Page:Guy Fawkes, or, The history of the gunpowder plot.pdf/9

Rh Haddington, in Worcestershire, where they had been in possession of estates since the time of Henry VI. At a conversation held between these conspirators, it was agreed that Winter should go over to the Netherlands to meet Velasco, constable of Castile, who had arrived at Flanders on his way to England to conclude a peace between James and the King of Spain, and him to solicit his Majesty to recal the penal laws against the Catholics, and to admit them into the rank of his other subjects. Winter received no encouragement from Velasco that he would stipulate in the treaty of peace for the liberties of the English Catholics; and so returned to England, taking Fawkes along with him, but without, at that time, communicating to him the nature of Catesby’s purpose. Guido, or Guy Fawkes, whose name has been more generally associated with this plot than that of any of the other conspirators, in consequence of the prominent part he undertook in the execution of it, was a gentleman of good family and respectable parentage in Yorkshire. His father, Edward Fawkes, was a notary at York, and held the office of Registrar and Advocate of the Consistory Court of the Cathedral. Of the education and early history of Guy Fawkes nothing is known; but having spent the little property he derived from his father, he enlisted as a soldier of fortune in the Spanish army in Flanders, and was present at the taking of Calais by the Archduke Albert in 1598. He was well known to the English Catholics, and had been despatched by Sir William Stanley and Owen from Flanders to join Christopher Wright on his embassy to Philip II. immediately after Queen Elizabeth’s