must surely appear a very strange sort of cowardice or policy in a prince, to proscribe and abuse the more powerful party of his supposed enemies, and, at the same time, to flatter and favour the weakest and most insignificant!" His lenity towards the feeble persecuted class must be attributed to their submissive demeanor, their general loyalty, their innocence of the plot, a circumstance unknown to the public, with which he was perfectly acquainted. There are many weighty reasons to conclude, that artful Cecil, earl of Salisbury, tutored by his father, lord Burleigh, in all manner of court intrigue and political finesse, qualities denominated in common life, sharping, swindling, trepanning, was the real father of this plot, worthy offspring of the Cecils! The king wished for some lucky occurrence to disengage him from his promises to the catholics, i. e. to foreign princes and his own subjects. To gain the good will of the puritans, whom he had disobliged, through any plausible pretext for renewing and enlarging the persecution against papists; and some expedient to work on the parliament, having experienced them very niggardly in their grants. The minister undertook to make him easy on these points, and framed the plot. "Cecil's chief and leading tool in this business seems to have been Tresham. This unhappy gentleman had too many temptations to this baseness, and too little integrity to resist them. He was not unknown to that minister; had been at some* private * See Dodd's Ecclesiastical History, Vol II. VOL. II. Y meetings with him on the affairs of the catholics; had more than once received his pardon* for a capital offence under his administration; and but a few hours before his death confessed, † that, " in consideration of that pardon, and to satisfy the lords of the council, he had given in examinations against Garnet which were not t true." While matters were preparing for the intended discovery of this plot, he§ often visited Cecil at midnight: and when that business was compleated, and there was no further occasion for his services, he was, it is said, carried off by a strangury, in the tower; a disease seldom mortal, unlesss, perhaps, to those who happen to "Sir Everard Digby in one of his private letters from the tower, says, "I have not named any either living or dead that should hurt my Lord Salisbury." (Cecil) B. of Lincoln's Hist. Append. "He was thought to have been concerned in the Earl of Essex's and Sir Walter Raleigh's plots. B. of Lincoln's Hist. &c. p. 95. 220. "This he did in a letter to Cecil, to whom, he desired that such his retractation might be delivered after his death. id. ib. p. 177. The following short extract is all we have of that letter, viz. "That, whereas, since the king's time, he had his pardon, and to satisfy the lords of the council, who heretofore examined him, he had accused Garnet; that now, he being weak, desired that his former examinations might be called in, because they were not true." B. of Lincoln's History of the Gun-powder, &c. p. 220. 66 Even now (says the earl of Salisbury at the tryal of Mr. Garnet) there is current throughout the town, a report of a retractation under Bate's hand, of his accusation of Greenwell," (another of the conspirators.) B. of Lincoln's Hist. of the Gun-powder Treason. p. 221. "Advocate for Conscience Liberty." be entrusted with a dangerous court-secret, and are, at the same time, at the absolute disposal of a wicked first minister. The most authentic accounts of this conspiracy confirm this denouement of the mystery. "Winter, one of the conspirators, declared, that Tresham only was suspected by them. This is also confessed by Saunderson* and others: nay, so great was this man's confidence and self-security, even after the plot was publicly known, "that he hankered about the court, when all his fellow-conspirators were fled and gone." And as for the manner of his death in the tower, doctor Goodman, bishop of Gloucester, avers that "he was carried off by poison;" alledging the testimony of William Butler, doctor of physic, by whom he was visited in his last sickness. Against the genuineness of James's letter to Clement VIII., containing expressions of regard and respect for his holiness and the catholic church, and large promises of favour and toleration to his catholic subjects, 'tis urged, 1. That his secretary, Balmerino, was accused, and convicted on his own confession, of having surreptitiously obtained his majesty's hand to it, and that he was sentenced to die for it. But notwithstanding Elizabeth's resentful remonstrance on that occasion, instead of suffering, on James's accession shortly after, he was added to his privy *King James. + Baker, King James, p. 433. How. King James p. 880. Review of the Court of King James, MSS. council, continuing in his majesty's favour for several years. It was the publication of the letter by cardinal Bellarmine, in answer to James's apology for the oath of allegiance, where he taxes him with inconstancy and a breach of promise towards his catholic subjects, induced him first to accuse him, in 1690, with a fault supposed to have been committed seven or eight years before.* Balmerino, unexpectedly questioned about it, at first honestly answered, that he sent it by his majesty's own commands;† until seeing the king knit his brow, either through fear or favour, he prudently took the blame on himself. After conviction he was pardoned, and restored to liberty, as was his son to his blood. Nevertheless, neither he or his family could ever forgive the prosecution. Bishop Burnet, an unexceptionable author in this case, states the collusion at Balmerino's tryal, and the reality of the king's having sent that letter to the pope. "A letter," says he, "was also writ to the pope by him, (K. James) giving assurance of this (that he would connive at the papists) which, when it came to be published by Bellarmine, upon the prosecution of the recusants, after the discovery of the Gun-powder Plot, Balmerino did affirm, that he, out of zeal for the king's service, got his hand to it, having put it into the bundle of papers, that were signed in course, without the king's knowing any thing of it. Yet, when that discovery drew no other severity but the turning him out of his office, &c. * Saunderson's king James. + Id. ib. all men believed that the king knew of the letter, and that the pretended confession of the secretary was only collusion to lay the jealousies of the king's favouring popery.' "* Had this letter to the pope contained nothing but a bare compliment, or declaration of James's lenity to the papists, without any further effect that was to result from it, it might, perhaps, have been easily counterfeited, and the secret kept; but, as its main tendency and purport was to fix a popish bishop of his own, as his majesty's agent with the pope, (and to request a cardinal's hat for him too) by whom his holiness might be truly informed of his majesty's conduct in that respect; and by whose means his majesty was likewise to receive the pope's opinion and directions, as occasion should happen; in this case, I say, such a fraud would never have been attempted, because it must have been quickly discovered." 2. That the pope published two briefs, forbidding the catholics to acknowledge any successor to Elizabeth, who would not grant a free exercise of their religion. This rather proves for the king's authenticated epistle to the pope, promising favor and indulgence; since the pope, and the English as well as Irish catholic, having received similar promises from him, the briefs were to promote his succession in opposition to English competitors, particularly lord Hertford, whose title was often cried up to tumults in the streets; he being, after the Stuarts, next heir to the crown.* * Burnet's History of his own Times, f. 7, + Lord Castlemain. Cath. Ap. p. 364. |