The Real Guy Fawkes

by Nick Holland

  Robert Catesby’s activities before, during and after the Essex Rebellion had inevitably brought him to the attention of chief courtier and spymaster Sir Robert Cecil. The scrutiny that he was under, and the suspicion in which he was held, was shown by the fact that he was temporarily imprisoned, as a precautionary measure, when Queen Elizabeth was dying. This fate also befell other Catholics who were adjudged to pose a threat to a smooth, and Protestant, succession.23

  Catesby’s reputation continued to grow among those who knew him, as shown in a letter to Catesby from his cousin William Parker:

  If all creatures born under the moon’s sphere cannot endure without the elements of air and fire, in what languishment have we led our life since we departed from the dear Robin whose conversation gave such warmth as we needed no other heat to maintain our healths... let no watery nymphs divert you, who can live better with the air, and better forebear the fire of your spirit and vigour than we, who account thy person the only sun that must ripen our harvest.24

  This letter is even more remarkable when you consider that the man who wrote it was formally known by the name of Baron Monteagle, and two years later it was his actions that would condemn Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes and others to their death.

  By the early seventeenth century Robert Catesby was the sun that ripened the harvest, the tall and imposing gentleman, the brilliant horseman, the charismatic leader, the pious Catholic, the eloquent and learned speaker and the relentless converter; he was also a man capable of extreme violence, one who would do anything to achieve his aims with complete disregard to others, and a man who was now ready to bring a plan to fruition that would shake the country to its core.

  Chapter 13

  Six Men in the Duck and Drake

  Drink today, and drown all sorrow;

  You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow;

  Best, while you have it, use your breath;

  There is no drinking after death.

  Fletcher, Jonson, Massinger and Chapman,

  Rollo Duke of Normandy

  Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatae Mariae semper Virgini, beato Michaeli Archangelo, beato Ioanni Baptistae, sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo, et omnibus Sanctis, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

  The Latin words being intoned were familiar to all six men in the darkened side-room with its door firmly locked. In English they read, ‘I confess to almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the saints that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.’

  This formula known as the confiteore was an introductory part of the Catholic mass, as it had been since the eleventh century, and continues to be so in a slightly altered form to this day. It was being spoken quietly, slowly, deliberately by Father John Gerard – the Jesuit priest who was still evading capture after his escape from the Tower more than six years earlier.

  The date was Sunday, 20 May 1604. This was no church fit for a mass, however. It was a back room of the Duck and Drake pub just off The Strand in London. Five men knelt and listened to the priest in silent reverence: they were Robert Catesby, Thomas Wintour, Jack Wright, Thomas Percy, and with them a man who had just returned to England from a self-imposed exile lasting over a decade – Guy Fawkes.1

  From outside their room came the everyday sounds of the inn: wine being served to men of position, ale to those of a lesser standing along with the hop-brewed beer which was a new introduction from continental Europe; horses being fed, mounted or dismounted in the central courtyard; arguments over games of dice, and the echoes of drunken singing. The men inside the room were taking their first steps to a far from everyday occurrence, they were embarking upon a plot to destroy the ruling establishment of England – King, Lords and Bishops.

  The chief instigator was Robert Catesby, and the gathering in the Duck and Drake marked the continuation of a feverish idea which had been growing within him for years. He had tried the passive approach of a church papist, tried to live a quiet family life, but in that time he had watched the Catesby fortunes dwindle and seen his father and uncle face persecution and jail. Harbouring Jesuit priests such as Fathers Gerard, Garnet and Tesimond had only served to fire his zeal for action – he didn’t have the temperament to be a priest, but he certainly had the temperament to be a fighter in the Catholic cause.

  While others of his generation, such as Guy Fawkes, had journeyed to Flanders to fight against the Protestant religion, Catesby knew that if true change was to happen then the fight would need to be brought to England. It was this burning belief, a desire for revolution, that made him throw his lot in with the ill-starred Essex rebellion. It was also this rising despair and anger that led Catesby to send Thomas Wintour to Spain in 1602, hoping to gain the military backing he needed to be confident of success in his plans.2

  The failure of Essex’s uprising and the lack of support from Spain brought Catesby to the realisation that he would have to launch an uprising of his own; it became an obsession bordering on the pathological that grew by the day from 1603 onward. While some Catholics continued to hope for tolerance from the new king, Catesby knew that James could not be trusted; there was no time to waste, but for any plot to succeed he would need a close group of men around him: men who felt as he did; men who were not afraid to die, not afraid to kill; men who could be trusted.

  One man fitted the bill thanks to a zeal that almost matched that of Catesby himself, Thomas Percy, and it may have been a visit from Percy to Catesby in the summer of 1603 that cemented his intentions. Percy and Catesby had become close friends over recent years, as shown by the betrothal of their children, and Catesby had also chosen Percy to oversee the sale of his Chastleton estate to pay off the fines he incurred after the Essex rebellion.3

  Thomas Percy too had become increasingly frustrated with the new King’s reign. He had taken James’s hand in his, talked to him man to man, and then told his friends the news that James had promised tolerance towards Catholics in England. It quickly became apparent that James would not live up to these promises, if indeed he had ever made them in the unequivocal way that Percy described. This was not only an affront against his religion, but against Thomas Percy himself. He felt his honesty and integrity being questioned.

  This wasn’t the first time that Thomas Percy’s honour had been called into question. His role as Constable of Alnwick saw Percy accused of bullying and embezzlement on many occasions. His long-standing reputation as a ready swordsman and fighter ensured that most of his tenants were too scared to raise concerns against him, and yet in 1602 he was proven to be dishonest in court – not on one or two counts, but on 34 counts.4 Nevertheless, his master the Earl of Northumberland rewarded him with ever greater powers – after all, it didn’t do to follow the law too strictly when collecting rents.

  Percy had faced even greater trouble in 1596 when he was arrested and imprisoned for killing a Scotsman named James Burne, but the Earl of Essex used his influence, at the time, to have Percy released. Writing to the judge, John Beaumont, the Earl of Essex said:

  I understand by this bearer, my servant Meyricke, of your willing disposition to favour Thomas Percy, a near kinsman to my brother of Northumberland, who is in trouble for some offence imputed unto him. I pray you to continue the same, that thereby his life may not be in hazard. He is a gentleman well descended and of good parts, and very able to do his country good service.5

  There was yet another matter that threw doubt upon Thomas Percy’s piety, and that could have been particularly prejudicial to his role in the gunpowder plot. As we’ve seen, he was married to Martha, the sister of Jack and Kit Wright, but it was also said that he kept a second spouse in the south of England. The rumour may not have been true, and he would not have been the only man of this time to commit bigamy, especially when many Catholic marriages were ca
rried out secretly and unofficially, but it gave him a reputation for dissolution.

  It was widely reported in his lifetime that Thomas Percy had two wives and that while one was kept in Warwickshire the other lived in abject poverty in London.6 Many people have taken this to mean that Martha Percy, née Wright, was the abandoned and impoverished wife, but it would seem more logical to assume that it was the other wife who was living in poverty – after all Martha had the family to support her;7 and would Jack and Kit Wright have so willingly worked alongside a man who had treated their sister so shabbily?

  Father Gerard described Thomas Percy thus: ‘For the most part of his youth he had been very wild more than ordinary, and much given to fighting’.8 However it was also reported that he had calmed down greatly in later years, thanks to his conversion to a more open Catholicism (having probably been a church papist beforehand) and that he always kept a priest in his house for his own use and that of his friends.9

  Any changes which had taken place in this tall, strong, imposing man with white hair and a white beard were merely superficial; inside he remained volatile, quick to anger and ready to strike – although loyal to his friends and those he served. It was these qualities that made him so useful to the Earl of Northumberland, and it was the same qualities that made him attractive to Robert Catesby.

  Catesby would not have been surprised by Percy’s outburst during a meeting they had at Ashby St. Legers in June 1603, indeed he had probably provoked Percy into it to test the strength of feelings. Catesby talked of how different the actions of King James were to the promises that Percy said he had given to him, and this was enough for the volcanic Percy to vow he would kill the King with his own hands. A smile crossed Catesby’s lips as he answered sardonically, ‘No, no, Tom, thou shalt not venture to small purpose, but if thou wilt be a traitor thou wilt be to some great advantage. I am thinking of a most sure way and I will soon let thee know what it is’.10

  Thomas Percy the bigamist, Thomas Percy the killer, Thomas Percy the embezzler, Thomas Percy the ready swordsman, Thomas Percy the friend: as he shook hands and took leave of him, Robert Catesby knew he had found a man he could rely on for the murderous deeds he was planning.

  He was now convinced that Percy had the mettle and desire to join his plot, but he did not reveal it to him yet. The first to be gathered into the epicentre of the plot was a man almost as volatile as Thomas Percy, his old sword fighting partner Jack Wright.

  By October 1503 – Catesby had revealed his intentions to Jack, and it was a plot both carefully targeted and yet ridiculously broad and ambitious. Catesby had known for a long time that killing the King alone would not be enough, a view shared by Guy Fawkes as he spurned a golden opportunity to kill the King not long before the plot was due to be enacted.11 No, to gain tolerance and equality for Catholics, not only the King but all his ruling lords and councillors must be destroyed completely. It must be a blow so complete and terrible that the function of government would be stopped altogether, leaving a void that Catesby could fill with a Catholic puppet of his choosing. Tesimond summed up Catesby’s plot, as he revealed it to the men he recruited, thus:

  [Catesby] decided after much reflection to gather together all the enemies of the Catholic religion in England and get rid of them in one single blow. Liberty and religion would be restored to Catholics with no resistance. To carry out this resolve, the best way seemed to him to await the reassembly of Parliament, when the three estates of the realm would be together with the King, councillors, puritans and bishops. These were all of them determined that in that time and place they would give the final death blow to the Catholic cause, as we have said. In that same moment of time, the plotters hoped to bring upon their heads the evil they had designed for others. They would blow them up with a mine, and the Parliament-house along with them. In this way, the authors of those most cruel laws would be removed along with the very place where they had been made. By this means he [Catesby] also thought that no leader would be left to oppose the papists.12

  We know that Jack Wright was the first to be recruited to Catesby’s plot from the testimony of the second recruit: Thomas Wintour.13 The Wintours and Catesby were cousins, and Catesby’s confidence in them was shown by letters that he sent to both Thomas Wintour and his brother Robert on 1 November 1603, a feast day known as All Saints’ Day, referred to in Wintour’s confession as ‘All-hollantide’.14 It was a day of solemnity when Catholics remembered their saints and especially their martyrs, a fitting day for Catesby to recruit people to what he fully envisaged could be a martyrdom of their own.

  Probably to his surprise, Catesby initially found the Wintours less than willing to answer the nondescript letter calling them to his home: in fact, Robert Wintour sent a simple letter declining the invitation.15 Thomas too replied that he could not visit his cousin as he was not very well disposed. This was the first time he had ever declined an invitation from Catesby,16 and so it seems clear that both Thomas and Robert Wintour had a premonition of the danger the outwardly innocent letter contained. It is possible Catesby had already dropped hints to the brothers of a possible plot, as he had done to Thomas Percy, and that they’d decided to keep clear of it if possible, but Catesby was never one to be turned down that easily.

  Upon receiving Thomas Wintour’s message, Catesby sent his messenger straight back to him at Huddington Court in Worcestershire and insisted that he must meet him. Unable to resist Catesby a second time, Thomas Wintour travelled to Lambeth where he found Catesby in company with Jack Wright.

  Catesby asked Wintour about his plans to leave England to fight for the Catholic cause in Flanders, something they must have discussed previously, and dissuaded him from pursuing those plans. Wintour was told that he must not ‘forsake his country’, but stay to free it from its current servitude. It was then that Catesby revealed his dread plan to Thomas Wintour:

  He said that he had bethought him of a way at one instant to deliver us from all our bonds, and without any foreign help to replant again the Catholic religion, and withal told me in a word it was to blow up the Parliament House with gunpowder; for, said he, in that place have they done us all the mischief, and perchance God hath designed that place for their punishment.17

  Wintour was shocked at the scale of Catesby’s plot and countered that if they failed in their task, they, their families, and Catholics in general would suffer, and that they would be condemned for their actions rather than praised. As always, the persuasive Catesby had an answer:

  He told me the nature of the disease required so sharp a remedy, and asked me if I would give my consent. I told him Yes, in this or what else so ever, if he resolved upon it, I would venture my life.18

  Throughout all of this part of Thomas Wintour’s confession, drawn out of the badly injured man at the Tower of London,19 there is no mention of the action or words of Jack Wright. He may have been sitting there as a silent witness, nodding encouragement at the right moments, or simply have been intended as an intimidating presence, but it is likely that Wright was behind what happened next.

  Although agreeing to participate in the plan, even to the point of giving up his life if necessary, Wintour had still expressed some concerns about its ferocity. Catesby placated him by saying that they must seek a meeting with the Constable of Castile20 first, to see if a peaceful resolution could still be found. The Spanish constable had travelled to Belgium in January 1604 to begin peace negotiations with England. Catesby asked Wright to travel to the continent to meet the constable, inform him of the parlous state of England’s Catholics, and ask the constable to intercede on their behalf in his negotiations with King James – if this led to James revoking anti-Catholic penal laws then the plot would be abandoned.

  This was Catesby’s way of soothing Wintour’s objections, and a counter to objections from any conspirators who may be added to the group later. Now at least they could say they had given the peaceful path one final chance, even though Catesby knew as well as anybody that
the Constable of Castile, who was set on achieving peace with England at all costs, would not get any such promise or action out of King James.

  Wintour’s proposed journey to Flanders had one further reason – the real reason for the journey, that was added on as if it was an afterthought to the earlier conversation. Wintour, in his confession, remembered Catesby’s words:

  Withal, you may bring over some confidant gentleman such as you shall understand best able for this business, and named unto me Mr. Fawkes.21

  It seems certain that Catesby had already heard of Fawkes’ reputation as a man of courage, a man fully committed to their cause and one who was willing and able to fight for it. It could be that he had already met Guy years earlier at Cowdray House, but the Guy of 1604 was very different to the one of ten years before: he was now battle-hardened and a man of the world, one who had consorted with royalty and scythed his way through bloody battlefields.

  He may also have heard glowing reports of Guy from his sources overseas, namely William Stanley and Hugh Owen, and there was one other man who would have spoken highly of his abilities: the man who sat alongside Robert Catesby, Jack Wright. Jack could have remembered Guy from their school days in York, or have heard a more recent report of him from his brother Kit who had been in Spain with Guy, but Jack left Catesby in little doubt that Guy was a man who could be brought into their little group.