CHAPTER II
THE FOUNDER OF THE PLOT
THE name of Guy Faukes has, by reason of the all-important part assigned to him in the conspiracy, become so closely identified with its formation and its direction, that we are apt nowadays to look upon him as the principal plotter, whereas he was really subordinate to another, whose name is not quite so familiar to the man in the street. This, the principal plotter, was Robert Catesby. It was, ab initio, Catesby's Conspiracy. It was from his restless brain that the idea of blowing up the House of Peers with gunpowder first emanated.[1]
Having laid his plans, Catesby looked round for confederates, upon whom he could implicitly rely, to help him; and, on his solicitation, they one after another promised to assist and obey him. He was from beginning to end the captain of the band. He hesitated at nothing to gain his own ends. Promises that he could not fulfil, statements about others that could not be true,
- ↑ I cannot agree with the theory that it was Thomas Winter who put the idea into Catesby's head. All the original evidence tends to prove that Catesby was the founder of the plot.
26
