From thinking wickedly they went on to do wickedly. They found there were some cellars under the houses of parliament, and they filled these cellars with gunpowder; and as they expected the parliament would meet in the house all together, with the king, on the fifth day of November, they hired a man called Guy Fawkes to set fire to the gunpowder, and so to blow it up, and kill everybody there at once. Now, it happened that one of the lords, whose name was Mounteagle, had a friend among the Roman Catholics, and that friend wrote him a letter, without signing his name, to beg him not to go to the parliament that day, for that a sudden blow would be struck which would destroy them all. Lord Mounteagle took this letter to the king’s council. Some of the councillors laughed at it, and said it was only sent to frighten Lord Mounteagle. But the king took it, and after thinking a little, he said, the sudden blow must mean something to be done with gunpowder, and he set people to watch who went in and out of the vaults under the parliament-house; till at last, on the very night before the Roman Catholics hoped to kill the king and all those belonging to parliament, they caught Guy Fawkes with his dark lantern, waiting till the time should come for him to set fire to the gunpowder. The king was very proud of having found out what the letter meant, and used to boast of it as long as he lived; but the truth is that the king’s clever minister, Sir Robert Cecil, had found out all about the plot, and managed to let James have all the credit. So far I have only told you of the foolish behaviour of King James. I must now write about his mischievous actions. His eldest son, Prince Henry, died very young; he was a sensible lad, and the people were sorry when he died, especially as his brother Charles was a sickly little boy. Now, little Charles was a clever child, and had very good dispositions; and if he had been properly brought up, he would have been a good king, and a happy man. Instead of that, you will read that he was a bad king, and I daresay you will cry when you find how very unhappy he was at last. James taught him that no power on earth had any right to find fault with the king, that the king’s power was given to him by God, and that it was a great sin to say that anything the king did was wrong. Thus he taught him to think that the people were made for nothing but to obey kings, and to labour and get money for kings to spend as they pleased, and that even the nobles were nothing but servants for kings; in short, he filled his poor little son’s mind with wrong thoughts, and never taught him that it was a king’s duty to do all the good he could, and to set an example of what is right. Yet Charles had many good qualities, as you will read by-and-by. He was a good scholar, and loved books and clever men, and music, and pictures; and if he had only been taught his duty as a king properly, he would have done a great deal of good to England.