How was Robert Cecil and King James Chief Minister involved in the gunpowder plot??
Robert Cecil was King James’s Chief Minister. It has become a popular theory that the Gunpowder Plot was totally devised and engineered by Robert Cecil and his vast network of spies in order to further discredit the English Catholics. Indeed, there were questionable actions by some of the plotters regarding their relationship with Cecil (relating to both Robert Catesby and Francis Tresham), but it is clearly evident that the government’s actions were not those of a body aware of some catastrophic enterprise about to be undertaken. Cecil alludes to the fact he had been aware of ‘papist activities’ for several months leading up to the gunpowder’s discovery, but there is no evidence to support this other than his own word. However, his now seemingly close relationship with William Parker, Lord Monteagle, certainly would have facilitated the movement of information between the circle of conspirators and Cecil, had such an action transpired. Cecil though was quick to take the credit for the
Many at the time felt that Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury had been involved in the plot to curry favour with the king and enact more stridently anti-Catholic legislation. Such theories alleged that Cecil had either actively invented the plot or allowed it to continue when his agents had already infiltrated it, for the purposes of propaganda. These rumors were the start of a long lasting conspiracy theory about the plot.
