Believing that his principal friends, and the priests for whom he felt the greatest veneration, had either joined in or expressed their approval of the scheme, Sir Everard began to be half inclined to consent to it. Was there to be a great enterprise, entailing personal activity and danger for the good of the Catholic cause, and was he to shrink from taking part in it? Was he alone, among the most zealous Catholic laymen of England, to show the white feather in a time of peril? Could he call himself a man if he trembled at the very thought of bloodshed? Yet, in truth, the idea of the cold-blooded massacre which was proposed appalled him; fair fighting he would rather rejoice in, but wholesale assassination was to the last degree repulsive to his nature. Hesitating and miserable, he reached Gothurst with his guest without giving any definite answer to the question whether he would join in the conspiracy. When they were in the house, Catesby showed him a book justifying proceedings which he claimed to be similar to the proposed plot. "I saw," he wrote afterwards to his wife,[159] "I saw the principal point of the case, judged by a Latin book of M. D., my brother's father-in-law." What book it may have been we have no means of knowing; but we do know that the perils of comparing parallel cases are notorious: and, unfortunately, the production of this book had the effect of turning the scale, and inducing Digby to join in the infamous plot. [159] "Letters of Sir Everard Digby" in _Gunpowder Treason_, p. 177. Necessary as it is for a biographer of Sir Everard Digby carefully to consider all the arguments that are likely to have influenced him in consenting to the Gunpowder Plot, it is all-important to keep before the mind the cause which, on his own admission,[160] was the first and most potent of his assent to the conspiracy. This was[161] "the friendship and love he bare to Catesby, which prevailed so much, and was so powerful with him, as that for his sake he was ever contented and ready to hazard himself and his estate." [160] Speech at his trial. [161] _Gunpowder Treason_, by Thomas, Bishop of Lincoln, p. 55. Sir Everard was a man of what may be termed violent friendship. We have already seen his almost immoderate attachment to Father Gerard. It was an excellent thing that he should have such a man for a firm friend; but his feeling towards him was something much more than that. Father Gerard was "his brother." The Jesuits make a rule of avoiding what they term "particular friendships," and the great aggression of affection would certainly not come from Father Gerard's side. And now we find him loving Catesby to such an extent as to be "ready to hazard himself and his estate" "for his sake."