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1604.] criminal and inhuman. But Catesby spared no labour to reconcile his mind to the idea; he painted in vivid colours the long, the pitiless, and the unmerited cruelties inflicted on the catholics. He enumerated the numbers who had been exterminated by the axe and the rope of the executioner; who had perished in their prisons, or who had been reduced from affluence and honour to beggary by the relentless bigotry of the government. He demanded whence relief was to come. What hope there was left of effectual intercession from abroad, or of resolute resistance from the dispirited catholics at home. He appealed to him whether God had not given to every man the right to repel force by force, and whether the whole world besides afforded them any other chance.

Winter was staggered but not convinced, and declared that he would not consent to any such frightful measure before fresh attempts were made to procure a mitigation of their sufferings by milder means. He, therefore, hastened over to the Netherlands, where the Spanish ambassador, Velasco, had arrived, in order to conclude a peace betwixt England and Spain. At Bergen, near Dunkirk, he had an interview with the ambassador, and urged upon him to demand a clause in the treaty for the protection of the catholics. He was soon convinced that Velasco, though promising to use his influence for that end, would not risk the completion of the peace by the advocacy of such a stipulation.

Indignant at this apathy, he hastened to Ostend on his return, where he accidentally encountered an old comrade in the Netherland wars, of the name of Guido or Guy Fawkes, a native of Yorkshire, and a man of determined courage, as well as of great experience and address. He had been Winter's companion in his mission to Madrid, and he now solicited him to accompany him to England, and unite his endeavours with other friends for catholic relief. Winter, it would seem, had now made up his mind to enter into Catesby's plot, but did not let Fawkes into the full secret for some time.

Meantime, Catesby had been ardently at work in the prosecution of his idea. He had communicated his plan to Percy and Wright. Thomas Percy was of the Northumberland family, and steward to the earl, and John Wright was brother-in-law to Percy, and reputed to be the best swordsman in England. Percy had joined the catholics about the same time as Catesby returned to them, and like a zealous proselyte had, during the latter days of Elizabeth, gone to James at Edinburgh, and endeavoured to draw from him a promise of favour to the catholics on his accession. James is reported to have assured Percy that he would at least tolerate the mass in a corner. This James afterwards denied, but his denial can go for very little, for it was perfectly in keeping with his kingcraft to promise what served to secure his ends for the time; and almost every monarch in Europe had to make that complaint against him. Percy, on the breaking out of the persecution under James, felt that he had been made the dupe of James's duplicity. He presented a remonstrance to the king, to which no answer was deigned, and Catesby found him in a mood of great resentment against the king, and in a favourable temper for his views. He not only agreed to co-operate but brought in his brother-in-law Wright, who was also a recent proselyte to catholicism.

Percy appears to have been of a very excitable nature: the embryo conspirators assembled at Catesby's lodgings, and Percy demanded whether they were merely to talk and never to act. Catesby said that before he would open his plan to them, he must demand from every one an oath of secrecy. This was assented to, and a few days afterwards, as appears by the confession of Winter, the five, that is, Catesby, Winter, Percy, Wright, and Fawkes, "met at a house in the fields beyond St. Clement's Inn, where they did confer and agree upon the plot, and there they took a solemn oath and vows by all their force and power to execute the same, and of secrecy not to reveal it to any of their fellows but of such as should be thought fit persons to enter into that action."

When they had all sworn and perfectly understood what was proposed, Catesby led them into an upper chamber of the house, where they received the sacrament from Gerard, the Jesuit missionary, but who, according to Winter's confession, was not let into the secret. Fawkes and Winter both asserted this in their examinations, which were read at the trial; but the part exculpating Gerard was omitted by Coke, whose mark, with the words ad usque, still remains in the original document, showing that Coke purposely omitted what would have exempted Gerard from blame.

This dreadful oath was taken on the 1st of May, 1604, but the conspirators resolved to wait for the remotest chance of any good arising out of the negotiations betwixt England and Spain. But the treaty was concluded on the 18th of August, without any clause protective of the catholics. Peace and commercial relations were restored betwixt the two countries, and James was left at liberty to do as he pleased with the cautionary towns if the states did not redeem them. After the ratification of the treaty, the Spanish ambassador solicited in the name of his sovereign the good-will of James towards his catholic subjects; but James assured Velasco that however much he might be disposed to such indulgence, he dared not grant it, such was the terror of his protestant subjects of any return to power of the catholics. Velasco took his leave, and fresh orders were issued to judges and magistrates to enforce the laws against the catholics with all rigour. This put the finish to the patience of the conspirators, and they protested that it was but a fitting retribution to bury the authors of all their oppressions under the ruins of the edifice in which they enacted such diabolical laws.

They now sought for a proper place to commence their operations, and they soon found a house adjoining the parliament house in the possession of one Ferris, the tenant of Whinneard, the keeper of the king's wardrobe. This Percy hired, in his own name, of Ferris, on pretence that his office of gentleman pensioner compelled him to reside part of the year in the vicinity of the court. But the conspirators were debarred from immediate operations, by the commissioners appointed by James to consider a scheme for the union of the two kingdoms, taking possession of this house, where they sate for several months. Not wholly, however, to lose time, the conspirators hired another house in Lambeth, on the banks of the river, where they stored up wood, gunpowder, and other combustibles, which they could easily remove by night in boats, as occasion served, to their house in Westminster as soon as it was in their hands. They confided the charge of this house in Lambeth to Thomas Kay, a catholic gentleman of reduced means, who took the oath and entered into the plot.

On the 11th of December the conspirators obtained