“An upper room of Widow Herbert’s house was turned into a chapel; and when the priest was ready for his part, Catesby, Percy, Tom Winter, Jack Wright, and Fawkes assembled in the house—a quaint old Tudor pile at the corner of Clement’s Lane—first in the lower room, where they swore each other upon the Primer, and then in the upper room, where they heard Father Gerard say Mass, and took from his hand the sacrament on that oath. Each of the five conspirators was sworn upon his knees, with his hand on the Primer, that he would keep the secret, that he would be true to his fellows, that he would be constant in the plot.” Is this perversion of the facts of history accidental, or a piece of downright dishonesty? At first, overlooking the writer’s known hostility to the Jesuits, and his insinuation about the priest being “ready for his part,” we concluded that the sentence describing how the conspirators were sworn was intended to commence after the word “Primer,” to preserve the unity of the action, but by inadvertence was put after the mention of the taking of the sacrament, thus conveying the false idea that the conspirators swore also _after_ or during Mass; but, having had occasion to refer to the index, we find that we had done Mr. Dixon’s dexterity injustice at the expense of his veracity. In seeking for the page of his book upon which this opaque statement appears, we find the following words in the index under the head “Gerard”—“administers the oath of secrecy to the Powder Plot conspirators in a house in Butcher’s Row, p. 95.” Thus the author of _Her Majesty’s Tower_, who, we presume, occupies a decent position among men of letters in his own country, not only cannot discover after the “occasional labor of twenty years” a most essential point of testimony bearing on the very subject to which his book is mainly devoted, but to make out a case against the much‐hated Jesuits actually falsifies and perverts facts already known and admitted; doing in the year of grace 1869 gratuitously, what Coke in 1606 did for hire. Can the force of malice go further? Digby, who, it will be remembered, was subsequently admitted into the plot, on his trial went even further than the originators of it; and, in exculpating the Jesuit Order, was most emphatic in denying any knowledge of the conspiracy on the part of Gerard, either in its progress or, as far as he knew, at its inception. So much for Father Gerard’s innocence as proved by others; the following is his own statement, made years after the occurrence when he was beyond the reach of English law, and subsequently affirmed in substance on his solemn oath: