He can scarcely have left Gothurst in the best of spirits, as he must have reflected that, for the first time, he had prevaricated and dissembled, if not actually lied, to the man he considered his best friend, the very priest who had received him into the Church; that he had parted with him on a far from satisfactory footing, and that he had been obliged to send him away from his house without saying Mass on a day of such importance to all good Catholics as that devoted to the memory of and intercession for the dead. Besides these, he had other good reasons for depression as he rode away from his beautiful home; he must have known that, at best, he was starting upon a very perilous enterprise; whether it succeeded or failed, many of his party might fall on the field in prosecuting it, if nothing worse happened to them; and it may be that, as he caught a last glimpse of Gothurst in the distance, the thought occurred to his mind that he would never see it again. The journey and his plans, however, would soon distract his thoughts. The plot itself, too, would occupy his mind above all other subjects. In each of the conspirators it seems to have produced a sort of intoxication. Stow says that,[249] "being drunke with the same folly," Sir Everard Digby "went to the appointed hunting at Don-church." [249] Stow's _Annales_, p. 879. Then there were his arms and his followers to be thought of and looked after. It is difficult in these days to realise that, some three hundred years ago, the servants, retainers, and to some extent the tenants, of large landowners were expected to fight when required by their lords. It is true that the feudal system had then almost ceased to exist; but although vassalage had been considerably limited more than a hundred years earlier by Henry VII., it was not abolished by statute until more than fifty years after the time of which I am writing. To carry ourselves back to that period, we have to imagine our gardeners, under-gardeners, grooms, stable-helpers, gamekeepers, and perhaps footmen, strapping on broad-swords, carrying pikes, putting on such armour as could be provided, and going forth to possible battle, some on foot, and some mounted on hacks, coach-horses, cart-horses, and ponies, not a few of which would be taken up from grass for the purpose.