It is moreover apparent that if in recent times historians have forgotten that such a view was ever held, or consider it too preposterous for serious discussion, this is not because fuller knowledge of the details of the conspiracy have discredited it. The official version of the story has remained in possession of the field, and it has gradually been assumed that this must substantially be true. In consequence, as it seems, writers of history, approaching the subject with this conviction, have failed to remark many points suggested even by the documentary evidence at our disposal, and still more emphatically by the recorded facts, which cannot but throw grave doubt upon almost every particular of the traditional account, while making it impossible to believe that, as to what is most essential, the Plot was in reality what has for so long been supposed. That long before the "discovery" the Plot must have been, and in fact was, known to the government; that this knowledge was artfully dissimulated, in order to make political capital out of it; that for the same purpose the sensational circumstances of its discovery were deliberately arranged; and that there are grave reasons for suspecting the beginnings of the desperate enterprise, as well as its catastrophe, to have been dexterously manipulated for State purposes;--such are the conclusions, the evidence for which will now be considered. FOOTNOTES: [99] _Gunpowder Plot Book_, 129. Printed in _Archæologia_, xii. 202*. [100] R.O. _Roman Transcripts_ (Bliss), No. 86, December 10th, 1605 (Italian). [101] Mr. Jardine writes (_Criminal Trials_, ii. p. 235), "_The True and Perfect Relation_ ... is certainly not deserving of the character which its title imports. It is not _true_, because many occurrences on the trial are wilfully misrepresented; and it is not _perfect_, because the whole evidence, and many facts and circumstances which must have happened, are omitted, and incidents are inserted which could not by possibility have taken place on the occasion. It is obviously a false and imperfect relation of the proceedings; a tale artfully garbled and misrepresented, like many others of the same age, to serve a State purpose, and intended and calculated to mislead the judgment of the world upon the facts of the case." Of the _Discourse_ he speaks in similar terms. (_Ibid._, p. 4.) [102] R.O. _Dom. James I._ xix. 94. Printed by Jardine, _Criminal Trials_, ii. 120 (note). [103] _Answere to certaine Scandalous Papers, scattered abroad under colour of a Catholic Admonition._ (Published in January, 1605-6.) [104] _Traditional Memoirs_, 36. Of this writer Lord Castlemaine says, "He was born before this plot, and was also an inquisitive man, a frequenter of company, of a noted wit, of an excellent family, and as Protestant a one as any in the whole nation." [105] _Court of King James_ (1839), i. 102. [106] Stonyhurst MSS., _Anglia_, v. 67.