Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/66

 CHAPTER VI SIR EVERARD DIGBY AND FRANCIS TRESHAM

F the thirteen misguided men who are known for certain to have been engaged in hatching the Gunpowder Plot, and who duly paid forfeit for their treason with their lives, the fate of one only has excited an expression of regret from his posterity. This one is Sir Everard Digby, Kt., who is popularly considered to have been cajoled into joining the conspiracy, after much hesitation, against his better and prior inclinations to have nothing whatever to do with the deed; and who is also commonly supposed to have been far superior to his confederates in regard to his general character and abilities. Why Sir Everard should thus alone of the plotters have been singled out for so much commiseration, it is difficult for anybody who has tested the traditional story of the plot, as recorded in the original papers at the Record Office, to comprehend. This popular sympathy seems, in fact, to have been accorded to Sir Everard on the absurdly mistaken grounds that