It was Goring who betrayed the secret to the popular leaders. The alarm may easily be imagined which this intelligence conveyed. Petitions from the military to the civil power are always looked on as disguised or rather undisguised commands, and are of a nature widely different from petitions presented by any other rank of men. Pym opened the matter in the house.[**] On the first intimation of a discovery, Piercy concealed himself, and Jermyn withdrew beyond sea. This further confirmed the suspicion of a dangerous conspiracy. Goring delivered his evidence before the house: Piercy wrote a letter to his brother, Northumberland, confessing most of the particulars.[***] Both their testimonies agree with regard to the oath of secrecy; and as this circumstance had been denied by Pollard, Ashburnham, and Wilmot, in all their examinations, it was regarded as a new proof of some desperate resolutions which had been taken. * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 247. Whitlocke, p. 43. ** Rush, vol v. p. 240. *** Rush. vol. v. p. 255. To convey more quickly the terror and indignation at this plot, the commons voted that a protestation should be signed by all the members. It was sent up to the lords, and signed by all of them, except Southampton and Robarts. Orders were given by the commons alone, without other authority that it should be subscribed by the whole nation. The protestation was in itself very inoffensive, even insignificant; and contained nothing but general declarations, that the subscribers would defend their religion and liberties.[*] But it tended to increase the popular panic, and intimated, what was more expressly declared in the preamble, that these blessings were now exposed to the utmost peril. Alarms were every day given of new conspiracies.[**] In Lancashire, great multitudes of Papists were assembling: secret meetings were held by them in caves and under ground in Surrey: they had entered into a plot to blow up the river with gunpowder, in order to drown the city:[***] provisions of arms were making beyond sea: sometimes France, sometimes Denmark, was forming designs against the kingdom; and the populace, who are always terrified with present, and enraged with distant dangers, were still further animated in their demands of justice against the unfortunate Strafford.