Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/335

Rh as both great and small began to stir and arm themselves upon this unlocked for accident. But, before twelve or sixteen hours passed, Catesby, Percy, the Winters, Wrights, Rookewood, and the rest, bringing then the assurance that their main plot was failed and bewrayed, whereupon they had built the golden mountain of their glorious hopes; they then took their last desperate resolution, to flopk together in a troop, and wander, as they did, for the reasons aforetold. But, as upon the one part, the zealous duty to their God, and their Sovereign, was so deeply imprinted in the hearts of all the meanest and poorest sort of the people, although then knowing of no further mystery than such public misbehaviours, as their own eyes taught them, as notwithstanding of their fair shews and pretences of their Catholic cause, no creature, man, or woman, through all the country would once so much as give them, willingly, a cup of drink, or any sort of comfort or support, but with execrations detested them, so, on the other part, the sheriffs of the shires, through which they wandered, conveying their people with all speed possible, hunted as hotly after them, as the evilness of the way, and the unprovidedness of their people upon that sudden could permit them. And so, at last, after Sir Richard Verney, Sheriff of Warwickshire, had carefully and straightly been in chase of them to the confines of his county, part of the meaner sort being also apprehended by him; Sir Richard Walsh, Sheriff of Worcestershire, did likewise dutifully and hotly pursue them through his shire: and, having gotten sure trial of their