The Gunpowder Plot (History/16th/17th Century History)

by Haynes, Alan

  The Jesuit came to rest his ‘hope of prevention’ on Catesby’s reluctant consent to send an emissary to Rome to enquire further of the Pope’s will. But Catesby made the requirement that the envoy chosen should also carry letters from Garnet, whose fear of consequences he had spotted. Under pressure Garnet weakly refused to do more than write to the papal nuncio in Brussels. Fear of the Pope made him try to shift responsibility. The lay envoy chosen by Catesby was his friend Sir Edmund Baynham, who readily consented, and may have had his own reasons for undertaking such a jaunt. As we have seen, he had achieved a certain notoriety that led to the courts and gaol.8 So a somewhat curious choice, but Catesby evidently judged Baynham to be unscrupulous which suited his own plans. Catesby emphatically hinted that there would be something of a seditious sort attempted for Catholics when Parliament met, and he secretly instructed Baynham to delay his journey after he reached Brussels. He should wait for whatever might happen, then gallop to Rome to inform the new pontiff, Paul V. All this ran counter to what Garnet had wanted, and Baynham tarried in England until early September before departing with introductions from Monteagle to Catholics in the Spanish Netherlands and Rome.

  SIX

  Spies and Soundings

  From about 1570 onwards the great men of the Elizabethan privy council were prepared to use spies to assist the making of policy. As a junior administrator in the 1580s and early 1590s Robert Cecil was able to give close scrutiny to the successes in this labyrinthine area, and during the late 1590s as he took on more responsibilities for implementing policy, observation became practice. Cecil showed an increasingly favourable attitude to the business of espionage and received many reports – some lame, some acute. All he lacked at this time to become a spy master to equal Sir Francis Walsingham (d. 1590) was a dark, even paranoid imagination.1 Great vigilance was still required of the Secretary of State after the accession of James because enemies within and without did not generously melt away; the Bye plot and Main plot seemed to confirm this. But given the peace made with Spain (1604), much of the treaty being to England’s advantage, Cecil might have been tempted to trim severely the intelligence cluster he had inherited from Burghley (d. 1598). Certainly a greater weight was now placed on career diplomats like Sir Thomas Edmondes in Brussels, Sir Thomas Parry in Paris and Ralph Winwood in the Hague, who conducted diplomatic business and supervised necessary intelligence gathering. But Cecil still used spies, and it has been averred that the government might have been more secure and knowledgeable early about the gunpowder plot if the Secretary had been willing to continue the previous employment of the ageing Thomas Phelippes.

  Once chief of operations to Walsingham, he had evidently revelled in the arcana of espionage. Phelippes was a good linguist, with a particular gift for penetrating ciphers, and he had played an important part in the wrecking of the Babington plot, for which he received a royal pension of 100 marks a year.* When Walsingham died Phelippes allowed his skills and reservoir of knowledge to be bought by Essex, because the earl’s political rival, Robert Cecil, did not like Phelippes, and he did not like Cecil. The reasons for this are now unfathomable, but perhaps there was an element of edgy competition between the two very short and physically unprepossessing men, with the hefty advantage of birth going to the hunchback Cecil rather than the pock-marked Phelippes. The latter evidently enjoyed money and eventually became Collector of Subsidy (Customs) for the Port of London. This provided him with an agreeable house and a servant shared with his colleague Arthur Gregory, a Dorset man whose peculiar accomplishment (also valued) was to open sealed letters without hinting that a violation had taken place. The menage à trois was completed by Thomas Barnes, a spy employed by Cecil. Phelippes’s port employment not only kept him comfortable, but also offered him the opportunity to follow ship movements along the estuary of the Thames, and to keep watch on any individuals who travelled abroad a little too often. One man with whom Phelippes had some contacts early in the seventeenth century was Henry Spiller (later knighted), an official of the Court of Exchequer in charge of recusancy fines, whose son was a suspect. Robert Spiller had been secretly denounced to Cecil, and it was noted that some of the family were known to be assisting Garnet and other priests in London; the young Spiller may have been a courier for Garnet.

  In the spring of 1605 a spy claimed to have seen Robert Spiller in the company of Guy Fawkes, an event later reported by Edmondes. But simultaneously Spiller was somehow in London making friends with the household of the French ambassador, Comte de Beaumont, Christophe Harlay, himself an intimate of the Earl of Northumberland. Writing from Paris in March 1605 to Beaumont, Spiller said he had been ill and was going to convalesce in the country for two months. If the search for Catholic recusants in England abated he said he intended to visit London for a short time after Easter. Spiller was well regarded at the court of the archdukes and meeting with de Tassis before the Spanish ambassador crossed to England, he was accompanied by Stanley, Hugh Owen and Father Baldwin. Such a huddle was suggestive to Phelippes who took it that some treasonable act was being worked up between London and Brussels. It was enough to set him off, warming to his favourite task of concocting a correspondence. So he began writing to Owen using the pseudonym ‘Vincent’, but Owen did not respond at all (which was also unusual) so in a flush of invention Phelippes amused himself by self-penning replies in cipher under the name ‘Benson’. These he made pretence of deciphering as discoveries and he sent copies to Cecil. Unfortunately for him, Thomas Barnes had spotted the correspondence and snatched a letter from ‘Vincent’ to ‘Benson’. The handwriting had such similarities with what Phelippes had sent that Cecil noted the fraud. Cecil had Sir Thomas Windebank arrest Phelippes, and he was required to deliver him to Cecil House without any exchanges with anyone on the way. One of the letters purloined by Barnes contained an innocent piece of gossip regarding Sir Thomas Parry intercepting a letter from Persons to Sir Anthony Standen (now imprisoned too). This made it appear that the luckless envoy was in league with Phelippes, and when interviewed by Cecil about what he was up to, all the cryptanalyst and forger could do was admit what he had done and excuse himself for an effort intended to make some money. Probably he would have been satisfied with a cut from the huge Spanish bribes that were then sloshing around the English court. Thoroughly peeved Cecil had him sent to the Gatehouse for meddling in state business, and later to the Tower where his visitors included Salisbury’s own secretary, Levinus Munck and Sir William Waad. Had Phelippes been left to develop connections and then inform Salisbury, he might have traced back the connection between Thomas Winter’s mission to the Spanish Netherlands in March 1604, the meeting with Guy Fawkes, and the arrival of the two men in England to meet Catesby at Lambeth in May. Phelippes probably knew more about the exiles and their business in the Spanish Netherlands than any secret agent then in the employ of Cecil. Periodically the Secretary could be too unyieldingly suspicious and Phelippes paid the price – in his case, despite the best efforts of friends like Waad, a lengthy period in the Tower.

  But then neither side in the extended duel of spies could afford to be very trusting. There were double agents galore, including the Brussels-based Captain William Turner, a professional soldier with past service in Ireland, France and the Low Counties. Owen fell into the trap of employing Turner, who was already one of Cecil’s spies, quite reliable over a number of years. Turner met Catholic exiles who told him to get in touch with Father Baldwin and Owen, and the agent first met the renegade Welshman when he was out walking with Charles Bailly. Owen’s reception of the unknown soldier was not cordial, and several days later when they met again at the court of the archdukes it became evident that Owen had been doing some background research on Turner for he referred to his brother who was serving in the forces of Count Maurice of Nassau, asking if this brother could be won over to the archdukes ‘and withal to render some town of importance’. Turner must certainly have been impressive under scrutiny because Owen gave him £100 and
required him to go to Holland. Turner complied and when he got to meet Maurice told him of the offer concerning his own brother. Returning to Brussels with Dutch thanks and a reward in his pocket, Turner gave the exiles ‘such things as I thought could best please their humours’.

  In May 1605 Turner got to meet Guy Fawkes, out of England to avoid any government sweep. The two then went together to report to Marquis Ambrogio Spinola, the Spanish commander, on what Turner had done in Holland. Some weeks later Owen sent for Turner and they had a long conversation about advancing arrangements for an invasion of England, after Turner had been received into the Catholic Church by Baldwin. Since England and Spain had ceased hostilities following the treaty signed in London in 1604, and there was no exclusion zone around the English coast, a company of 1,500 Spanish troops were then in Dover awaiting passage to the Spanish Netherlands. The intention was to use them as a vanguard, reinforced by the volunteer regiment of exiles, as well as some three hundred English cavalry ‘which he was assured would be ready to join them’. This must refer, even if the figure is optimistic, to the projected cavalry from the Midlands. From Dover it was envisaged the Spanish would move to Rochester where they would seize the strategic bridge over the Medway and immobilize the English fleet at anchor. Turner was himself told to wait in Dover for Father Greenway (Tesimond), who, returning with books and packets of letters, would then escort him to meet Catesby. According to Owen the plotters expected to use Turner in a freelance capacity, as the agent told Sir Thomas Edmondes. The ambassador was not impressed and for reasons of his own based on unknown evidence or maybe just intuition, decided that his informant was a feckless individual meriting little attention.2 In a letter to Salisbury in late September 1605 Edmondes was most uncomplimentary, remarking on Turner’s ‘light and dissolute life’ – an authentically stuffy English diplomat’s cautious response. With Phelippes still in prison this attitude meant in effect that two vital conduits of information to Salisbury were blocked. Nor as yet did he receive anywhere near enough detailed material from diplomats like Parry who employed his own intelligencers. The lack of specificity extended for months and brought the government very close to having to dismantle the plot virtually as it happened. Their claim that it was the cryptic Monteagle letter which alerted them to the headlong progress of a projected calamity begins to look less unlikely, although candour was not a function of government, and Catholic historians have derided the notion.

  Fawkes returned to England in September 1605 while Catesby was still grappling with the continuing problem of finance.3 He had now sold Bushwood to Sir Edward Grevile in order to raise cash, but it cannot have been cheap to hire the ship of Henry Paris of Barking to take Fawkes over to Gravelines and then wait for weeks to bring him back in disguise with his companion. Besides, Percy had spent the others’ money quite lavishly and even paid a man called York to do alterations on his hired premises. There had been a topping-up delivery of gunpowder to pay for, and because the plotters had grown more reckless their efforts had nearly been disclosed early in September by a servant of Whynniard. What John Shepherd saw was ‘a boat lie close by the pale of Sir Thomas Parry’s garden and men going to and fro the water through the back door that leadeth into Mr Percy’s lodgings . . .’ Thomas Winter later explained Catesby’s hectic activity in town and country:

  Now by reason that the charge of maintaining us all so long together, besides the number of several houses which for several uses had been hired, and buying of powder, etc, had lain heavy on Mr Catesby alone to support, it was necessary for to call in some others to ease his charge, and to that end desired leave that he with Mr Percy and a third whom they should call might acquaint whom they thought fit and willing to the business, for many, said he, may be content that I should know who would not therefore that all the Company should know their names. To this we all agreed.

  In Winter’s testimony it was before Michaelmas that the meeting between Percy and Catesby, already mentioned, took place in Bath. Monteagle was expected to join them there, but there is no sign now that he did, although he wrote a rather swooning letter to Catesby as ‘the dear Robin’. During their meeting Percy and Catesby talked about money and planned the rising in the Midlands. No doubt the latter heard reports of the very public private pilgrimage to St Winifred’s Well, Holywell in Flintshire, organized by Father Garnet.4 His interest in the Jesuit’s effort would have been acute for in it Catholic wealth was on the move. In addition he might have noticed that Wales was stirring with sedition. From there the Bishop of St Asaph complained to Salisbury of ‘the unfortunate and ungodly increase of Papists in my diocese who within the last three years are become near thrice as many.’ A striking diminution of these numbers was achieved by Salisbury’s agent, John Smith, an apostate Catholic released from prison in June 1605 on the promise of good service. Remarkably Smith delivered on this, for by mid-October the authorities locally noted with pleasure a huge falling away in recusancy. The rump that remained was for the most part comprised of women, and there were many of them too in Garnet’s effort. No doubt he intended the pilgrimage to illustrate that the Jesuits still had some pull, but it is not inconceivable he hoped to get himself arrested sooner rather than later, hoping by imprisonment to escape the consequences of the dreadful secret vouchsafed him by Catesby. The news that Parliament was again prorogued from 3 October to 5 November seemed good, since delay might hinder the plot and give time for the anticipated interview between Baynham and the Pope.

  Catesby’s initial choice of keeping the plot as a family affair had been vindicated by the general level of secrecy maintained. But seepages about it there had been; how could the mouths of servants be completely stopped, or those of their wives? The uncertainty about the plot led to speculation about a coming ‘stir’ during the next session of Parliament, but no one as yet could name the precise form. There was much expectancy and agitation among the leading Catholic families who eagerly threw open their houses to the pilgrims.5 Indeed, the relatives of those same Catholic peers whose lives were threatened joined the Garnet excursion which started from Gothurst (or Gayhurst) in Buckinghamshire, the handsome property of Sir Everard Digby’s wife. Their cover was a proposed otter hunt along the Ouse which flowed by the grounds. Digby was another cousin of Anne Vaux, and the house-party included her sister, Mrs Brookesby and her husband Bartholomew, whose death sentences for involvement in the Bye plot had been commuted; Ambrose Rookwood and his wife; Thomas Digby – Sir Everard’s brother – and other leading papists. Besides Garnet the party included Father Strange,* Digby’s chaplain, and that notorious lay brother (Garnet’s server), Nicholas Owen (nicknamed ‘Littlejohn’ because he was so tall), a man much admired for his genius in contriving priests’ holes. Altogether thirty persons started and rode by easy stages westward, being joined by others, and soon by Father Fisher. On the return journey they rested for a time at Huddington, the Worcestershire home of the Winter brothers, and also at Norbrook, the fortified home of John Grant. Salisbury did not attempt to disperse such a bold clan saying masses daily and passing through Shrewsbury with an ostentatious lack of discretion. When Holt had been reached a procession was formed, with the crucifix carried and led by the priests. The ladies of the party elected to walk barefoot the twenty miles to the shrine ‘where all remained a whole night’.

  Someone who reached Norbrook before the pilgrims was Catesby, welcomed by Grant, who took the oath of the plotters at this time and promised horses for the cause. Catesby left before the party arrived, probably to avoid Garnet, but he was anxious to intercept Ambrose Rookwood of Coldham Hall in Stanningfield (near Bury St Edmunds), Suffolk. Like Digby he was a young man (b. 1574) of privilege, head of an ancient and wealthy family, who had suffered like his neighbours and had been cited for recusancy in February at the London and Middlesex sessions, but was still affluent.6 As a boy he had been educated by Jesuits at St Omer with his brothers Robert and Christopher who had become priests. Robert Rookwood was ordained in 1604 and had
returned to England just recently – ‘a little black fellow, very compt and gallant’. Catesby and Grant expected Ambrose Rookwood to ride ahead and probably the encounter was contrived by Thomas Winter to take place at Huddington, with Rookwood detached from his new bride, Elizabeth (née Tyrwhitt), the sister of Lady Ursula Babthorpe. What made Rookwood so ready to believe the well-rehearsed assurances of Catesby? Perhaps it was a residual naivety but there was clearly a great affection for an older friend ‘whom he loved and respected as his own life’. Besides, Rookwood had often been in the convivial company at the Mermaid in Bread Street and lately both men had had adjacent lodgings in the Strand. Even so, at first the younger man baulked at ‘taking away so much blood’, for like other conspirators he was liable to ‘compunctious visitings of nature’. Catesby in his dominant mode was able to subdue such feelings in his friend by declaring that Catholic peers would be tricked out of attending Parliament, and besides, the priests had agreed to the lawful nature of the act. His Jesuit education having prepared the ground, Rookwood could not resist the seed.