Page:Guy Fawkes, or, The history of the gunpowder plot.pdf/3



THE conspiracy called the GUNPOWDER PLOT must, for various reasons, be considered as one of the most remarkable occurrences in English history. The atrocity of the design, the extent of the mischief intended, and the mysterious manner in which the scheme is represented to have been detected upon the eve of its execution, would alone be sufficient to give a surpassing interest to the story; while the observance of the anniversary periodically awakens the remembrance of Guy Fawkes and his associates, and perpetuates the memory of the transaction by rendering its leading features familiar even to our children.

In order to form a fair judgment of the causes which produced the Gunpowder Treason, and to comprehend the motives of those who were engaged in it, it is necessary to consider generally the state of the English Catholics at that period, and to take a summary view of the penal restrictions and liabilities to which, at the commencement of the reign of James I., the adherents to the Roman Church were subject.

The laws passed against recusants in the latter years of the reign of Elizabeth were extremely severe; and whatever may have been the object with which they were passed, and without discussing the debatable question of