and by what he said in his own works, claims the honour of discovering the gunpowder plot, by the sagacity and reflection with which he solved the enigmatical and ungrammatical letter sent on that occasion.  The train of his thoughts has even been preserved to us; and, although a loose passage, in a private letter of the Earl of Salisbury, contradicted by another passage in the same letter, would indicate that the earl was the man; yet even Mrs. Macaulay acknowledges the propriety of attributing the discovery to the king’s sagacity.  Several proofs of his zeal and reflection in the detection of imposture might be adduced; and the reader may, perhaps, be amused at these.

There existed a conspiracy against the Countess of Exeter by Lady Lake, and her daughter, Lady Ross.  They had contrived to forge a letter in the Countess’s name, in which she confessed all the heavy crimes they accused her of, which were incest, witchcraft, &c.;[A] and, to confirm its authenticity, as the king was curious respecting the place, the time, and the occasion, when the letter was written, their maid swore it was at the countess’s house at Wimbledon, and that she had written it at the window, near the upper end of the great chamber; and that she (the maid) was hid beneath the tapestry, where she heard the countess read over the letter after writing.  The king appeared satisfied with this new testimony; but, unexpectedly, he visited the great chamber at Wimbledon, observed the distance of the window, placed himself behind the hangings, and made the lords in their turn:  not one could distinctly hear the voice of a person placed at the window.  The king further observed, that the tapestry was two feet short of the ground, and that any one standing behind it must inevitably be discovered.  “Oaths cannot confound my sight,” exclaimed the king.  Having also effectuated other discoveries with a confession of one of the parties, and Sir Thomas Lake being a faithful servant of James, as he had been of Elizabeth, the king, who valued him, desired he would not stand the trial with his wife and daughter; but the old man pleaded that he was a husband and a father, and must fall with them.  “It is a fall!” said the king:  “your wife is the serpent; your daughter is Eve; and you, poor man, are Adam!"[B]

[Footnote A:  Camden’s “Annals of James I., Kennet II., 652.”]

[Footnote B:  The suit cost Sir Thomas Lake 30,000_l_.; the fines in the star-chamber were always heavy in all reigns.  Harris refers to this cause as an evidence of the tyrannic conduct of James I., as if the king was always influenced by personal dislike; but he does not give the story.]

The sullen Osborne reluctantly says, “I must confess he was the promptest man living in detecting an imposture.”  There was a singular impostor in his reign, of whom no one denies the king the merit of detecting the deception—­so far was James I. from being credulous, as he is generally supposed to have been.  Ridiculous as the affair may appear to us, it had perfectly succeeded with the learned fellows of New College, Oxford, and afterwards with heads as deep; and it required some exertion of the king’s philosophical reasoning to pronounce on the deception.