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Sonnet 124
Shakespeare's father, John (undoubtedly a covert Catholic) was friends with William Catesby, the father of the head conspirator,
Robert Catesby. John Shakespeare and William Catesby shared illegal Catholic writings that eventually wound up in the attic of John's home in Stratford.
Moreover, the Mermaid Tavern in London, frequented by Shakespeare and owned by his closest friend and confident,
was a preferred meeting spot of the turncoats as they schemed to obliterate the Protestants once and for all.
See Shakespeare-online website.
If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfather'd,
As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather'd.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short-number'd hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
"the fools of time"
the Gunpowder Plotters