Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/36

32 summoned 'out of Flanders.' That Catesby, villain though he was, must still have been a person of a peculiarly fascinating disposition to have wielded so subtle an influence over his fellows cannot be doubted. In point of energy and administrative ability, he stood out head and shoulders above all his confederates, and he alone amongst them was competent to put the conspiracy into working order, and to keep it so long strictly secret from the Government of King James I. Cruel and clever as he was, he ruled those under him with a hand of iron, and never hesitated to commit an act of violence, or concoct a lie, in order to place his subordinates more completely under his sway. He was, in truth, the most unscrupulous and reckless member of all the wicked men who had joined together to attempt a crime that ranks in the annals of history as the most atrocious ever devised by human brains.