The original propounder of the plot was unquestionably Robert Catesby, of Ashby Saint Ledgers, a Northamptonshire gentleman of ancient ancestry and fair estate. He first whispered it in secret to John Wright, a Lincolnshire squire, and soon afterwards to Thomas Winter, a younger brother of the owner of Huddington Hall in Worcestershire, and a distant cousin of an old friend of some of my readers--Edward Underhill, the "Hot Gospeller." Thomas Winter communicated it in Flanders to Guy Fawkes, a young officer of Yorkshire birth, and these four met with a fifth, Thomas Percy, cousin and steward of the Earl of Northumberland. The object of the meeting was to consider the condition of the Roman Catholics, with a view to taking action for its relief. There was also a priest in the company, but who he was did not transpire, though it is almost certain to have been one of the three Jesuits chiefly concerned in the plot--John Gerard, Oswald Greenway, or Henry Garnet. Percy, usually fertile in imagination and eager in action, was ready with a proposition at once. He said-- "The only way left for us is to kill the King; and that will I undertake to do. From him we looked for bread, and have received nought save stones. Let him be prayed to visit my Lord Mordaunt at Turvey, where a masque may be had for him; and he once there, in the house of one of us (though my Lord be not known so to be), he is at our mercy. How say you, gentlemen?" "Nay, my son," replied the priest. "There is a better course in hand-- even to cut up the very roots, and remove all impediments whatsoever." "That were to run great risk and accomplish little," added Catesby. "No, Tom: thou shalt not adventure thyself to so small purpose. If thou wilt be a traitor, I have in mine head a much further design than that,--to greater advantage, and that can never be discovered." Every body wished to know his meaning. "I have bethought me," continued Catesby, "of a way at one instant to deliver us from all our bonds, and without any foreign help to replant again the Catholic religion. In a word, it is to blow up the Parliament House with gunpowder, for in that place have they done us all the mischief, and perchance God hath designed that place for their punishment." "Truly, a strange proposal!" said Thomas Winter. "The scandal would be so great that the Catholic religion might sustain thereby." "The nature of the disease requires so sharp a remedy," was Catesby's reply. "But were it lawful?" objected John Wright. "Ask your ghostly father," said Catesby, who was pretty sure of the answer in that case. "But remember," said Winter, "there are many of our friends and Catholic brethren amongst the Lords: shall we destroy them with the rest?" Catesby's answer was in principle that of Caiaphas. "Ay: 'tis expedient the few die for the good of the many."