Elizabeth died on 24th March 1603, and James Stuart peacefully acceded to the throne. We need not stop to consider the shifts by which Parsons now sought the favour of James; he had, he boldly and untruthfully said, abandoned the idea of a Spanish succession at the death of Philip II. in 1598. James was not to be deceived, and, in his negotiations with Rome, made a point of having the Jesuits excluded. The conflicting counsels in regard to the Catholics ended, as is known, in a decision to tolerate lay Catholics, but not priests, and the bitter agitation began which led up to the famous plot. Catesby and Winter conceived the horrible idea of blowing up the Parliament House when the King, the Royal Family, and the Lords and Commons were assembled in it for the opening of Parliament. Guy Fawkes, Thomas Percy, and J. Wright were admitted to the secret, and in March 1604 they met and swore to accomplish the plot. In an adjoining room a priest said mass for them, and Fawkes and Winter afterwards said that this priest was Father Gerard; Gerard, however, denied this, and the point is not important, since it is not at all probable that Gerard was ever admitted to the secret, and no priest knew of the plot until long afterwards. Gerard's idea was that toleration could be bought, but he failed even to find the money. For more than a year and a half the conspirators brooded over their ghastly scheme, and made preparations for carrying it out; and on 5th November 1605 Fawkes was arrested in the cellar beneath the House beside a mass of powder. It is agreed that no Jesuit inspired this plot; the point we have to determine is whether the Jesuits were aware of the plot and acquiesced in it by their silence. The whole subject has been fully and repeatedly discussed, and I propose to rely almost entirely on the "Declarations" which Father Garnet addressed to the authorities during his trial and imprisonment.[16] The living Jesuit, Father Gerard, may express an ingenuous doubt whether there ever was a Gunpowder Plot at all; his predecessor of the seventeenth century, who ought to know, was concerned only to extricate himself, by a series of confessions, evasions, and untruths to which no parallel can be found in the history of martyrs, from the very grave moral and legal charge of having known that this horrible slaughter was contemplated and made no effort to disclose or prevent it.