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    "source_title": "Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911)",
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    "chunk_id": "1911:digby:64f5bef5ad5f",
    "title": "DIGBY",
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    "verified_text": "digby, everard), where they arrived at 10 o'clock at night, having on their way broken into lord windsor's house at hewell grange and taken all the armour they found there. their case was now desperate. none had joined them: \"not one came to take our part,\" said sir everard digby, \"though we had expected so many.\" they were being followed by the sheriff and all the forces of the county. all spurned them from their doors when they applied for succour. one by one their followers fled from the house in which the last scene was to be played out. they now began to feel themselves abandoned not only by man but by god; for an explosion of some of their gunpowder, on the morning of the 8th, by which catesby and some others were scorched, struck terror into their hearts as a judgment from heaven. the assurance of innocence and of a just cause which till now had alone supported them was taken away. the greatness of their crime, its true nature, now struck home to them, and the few moments which remained to them of life were spent in prayer and in repentance. the supreme hour had now arrived. about 11 o'clock the sheriff and his men came up and immediately began firing into the house. catesby, percy and the two wrights were killed, winter and rokewood wounded and taken prisoners with the men who still adhered to them. in all eight of the conspirators, including the two winters, digby, fawkes, rokewood, keyes and bates, were executed, while tresham died in the tower. of the priests involved, garnet was tried and executed, while greenway and gerard succeeded in escaping. so ended the strange and famous gunpowder plot. however atrocious its conception and its aims, it is impossible not to feel, together with horror for the deed, some pity and admiration for the guilty persons who took part in it. \"theirs was a crime which it would never have entered into the heart of any man to commit who was not raised above the lowness of the ordinary criminal.\" they sinned not against the light but in the dark. they erred from ignorance, from a perverted moral sense rather than from any mean or selfish motive, and exhibited extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice in the pursuit of what seemed to them the cause of god and of their country. their punishment was terrible. not only had they risked and lost all in the attempt and drawn upon themselves the frightful vengeance of the state, but they saw themselves the means of injuring irretrievably the cause for which they felt such devotion. nothing could have been more disastrous to the cause of the roman catholics than their crime. the laws against them were immediately increased in severity, and the gradual advance towards religious toleration was put back for centuries. in addition a new, increased and long-enduring hostility was aroused in the country against the adherents of the old faith, not unnatural in the circumstances, but unjust and undiscriminating, because while some of the jesuits were no doubt implicated, the secular priests and roman catholic laity as a whole had taken no part in the conspiracy. bibliography.--the recent controversy concerning the nature and origin of the plot can be followed in _what was the gunpowder plot?_ by john gerard, s.j. (1897); _what gunpowder plot was_, by s. r. gardiner (a rejoinder) (1897); _the gunpowder plot ... in reply to professor gardiner_, by john gerard, s.j. (1897); _thomas winter's confession and the gunpowder plot_, by john gerard, s.j. (with facsimiles of his writing) (1898); _eng. hist. rev._ iii. 510 and xii. 791; _edinburgh review_, clxxxv. 183; _athenaeum_ 1897, ii. 149, 785, 855; 1898, i. 23, ii. 352, 420; _academy_, vol. 52 p. 84; _the nation_, vol. 65 p. 400. a considerable portion of the controversy centres round the question of the authenticity of thomas winter's confession, the ms. of which is at hatfield, supported by professor gardiner, but denied by father gerard principally on account of the document having been signed \"winter\" instead of \"wintour,\" the latter apparently being the conspirator's usual style of signature. the document was deposited by the 3rd marquess of salisbury for inspection at the record office, and was pronounced by two experts, one from the british museum and another from the record office, to be undoubtedly genuine. the cause of the variation in the signature still remains unexplained, but ceases to have therefore any great historical importance. the bibliography of the contemporary controversy is given in the article on henry garnet in the _dictionary of national biography_ and in _the gunpowder plot_ by david jardine (1857), the latter work still remaining the principal authority on the subject; add to these gardiner's _hist. of england_, i., where an excellent account is given; _history of the jesuits in england_, by father ethelred taunton (1901); father gerard's _narrative in condition of the catholics under james i._ (1872), and father greenway's narrative in _troubles of our catholic forefathers_, 1st series (1872), interesting as contemporary accounts, but not to be taken as complete or infallible authorities, of the same nature being _historia provinciae anglicanae societatis jesu_, by henry more, s.j. (1660), pp. 309 et seq.; also history of great britain, by john speed (1611), pp. 839 et seq.; _archaeologia_, xii. 200, xxviii. 422, xxix. 80; _harleian miscellany_ (1809), iii. 119-135, or _somers tracts_ (1809), ii. 97-117; m. a. tierney's ed. of _dodd's church history_, vol. iv. (1841); _treason and plot_, by martin hume (1901); _notes and queries_, 7 ser. vi., 8 ser. iv. 408, 497, v. 55, xii. 505, 9 ser. xi. 115; _add. mss. brit. mus._ 6178; _state trials_, ii.; _calendar of state pap. dom._ (1603-1610), and the official account, _a true and perfect relation of the whole proceedings against the late most barbarous traitors_ (1606), a neither true nor complete narrative however, now superseded as an authority, reprinted as _the gunpowder treason ..._ with additions in 1679 by thomas barlow, bishop of lincoln. a large number of letters and papers in the state paper office relating to the plot were collected in one volume in 1819, called the _gunpowder plot book_; these are noted in their proper place in the printed calendars of state papers, domestic series; see also articles on fawkes, guy; tresham, francis; monteagle, william parker, 4th baron; percy, thomas; catesby, robert; garnet, henry; digby, sir everard. (p. c. y.)",
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