them_. This council is not to be contemned, because it may do
you good, and can do you no harm; _for the danger is past, as
soon as you have burnt the letter_: and I hope God will give you
the grace to make a good use of it, to whose holy protection I
commend you[12]."

[Footnote 12: "A strange letter, from a strange hand, by a
strange messenger: without date to it, name at it, and (I had
almost said) sense in it. A letter which, even when it was
opened, was still sealed, such the affected obscurity
therein."--FULLER. Book x. 26.]

Dark, indeed, were the words. In the first instance, Monteagle viewed
the matter as a _hoax_, intended to prevent him from attending the
opening of the session. Still he deemed it the safest course not to
conceal its contents. Accordingly he hastened off to Whitehall at that
late hour, when, too, the streets of London were not lighted as they are
in our day, and submitted the letter to the earl of Salisbury, Cecil,
one of the secretaries of state. It does not appear that Cecil laid much
stress upon the letter; at the same time he expressed an opinion, that
it might refer to some design of the papists, respecting which he had
received some information from various quarters. His information,
however, did not relate to any plot; but merely to an attempt, on the
part of the Romanists, at the commencement of the session, to obtain a
toleration for their worship, and the relaxation of some of the penal
laws.

Various attempts have been made to shift the odium of the conspiracy
from the church of Rome, and also from any members of that church. Some
Roman Catholic writers have not scrupled to say, that the whole was a
trick of Cecil's, and that King James was privy to the design, which was
entered upon by the court, for the purpose of rendering the Romanists
odious, and to pave the way for more stringent laws against recusants.

The assertion that the whole plot was a trick of Cecil's, intended to
render the Romanists odious to their countrymen, was not advanced till
sixty years after the event. No one at the time questioned the reality
of the conspiracy. The confessions of the parties, and the secret
letters of Sir Everard Digby, preclude the possibility of even
entertaining such an absurd notion. Not one of the conspirators
complained of being deceived into the plot, either at his trial or
execution; nor did any of their apologists deny the fact of the tr