"A wish," he adds, "which in my opinion, hath more of poetry than of piety therein, and from which I must be forced to dissent." Assuredly if it were judged that silence and oblivion should be the lot of the conspiracy, no stranger means were ever adopted to secure the desired object. A public thanksgiving was appointed to be held every year, on the anniversary of the "discovery;" a special service for that day was inserted in the Anglican liturgy, and Gunpowder Plot Sermons kept the memory of the Treason green in the mind not of one but of many generations. Moreover, the country was flooded with literature on the subject, in prose and rhyme, and the example of Milton is sufficient to show how favourite a topic it was with youthful poets essaying to try their wings.[448] In regard of the history, one line was consistently adopted. The Church of England in its calendar marked November 5th, as the _Papists' Conspiracy_, and in the collect appointed for the day the king and estates of the realm were described as being "by Popish treachery appointed as sheep to the slaughter, in a most barbarous and savage manner, beyond the examples of former ages." Similarly, preachers and writers alike concurred in saying little or nothing about the actual conspirators, but much about the iniquity of Rome; the official character of the Plot, and its sanction, even its first suggestion, by the highest authorities of the Church, being the chief feature of the tale hammered year after year into the ears of the English people. The details of history supplied are frequently pure and unmixed fables.[449] [Illustration: THE POWDER PLOT. IV.] Nor was the pencil less active than the pen in popularizing the same belief. Great was the ingenuity spent in devising and producing pictures which should impress on the minds of the most illiterate a holy horror of the Church which had doomed the nation to destruction. One of the most elaborate of these was headed by an inscription which admirably summarizes the moral of the tale. THE POWDER TREASON.--Propounded by _Satan_: Approved by _Antichrist_ [_i.e._ the Pope]: Enterprised by _Papists_: Practized by _Traitors_: Revealed by an _Eagle_ [Monteagle]: Expounded by an _Oracle_ [King James]: Founded in _Hell_: Confounded in _Heaven_.