Note 183 — Chapter IV

Still more serious are the contradictions on another point. We are told, on the one hand, that a proclamation was drawn up for the inauguration of the new sovereign—whoever this was[183]—and, on the other, that the associates were resolved not to avow the explosion to be their work until they should see how the country took it, or till they had gathered a sufficient force,[184] and accordingly that they had no more than a project of a proclamation to be issued in due season. But, again, it is said[185] that Catesby on his way out of town, after the event, was to proclaim the new monarch at Charing Cross, though it is equally hard to understand, either how he was to know which of the plans had succeeded, and who that monarch was to be,—whether a king or a queen,—or what effect such proclamation by an obscure individual like himself was expected to produce; or how this, or indeed any item in the programme was compatible with the incognito of the actors in the great tragedy.