CHAPTER XLVI.
JAMES I.
{1604.} We are now to relate an event, one of the most memorable that history has conveyed to posterity, and containing at once a singular proof both of the strength and weakness of the human mind; its widest departure from morals, and most steady attachment to religious prejudices.

It is the "gunpowder treason" of which I speak; a fact as certain as it appears incredible.
The Roman Catholics had expected great favor and indulgence on the accession of James, both as he was descended from Mary, whose life they believed to have been sacrificed to their cause, and as he himself, in his early youth, was imagined to have shown some partiality towards them, which nothing, they thought, but interest and necessity had since restrained.

It is pretended, that he had even entered into positive engagements to tolerate their religion as soon as he should mount the throne of England; whether their credulity had interpreted in this sense some obliging expressions of the king's, or that he had employed such an artifice in order to render them favorable to his title.[*] * State Trials, vol.ii.p.

201, 202, 203.

Winwood, vol.ii.
p.