Note 230 — Chapter V

On the 17th of October, more than a week before the first hint of danger is said to have been breathed, we find the minister writing to Sir Thomas Edmondes, at Brussels,[230] in terms which certainly appear to couple together the growing danger of conversions to Catholicism, of which we have heard above, and the remedy soon to be supplied by the new policy which the discovery of the Plot so effectively established. He speaks of the "insolencies" of the priests and Jesuits, who are doing much injury by infecting with their poison "every youth that cometh amongst them;" ominously adding, "which liberty must, for one cause or another, be retrenched."