whose stores were in a cellar immediately beneath the House of Lords, and who was selling off his stock of coals previous to removing to some other place of business.

This seemed to the fanatical men quite a wonderful interposition of Providence on their behalf. They were tired out with their work; the wall was not nearly cut through; and, indeed, they had begun to doubt whether they should eventually succeed. Here was an opportunity for them, therefore! They had only to hire the vacant cellar, and their hard and dangerous labours might at once cease.

"Percy hired the cellar of the dealer in coals; the mine was abandoned; and they began to remove thirty-six barrels of gunpowder from the house at Lambeth. They threw large stones and bars of iron among the powder, to make the breach the greater; and they carefully covered over the whole with fagots and billets of wood. All this was completed by the month of May, when they once more separated. Fawkes was despatched into Spanish Flanders to win over Sir William Stanley and Captain Owen, who held military commands there, and who were supposed capable of collecting a good number of men, either English Catholics or foreigners. Fawkes returned in August, having succeeded no further than to obtain a promise from Owen that he would communicate with Stanley, who was, at that time, absent in Spain.

"In September, Sir Edmund Baynham, a gentleman of an ancient family in Gloucestershire, was admitted into the whole or part of the plot, and sent to Rome,

not to reveal the project, but to gain the favour of the Pope and his court, when the blow was struck." The rest of the plotters remained in England-most of them in London, where they had another alarm. This was occasioned by the meeting of Parliament being once more postponed from the 3rd of October to the 5th of November; and the conspirators thought this delay to be occasioned by some suspicion of their designs. Thomas Winter, however, undertook to go into the House on the day on which prorogation was to be made, and observe the countenance of the Lordcommissioners. He did so, and found all tranquil. The commissioners were walking about, and conversing, in the House of Lords, just over the thirty-six barrels of gunpowder; so Master Winter returned to his fellow-conspirators with the assurance that their secret was safe.

THERE

CHAPTER III.

THE PLOT RIPENS.

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HERE were now eleven conspirators mixed in the plot,―besides the priest who administered the oaths. There was Robert Catesby, the first designer; then there were the two Winters, the two Wrights, Guido Fawkes, Thomas Percy, Robert Kay, John Grant, Sir Edmund Baynham, and Thomas Bates. With the exception of the last named, as I have said before, each of these conspirators was a gentleman by birth and education; and some of them were men of

property and influence. Yet, in spite of this, they could plot and contrive the destruction of those who had never personally injured them, with all the eagerness of ignorant savages. What made it the worse was that they fancied they were pleasing God in their contemplated barbarity, as though He could be pleased by acts of violence and bloodshed!

Numerous as they were, these gentlemen conspirators were desirous of adding to their number. Their plans required money, to be carried out to completion; and though some of them were tolerably well-to-do, others were poor. They, therefore, looked about for some who could help them in this particular; and

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"about Michaelmas it was agreed to admit three more Catholic gentlemen" (still gentlemen, you see), "who were known to have a command of ready money, into the plot. The first of these was Sir Everard Digby, of Drystoke, in Rutlandshire, an enthusiastic young man, and a bosom friend of Catesby. Digby had immense estates, a noble mansion, a young wife, and several young children; but, after some struggle with his domestic feelings and conscience, he yielded to Catesby, promising to furnish fifteen hundred pounds for furthering the plot, and to collect his Catholic friends on Dunsmore Heath, in Warwickshire, by the fifth of November, as if for a hunting party.

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The second new conspirator was Ambrose Rookwood, of Coldham Hall, Suffolk, the head of a very ancient and opulent family. Like Digby, he had long been the bosom friend of Catesby, and his romantic attachment to that chief conspirator seems to have been a more leading passion than his religious fanaticism. He had a magnificent stud of horses, which made his accession very desirable. Like most of the others, he at first shuddered at the prospect of so much slaughter, but his scruples were quieted by Catesby; and, to be near the general meeting at Dunsmore, he removed with his family to Clopton, near Stratford-on-Avon. He had suffered fines and imprisonment; but he was still wealthy, and, until entering the gunpowder treason, a peaceful man.

"The third accession was in Francis Tresham, eldest son and heir of Sir Thomas Tresham, who had recently succeeded his father in a large estate in Northamptonshire. Sir Thomas had felt the venge

ance of the penal laws (against Papists); in his own words, he had undergone 'full twenty years of restless adversity and deep disgrace, only for testimony of conscience.' His son Francis had had a hand in . several plots; it appears, however, that he did not enjoy the confidence of the desperate men with whom he had been engaged, and that he passed for a fickle, mean-spirited man; but he was Catesby's near relation, and he had money, whereof (after taking the oath) he engaged to furnish two thousand pounds. But," adds the historian, "from the moment Tresham was admitted, Catesby became a prey to misgivings and alarms.

"As the great day-the fifth of Novemberapproached, the conspirators had several secret consultations at White Webbs, a house near Enfield Chase, then a wild, solitary place. Here it was resolved that Fawkes should fire the mine by means of a slow-burning match, which would allow him time to escape before the explosion of the gunpowder. But now they felt the difficulty there would be in warning and saving their friends; and most of the conspirators had dear friends and relations in parliament. In the upper house (or House of Lords), for example, the Lords Stourton and Mounteagle, both Catholics, had married sisters of Francis Tresham; and Tresham was exceedingly earnest that they should have some warning given them, in order to keep them away from parliament. Percy, also, was eager to save his relation, the Earl of Northumberland; and Kay, the decayed gentleman who had charge of the house at Lambeth, was equally anxious to save