We shall presently see that Sir Everard intended to turn his steps towards Wales, when the blow should have been struck, making sure of the support of Catholics so persecuted as the Welsh and the inhabitants of the border counties. Here is something about them. Less than five months before the attempt to blow up the houses of parliament, the Protestant Bishop of Hereford wrote to Salisbury:--[212] "On Wednesday last, at evening, Sir James Scudamore and other justices of the peace, with such aid as I could give them, went unto the Darren and other places adjoining to make search and apprehend Jesuits and priests ... and did make diligent search all that night and day following, from village to village, from house to house, about thirty miles compass, near the confines of Monmouthshire, where they found altars, images, books of superstition, relics of idolatry, but left all desolate of men and women. Except here and there an aged woman or a child, all were fled into Wales, and but one man apprehended; all that circuit of rude barbarous people carried headlong into these desperate courses by priests (whereof there is great store) and principal gentlemen, lords of towns and manors there. They are all fled into the woods, and there they will lurk until the assizes be past." Rumours of the searches on the part of the "justices of the peace," "with such aid" as the Bishop of Hereford "could give them," would reach Gothurst and provoke Sir Everard. They remind one of the remark made by Cardinal Bellarmine on the Gunpowder Plot:--[213] "I excuse not the crime, I loathe unnatural murders, I execrate conspiracies, but no one can deny that provocation was given." [212] S. P. Dom. James I., Vol. xiv. n. 52, June 22, 1605. [213] Reply to the King's _Triplici nodo triplex cuneus_. See _The Month_, No. 366, p. 501. The plan of campaign was doubtless discussed at great length at Gothurst during the early part of the month of October. Parliament was to meet at the beginning of November, and the great attempt was intended to be made about the 5th. No time, therefore, was to be lost in making provision for every contingency. Sir Everard was still anxious as to whether all the Catholic peers, and those peers who were friendly to Catholics, could, with any certainty, be induced to absent themselves from the House at the time of the explosion.