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

by Haynes, Alan

  NINE

  Transgression on Trial

  Digby and his fellow-prisoners were brought from the Tower on a river-barge to reach Westminster about half an hour before the opening of the trial in late January 1606. Since class distinctions operated in prisons Bates was brought from the Gatehouse in Westminster itself. Together they stood waiting in star chamber for the arrival of the judges and while they were there a contemporary scrutinized them. Evidently he was displeased: ‘It was strange to note their carriage, even in their very countenances.’ Those who let their heads fall, bowed them, were ‘full of doggedness’ while those looking about them were ‘forcing a stern look’; if they failed to pray this was an ugly fault, but if they did pray ‘it were by the dozen upon their beads’. As for those who smoked, they were altogether too nonchalant because they did not seem to mind being hanged.1 Sir John Harington, who was another spectator, declared: ‘I have seen some of the chief [conspirators] and think they bear an evil mark in their foreheads, for more terrible countenances were never looked upon.’ Taken into the hall where spectators buzzed with anticipation and all strained forward to see them, they were helpfully placed on an elevated platform in front of the judges. Queen Anne and Prince Henry were in a concealed chamber or niche from which they could see but not be seen, and it was reported inevitably that James was also somewhere present. Digby tall and dignified in a black satin suit and ‘tuff taffetie gown’ stood with the others although he was arraigned under a separate indictment from them and was tried alone after them. He would plead ‘guilty’, while the others pleaded ‘not guilty’. According to Father Gerard, Digby’s plight stirred some of the courtiers present who lamented his position ‘and said he was the goodliest man in the whole court’.2

  The first lawyer to speak for the Crown was the Master of the Rolls, Sir Edward Philips (or Phelips). The matter before the court, he said, was one of treason ‘but of such horror, and monstrous nature’. To murder any man was abominable and if ‘to touch God’s anointed’ was to oppose God himself, then ‘how much more than too monstrous’ was it to murder King, Queen, Prince, State and Government. After discoursing briefly on the chief points of the indictment, and describing the objects of the conspiracy and the plan, Philips sat down to make way for the principal counsel for the prosecution, Sir Edward Coke, Attorney-General for the past nine years. Educated at Norwich Grammar School, Trinity College, Cambridge and the Inner Temple, Coke had risen to prominence as prosecutor at the trial of Dr Lopez (1594) accused of planning to murder Elizabeth; and the Earl of Essex (1601), when his brutal style was unrelenting. Much the same was true of his prosecution of Ralegh (1603) when his vituperation had struck many as excessive. The conspirators could be sure that he would be unsparing to the point of savagery, and even a dour spirit as redoubtable as Fawkes may have felt a pinch of disquiet as Coke rose. If Coke could discomfort them, a terror in language, he would do so. Yet he began conventionally and for him even mildly. The plot had been the greatest treason ever conceived against the greatest king that ever lived. In a rare and somewhat clumsy effort to be even-handed he went on: ‘It is by some given out that they are such men as admit just exception, either desperate in estate, or base or not settled in their wits [here no doubt he gave a baleful glance towards John Grant], such as are sine religione, sine sede, sine fide, sine re, et sine spe [without religion, without habitation, without credit, without means, and without hope].’ Yet the truth was they were men of some substance ‘howsoever most perniciously seduced, abused, corrupted, and jesuited, of very competent fortunes and estates’.

  Having begun with the laity, the men before him, Coke launched forth on a declamation against ‘those of the spirituality’ who were not yet available for trial. ‘I never yet knew a treason without a Romish priest; but in this there are very many Jesuits, who are known to have dealt and passed through the whole action.’ He named four, beginning not surprisingly with Garnet, as well as ‘their cursory men’ like John Gerard. Working up his revulsion, he went on: ‘the studies and practises of this sect principally consisted in two D’s, to wit, in deposing of Kings and disposing of Kingdomes.’ The effect was that ‘Romish Catholics’ had put themselves under ‘Gunpowder Law, fit for Justices of Hell’. This in turn led him back to Roger Bacon, ‘one of that Romish rabble’, as the supposed inventor of the explosive material. The allusion offered two hits; ‘all friars, religious, and priests were bad’, but still the principal offenders were ‘the seducing Jesuits . . . men that use the reverence of Religion . . . to cover their impiety, blasphemy, treason, and rebellion, and all manner of wickedness’. This last reverberating phrase was laden with deeper meaning to the more widely read in the assembly. Even a loyal (?) recusant like Anthony Copley, imprisoned on the accession of James for the Bye plot, but pardoned after a year in the Gatehouse, had warned briskly of Jesuit activities, and their pro-Spanish leanings which might lead to ‘the rape of your daughter, the buggery of your son or the sodomizing of your sow’.3

  When Coke had finished the depositions made by the prisoners on examination in the Tower were read aloud. They were humble, even penitent in tone. Thomas Winter, for example, said: ‘My most honourable Lords – Not out of hope to obtain pardon, for speaking of my temporal past, I may say the fault is greater than can be forgiven . . . since I see such courses are not pleasing to Almighty God, and that all or most material parts have been already confessed.’4 When these items had been read Popham made some remarks to the jury and directed them to consider their verdict which they did after removing to another room. Digby was then arraigned by himself upon a separate indictment charging him with high treason in conspiring the death of the king, with conferring with Catesby in Northamptonshire concerning the plot, assenting to the design and taking the oath of secrecy. As soon as the indictment was read Digby began to make a speech, but was halted and told he had to plead to the charge before launching on any sort of defence. Digby at once said he was guilty and then spoke of the motives which had led him into the action. He began with a denial that it had been ambition or discontent, or even ill-will towards any member of Parliament. Instead he put forward the commanding force of his friendship and affection for Catesby, whose influence over him was so profound that he was bound to risk his inheritance and even his life at the other’s bidding. The second motive was the cause of religion, and for his faith he was glad to risk estate, life, name, memory, posterity ‘and all worldly and earthly felicity whatsoever’. This is the boundless conviction of the fanatic. His third motive was prompted by the broken promises to Catholics, and had as its object the prevention of tougher laws such as they had reason to fear.5

  Then Digby made a public petition that since the crime was his and not his family’s, the punishment should be limited to him. He wanted his wife to have her jointure, his son the entailed lands, and his sisters the portions which were in his hands. He thought too of his creditors and sought permission for one of his servants to attend him to make provision for their claims. Finally, after asking pardon of the king and lords he entreated to be beheaded – the manner of a gentleman – ‘that his death might satisfy them for his trespass’. Coke’s response to this was as heavy and gloomy as the light in the hall at the end of a January day. He repudiated each point with sarcastic contempt and when Digby intervened to say that he had confessed he deserved the vilest death and yet ‘some moderation of justice’, Coke retorted sardonically that he was asking for exactly what once he had buoyantly set aside. The king showed great moderation and mercy in that for so towering a crime no new torture had been devised or inflicted. A little more in like vein and then Coke gave way to one of the commissioners, the Earl of Northampton, the learned pedant and crypto-Catholic who could bore for England.

  The main thrust of his inevitably long and wordy speech was made to refute the charge against James of having broken promises to Catholics.6 Northampton denied that James ever encouraged them to expect any favour, thus contradicting reports of Father Wa
tson’s celebrated interview with James years before in Scotland. He made too a strong point of Thomas Percy having asserted that the king had promised toleration to the Catholics – in which case why did Percy think it so worthwhile to employ Fawkes and others to plot against James in Spain? When Salisbury followed his colleague he began by acknowledging his connection by marriage with Digby, before dealing with the prisoner’s plea concerning broken promises to Catholics. It imputed, of course, bad faith to James and Digby may have forfeited his beheading by simply raising the point. A proper and dignified servant of his sovereign, Salisbury rejected the charge, and when he too had finished Philips asked for the judgment of the court upon the verdict of the jury against the seven and Digby. Each man was then asked if he had anything to say as to why the sentence of death should not be pronounced against him. Thomas Winter asked for mercy for his brother Robert, who simply begged for it. Ambrose Rookwood sought rather haltingly to play down his part, being ‘only persuaded and drawn in by Catesby, whom he had . . . esteemed dearer than anything else in the world’. Finally, Lord Chief Justice Popham described and defended the laws made by Elizabeth against ‘priests, recusants, and receivers and harbourers of priests’ and then he pronounced the usual sentence for high treason upon all eight men. Digby bowed towards the commissioners and said: ‘If I may but hear any of your Lordships say you forgive me, I shall go more cheerfully to the gallows.’ Their response was ‘God forgive you, and we do.’ By the light of flaming torches the prisoners were escorted back to the barge and thence to the Tower which they entered through Traitor’s Gate. They had two days to live and meditate on their fate.7

  In his last days Digby’s resolve did not unravel. He never expressed anything until the very last but a rigid belief in what he repeatedly called ‘the cause’, although many priests and fellow Catholics had rehearsed both privately and publicly the condemnations made in the wake of the Bye plot. ‘Oh, how full of joy should I die, if I could do anything for the cause which I love more than my life.’8 Even writing to his sons he could not warn them to smother such transcendent yet costly feelings if their faith was under threat. Given the extent to which Catesby had manipulated and concealed details, Digby’s lack of reproach or resentment seems extraordinary, but then what was important to him was the resolution he had made at the start. His sin, he declared, was not against God but the state – ‘I do not think there were three worth saving that would have been lost.’ Evidently most people then and now did not and do not share this implacability and rightly find such a baleful attitude as evil as the serious injustices that prompted such a point of view. Certainly the revenge of the government was not going to be stalled this time by calculated royal mercy as it had been with the Main plotters. This time the monarchy had been undermined and its sacred dignity besmirched; it needed a restorative effort and ‘The public execution did not re-establish justice; it reactivated power.’ Such an intention could of course be undermined because in Jacobean England the frailties of the executioner and his victim might lead to an unseemly tussle between solemnity and absurdity. Indeed, there is a suspicion that the expectation of macabre farce was what continued to draw crowds, although familiarity with the grisly ritual does not seem to have reduced interest.

  Digby, Robert Winter, John Grant and Thomas Bates were lashed to wattled hurdles at the Tower to be dragged lying on their backs the mile to the scaffold in St Paul’s churchyard.9 Since this was 29 January 1606, it was a cold and grubby group that was jeered at contemptuously and coarsely by curious onlookers in city streets lined with guards of householders. At the place Digby found the composure to conform to tradition by making a last speech. Now he asked forgiveness of all ‘and if he had known it first to have been so foul a treason he would not have concealed it to have gained a world’. He then asked the crowd to witness that he died penitent and sorrowful. Denied the attendance of a Catholic priest, Digby rejected attentions from a Protestant clergyman.10 He fell to prayers ‘often bowing his head to the ground’ before standing and saluting according to their rank all those who were near. This he managed with such an air of imperturbability ‘that he appeared to be entirely fearless of death’. Then he was stripped of all garments save his shirt and he went slowly up the ladder murmuring ‘O Jesus, Jesus, save me and keep me.’ It seems to have been the particular unkindness of the executioner that as soon as Digby was parted from the ladder the rope was cut and he fell gashing his forehead. Perhaps he was providentially stunned before the worst. If he had been left on the noose he would not have died from strangulation because a taut rope at the end of a properly gauged drop snaps a ligament in the neck. It is this fracture which allows a boney projection to enter the base of the brain and cause death. This spontaneous event was denied Digby who was still conscious when he was hauled to the block to be castrated, disembowelled and quartered. He died (to quote Macbeth, I. iv. 8–11):

  As one that had been studied in his death

  To throw away the dearest thing he ow’d,

  As ’twere a careless trifle

  His life, as he believed, closed and opened simultaneously. The next day, which saw the distant capture of Father Garnet after so many years, Thomas Winter, Robert Keyes, Guy Fawkes (on the brink of physical collapse) and Ambrose Rookwood were delivered in a similar fashion from the Tower. But this time the executions were at a different venue – Old Palace Yard, Westminster – opposite the building that had been marked for destruction. Moving there the procession passed by a house in the Strand in which Rookwood’s wife Elizabeth had secured quarters. When they got very near, Rookwood, who had been praying continuously with closed eyes now opened them to see her waiting at an open window. It is said he raised himself up from the hurdle and called to her to pray for him. She replied ‘I will! I will! And do you offer yourself with good heart to God and your Creator! I yield you to Him with as full an assurance that you will be accepted of Him as when He gave you to me.’11 Their son was actually knighted by James at the end of the reign.

  Given the additional distance of Old Palace Yard from the Tower, and the lugubrious progress to it, the unhappy quartet could not summon much energy for a crowd-pleasing performance. Kneeling and often bowing their heads to the ground they prayed, but kept their voices low. Not much more than the phrase ‘O Jesu, Jesu, save me and keep me’ repeated continuously while on the ladder was heard. Of the four it seems to have been Keyes who retained a lingering hint of truculence. With the execution of the key plotters there was now an extended pause in the arterial wallowing. During this time Garnet, Oldcorne, Nicholas Owen and Ralph Selby were brought to the Tower, arriving on 4 February, after two days in the Gatehouse.

  Garnet’s first examination of many (John Gerard, SJ said twenty-three (1897)) was the following day and he maintained his cautious resistance to the questions even when the possibility of subjecting him to the rack was flourished. His reply was a steady ‘Minute ista pueris’ – ‘Threats are only for boys.’ Yet he would have learnt, because no one would have protected him from the knowledge, that Owen was marked down for torture; the warrants authorizing it were issued that month, and when he died it would have been obvious to suppose that he had succumbed to state violence, not as the government claimed, of a self-inflicted knife wound. Garnet denied having sent Baynham to the Pope and also the notion that he had encouraged Catholics to pray for the success of the ‘Catholic Cause’.12 When he admitted anything – such as the grand and obvious excursion to St Winifred’s Well – it was only stuff of limited interest, and realizing the interrogations had stalled, the investigators needed to glean more without risking an immediate martyrdom. They began with the classic friendly warder option whereby a correspondence with several Catholics, including Anne Vaux, was begun, and secret notes appended in lemon juice. But the letters to her were written instead in orange juice which does not fade on heating. So to cover these specials the government needed a brilliant forger and they selected Arthur Gregory who later wrote for his reward to S
alisbury, since he had been robbed of his accumulated possessions by looters during the surge of the plague in March/April of 1606. All the letters proved so guarded in their contents that nothing new emerged. Still, the warder, as if warming to his prisoners and growing more willing to serve them, allowed a door between the cells of Oldcorne and Garnet to remain unlocked, and so the men could now meet and talk. It was these conversations that were noted down for the Secretary and Northampton by Lockerson and Forsett, hidden in secret recesses. But even the most conscientious eavesdropper could not hear every word and random noises in the Tower made accuracy difficult.

  Five of these brotherly chats were allowed, and for a man in such a parlous situation, Garnet showed some resilience of spirit. He was irked when an occasional snigger was the response to a pointed quip about his predicament, and he even managed to find fault with some of the questions put to him. He does, however, seem to have had a rueful respect for Coke who slid from compassion to aggression in the time-honoured fashion of interrogators through the ages. Garnet had spent some eighteen years in hiding, subduing his own recurrent fears of discovery and those of the people who gave him sanctuary. He was about fifty and had been under great strain during his long period as superior, and to some extent his attitudes had been shaped from Rome by the remote but dominating personality of Father Persons; Garnet had been ‘strengthened’ or hampered according to the view taken of that priest’s activity. On 5 and 6 March the lord commissioners questioned Oldcorne and Garnet who at first denied having talked about the best mode of conducting their defence. Without pressure it must be unlikely that even when told that their conversations had been secretly recorded Oldcorne would have admitted with sudden candour on the second day just what exchanges he had had with his superior. Did the torturers show him what they had prepared if he remained uncommunicative, judging him the most vulnerable?