GUNPOWDER PLOT

In English History, the celebrated conspiracy of certain disappointed Roman Catholics to destroy the king, James I., and the two Houses of Parliament, by gunpowder, which was detected on the 4th of November, 1605. Its details are nmong the most popular portions of English history, and too well known to need repetition. But the miraculous exercise of sagacity by which King James is commonly said to have detected the nature of the plot, from the mysterious letter sent to Lord Mon teagle, is now perhaps negatived beyond a doubt. It had long been remarked that Salisbury and Car lisle (probably before the scheme between themselves and their royal master was concerted) had claimed for themselves the credit of the discovery; and it now appears that Lord Mon teagle had been previously rewarded by government for mysterious services, apparently rendered in the capacity of spy: so that it is highly probable that he was acquainted with the design of the male contents, and that the celebrated letter was an invention, destined to conceal the real mode of discovery. Those who are anxious to study the Roman Catholic version of the story will find it ably detailed in the pages of Lingard vol. vii., ch. 1., 4to ed.). That writer seeks to throw the whole onus of the conspiracy on Catesby, its chief promoter, and to expulcate Father Garnet; but Mr. Jardine (in his State Trials), who has fully investigated the Bubject, is of a different opinion. GUNTERS CHAIN, so called from its reputed inventor, Is the chain commonly used for measuring land. It is 66 feet or 4 poles in length, and is divided into 100 links, each of which is joined to the adjacent one by three rings; and the length of each link, including the connecting rings, is 702 inches. The advantage of this measure consists in the facility which it affords to numerical calculation. The English acre contains 4840 square yards; and Gunter's chain being 22 yards in length, the square of which is 484, it follows that a square chain is exactly the tenth part of an acre. A square chain again contains 10,000 square links, so that 100,000 square links are equal to an acre; consequently, the contents of a field being cast up in square links, it is only nece ary to divide by 100,000, or to cut off the last five figures, to obtain the contents expre ed in acres. [s. 554]