GUNPOWDER PLOT
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GUNPOWDER PLOT
year 1613, and was educated at Clare Hall, Cambridge. He became fellow and tutor of his college, and distin- guished himself as a preacher, but on account of his zeal for the king's service he was ejected, and after- wards was made chaplain to Sir Robert Shirley, at whose death he obtained the chapel at Exeter House, Strand. At the Restoration his services were reward- ed; he was created D.D. by the king's mandate. He was one of the coadjutors selected by the bishops to maintain the High-church cause at the Savoy Confer- ence (Ififjl), and was the principal disputant with Bax- ter. He had a Romanizing tendency, and advocated prayer for the dead. In 16G9 he was made bishop of Chichester, and in 1674: was translated to El}-, where he died in 1684. He wrote largely on the controver- sies of the time, and especially The Paschal or Lent Fust apostnlical and pa-petual, recently reprinted in the Library of Anglo-Cath. Theology (Oxford, 1S45, Svo).— Hook, Eccl. Biog. vol. v; Neal, History of the Puritans, iii, 90, 168 ; Darling, Cgclo]). Bibliographica, i, 1355.
Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy formed and ma- tured in the years 1601-5 by some English Romanists to blow up with gunpowder the Parliament House, and thus destroy at once the king, lords, and commons of England when assembled at the opening of Parlia- ment, with the hope of being able, during the result- ant confusion, to re-establish their faith in the king- dom, or, at least, avenge the oppressions and persecu- tion of its adherents. At the accession of James I to the throne, the Roman Catholics anticipated toleration, or, at all events, a great relaxation in the rigor of the penal laws against them, and were greatly exasperated on finding that not onh' were their hopes in this regard disappointed, but that increased severity was employ- ed towards them ; for James, when once firmly seated on his throne, in Feb. 1604, "assured his council that ' he had never any intention of granting toleration to the Catholics;' that he would fortify the laws against them, and cause them to be put into execution to the utmost.'' The conceiver of the design of taking so in- discriminate and brutal a vengeance was Robert Cates- by, of "ancient familj^ and good estate," who had once abjured and then returned again with increased ardor to his early faith. He made known his scheme first to Thomas Winter, "a gentleman of Worcestershire," and next to John Wright, who belonged to a higlih' respectable Yorkshire family. According to the state- ment made in prison (Nov. 19, 1605) by a fellow-con- spirator (Fawkes), "these three first devised the plot, and were the chief directors of all the particularities of it." Winter refused his assent to the plan until an ef- fort had been made to obtain, through the mediation of Spain, toleration for the English Catholics bj' a clause to that eff'ect in the treaty then negotiating be- tween England and Spain. He accordingly went to the Netherlands to further that object, where he learn- ed from the Spanish ambassador that it could not be accomplished. He, however, met at Ostend an old as- sociate, Guy Fawkes (q. v.), and foreseeing in him an efficient coadjutor in Catesby's scheme, induced him to return with him to England without making known to Fawkes the jiarticular nature of the plot. Fawkes, though not the projector or head, became by far the most notorious member of the conspiracy, and popular opinion long represented him as a low, cruel, and mer- cenary ruffian ; l)ut he appears to have been b}' birth a gentleman, and of a nature chivalrously daring and iinsGlfish, but thoroughl}' perverted b}' a blind fanati- cism, which led liim to regard devotion to his own faith and its adherents as the essence of Christian virtues. Soon after the arrival of T. Winter and I'awkes in London, a meeting was held at Catesby's lodgings, at wliich there were present the four already named and an additional member of the conspiracy, Thomas- Per- cy, a brother-in-law of John Wright, and "a distant re- lation of the carl of Northumberland." These five, at Catesby's request, agreed to bind themselves to secre-