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

by Haynes, Alan

  Whatever the case, Oldcorne’s release of information provided the leverage for a concentrated effort to draw out Garnet and he was unable to sustain his defence. Now he admitted meeting Fawkes a year before, and writing on his behalf to Father Baldwin in the Spanish Netherlands. There were the talks as well with Catesby, now admitted, and on 9 March he wrote a declaration that he had ‘dealt very reservedly with your Lordships in the case of the later powder action’. Garnet then rehearsed what he had become familiar with from colleagues – broadly speaking the known story of the plot – embellished with grace notes about his own unease as the thing developed. He had written frequently to Rome to solicit support against such wild efforts but none had been forthcoming. This is not surprising because of course Persons was at hand there. The false idea that he had moderated and adjusted his aspirations has been widely touted recently. In this view Persons had set aside activism for more emollient proceedings with James, but a further review of the evidence shows how wide of the mark this is.13 In fact, the plot was perfectly consistent with the long-held views of the stubborn zealot. Resistance and activism had survived in the writings of Persons and were paralleled in the plot. As Garnet now revealed, the intention of the plotters had threatened many not party to it. Of the ambiguous position of Monteagle, Garnet remained uncertain but he did trail some past conversations with him to suggest anti-royal feelings and clandestine disloyalty. James was not going to allow this an airing in court and so it was suppressed.

  Another examination taken by Popham, Coke, Waad and possibly Forsett, strove to pin down the Jesuit on when exactly he had had knowledge of the conspiracy. Before Easter 1605? No, late in the summer from Greenway and then directly from Catesby. It was Garnet’s proposal that the Pope should be sounded and he had agreed with the choice of Baynham, having no alternative candidate. The question remained as to whether this bluff envoy was specifically briefed about the plot. Nor is it totally clear what Garnet expected of the Pope – a ban on such a violent enterprise, or something more non-commital with a hint of approval? My view is that Garnet expected Persons to have worked the papacy to an acceptance of the inevitability of violence, although Clement VIII had become increasingly irritated by the constant swirl of controversy about the English Jesuit Persons. He and Catesby were twins in the focus of their fury which was fanaticism. No doubt a vibrant component in the former’s mind was the deeply buried notion of revenge on the country that had forced him into exile. As it was, Garnet’s lurch into the confessional mode continued for several days, with emerging details that engaged the commissioners. Even in his unenviable position Garnet may still have hoped to avoid a charge of treason, with the substitution of the lesser misprision of treason. Then on 15 March Popham drafted a lengthy list of proofs against him which was subsequently read and annotated by Salisbury, and likely used for the trial.

  When Father Baldwin was eventually returned to custody in England from the Palatinate in 1610, he maintained his innocence under examination, remaining in prison until 1618 without being tortured.14 The government could have treated Garnet in the same way, but to build a case against the Jesuits at that time required a verdict in court on Greenway and Garnet. Since the former had escaped, the focus was bound to be on the provincial superior. Popham summarized the government line when he wrote that ‘Garnet was a principal part and actor in the Gunpowder Treason, and [so too] most of the Jesuits.’ Several days before this comment, Salisbury had written to the Earl of Mar asserting that Garnet ‘is condemned by clear justice to have been privy to the foulest treason . . .’ which actually falls short somewhat of Popham’s crisp view of Garnet’s centrality to the plot. By this time, as it happened, a public trial was needed as a vital decongestant of public fears in the immediate aftermath of the Great Rumour.

  On 22 March at about six-thirty in the morning news swept the court (and hence London) that James had been slain at Woking and it was maintained until after nine. Double guards were set at the court gates and about the city, and Waad at the Tower was particularly galvanized. He drew up the drawbridge, shut up all his prisoners, had the great ordnance loaded and took all keys into his own possession. This seemed necessary in the light of the rumour embellishment that several courtiers had also been slain. Some said the treason was the revenge of English Jesuits, others that it had been done by Scots in drag; others still that it was the action of Frenchmen and Spaniards using a poisoned dagger. There was inevitably widespread distress, ‘great weeping and lamentation both in old and young, rich and poor’ until assurance of the king’s safety and a proclamation to calm distracted minds. The Spanish ambassador, Zuniga, gave the Master of Ceremonies, Sir Lewis Lewkenor, a gold chain to mark the good news ‘and it was thought he was so bountiful either out of terror, being afraid of the people in this confusion, because it was rumoured that the King of Spain was a fomentor of others of the Plot; or, out of a desire to vindicate his Master’s honour, and take the odium from him.’ In the meantime the House of Commons sat in continuous session lest a sudden rising by them should add to the general alarm. Then a messenger of the House of Lords confirmed the king’s safety and perfect health, and Prince Henry led a great party to greet his father at Knightsbridge. Ordinary Londoners flocked there too, greeting James with most impassioned rejoicing that afternoon.15

  There followed very rapidly the trial of Father Garnet at the Guildhall on 28 March 1606, in one session lasting from 8.00 am to 7.00 pm. The discovered treatise of equivocation found among the late Francis Tresham’s possessions, in a copy made for him by his servant Vavasour, with a variant title in Garnet’s own hand, was to be the pivot of the proceedings, although the government still did not realize that the Jesuit was its author.16 Garnet was trapped into defending himself on equivocation, which had never shocked English Protestants familiar with the Jesuit doctrine as deeply as it did when the Provincial of England openly espoused it. For many people a Jesuit was the agent of the devil, not of God, and ‘equivocation was his means to treason’. In its pristine form the word was derived from Latin and it has passed unscathed through Middle English meaning the ability to juggle words; in Hamlet the gravedigger employs it so. Then it was annexed by the Counter-Reformation, continental Jesuits, to focus a technical doctrine in a particular usage. So when Cardinal Bellarmine’s pupils shipped clandestinely into England (Garnet, Southwell and Oldcorne), they brought with them the invisible mental camouflage of equivocation – a colonizing agent that was an instrument of pastoral care. Southwell quoted parts of Garnet’s treatise when he was put on trial in 1595. When Garnet spoke to his own defence his first reference was to equivocation which was in itself a challenge to order because it denied the differences on which order rested.17 It justified reworking or banding the truth by the use of words with equivocal meanings, accompanied by mental reservations within a specific moral framework. Jesuits had this very flexible resource to protect themselves from magistrates wishing to interrogate them on matters which they (the Jesuits) held were not within the remit of the justices. So, if asked, a disguised priest could reply to the question ‘Did you attend Mass yesterday?’ with the truthful response ‘No, I did not attend Mass yesterday’ while silently expanding the answer with the equivocation ‘at St Sepulcre’s’.

  The intellectual surface elasticity of Garnet’s argument took the full weight of Coke’s rhetoric which rolled over the defence like a great engine of siege warfare:

  For equivocation, it is true indeed that they do outwardly to the world condemn lying and perjury, because the contrary were too palpable, and would make them odious to all man: but it is open and broad lying and forswearing not secret and close lying and perjury, or swearing a falsehood which is most abominable, and without defence or example. And if they allow it not generally in others, yet at least in themselves, their confederates and associates in treasonable practises, they will both warrant and defend it, especially when it may serve their turn, for such purposes and ends as they look after.

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p; Equivocation excited particular indignation when Protestants felt so grievously agitated. Zorzi Giustinian, an anti-Jesuit Catholic, was inclined to share the Protestant viewpoint and he recorded the shock of ministers over equivocation ‘and especially the King, who is particularly versed in such matters’. The jury found Garnet guilty and the death sentence was pronounced. He was then removed for further interrogations during which he continued to defend equivocation, even in the week preceding his death. Originally this was set for 1 May, but London was seething with excitement so the government felt obliged to postpone it to 3 May to avoid a clash with traditional May Day celebrations. The execution took place on a scaffold at the west end of St Paul’s precinct, and as Garnet mounted the ladder, the Recorder of London, sent by James to represent him, urged the priest not to equivocate with his last breath in this life. Garnet replied with a certain rueful dignity that this was not the time to equivocate; how it was lawful and in what circumstances he had shown elsewhere. He was then hanged, but at the King’s command not cut down immediately, so that he was dead when hewn apart for the affronted sovereign’s superior earthly power to be demonstrated.

  To many Catholics – even some who regarded equivocation with disapproval – Garnet was a martyr. Zorzi Giustinian had come to speak kindly of him, and the posthumous story of the miraculous representation of his head upon a straw in blood did honour late in 1606 to his memory. Protestants on the other hand derided the idea that Garnet was a saint and cheerfully took the view that if anything he had been a dissolute scamp. On the eve of the trial, John Chamberlain, writing to Dudley Carleton, reported that the Jesuit ‘comforts himself with sack to drown sorrow’ and many were willing to misunderstand Garnet’s relationship with Anne Vaux. Even Salisbury teased him about this with a quip: though later he did ask Garnet’s forgiveness for the ill-timed and off-colour joke. But the original accusation of clerical impropriety had a lewd charm for many others, and at his execution, as John More reported to Ralph Winwood, the Jesuit ‘made many protestations endeavouring to clear the suspicion of his incontinence with Mrs Vause [sic], wherein it is thought he served himself with his accustomed equivocations . . .’ This is not completely accurate because at the last Garnet was less loquacious than alleged, but More’s representation chimed with contemporary views. To those Protestants who could admire composure in the face of a horrendous ritualized death, Garnet was still a traitor, as Catesby and the others had been. In the torrent of published exchanges after the government pinioned Catholics with the Oath of Allegiance (see Chapter 11), it was Bishop Andrewes who most skilfully made the government’s case against Garnet. Why was the fiction of Garnet’s straw being so assiduously cherished and circulated? Cardinal Bellarmine (oppressor of Galileo) called Garnet ‘a man of incomparable sanctity of life’, who had suffered only for refusing to reveal what his conscience forbade. To answer this Andrewes averred the contrary – that Garnet was actually a man of some notoriety for his bad habits (‘Bacchus certe magis redolebat quam Apollinum’). And as to the gunpowder plot, he did know from many quarters what was intended. Even if it was admitted that he knew under the seal of confession only, there were several courses open to him. Without mentioning names he could have passed on just enough information to avert so great a crime. He might have given private information to the Pope. He might have urged the person confessing to abandon the project and induce others so to do, under threat of divulging it if the penitent refused compliance. He might have warned those whose lives were in peril. He did none of these things and so was condemned by his own actions. Indeed, by concealment he sinned, and Andrewes cited various authorities who took the view that crimes intended and communicated to a priest in confession should be revealed.

  Andrewes condemned utterly any form of revolt against the legitimate power of the prince.18 He developed this unyielding position in his famous series of sermons preached on both 5 August, in commemoration of the Gowrie plot, and 5 November. The two series began in 1606 and continued for nine and ten years respectively, so that in all there were nineteen sermons in which to ram home various concerns. Today this seems excessive but no one would have reproached Andrewes then for his submissive adulation of James. What has happened since then is that Andrewes has been judged to bear a substantial (if preliminary) responsibility for the conflict that engulfed Britain within two generations. Some historians have seen in these sermons the ideological basis for the combined errors of William Laud and Charles I, since Andrewes held the unshakeable conviction that all power derived from God and any prince of any sort had ‘the mandate of heaven’, as in Proverbs 8:15: ‘By me Kings reign’. God alone makes or unmakes a prince, and no one on his own authority can substitute for God. So Andrewes condemned the theories that had arisen to revise the fundamental stance he took: the papal pretension to the right of deposition; the notion of the ‘social contract’, and any form of rebellion at all.19 His position required passive obedience to tyranny and the renunciation of any resistance; those who rejected this stance were condemned for the thought and subsequent action. In his sermons Andrewes would sometimes invite his listeners to give thanks to God for the physical destruction of the Gowrie and the gunpowder plotters, as well as pray for the ultimate destruction of the king’s enemies. He viewed both plots in the same light and his sermons did not differentiate between them. As far as the gunpowder plot was concerned he gave voice to the view of a large section of public opinion, emphasizing its unprecedented intention to kill in an instant such a throng of people. The suddenness of it appeared particularly terrible since unprepared souls were at risk. Such thoughts gave his oratory its keenness – with a personal edge to it. On Sunday 3 November 1605 he had been consecrated Bishop of Chichester and appointed Lord High Almoner. On 5 November he resigned his Mastership of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and thus ended a thirty-five year connection begun when he entered the college as a student. Now fifty, this huge change in his life might have marked its end, for as a bishop he would have been in the House of Lords.20

  TEN

  The Second Wave

  When Thomas Wilson, nephew of Queen Elizabeth’s principal secretary of that same name, prepared a list of her possible successors at home and abroad, he favoured James VI over Lady Arabella Stuart.1 Even so, he did not exclude Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland whose claim was based on his descent from a grand-daughter of the eldest brother of Henry III. A plot that killed the Stuarts en masse, as well as many of the aristocracy, would likely have left him as the highest ranking living Englishman in the country, and with a large Catholic following although not a Catholic himself. One drawback by the late sixteenth century was that the Percy family had something of a reputation for scepticism, and the earl’s particular interest in science, his strong patronage of Thomas Hariot and others, in combination made him an object of some suspicion. He was not quite right somehow, and his easy sarcasm and pointed wit left him somewhat isolated at court. There was also the undeniable fact that he regarded the Scots who clustered tightly about James with a contempt which as a northern earl he made no effort to hide: ‘a disdainful and contemptuous attitude which could not fail to make him many enemies at court.’ By 1605 Northumberland had withdrawn more and more into the company of congenial friends, including Thomas Percy. This made him a target the moment the news of the plot broke. John Chamberlain, writing to Dudley Carleton, once in the earl’s employ, quickly remarked on this. His fears were justified because on 27 November James signed the warrant to commit the earl to the Tower to await trial. His brothers, Sir Allan and Sir Josceline were also arrested, along with hitherto privileged Catholic lords like Mordaunt, Stourton and Montagu. The second of these was a kinsman of Salisbury, while Montagu was the son-in-law of the Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Dorset. Of the trio it was Montagu who was least marked by suspicion, although on the Tuesday before All Saints’ Day (29 October) he had met Catesby at the Savoy. Their mild and brief exchanges were noted by Montagu in a letter of explanation to his power
ful father-in-law: ‘The Parliament,’ said Catesby, ‘I think bringeth your lordship up now?’ Montagu: ‘No surely; but it will on Monday next, unless my Lord Treasurer do obtain me his Majesty’s licence to be absent which I am in some hope of.’ Then Catesby said something to the effect that Montagu could hardly be entranced by such business, and his lordship agreed. The rest of the conversation seems innocuous enough being ‘of my walks (as I remember)’ and ‘of maintaining them’. Is there possibly something encoded in this or was Catesby really interested in the maintenance of Montagu’s formal gardens? Perhaps he was planning something at Ashby St Legers? At any rate, Montagu was released from custody later in the year after some lobbying. For Mordaunt and Stourton there were problems with a statement made by Fawkes that Catesby had known that neither man would be in Parliament on the day. Suspicions about them lingered and Drayton House was described as ‘a receptacle of most dangerous persons’. After a star chamber hearing they were fined and imprisoned. The nineteen privy councillors and judges set Mordaunt’s fine at 10,000 marks (£6,666) and Stourton’s at 6,000 (£4,000). These massive demands were never cleared and both men were removed from the Tower to the Fleet prison in August 1606. Stourton was released in 1608, while Mordaunt, who had had the most frequent contacts with the plotters, died in the following year.2

  In the meantime the government had the not inconsiderable problem of deciding whether to deal with Northumberland in the same manner, or to embark upon a trial for treason. The slow build-up of anecdotal evidence permitted the preparation of a case for either sort of prosecution and certainly Salisbury was wary of jumping to conclusions. He wrote to Sir Thomas Edmondes in early December that while Thomas Percy might have given his kinsman some generalized warning of what was being prepared, there was ‘no direct proof whether the Earl would have been present at Parliament or not . . .’. Others were less cautious and Sir William Browne, lieutenant-governor of Flushing, whose daughter had married a Percy, was stung into writing from there on 9 November: ‘Seeing the earl of Northumberland hath so villainously and devilishly forgot himself, I am sorry that ever I honoured him, and more sorry that I have a child that carries his name.’ So at home and abroad the earl’s involvement was often assumed and he was correct to become apprehensive for he was indeed trapped. Salisbury noted his misfortune; Catesby and Thomas Percy were dead together, so the earl’s ‘innocency or his guiltiness must both depend upon the circumstances of other persons and times’. As the case against him grew the earl was hot in his own defence and so too was his wife. Although Salisbury seems to have maintained a private view until the beginning of March 1606 that Northumberland was innocent, Dorothy Percy, his countess, one of the famous sisters of Essex, boldly put it to James that only he could deflect ‘the ill-will of a certain great personage’.