The reader will perhaps be reminded of Sir Walter Scott's inimitable picture of the king's satisfaction in this notable achievement.
"Do I not ken the smell of pouther, think ye? Who else nosed out the Fifth of November, save our royal selves? Cecil, and Suffolk, and all of them, were at fault, like sae mony mongrel tikes, when I puzzled it out; and trow ye that I cannot smell pouther? Why, 'sblood, man, Joannes Barclaius thought my ingine was in some manner inspiration, and terms his history of the plot, _Series patefacti divinitus parricidii_; and Spondanus, in like manner, saith of us, _Divinitus evasit_."--_Fortunes of Nigel_, c. xxvii.
[270] _Relation_ ..., November 7th, 1605 (P.R.O.).
[271] _Narrative_, f. 68 b.--Stonyhurst MSS.
[272] F. 66. It will be remembered that this episode is not mentioned by Cecil in his version of November 6th. Bishop Goodman's opinion is that this and other points of the story were contrived for stage effect: "The King must have the honour to interpret that it was by gunpowder; and the very night before the parliament began it was to be discovered, to make the matter the more odious, and the deliverance the more miraculous. No less than the lord chamberlain must search for it and discover it, and Faux with his dark lantern must be apprehended." (_Court of King James_, p. 105.)
[274] There is, of course, abundant contradiction upon this point, as all others, but the balance of evidence appears to point to 2 a.m. or thereabouts.
[275] The customary hour for the meeting of the Houses was 9 a.m., or even earlier. (_Journals of Parliament._)
[276] The list of those present is given in the _Lords' Journals_; it is headed by the Lord Chancellor (Ellesmere), and includes the Archbishop of Canterbury, fourteen bishops, and thirty-one peers, of whom Lord Monteagle was one. In 1598, as Mr. Atkinson tells us in his preface to the lately published volume of the _Calendar of Irish State Papers_, the cellars of the Dublin Law Courts were used as a powder magazine. The English Privy Council, startled to hear of this remarkable arrangement, pointed out that it might probably further diminish the number of loyal subjects in that kingdom, but were quaintly reassured by the Irish Lords Justices, who explained that, in view of the troublous state of the times, the sittings of the courts had been discontinued, and were not likely to be resumed for the present.