AROUND the Gunpowder Plot has gathered a mass of fabulous embellishment too curious to be passed over in silence. This has chiefly attached itself to Guy Faukes, who, on account of the desperate part allotted to him has impressed the public mind far more than any of his associates, and has come to be erroneously regarded as the moving spirit of the enterprise. One of the best authenticated facts regarding him is that when apprehended he was booted and spurred for a journey, though it is usually said that he was to have travelled by water. There is, however, a strange story, told with much circumstantiality, which gives an elaborate but incomprehensible account of a tragic underplot in connection with him. This is related at considerable length in a Latin hexameter poem, _Venatio Catholica_, published in 1609, in the _History of the Popish Sham Plots_, and elsewhere. According to this tangled tale the other conspirators wished both to get rid of Faukes, when he had served their purpose, and to throw the suspicion of their deed upon their enemies, the Puritans. To this end they devised a notable scheme. A certain Puritan, named Pickering, a courtier, but a godly man, foremost amongst his party, had a fine horse ("Bucephalum egregium"). This, Robert Keyes, his brother-in-law, purchased or hired, and placed at the service of Faukes for his escape. The steed was to await him at a certain spot, but in a wood hard by assassins were to lurk, who, when Guy appeared, should murder him, and having secured the money with which he was furnished, should leave his mangled corpse beside the Bucephalus, known as Mr. Pickering's. Thus Faukes would be able to tell no tales, and--though it does not appear why--suspicion would be sure to fall on the Puritan, and he would be proclaimed as the author of the recent catastrophe. "Hoc astu se posse rati convertere in hostes Flagitii infamiam, causamque capessere vulgo Qua Puritanos invisos reddere possent, Ut tantæ authores, tam immanis proditionis. Cognito equo, et facta (pro more) indagine cædis, Aulicus hic sceleris tanquam fabricator atrocis Proclamandus erat, Falso (ne vera referre Et socios sceleris funesti prodere possit) Sublato." Many curious circumstances have likewise been imported into the history, and many places connected with it which appear to have no claim whatever to such a distinction. Thus we hear (_England's Warning Peece_) that the Jesuit Cresswell came over from Spain for the occasion "to bear his part with the rest of his society in a victorial song of thanksgiving." Also that on November 5th, a large body of confederates assembled at Hampstead to see the House of Parliament go up in the air.