[267] To Sir T. Edmondes, January 22nd, 1605-6.—Stowe MSS., 168, 73, f. 301.
[268] Viz., the complicity of the Jesuits, "not only as being casually acquainted with the Plot," but as having been "principall comforters, to instruct the consciences of some of these wicked Traytors, in the lawfulnesse of the Act and meritoriousnesse of the same."
On this it is enough to remark that when Father Garnet, the chief of the said Jesuits, came afterwards to be tried, no attempt whatever was made to prove any such thing. Cecil therefore wrote thus, and made so grave an assertion, without having any evidence in his hands to justify it.
[269] That King James alone solved the enigma was put forth as an article of faith. In the preamble to the Act for the solemnization of the 5th of November, Parliament declared that the treason "would have turned to utter ruin of this whole kingdom, had it not pleased Almighty God, by inspiring the king's most excellent Majesty with a divine Spirit, to discover some dark phrases of a letter...." In like manner, the monarch himself, in his speech to the Houses, of November 9th, informed them: "I did upon the instant interpret and apprehend some dark phrases therein, contrary to the ordinary grammar construction of them, and in another sort, than I am sure any divine or lawyer in any university would have taken them."
This "dark phrase" was the sentence—"For the danger is past as soon as you have burnt the letter," which the royal sage interpreted to mean "as quickly," and that by these words "should be closely understood the suddenty and quickness of the danger, which should be as quickly performed and at an end as that paper should be of blazing up in the fire."
Of this famous interpretation Mr. Gardiner says that it is "certainly absurd;" while Mr. Jardine is of opinion that the words in question "must appear to every common understanding mere nonsense."
When it was proposed in the House of Commons (January 31st, 1605-6,) to pass a vote of thanks to Lord Monteagle for his share in the "discovery," one Mr. Fuller objected that this would be to detract from the honour of his Majesty, for "the true discoverer was the king."
The reader will perhaps be reminded of Sir Walter Scott's inimitable picture of the king's satisfaction in this notable achievement.
"Do I not ken the smell of pouther, think ye? Who else nosed out the Fifth of November, save our royal selves? Cecil, and Suffolk, and all of them, were at fault, like sae mony mongrel tikes, when I puzzled it out; and trow ye that I cannot smell pouther? Why, 'sblood, man, Joannes Barclaius thought my ingine was in some manner inspiration, and terms his history of the plot, Series patefacti divinitus parricidii; and Spondanus, in like manner, saith of us, Divinitus evasit."—Fortunes of Nigel, c. xxvii.
[270] Relation ..., November 7th, 1605 (P.R.O.).