Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/18

16 lightened, were to be made heavier. Goaded into fury by the cruelty of the new Government, many of the Romanists were prepared to have recourse to arms rather than submit to an increase of the taxation laid upon them. But the English Roman Catholics, as a body, strong as they were numerically, were divided among themselves. The majority were not inclined to adopt forcible measures until the last extremity, and looked with suspicion upon that section of their co-religionists who permitted themselves to be guided by the Jesuits, whose coming into England had already wrought such terrible harm to the Roman cause during the last twenty years of Elizabeth's reign.

It was from the Jesuitical party that the Gunpowder Plotters sprung. All of these conspirators were acquainted with Father Henry Garnet, the Superior of the Jesuits in England, and with the Jesuit Fathers Oldcorne, Greenway, Baldwin, and Gerard. To these Jesuits the conspirators, before the inception of their plot, were wont to betake themselves for counsel and direction in matters political and religious; and they became identified in due course with the schemes concocted by Father Robert Parsons for obtaining aid from Spain. Such schemes were heartily disliked by the great mass of the Roman Catholic laity, and by the secular priests, who cordially detested the Jesuits and their pupils. The power of the Jesuits was, as the