That such impositions were in fact connected with the designs of religious parties, is the only circumstance capable of palliating the ridicule attached to a king of England gravely occupying himself, and sometimes his privy-council, in watching the contortions, and making minutes of the ravings, of a set of miserable wretches, either pure impostors or the real subjects of epilepsy, who might with so much less ceremony have been consigned to the remedial methods of an hospital or a bridewell. “One advantage however accrued to the sovereign himself from these investigations; they disclosed to him such examples of knavery, delusion and imposture in these matters, that he is said to have heartily repented the support which he had lent to popular superstition by the publication of his Demonologia,' and, in his latter years, to have nearly renounced his faith in witchcraft. "Vanity was a leading foible in the character of James, and one source of some of the principal mistakes of his reign. It was an overweening of his own eloquence and polemical skill which tempted him to hold the conference at Hampton court, where, under the notion of confuting the refractory puritans, he insulted them by menaces and revilings, and thus converted this formidable party from mere dissatisfied sectaries, into determined political enemies. The same principle, exalting his idea of the surpassing majesty of the kingly character, prompted him to indulge in those arrogant and even blasphemous representations of his own prerogative and dignity which filled all true Englishmen with indignation and disgust, and implanted in the bosoms of his parliaments jealousies which he found it impossible to eradicate. It was in a great measure also his vanity which prompted him to seek, on behalf of his heir, those alliances with the great catholic sovereigns which became the source of so much offence to his people, and finally of irreparable ruin to his posterity. "On his propensity to favouritism it is needless to expatiate; every page in his history is an exemplification of his weakness, and of the endless mischiefs which it is calculated to produce. The only excuse for his blind indulgence to the objects of his affection, must be derived from his boundless good-nature; which overflowed upon all who approached him, and rendered it a moral impossibility for him to refuse any request urged with importunity. His profuse liberality, which sprung from the same source, was the chief if not the sole cause of his constant want of money; for his personal habits were simple and uniform in a remarkable degree; he cared for few objects of magnificence, and indulged in no expensive pleasures, unless the sports of the field deserve to be accounted such when pursued by a monarch. these sports, in which James consumed so large a portion of his time, it was the worst effect, that they contributed to foster that irascibility on small provocations which so frequently transported him beyond the bounds of dignity and even of common decency, and on some occasions exposed him to the contempt, of the meanest of his people. An anecdote to this effect, related by Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards earl of Strafford, belongs to the last year of James's life, and may here find a place. Of "I will . . . . write you news from the court at Rufford, where the loss of a stag, and the hounds hunting foxes instead of deer, put the king your master into a marvellous chafe, accompanied with those ordinary symptoms better known to you courtiers, I conceive, than to us country swains; in the height whereof comes a clown galloping in, and staring full in his face; 'Sblood,' quoth he, am I come forty miles to see a fellow?' and presently in a great rage turns about his horse, and away he goes faster than he came. The oddness whereof caused his majesty and all the company to burst out into a vehement laughter; and so the fume, for the time, was happily dispersed."6 "Another story, for which we are indebted to Wilson, is equally illustrative of the faults and excellencies of the monarch's disposition. In the midst of the negotiations for the Spanish match, the king, who was at Theobalds, was much discomposed by missing some important papers which he had received respecting it. On recollection, he was persuaded that he had intrusted them to his old servant Gib, a Scotchman and gentleman of the bedchamber. Gib, on being called, declared, humbly but firmly, that no such papers had ever been given to his care; on which the king, transported with rage, after much reviling, kicked him as he kneeled before him. 'Sir,' exclaimed Gib, instantly rising, 'I have served you from my youth, and you never found me unfaithful; I have not deserved this from you, nor can I live longer with you under this disgrace: fare ye well, sir, I will never see your face more:' and he instantly took horse for London. No sooner was the circumstance known in the palace, than the papers were brought to the king by Endymion Porter, to whom he had given them. He asked for Gib, and being told that he was gone, ordered them to post after him and bring him back; vowing that he would neither eat, drink, nor sleep till he saw him. And when he at length beheld him entering his chamber, he kneeled down and very earnestly begged his pardon; nor would he rise from this humble posture till he had in a manner compelled the confused and astonished Gib to pronounce the words of absolution." Robert Catesby. BORN CIR. A. D. 1558.-died a. d. 1605. ROBERT CATESBY, one of the principal conspirators in the gunpowder treason, was a descendant of Catesby, the favourite minion of Richard III., and enjoyed the family estate of Ashby St Legers, in Northamptonshire. His early education was probably intrusted to some catholic priest, or jesuit, who imbued the youth's mind with those wretched notions of the supreme claims of the church of Rome on all its members, to which he afterwards sacrificed his property and life. Ás early as the year 1588, his attachment to the catholic interest was known to be so strong, that he was one of those whom it was judged expedient, on the approach of the armada, to commit to Wisbeach castle. Some years afterwards, he engaged in Garnet's traitorous negotiations with the court of Spain. Garnet seems to have relied a good Earl of Strafford's Letters and Dispatches, vol. i. p. 23. deal on Catesby's assistance and counsels in the desperate game which he was playing; but the peace with Spain cut off many of the projects of the Roman faction, and threw Catesby idle for a time. James I., it is well known, seemed at first very favourably disposed towards the catholic party, but as soon as that monarch changed his line of policy, and began to threaten the catholics with a revival of Elizabeth's penal laws, Catesby, and some other desperate spirits, conceived the design. of the gunpowder-plot, and carried their designs into action with a precipitancy which ultimately defeated their own object. Catesby, who was the originator of the whole plot, first communicated his design to Francis Tresham, a catholic gentleman, who seems to have suffered imprisonment with Catesby in Wisbeach castle, under the same suspicions. Tresham entered readily into the plot, having already written a work in which he maintained the right and duty of all true sons of the church to depose a heretic sovereign. The two conspirators then took into their association one Thomas Percy, who conceived himself to have received a deep personal injury from James. Five or six others, chiefly gentlemen of family in the midland counties, were added to the confederacy, and the whole conspirators, after swearing secrecy and fidelity to each other, received the sacrament and absolution from Desmond, alias Greenway, a jesuit. On some hesitation manifesting itself among the band, Catesby put the following case of conscience to Father Garnet :-"Whether, for the good and promotion of the catholic cause against heretics, the necessity of the time and occasion so requiring, it were lawful or not, amongst many guilty, to destroy also some innocent." The jesuit responded affirmatively, and it was now decided, without a dissentient voice, to blow up the whole parliament when assembled together in one house on the 5th of November. There was one Faukes, born of a good family in Yorkshire, but who had followed the profession of arms from his youth, and acquired a daring and desperate character during a life of much vicissitude. This man had already been of service to the jesuits, in conducting some of their negotiations betwixt England and the continent, and was now pitched upon by the conspirators as a fit hand to prepare the mine and fire the train by which they hoped to annihilate the protestant cause in England at once and for ever. Faukes was now in Flanders, but was speedily procured, and, assuming the character of Percy's servant, proceeded to arrange a number of barrels, filled with gunpowder, in the vaults beneath the parliament-house, which Percy had been allowed to rent. It was resolved that, as soon as the blow was struck, one party of the conspirators should hasten to Warwickshire, and having secured the person of the princess Elizabeth, proclaim her queen. Sir William Stanley, a renegade English officer, who had entered the service of the archduke of Spain, was to land a force in England at the same time. At first the conspirators hired a house adjoining to that in which the house of lords met, and proceeded to run a mine under the latter from the interior of the former. But an opportunity which offered for hiring the vaults beneath the house of lords, induced them to abandon their mine after having laboured at it for several months with great diligence. Successive prorogations of parliament long suspended the hopes of the conspirators, and kept them exposed to fearful peril, from the betrayal or desertion of any of their number; but they preserved their fidelity towards each other, and seem to have pursued their infernal purpose with a steadiness and resolution worthy of a better cause. At last the fatal day approached on which it was resolved parliament should meet. The king in person was to open the session, the queen and court were to be present as spectators, and both houses were to assemble under the same roof. The eve of the decisive day beheld every thing in readiness on the part of the conspirators,-the barrels of powder were arranged, the train was laid,—and even the desperate Faukes had taken his place in the cellarage, with a tinder-box and dark lantern, ready to fire the match when the fatal hour should arrive, when "a circumstance, beyond calculation, or beyond control,--the intense anxiety of a woman's heart for the safety of a beloved object," revealed the desperate purposes of the conspirators, in time to save the objects of their horrid plot. On the 3d of November, Lord Monteagle received an anonymous letter, warning him, in mysterious terms, against being present at the opening of parliament on the 5th. This communication is supposed to have been prompted by the affection of his lordship's sister, the wife of Thomas Habington, one of the conspirators. It instantly excited alarm at court, and the lord-chamberlain was directed to make a strict examination of all places contiguous to the house of lords next day. At midnight, on the 5th of November, a magistrate entered the vaults, under the pretext of searching for stolen goods, and detected the barrels of powder, with the arch-incendiary, Faukes himself, who was immediately taken into custody. The conspirators, on hearing of the discovery having been made, hastened into Warwickshire, with the intention of seizing the person of the princess Elizabeth, and raising the standard of revolt; but the vigilance of Sir John Harrington secured the princess, and the sheriff' having raised the country, the rebels, whose total number did not exceed eighty, threw themselves into Holbeach house, on the borders of Staffordshire, the family seat of Stephen Lyttleton, one of the conspirators. For a time they defended themselves desperately here, but an accidental explosion of some of their powder scorched several of them and compelled the rest to endeavour to fight their way through their assailants. In this attempt, Catesby, Percy, and three others, were slain; Lyttleton and Winter escaped; the rest, amongst whom were Sir Everard Digby, surrendered, and were carried to London. Sir Everard Digby. BORN A. D. 1581.-DIED A. D. 1606. THIS catholic gentleman, memorable for the share he had in the gunpowder-plot, was born in the year 1581, of a very ancient and honourable family. His father, Everard Digby, of Drystoke, in Rutlandshire, was a man of considerable learning and genius, and the author of several treatises on scientific and other subjects. His early death left his son, Everard, at the tender age of eleven, to the uncontrolled direction of certain catholic priests, who instilled into his tender mind the idea of implicit obedience to his mother-church, as the first and most sacred of human obligations. On attaining manhood, Digby was one of the most accomplished and fascinating men of his age. Elizabeth, with all her abhorrence of heresy, was compelled to admire the handsome papist, and bestowed several marks of royal favour upon him. Her successor, James, knighted him. By his marriage with Mary, daughter and sole heiress of William Mulsho of Gothurst, in Bucks, he obtained a large accession to his fortune. But his intimacy with Tresham involved him in that fatal plot, which was destined to bring a life, otherwise fair and prosperous, to an ignominious close. The arguments by which Sir Everard was persuaded to engage in this affair, according to his own account, were these-First, he was told that King James had broken his promises, solemnly made to the catholics; secondly, he was assured that the council contemplated introducing a number of very severe laws against popery, in the next parliament; thirdly-and this was the reason, he confessed, which weighed most with him-he felt it to be the duty of every member of the catholic church to aim at its restoration, even at the hazard of life and fortune. By such reasoning as this, Sir Everard was prevailed upon to join Catesby and Tresham in their dark conspiracy; and with such ardour did he engage in the design, that he offered £1,500 from his own purse, towards defraying the expenses of it, and received Guy Faukes into his own house during the suspension of their proceedings, occasioned by the unexpected prorogation of parliament. Upon his commitment to the tower, with the other conspirators taken at Holbeach house, he solemnly declared his ignorance of the intended plot, and during all his examinations, carefully avoided inculpating any other persons than those already dead, or who had been taken, like himself, in open rebellion. In giving utterance, as a dying man, to such notorious falsehoods as those by which he attempted to conceal from the government the nature and extent of the disconcerted plot, Sir Everard was doubtless supported by the exceedingly perverted notions of moral duty which had been instilled into his mind by his jesuitical tutors. Yet, it was not without a deep inward conflict that he maintained the part he did before his examiners. In some notes which he contrived to send to his lady during his imprisonment, he has such passages as the following:-" Now, for my intentions, let me tell you, that if I had thought there had been the least sin in the plot, I would not have been of it for the world; and no other cause drew me to hazard my fortune and life, but zeal to God's religion. For my keeping it secret, it was caused by certain belief that those who were best able to judge of the lawfulness of it, had been acquainted with it and given way to it. More reasons I had to persuade me to this belief than I dare utter, which I will never to the suspicion of any, though I should to the rack for it; and as I did not know it directly that it was approved by such, so did I hold it in my conscience the best not to know any more if I might. I have, before all the lords, cleared all the priests in it, for any thing that I know; but now, let me tell you what a grief it hath been to me, to hear that so much condemned, which I did believe would be otherwise thought on by catholics; there is no other cause but that which hath made me desire life, for when I came into prison death would have been a welcome friend unto me, and was most desired; but when I heard how catholics and priests thought of the matter, and that |