Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/105

Rh Lyttleton, Robert Winter, and Thomas Bates. Here also Sir Everard Digby left them, and was speedily captured by the Sheriff of Worcestershire's men, hiding in a wood. Whether Sir Everard Digby actually deserted them, or was commissioned to obtain assistance from Roman Catholics living further afield, remains a disputed point.

Meanwhile, in London, great had been the stir when it was discovered that the birds had flown. The extraordinary rapidity of the mode of travelling adopted by Percy and Rookewood obtained for them a long start, but messengers were soon speeding into the Midlands, on their account, from Whitehall. Of the insurrection in the Midlands the Government was well aware; another proof that they had known for some time past of what was going-on. For the conspirators did not really take the field until November 6, and yet on the 7th was printed in London a proclamation denouncing the revolt. In those days, it is hardly necessary to remark, there were no telegraphs, telephones, motor-cars, or trains, so that Lord Salisbury must have got his information in a very quick space of time, if he waited for advices from Warwickshire before printing the royal proclamation issued in London on the 7th.

This proclamation is interesting in the extreme. In it Thomas Percy is denounced as the leader, whilst there is no allusion to Sir