We shall afterwards have to examine in some detail the divergencies of these several narratives: at present we are concerned only with the intimation which they afford of a previous knowledge of the Plot on the part of the government. In the "King's Book"--which was not only to be disseminated broadcast at home, but to be translated and spread abroad, and, moreover, to be suited to the taste of its supposed author--the preternatural acuteness of the monarch is extolled in terms of most preposterous flattery, and his secretary is represented as altogether incredulous of danger, and unwilling to be convinced even by his royal master's wonderful interpretation of the mysterious warning. Nevertheless, not only is mention parenthetically introduced of the minister's "customable and watchful care of the king and State, boiling within him," of his laying up these things in his heart, "like the Blessed Virgin Mary," and being unable to rest till he had followed the matter farther,--but it is dexterously intimated that, for all his hardness of belief, he was sufficiently well informed before the warning came to hand, and that "this accident did put him in mind of divers advertisements he had received from beyond the seas, wherewith he had acquainted as well the king himself, as divers of his Privy Councillors, concerning some business the Papists were in, both at home and abroad, making combination amongst them for some combination against this Parliament time," their object being to approach the king with a petition for toleration, "which should be delivered in some such order, and so well backed, as the king should be loth to refuse their requests; like the sturdy beggars craving alms with one open hand, but carrying a stone in the other, in case of refusal." As prepared for the Privy Council, the account, though substantially the same, was somewhat more explicit. The secretary was fully aware, so the Lords were told, "that some practices might be doubted," and he "had, any time these three months, acquainted the King, and some of his Majesty's inward Counsellors, that the priests and laymen abroad and at home were full of the papists of this kingdom, seeking still to lay some _plot_ for procuring at this Parliament exercise of their religion."