The Enigma of Gunpowder Plot, 1605

The fruit of a lifetime of research by Irish priest Francis Edwards: the Gunpowder Plot was an  "inside job " hatched by the Lord Chancellor Robert Cecil. This plot was the founding act of the British Empire. See also The Grand-daddy of all Fake Terror Fall Guys: Guy Fawkes .

From the website of the publisher: According to the orthodox, old-fashioned view, Cecil, Earl of Salisbury 'discovered the conspiracy, a second judgement is that he nourished it and a third that he invented it'. Archbishop Mathew's succinct summary of the three solutions to Gunpowder Plot clarifies the object of this book. The first, simplistic solution of the plot, retailed to the English ambassadors on the continent by Robert Cecil, James I's secretary of state, still finds much favour.

That Cecil nourished the plot, although it did not originate with him, is the more common view. The third solution of this strangest and most enigmatic of events – or non-events – in British history is outlined here. The author has tried to make his approach non-confrontational and non-polemical, so that, even if readers remain unconvinced by the array of evidence and its interpretation, they will recognize that this third solution is neither as extreme or absurd as it is usually represented. It tries to take into account all that remains of the evidence, without omitting anything that might spoil the thesis.