summoned 'out of Flanders.' That Catesby, villain though he was, must still have been a person of a peculiarly fascinating disposition to have wielded so subtle an influence over his fellows cannot be doubted. In point of energy and administrative ability, he stood out head and shoulders above all his confederates, and he alone amongst them was competent to put the conspiracy into working order, and to keep it so long strictly secret from the Government of King James I. Cruel and clever as he was, he ruled those under him with a hand of iron, and never hesitated to commit an act of violence, or concoct a lie, in order to place his subordinates more completely under his sway. He was, in truth, the most unscrupulous and reckless member of all the wicked men who had joined together to attempt a crime that ranks in the annals of history as the most atrocious ever devised by human brains. T CHAPTER III THOMAS WINTER AND JOHN WRIGHT HOMAS WINTER was a Worcestershire gentleman of good family. relative of several of his fellow-conspirators, namely Catesby, Tresham, Grant, and of course (his elder brother) Robert Winter.' He was also a connection by marriage of Lord Mounteagle, to whom the famous letter, revealing the conspiracy, was addressed. He was, so Father Gerard boasts, 'a reasonable good scholar, and able to talk in many matters of learning, but especially in philosophy or histories very well and judicially. He could speak both Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French. He was of mean stature, but strong and comely, and very valiant. He was very devout, and zealous in his faith.' If this account be true-and there is some reason to doubt it-Winter must have been the most accomplished and capable of all the conspirators, for he was also a soldier as well as a 1 Percy and the Wrights were relations, so that the plot was quite a family affair. Moreover, Catesby's son married one of Percy's daughters. scholar. Born in 1572, he spent the greater part of the last decade of Elizabeth's reign on the Continent, in fighting first in the Netherlands, curiously enough, against Spain, that very power to which most of his friends at home looked for aid. Before the period of the Essex rebellion, however, he had changed his politics, and we find him employed on a secret mission to Madrid, asking military aid from the Spanish King on behalf of the English Romanists, so soon as Elizabeth should die, or even beforehand. On this mission he seems to have been sent by the advice and direction of Lord Mounteagle and Father Garnet, after they and he had consulted with Tresham and Catesby. He was accompanied on his journey by Father Greenway, and on arriving at Madrid, placed his negotiations with the Spanish Government under the direction of Father Cresswell, S.J. On returning from this mission, he went across (in 1604) to Brussells, on a continuation of his errand, to visit the Constable of Castille, 'whose answer was,' according to Gerard, 'that he had strict command from his Majesty of Spain to all good offices for the Catholics; and for his own part, he thought himself bound in conscience so to do, and that no good occasion should be omitted. Thus much the Constable promised at that time. . . . But it is an easy matter to satisfy with hopes of 1 And, I believe, his religion. He was a convert to Roman Catholicism. |