Gunpowder Plot
Many at the time felt that Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury had been involved in the plot to gain favour with the king and enact more stridently anti-Catholic legislation. Such theories alleged that Cecil had either actually invented the plot or allowed it to continue when his agents had already infiltrated it, for the purposes of propaganda. These rumours were the start of a long-lasting conspiracy theory about the plot. Yet while there was no "golden time" of "toleration" of Catholics which Father Garnet had hoped for at the start of James' reign, the legislative backlash had nothing to do with the plot: it had already happened by 1605, as recusancy fines were re-imposed and some priests expelled. There was no purge of Catholics from power and influence in the kingdom after the Gunpowder Plot, despite Puritan complaints. The reign of James I was, in fact, a time of relative leniency for Catholics, few being subject to prosecution.