Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/334

302 subjects in those parts prevented the speed of his proclamations. For, upon the third day after the flying down of these rebels, which was upon the Friday next after the discovery of their plot, they were most of them all surprised by the Sheriff of Worcestershire, at Holbeach, about the noon of the day, and that in the manner following.

'Grant, of whom I have made mention before, for taking the great horses, who had not all the preceding time stirred from his own house till the next morning after the attempt should have been put in execution; he then laying his accounts without his host, as the proverb is, that their plot had, without failing, received the day before their hoped-for success; took, or rather stole, out those horses, as I said before, for enabling him, and so many of that foulest society, that had still remained in the country near about him, to make a sudden surprise upon the King's elder daughter, the Lady Elizabeth, having her residence near by that place, whom they thought to have used for the colour of their treacherous design, his Majesty, her father, her mother, and male children being all destroyed above, and to this purpose also had that Nimrod, Digby, provided his hunting-match against that same time, that numbers of people being flocked together, upon the pretence thereof, they might the easier have brought to pass the sudden surprise of the person.

'Now the violent taking away of those horses, long before day, did seem to be so great a riot in the eyes of the common people that knew of no greater mystery. And the bold attempting thereof did engender such a suspicion of some following rebellion in the hearts of the wiser sort,