3-003-918 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes being interrogated by James I. and his council in the King's bedchamber, Whitehall - by John Gilbert, 1861. Engraving of a painting. '...so great has been the perversion of circumstances connected with this atrocious design by religious and political party spirit that it is only of late years we have attained to anything approaching a true knowledge of the event. Even now...there is much...which is involved in mystery. It was the policy of James I., and of his Ministers, to represent the Gunpowder Plot as having been encouraged by the Pope and approved of by the great body of Roman Catholics in England. For this purpose, before the trial of the conspirators, an artfully-concocted but dishonest narrative, entitled "A Discourse of the Gunpowder Plot," was...circulated in England, and...every part of Europe...in the published account of the examinations and trial of the suspected parties, the evidence is designedly misrepresented...The result of these and similar measures to deceive the world...has been to leave everything concerning it but the notorious and indisputable fact of a design planned by Roman Catholics to destroy King, Lords, and Commons, questions of doubt and controversy almost to the present day'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.