After some particulars concerning the jealousy against the Scots, and the matter of the union (which "sticketh much in the Parliament's teeth") Blount goes on to relate how Cecil has been attempting to float a second Powder Plot—the scene being this time the king's court itself. He has had another letter brought in, to set it going, and had seemingly calculated on capturing the writer himself and some of his brethren in connection with it. In this, however, he has been foiled, and the matter appears to have been dropped. In Blount's own words:[446]
"Now these last days we expected some new stratagem, because Salisbury pretended a letter to be brought to his lordship found by chance in St. Clement's Churchyard, written in ciphers, wherein were many persons named, and a question asked, whether there were any concavity under the stage in the court. But belike the device failed, and so we hear no words of it. About this time this house was ransacked, where by chance Blount came late the night before, finding four more, Talbot, N. Smith, Wright, Arnold; being all besieged from morning to night. If things had fallen out as was expected, then that letter would have haply been spoken of, whereas now it is very secret, and only served to pick a thanks of King James, with whom Salisbury keepeth his credit by such tricks, as upon whose vigilancy his majesty's life dependeth."
One other feature of the after history demands consideration. As Fuller tells us,[447] "a learned author, making mention of this treason, breaketh forth into the following rapture:
'Excidat illa dies aevo, ne postera credant
Saecula; nos certe taceamus, et obruta multâ
Nocte tegi propriae patiamur crimina gentis.''Oh, let that day be quite dashed out of time,
And not believ'd by the next generation;
In night of silence we'll conceal the crime,
Thereby to save the credit of the nation.'"
"A wish," he adds, "which in my opinion, hath more of poetry than of piety therein, and from which I must be forced to dissent." Assuredly if it were judged that silence and oblivion should be the lot of the conspiracy, no stranger means were ever adopted to secure the desired object. A public thanksgiving was appointed to be held every year, on the anniversary of the "discovery;" a special service for that day was inserted in the Anglican liturgy, and Gunpowder Plot Sermons kept the memory of the Treason green in the mind not of one but of many generations.
Moreover, the country was flooded with literature on the subject, in prose and rhyme, and the example of Milton is sufficient to show how favourite a topic it was with youthful poets essaying to try their wings.[448]
In regard of the history, one line was consistently adopted. The Church of England in its calendar marked November 5th, as the Papists' Conspiracy, and in the collect appointed for the day the king and estates of the realm were described as being "by Popish treachery appointed as sheep to the slaughter, in a most barbarous and savage manner, beyond the examples of former ages." Similarly, preachers and writers alike concurred in saying little or nothing about the actual conspirators, but much about the iniquity of Rome; the official character of the Plot, and its sanction, even its first suggestion, by the highest authorities of the Church, being the chief feature of the tale hammered year after year into the ears of the English people. The details of history supplied are frequently pure and unmixed fables.[449]