Note 121 — Chapter III

So much for the testimony of Protestants. As for those who had to suffer in consequence of the affair, there is no need to multiply testimonies. Lord Castlemaine tells us[121] that "the Catholics of England, who knew Cecil's ways of acting and their own innocence, suspected him from the beginning, as hundreds still alive can testify." Father Henry More, S.J., a contemporary, speaks to the same effect.[122] Father John Gerard, who was not only a contemporary, but one of those accused of complicity, intimates[123] his utter disbelief of the official narrative concerning the discovery, and his conviction that those who had the scanning of the redoubtable letter were "well able in shorter time and with fewer doubts to decipher a darker riddle and find out a greater secret than that matter was." One Floyde, a spy, testified in 1615[124] to having frequently heard various Jesuits say, that the government were aware of the Plot several months before they thought fit to "discover" it.