Note 302 — Chapter VII

Yet more remarkable is a piece of information supplied by Bishop Goodman, his authority being the eminent lawyer Sir Francis Moore, who, says he, "is beyond all exception."[302] Moore, having occasion during the period when the Plot was in progress to be out on business late at night, and going homeward to the Middle Temple at two in the morning, "several times he met Mr. Percy coming out of the great statesman's house, and wondered what his business should be there." Such wonder was certainly not unnatural, and must be shared by us. That a man who was ostensibly the life and soul of a conspiracy directed against the king's chief minister, even more than against the sovereign himself, should resort for conference with his intended victim at an hour when he was most likely to escape observation, is assuredly not the least extraordinary feature in this strange and tangled tale.