The Gunpowder Plot: Terror & Faith In 1605 - Plot & Excerpts
The King had returned from hunting the previous day, but Salisbury evidently felt no need to quicken his pace and waited until the afternoon to give it to him. The King was alone in his gallery at Whitehall. Salisbury handed him the letter without comment and let the King read it in silence. Having read the letter once, James took ‘a little pause’, then he re-read it all through.*1Salisbury said that the letter must have been written ‘by a fool’. This was a deliberate ploy, Salisbury explained afterwards. He wanted to be sure to get his master’s true reaction. Salisbury drew particular attention to the phrase ‘the danger is passed as soon as you have burnt the letter’, which, he said, he found quite meaningless. It was his sagacious master – so experienced in the ways of conspiracies in both England and Scotland – who puzzled out the answer. James believed that something to do with ‘powder’ was being suggested – in other words an explosion.At this point, one might have thought that Salisbury – a sincerely concerned Salisbury – would have dropped his pretence of bafflement.
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