orious enterprises, which had failed
in the first instance, he hoped to encourage them to persevere, and to
induce them to expect that God would, in the end, enable them to
accomplish their purposes. Who can deny, after these facts, that the
church of Rome was deeply involved in the gunpowder treason? Or who can
exculpate her, even at present, from the charge of maintaining
principles subversive of Christian liberty and Protestant governments?
When one of the conspirators, who was received by the governor of
Calais, was condoled with, on being banished his country, he replied,
"It is the least part of our grief that we are banished our native
country; this doth truly and heartily grieve us, that we could not bring
so generous and wholesome a design to perfection."

Sir Everard Digby was a mild and amiable man, and, with the exception of
his participation in the plot, no stain rests upon his character; yet he
seems to have considered that, by engaging in this treason, he was
really doing God service. His letters, written during his imprisonment,
and published by Bishop Barlow in 1679, illustrate the influence of the
principles of the church of Rome on the mind of an otherwise excellent
individual. They were written with the juice of lemon, or something of
the same kind: written, too, when he had time to reflect in his solitary
cell, yet it is evident that he thought he was advancing the cause of
true religion in the part which he took; and, further, that he was never
convinced that the deed was sinful, so completely had the jesuitical
principles of the prime actors in the conspiracy warped his judgment and
influenced his views. The papers were discovered in the house of Charles
Cornwallis, Esq., who was the executor of Sir Kenelm Digby, the son and
heir of Sir Everard. They were once in the possession of Archbishop
Tillotson, as he testifies in one of his sermons.

The letters were by some secret means conveyed to his lady, and were
preserved in the family as sacred relics. "Sir Everard Digby," says
Archbishop Tillotson in his sermon on the fifth of November, "whose very
original papers and letters are now in my hands, after he was in prison,
and knew he must suffer, calls it the best cause, and was extremely
troubled to hear it censured by Catholics and priests, contrary to his
expectations, for a great sin." The letters were also, once in the
possession of Bishop Burnet, as he himself informs us. From him we learn
how