ing of 1604 a proclamation which
bade all Jesuits and seminary priests depart from the land proved that
on its political side the Elizabethan policy was still adhered to. But
the effect of the remission of fines was at once to swell the numbers of
avowed Catholics. In the diocese of Chester the number of recusants
increased by a thousand. Rumours of Catholic conversions spread a panic
which showed itself in an act of the Parliament of 1604 confirming the
statutes of Elizabeth; and to this James gave his assent. He promised
indeed that the statute should remain inoperative; but rumours of his
own conversion, which sprang from his secret negotiation with Rome, so
angered the king that in the spring of 1605 he bade the judges put it in
force, while the fines for recusancy were levied more strictly than
before. The disappointment of their hopes, the quick breach of the
pledges so solemnly given to them, drove the Catholics to despair. They
gave fresh life to a conspiracy which a small knot of bigots had been
fruitlessly striving to bring to an issue since the king's accession.
Catesby, a Catholic zealot who had taken part in the rising of Essex,
had busied himself during the last years of Elizabeth in preparing for a
revolt at the Queen's death, and in seeking for his project the aid of
Spain. He was joined in his plans by two fellow-zealots, Winter and
Wright; but the scheme was still unripe when James peaceably mounted the
throne; and for the moment his pledge of toleration put an end to it.
But the zeal of the plotters was revived by the banishment of the
priests; and the conspiracy at last took the form of a plan for blowing
up both Houses of Parliament and profiting by the terror caused by such
a stroke. In Flanders Catesby found a new assistant in his schemes,
Guido Fawkes, an Englishman who was serving in the army of the Archduke;
and on his return to England he was joined by Thomas Percy, a cousin of
the Earl of Northumberland and a pensioner of the king's guard. In May
1604 the little group hired a tenement near the Parliament House, and
set themselves to dig a mine beneath its walls.

[Sidenote: The Gunpowder Plot.]

As yet however they stood alone. The bulk of the Catholics were content
with the relaxation of the penal laws; and in the absence of any aid the
plotters were forced to suspend their work. It was not till the sudden
change in the royal policy that their hopes revived. But with the
renewal of persecut