Thus much for the moral effect produced by the efforts of Sir Everard Digby and his friends for the benefit of the English Catholics; the material effect may be described in a few words. It was, instead of relieving them from oppression, to cause the laws and disabilities under which they suffered to be redoubled. When they reflect upon all these things, can Catholics recall the memory of Sir Everard Digby with no other feelings than those of pity? Surely, if any class of men have cause to execrate the memory of every conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot, it is not the Protestants but the Catholics. None the less may it be doubted, whether, among misguided men, there is a character in history more to be pitied than Sir Everard Digby. Whatever his faults, whatever his errors, whatever the mischief he wrought to the cause for which he was ready to give his life, he never seems to have been guilty of a selfish action; if he was disloyal to his country, he believed that he was serving its best interests; if he mistook atrocious murder for legitimate warfare, it was with the hope of restoring his fellow-countrymen to the faith of their forefathers. * * * * * The inhabitants of London were to have two thoroughly happy days; there was to be a great execution on Thursday and another on Friday. Four traitors were to be hanged, drawn, and quartered on either day. On Thursday, the 30th of January 1606, Sir Everard Digby was taken from his prison in the Tower to a doorway in front of which four horses were each harnessed to a separate wattled hurdle lying on the ground. He found three of his fellow-conspirators awaiting him--his late host, Robert Winter of Huddington, the courageous, but rough and pugnacious, John Grant of Norbrook, and--there being no respect of persons on the scaffold--Thomas Bates, Catesby's servant. Ordered to lie down on his back, with his head towards the horse's tail, Sir Everard was tightly bound to the hurdle, and when all the four condemned men had been treated in the same manner, the procession started on its doleful journey. To be dragged through the muddy streets of London, to be splashed and saturated with their slush and filth, and to be bruised and shaken over the rough stones as the hurdle rose and fell over them, must have been as disagreeable as it was degrading; and the mile or more from the Tower to the place of execution--the west of St Paul's Cathedral--was a long distance over which to be submitted to such an ordeal. To add to the sensations of disgrace, the streets were crowded, and nearly every window in Cheapside was filled with people watching the prisoners passing to their doom.