ew government: as this
was not granted them they set to work at once on new schemes of
insurrection. Christopher Wright was one of those who had invited
Philip III to support the Catholics. When the Constable of Castile
came to Flanders to negotiate the peace, Thomas Winter visited him in
order to lay their wish before him. Though they met with a refusal
from him as well as from his master they found nevertheless a support
which was independent of the approval of individuals. In the archducal
Netherlands a combination of a peculiar kind, favourable to their
views, had been formed, in consequence of the permission to recruit in
the British dominions, which by the terms of the peace had been
granted to Spain as well as to the Netherlands. An English regiment,
about fifteen hundred strong, had been raised, in which the chaplains
were all Jesuit fathers; and no officers were admitted but those who
were entirely devoted to them. An English Jesuit named Baldwin, and a
soldier of the same opinions, Owen by name, were the leading spirits
among them. There was here, so to speak, a school of soldiers side by
side with a school of priests, in which every act of the English
government provoked slander, malediction, and schemes of opposition.
Pope Clement was blamed for not threatening James with excommunication
as Elizabeth had formerly been threatened; and the necessity for
violent means of redress was canvassed without disguise. These views
were repeated in congenial circles in Paris and reacted also upon
their friends in England. Robert Catesby had been most active in the
enlistment of the regiment. Christopher Wright on his journey to Spain
was attended by one of the most resolute officers of this regiment,
Guy Fawkes. The latter returned with Winter to England, and was
pointed out by Owen as a man admirably qualified to conduct the
horrible undertaking which was being prepared for execution. It must
remain a question in whose head the thought of proceeding to it at
this moment originated: we only know that Catesby first communicated
it to another, and then with the aid of this comrade to the rest of
the band. To this another member had been added, who was connected, if
only in a remote degree, with one of the most distinguished families
among the English nobility. I refer to Thomas Percy, a kinsman of the
Earl of Northumberland, who through his influence had once received a
place in the court establishment of King James of Scot