They hired some cellars under the Houses of Parliament, and stored
them with barrels of gunpowder, hidden by faggots; and the time was
nearly come, when one of the lords called Monteagle, received a letter
that puzzled him very much, advising him not to attend the meeting of
Parliament, since a sudden destruction, would come upon all who would
there be present, and yet so that they would not know the doer of it.
No one knows who wrote the letter, but most likely it was one of the
gentlemen who had been asked to join in the plot, and, though he would
not betray his friends, could not bear that Lord Monteagle should
perish. Lord Monteagle took the letter to the council, and there,
after puzzling over it and wondering if it were a joke, the king said
gunpowder was a means of sudden destruction; and it was agreed that,
at any rate, it would be safer to look into the vaults. A party was
sent to search, and there they found all the powder ready prepared,
and, moreover, a man with a lantern, one Guy Fawkes, who had undertaken
to be the one to set fire to the train of gunpowder, hoping to escape
before the explosion. However he was seized in time, and was forced
to make confession. Most of the gentlemen concerned fled into the
country, and shut themselves up in a fortified house; but there,
strange to say, a barrel of gunpowder chanced to get lighted, and
thus many were much hurt in the very way that meant to hurt others.
There was a great thanksgiving all over the country, and it became the
custom that, on the 5th of November--the day when the gunpowder plot
was to have taken effect--there should be bonfires and fireworks, and
Guy Fawkes' figure burnt, but people are getting wiser now, and think
it better not to keep up the memory old crimes and hatreds.
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