Note 267 — Chapter VI

Important information upon the same point is furnished by Cecil in another letter, written in the following January.[267] He undertakes to explain to his correspondent how it came to pass that a circumstance of supreme importance, of which the government were fully cognizant,[268] was not mentioned in the official account. This he does as follows: "And although in his Majesty's book there is not any mention made of them [the Jesuits], and of many things else which came to the knowledge of the State, yet is it but a frivolous inference that thereby [they] seek to serve their turn, considering the purpose of his Majesty was not to deliver unto the world all that was confessed concerning this action, but so much only of the manner and form of it, and the means of the discovery, as might make it apparent, both how wickedly it was conceived by those devilish instruments, and how graciously it pleased God to deal with us in such an extraordinary discovery thereof."