On this persecution he grounded his hopes--hopes, never realized, for the sufferers, amid all the grievances they endured, remained constant in their fidelity to the throne--of exciting a general insurrection among the Catholics.
Disappointed in this expectation,--disappointed, also, in his hopes of Spain, of France, and of aid from Rome, he fell back upon himself, and resolved upon the execution of a dark and dreadful project which he had long conceived, and which he could execute almost single-handed, without aid from foreign powers, and without the co-operation of his own party.
The nature of this project, which, if it succeeded, would, he imagined, accomplish all or more than his wildest dreams of ambition or fanaticism had ever conceived, it will be the business of this history to develope.
Without going further into detail at present, it may be mentioned that the success of the plot depended so entirely on its secrecy, and so well aware was its contriver of the extraordinary system of espionage carried on by the Earl of Salisbury and the Privy Council, that for some time he scarcely dared to trust it out of his keeping.

At length, after much deliberation, he communicated it to five others, all of whom were bound to silence by an oath of unusual solemnity; and as it was necessary to the complete success of the conspiracy that its outbreak should be instantaneously followed by a rise on the part of the Catholics, he darkly hinted that a plan was on foot for their deliverance from the yoke of their oppressors, and counselled them to hold themselves in readiness to fly to arms at a moment's notice.

But here again he failed.
Few were disposed to listen to him; and of those who did, the majority returned for answer, "that their part was endurance, and that the only arms which Christians could use against lawful powers in their severity were prayers and tears." Among the Popish party of that period, as in our own time, were ranked many of the oldest and most illustrious families in the kingdom,--families not less remarkable for their zeal for their religion than, as has before been observed, for their loyalty;--a loyalty afterwards approved in the disastrous reign of James the Second by their firm adherence to what they considered the indefeasible right of inheritance.

Plots, indeed, were constantly hatched throughout the reigns of Elizabeth and James, by persons professing the religion of Rome; but in these the mass of the Catholics had no share.

And even in the seasons of the bitterest persecution, when every fresh act of treason, perpetrated by some lawless and disaffected individual, was visited with additional rigour on their heads,--when the scaffold reeked with their blood, and the stake smoked with their ashes,--when their quarters were blackening on the gates and market-crosses of every city in the realm,--when their hearths were invaded, their religion proscribed, and the very name of Papist had become a by-word,--even in those terrible seasons, as in the season under consideration, they remained constant in their fidelity to the crown.
From the troubled elements at work, some fierce and turbulent spirits were sure to arise,--some gloomy fanatics who, having brooded over their wrongs, real or imaginary, till they had lost all scruples of conscience, hesitated at no means of procuring redress.