the powder plot. iv.
Nor was the pencil less active than the pen in popularizing the same belief. Great was the ingenuity spent in devising and producing pictures which should impress on the minds of the most illiterate a holy horror of the Church which had doomed the nation to destruction. One of the most elaborate of these was headed by an inscription which admirably summarizes the moral of the tale.
The Powder Treason.—Propounded by Satan: Approved by Antichrist [i.e. the Pope]: Enterprised by Papists: Practized by Traitors: Revealed by an Eagle [Monteagle]: Expounded by an Oracle [King James]: Founded in Hell: Confounded in Heaven.
Accordingly we find representations of Lucifer, the Pope, the King of Spain, the General of the Jesuits, and other such worthies, conspiring in the background while the redoubtable Guy walks arm in arm with a demon to fire the mine, the latter grasping a papal Bull (unknown to the Bullarium), expedited to promote the project: or again, Faukes and Catesby stand secretly conspiring in the middle of the street, while Father Garnet, in full Jesuit habit (or what is meant for such) exhorts them to go on: or a priest gives the conspirators "the sacrament of secrecy;" or representative Romish dignitaries blow threats and curses against England and her Parliament House,—or the Jesuits are buried in Hell in recompense of their perfidy.
It cannot, however, escape remark that while the limners have been conscientiously careful in respect of these details, they have one and all discarded accuracy in regard of another matter in which we might naturally have expected it. In no single instance is Guy Faukes represented as about to blow up the right house. Sometimes it is the House of Commons that he is going to destroy, more frequently the Painted Chamber, often a nondescript building corresponding to nothing in particular,—but in no single instance is it the House of Lords.
the powder plot. v.
The most extraordinary instance of so strange a vagary is afforded by a plate produced immediately after the occurrence it commemorates, in the year 1605 itself.[450] In this, Faukes with his inseparable lantern, but without the usual spurs, is seen advancing to the door of the "cellar," which stands conspicuous above ground. Aloft is seen the crescent moon, represented in exactly the right phase for the date of the discovery.[451] The accuracy exhibited as to this singular detail makes it more than ever extraordinary that the building to which he directs his steps is unquestionably St. Stephen's Chapel—The House of Commons.