Note 108 — Chapter III

Such a belief must have been widely entertained, otherwise it could not have been handed on, as it was, for generations. It is not too much to say that historians for almost a century and a half, if they did not themselves favour the theory of the government's complicity, at least bore witness how widely that idea prevailed. Thus, to confine ourselves at present to Protestant writers, Sanderson,[108] acknowledging that the secretary was accused of having manipulated the transaction, says no word to indicate that he repudiates such a charge. Welwood[109] is of opinion that Cecil was aware of the Plot long before the "discovery," and that the famous letter to Monteagle was "a contrivance of his own." Oldmixon writes[110] "notwithstanding the general joy, ... there were some who insinuated that the Plot was of the King's own making, or that he was privy to it from first to last." Carte[111] does not believe that James knew anything of it, but considers it "not improbable" that Cecil was better informed. Burnet[112] complains of the impudence of the papists of his day, who denied the conspiracy, and pretended it was an artifice of the minister's "to engage some desperate men into a plot, which he managed so that he could discover it when he pleased." Fuller[113] bears witness to the general belief, but considers it inconsistent with the well-known piety of King James. Bishop Kennet, in his Fifth of November sermon at St. Paul's, in 1715, talks in a similar strain. So extreme, indeed, does the incredulity and uncertainty appear to have been, that the Puritan Prynne[114] is inclined to suspect Bancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, of having been engaged in the conspiracy; while one of the furious zealots who followed the lead of Titus Oates, mournfully testified that there were those in his day who looked upon the Powder Treason "as upon a romantic story, or a politic invention, or a State trick," giving no more credence to it than to the histories of the "Grand Cyrus, or Guy of Warwick, or Amadis de Gaul,"—or, as we should now say, Jack the Giant Killer.