Rafael Sabatini

The King's Minion Rafael Sabatini

King James, fully recovered from the terrible fright occasioned him by the Gunpowder Plot, had returned to his norm of pusillanimity. Guy Fawkes, unbroken in spirit, however broken in body by torture, had expiated on the gallows in Paul's Yard the attempt-in his own bold words-to blow the Scots beggars back to their mountains. The beggars remained and profited by the distribution amongst them of the acres and possessions of the conspirators, most of whom were gentlemen of substance. For the King, too, the matter had not been without ultimate profit, of a more spiritual kind. It had enabled him by an exercise of the arts of kingcraft-a term signifying little more than the shameless use of falsehood and dissimulation-to parade before the world the divine inspiration vouchsafed to monarchs.