It seems that Catesby conceived the plan during the spring, A.D. 1603. Thomas Winter states that he was requested to meet him in town; where, after receiving a second letter, he found him with John Wright. At this meeting they conversed on the necessity incumbent on them of doing something for the cause of their religion and country; for these men, forsooth, professed to be patriots. Winter expressed his readiness to hazard his life in the cause; and Catesby made known his project. Thomas Winter then went to the Continent to meet Fawkes, to whom he was to make known the fact, that a plot was in agitation. They met and returned to England the following spring, when they were joined by Catesby, Percy, and Wright. At one of these meetings Percy came into the room and said, “Shall we always, gentlemen, talk, and never do any thing?” Catesby took Percy aside for a few minutes. Percy proposed to kill the king; but Catesby said, “_No, Tom_, thou shalt not adventure thy life to so small a purpose.” At this time the plan was partially concocted by Catesby, but was revealed only to Winter. Catesby and Winter agreed that an oath of secresy should be administered before the plot was fully disclosed to their companions; who, though they were all anxious to enter upon any project, however desperate, were not yet acquainted with the plan which had been devised by Catesby. Though Winter and Fawkes had met on the Continent, and had travelled together to England, yet it does not appear that the latter was made at that time acquainted with the treason. He came to England with Winter, with a view to the contrivance of a plot, but with the particular scheme projected by Catesby he was not acquainted, until after his return from the Continent. He was a reckless character, and ready to join in any desperate enterprise. Fawkes, in his own confession, declares, that the matter was at first broken to him in a general way by Winter. The parties were now five in number, namely, Catesby, Fawkes, Percy, Thomas Winter, and John Wright. According to agreement they all met together in a room near St. Clement’s church, in the Strand. Here they administered an oath of secresy to each other on a Primer. When the oath had been taken, they all went into the next room, in which was the Jesuit Gerard, from whom, after they had heard mass, they received the sacrament. Gerard was probably acquainted with all the particulars of the plot. He was aware of the designs and intentions of the conspirators; for he waited in the room for the express purpose of uniting them together into a common bond for treasonable purposes. As soon as these ceremonies had been passed through, Catesby and Winter unfolded to the rest the plan which had been devised; and observed that the oath had been taken, in order that the plot might be concealed. Fawkes and the rest fully approved of all that had been done, entering into the plot with the utmost alacrity. In the spring of 1604, therefore, the plot was