ABSTRACT
One evening near sunset in October, as King James was coming up from Gravesend in one of the boats called “King’s boats” (of which there are eighteen, all ten- or twelve-oared), and about 200 men with him, gunpowder mines had been laid on the quay, where the King’s boat was to be steered to the shore, and where he usually landed. But a woman who sold apples on the shore gave the King a hint, so that he was delivered from that treachery by God’s help. Three of the traitors were caught, but two went free so long as we stayed there. The King summoned a great meeting below the Tower of London on a wide and level plain: an astounding number of people gathered there. And the conspiracy having been enquired into, and the sentence pronounced, the traitors were broken on the wheel, limb by limb 1 ; and until this was done we were obliged to remain in London, so that the upshot of the affair and its course might be sent in a missive to the King of Denmark 2 .
