Father Gerard, it is true, does not lay very great stress on this evidence; but neither does he subject it to the criticism to which it is reasonably open. What is to be thought, for instance, of the accuracy of a writer, who states that 'Sir Everard Digby's two sons were both knighted soon after,' when, as a matter of fact, the younger, Kenelm, was not knighted till 1623, and the elder, John, not till 1635? Neither Sir Kenelm's alleged talk, nor that of Wotton and Vowell, prove anything. On the statement about Catesby I shall have something to say later, and, as will be seen, I am quite ready to accept what is said about Monteagle. The most remarkable allegation in the paper is that relating to the second Earl of Salisbury. In the first place it may be noted that the story is produced long after the event. As the words imply that Lenthall was dead when they were written down, and as his death occurred in 1681, they relate to an event which occurred at least seventy-six years before the story took the shape in which it here reaches us. The second Earl of Salisbury, we are told, informed Lenthall that the plot was 'his father's contrivance,' and Lenthall told Webb. Are we quite sure that the story has not been altered in the telling? Such a very little change would be sufficient. If the second Earl had only said, "People talked about my father having contrived the plot," there would be nothing to object to. If we cannot conceive either Lenthall or Webb being guilty of 'leaving the story better than they found it,'--though Wood, no doubt a prejudiced witness, says that Lenthall was 'the grand braggadocio and liar of the age in which he lived'[10]--our anonymous and erudite friend who perpetrated that little blunder about the knighthood of Sir Everard Digby's sons was quite capable of the feat. The strongest objection against the truth of the assertion, however, lies in its inherent improbability. Whatever else a statesman may communicate to his son, we may be sure that he does not confide to him such appalling guilt as this. A man who commits forgery, and thereby sends several innocent fellow creatures to torture and death, would surely not unburden his conscience to one of his own children. _Maxima debetur pueris reverentia._ Moreover the second Earl, who was only twenty-one years of age at his father's death, was much too dull to be an intellectual companion for him, and therefore the less likely to invite an unprecedented confidence.