere devices to conceal Tresham's treachery. When the letter was formally communicated to the king, he at once declared its meaning, and the most simple way of accounting for his power of divination is to suppose that, like lord Mounteagle, he had been told beforehand. On the very evening of the 4th, the lord chamberlain and lord Mounteagle visited the parliament house, and entering the cellar in a casual way, told Guy Fawkes, whom they found there, and who passed as Percy's servant, that his master had laid in plenty of fuel. Only fanati cism gone the length of fatuity could have made him persevere after this. But he did, though escape was still possible; and on the morning of the 5th, a little after midnight, he was arrested conling out of the cellar. dressed as for a journey. Three matches were found on him, a dark-lantern burning in a corner within, and a hogshead :toil :36 barrels of gunpowder. He was examined and tortured. He confessed his own guilt, but would not discover his associates. However, he and the chief of them were either killed on being captured, or died on the scaffold; except Tresham, who at first walked about openly, at last was apprehended, and died of a natural disease in the Tower. The memory of this plot, invested by much fiction, has survived in England; and it was not more diabolical than hopeless and mad. It was in itself mysterious, and for purposes of state policy and Protestant zeal, a further mystery was thrown over it. No name in English history has been inure detested than that of Guy Fawkes (q.v.).