Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/7



N these pages I relate the oft-told story of the famous Gunpowder Plot. For spinning such a well-known yarn, I offer no apology, because I hold that there is room for another, and more thoroughly impartial record than has yet been drawn up. I have based the foundations of my work entirely upon the original evidence as represented in the mass of Domestic and Foreign State Papers, dealing with the reign of James I., preserved at the Public Record Office, and at the British Museum (Additional MSS. 6178).

The result of my investigations has been, in my humble opinion, not only to verify the authenticity of the traditional story of the plot, but to reveal also that the Government knew full well of the existence of the conspiracy long before the receipt of the warning letter by Lord Mounteagle—a transaction which can best be described, in vulgar parlance, as a put-up job.

In no history of England, with perhaps the exception of that by Dr. S. R. Gardiner, or in no