on the House of Lords to witnesse it; some priests having disavowed any such thing in print beyond sea, where I my selfe was asked the same question: And such as want impudence to deny it, doe yet only acknowledge it for the single attempt of some few discontented spirits, rendered desperate through the heavy affliction they then lay under: all their hopes being lost in the neglects of the kings of Spaine and England. The first remaining as carelesse of his faith, as the other did of the performance of his word: Though Garnet, their arch priest, was one, and about that time prayers and fasts appointed to be used by those Romishly affected throughout this whole realme.

11. I never met two of a like conceit, concerning any effect or extent this powder might have reached, had it not failed of successe since one did confine it, (who pretended to have been assisting at the springing of divers mines,) to the circle it lay in, and no farther than to the shaking of the contiguous buildings; whereas the

judgments of others no lesse experienced, delivered at least the whole isle to the furyof it. But the Lord Wilmot did, in my mind, offer the most probable conjecture, (who had seene a like quantity of powder fired upon a wharfe in Dublin,) that, by reason of the weight and straightnesse of the vault, which would have given it all leasure to kindle, it could not but have wrought dire effects upon the city it selfe : Since the other did no lesse, though it had no narrower arch to restraine it, than that of heaven. This I am sure of, that it had overwhelmed church and state; a conspiracy drag'd out of hell, nay, worse than the devill himselfe, for he seeks to preserve his own, whereas, this passed by few of the same profession, many knowne papists, then sitting in the House of Lords, besides other private ones, that were mingled amongst the commons. Happy for us that may safely guesse at the consequence, and are by speciall mercy of Almighty God removed from the danger: It having been very un

likely for our family to escape, since at that very time my father maintained Mr Thomas Brightman under his roofe. Yet let me justify the charity of these underminers so far, as to say, they only intended, in their calculation, the destruction of the House of Lords; unlesse report was found more charitable than they.

12. Here, as in most conspiracies of like composition, the former-mentioned priest was a principall ingredient; of whom, after his death, they reported wonders, as that the perfect effigies of his face remained in the straw-used to dry up the bloud on the scaffold; but all the miracle I could observe was the prodigiousnesse of the at tempt, who have had some of those strawes in my hands, yet could observe no more than by imposing upon my imagination, (first prompted through others report,) I found, as may be in all strawes else, the resemblance of a beard, and something fancy was at that time apt to cast into the mold of a face, being formerly suborned by the

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generall opinion: Yet these no doubt are sold, and pass at this day for reliques, as I know they did twenty years after, and he for a holy saint. From whence we may judge at the originall, no lesse than validity, of divers at this day current amongst us; such false coyne being in some judgments absolved from all tincture of corruption due to deceit, by the profit and reverence they procure to commerce: As if God had so poorly provided for his honour as to want the weake supporters of falsehood and credulity; since what he could say in excuse of the treason, (which he professed alwaies to abhorre,) was, that it came to his knowledge under the seale of confession. He was executed at the west gate of Paules,

'One Wilkinson was the promulgator of this pretended miracle, which was said to display not only Garnet's very features, but a star and cross on the forehead, a cherubim hovering upon the chin, and a glory surrounding the whole. Gualterus Paulus, a German jesuit, turned the letters of the name Henricus Garnetus into Pingere Cruentus Arista, and added to this miserable anargram an equally wretched gloss. See Somers' Tracts, vol. ii. p. 110. Scott's edit.

having the favour only to hang 'till he was dead; the rest being used too cruelly, as may be thought by all that remove their eyes never so little from the merit of the

cause.

13. The discovery appeared no lesse admirable, than the treason, to such as tooke the printed report for authenticke, that a letter was sent to the Lord Morley, and from him to his majesty, &c. a neat device of the treasurer's to fetch him in, to whose estate or person, if not both, he had a quarrell. He being very plentifull in

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This seems a strained pitch of incredulity. If Cecil, as hinted in the text, had intended any scheme against Lord Morley's estate or person, he was so far from pursuing it, that, in his speech upon Digby's trial, he gives that nobleman high credit for his discovery. Neither was Morley left unrewarded by the court; for Wilson, in his History of James I., acquaints us, that he had an annuity of 5007. granted for his life, and a pension of 2007. to him and his heirs for ever. It was, on the other hand, never denied, that Cecil had received intelligence from abroad, or perhaps from the French ambassador at home, that there were some extraordinary preparations on foot among the English catholics; information of a nature much too general