It has been said, in excuse for the conspirators, that there are reasons for suspecting the idea of the Gunpowder Plot to have been conceived in the first instance by Cecil, who had it suggested to Catesby, through a third person--possibly Mounteagle--with the deliberate intention of bringing discredit upon the English Catholics, and thereby giving cause for the enactment of severer measures for their repression. This may remind some of my readers that, at the height of the agrarian crime in Ireland, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, many good Irish Catholics were persuaded, or persuaded themselves, that the outrages were invented, instigated, and encouraged, if not actually perpetrated, at the suggestion of the authorities at Dublin Castle, in order to throw discredit upon "the poor, oppressed Irish peasantry," and to give an excuse for "persecuting" them with renewed vigour. As to the question whether Cecil originated the Gunpowder Plot as a bait with which to entrap Catholic priests, Jesuits, and laymen, if there be any grounds for it, it certainly has great historic interests; but whether Cecil, or the Devil, or both, put the idea into the heads of the conspirators, little, if at all, affects their guilt. CHAPTER IX. Towards the end of the last chapter, I showed that the conspirators were for the most part in fairly comfortable circumstances, and that some of them were rich. It was not necessary to my purpose to enter into details concerning Guy Fawkes, who was an adventurer and a mere tool, or concerning Thomas Bates, who was Catesby's servant. Nor did I mention the Littletons--one a wealthy man, and the other a younger son, and a cousin of the former; for, although they joined in the rising after the discovery of the plot, and suffered death for it, they do not appear to have been among the sworn conspirators beforehand. But, before dismissing the subject of the riches or poverty of the plotters, I have something more to say.