to Sir William Usher, clerk of the council, and the writer began by saying that it would show him, though far severed from him in religion, how near he came home to him in honesty.  He was a Catholic, and professed to reveal what he had heard among Catholic gentlemen, ‘after the strictest conditions of secresy.’  The conspirators were, in the first place, to murder or poison the lord deputy when he came to Drogheda, ’a place thought apt and secure to act the same.’  They thought it well to begin with him, because his authority, wisdom, and valour stood only in the way of their first attempts.  Next after him they were to cut off Sir Oliver Lambert, whom for his own judgment in the wars, his sudden resolution, and undertaking spirit, they would not suffer to live.  These two lights thus put out, they would neither fear nor value any opposite in the kingdom.  The small dispersed garrisons must either through hunger submit themselves to their mercy, or be penned up as sheep to the shambles.  They held the castle of Dublin for their own, neither manned nor victualled, and readily surprised.  The towns were for them, the country with them, the great ones abroad prepared to answer the first alarm.  The Jesuits warranted from the Pope and the Catholic king would do their parts effectually, and Spanish succours would not be wanting.  These secrets greatly troubled the sensitive conscience of Lord Howth.  From the time he was entrusted with them, he said, ’till I resolved to give you this caveat, my eyelids never closed, my heart was a fire, my soul suffered a thousand thousand torments; yet I could not, nor cannot persuade my conscience, in honesty, to betray my friends, or spill their bloods, when this timely warning may prevent the mischief.’  In conclusion, he said, ’though I reverence the mass and the Catholic religion equal with the devoutest of them, I will make the leaders of this dance know that I prefer my country’s good before their busy and ambitious humours.’  It is related of this twenty-second baron of Howth, known as Sir Christopher St. Lawrence, that having served in Ulster under Essex, and accompanied him in his flight to England, he proposed to murder Lord Grey de Wilton, lest he should prejudice the queen’s mind against her former favourite, if he got access to her presence before him; that he had commanded a regiment of infantry under Mountjoy, and that when that regiment was disbanded, he became discontented, not having got either pension or employment; that having gone as a free lance to the Low Countries, and failed to advance himself there as he expected, through the interest of Irish ecclesiastics, he returned to England, and skulked about the ante-chambers of Lord Salisbury, waiting upon Providence, when he hit upon the happy idea of the revelations which he conveyed under the signature of’ A.B.’[1]

[Footnote 1:  Meehan, p.103.]