Catholics were accused, and upon false testimony convicted and executed; among them the aged Viscount Stafford." Ballads, such as that which begins as follows, describing this so-called and non-existent conspiracy, were eagerly purchased in the streets. [415] "Good People, I pray you, give ear unto me, A Story so strange you have never been told, How the _Jesuit_, _Devil_, and _Pope_ did agree Our State to destroy, and Religion so old. To _murder_ our _King_, A most horrible thing, &c." [413] See Wharton's _Laud's History, &c._, p. 567. [414] Haydn's _Dictionary of Dates_, 1892, p. 696. [415] _A New Narrative of the Popish Plot, showing the Cunning Contrivance thereof._ Nor did the prejudices against Catholics raised by the Gunpowder Plot, early in the seventeenth century, die out at the end of it. Even now there remains a traditional superstition in this country that it was planned by the Jesuits, admired by the majority of English Catholics, and secretly connived at by the Pope and the Sacred College. For generations, English schoolboys have believed that Roman Catholics are people who would blow up every Protestant with gunpowder if they could. So indelible has been the prejudice created against Catholics by the misdoings of a mere handful of conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot, that the large number of English Catholic squires, baronets, and noblemen, who squandered their estates and their patrimony, and even gave their lives, for their king, in the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II., failed to eradicate the popular notion that all Catholics were disloyal. The meetings at White Webbs and Gothurst gave rise to the idea that the private house of every Catholic served as a rendezvous for plotters, and every seminary as a nest of traitors; the fact that Catesby and Digby had Jesuit friends has made Protestants believe that every Jesuit would commit a murder if he thought it would serve the cause of his religion; and the fact that they had priests in their houses has led to the impression that, wherever there is a domestic Catholic chaplain, mischief is certain to be brewing. Worst of all, when Protestants are told of "an excellent Catholic," a man who goes to confession and communion every week, a man of irreproachable character both in private and in public life, a man of high position, great wealth, charming manners, and popularity among Protestants as well as Catholics, they can point, as they have been able to point for nearly three hundred years, to the history of Sir Everard Digby, as an example of what even such a man would be "obliged to do" were "his priest" so to order him.