by Nick Holland
So it was that Thomas Wintour left Lambeth and sailed for Belgium. His meeting with Guy Fawkes would result in Guy’s return to London, to a conspiratorial meeting in the Duck and Drake, to cellars underneath the House of Lords, to the torture chambers of the Tower of London, and to the gallows and lasting infamy.
Chapter 14
This is the Gentleman
Speak, speak, let terror strike slaves mute,
Much danger makes great hearts most resolute
John Marston, The Wonder of Women
By 1604, Guy Fawkes had spent around a decade away from the country of his birth. In those years he had fought valiantly for the Catholic cause with the Spanish army, and gained promotion, esteem and the scars of battle. In that time, however, he had also seen men slaughtered on the unforgiving sands of Flanders, and witnessed appalling conditions among his fellow soldiers, with troops failing to be paid and having to subsist on a handful of bread or a portion of cheese every day.1 Men who had given their all for a cause were left to scavenge acorns for food, while others resorted by necessity to looting and pillaging.
It was not only Guy’s bravery that had brought him to the attention of his superiors but also his intelligence, and it was this that led Stanley and Owen to select him to meet King Philip III in a final attempt to persuade him to use force against England rather than seeking peace. This had resulted in frustration for Guy: he had found the King and his councillors paying lip service to his words, and for months was kept a virtual prisoner, too dangerous to be set free in case his actions impacted upon the fledgling peace talks between Spain and England.
After Guy’s release, and the failure of his mission to Spain, Guy returned to the English regiment in Flanders,2 but he now had a more jaundiced view of life and the fight he was involved in than when he’d first crossed the sea from England. Peace was breaking out across Europe, and Guy saw now that the real fight between Catholics and Protestants was continuing, as it always had, in England. A visit from an old acquaintance would provide the opportunity he was now looking for.
After landing at Dunkirk, Thomas Wintour had sought out Hugh Owen, knowing that the Welsh Intelligencer had the knowledge and influence to gain him an audience with the Constable of Castile. The meeting was arranged at Bergen, the Dutch name given to present day Mons in southern Belgium, and it says a lot for Hugh Owen’s standing and reputation that he was able to broker a meeting between Wintour and the Spanish duke who must have been busily occupied in the early stages of peace negotiations.
As Catesby had no doubt foreseen when sending Wintour to Belgium, the Constable was not prepared to offer any support other than non-committal words of semi-encouragement. In Wintour’s confession he states that Catesby later asked him what the Constable’s response had been, to which Wintour replied ‘good words’,3 but it was clear that these words would not be backed up by actions, at least not by the Spanish army.
Following the disappointing conclusion to the meeting, Wintour travelled back to Dunkirk in the company of Owen, and pressed him further on whether he thought Spain would offer English Catholics any assistance if there was an uprising of some kind. Owen could be blunt when he had to, and replied unequivocally that the Spanish court cared little for the Catholics of England now, being solely focused upon concluding an armistice with their old enemy.
His answer was received by Wintour with a heavy heart, for he knew now that there was nothing which could stop Robert Catesby pressing ahead with his murderous plan – a plan to which he had pledged his allegiance.
There was no going back, and so there was nothing to do but to act upon the secondary part of his overseas mission, an action that he still didn’t realise was the sole reason he’d been sent to the Low Countries. Here is Wintour’s account of his conversation with Hugh Owen:
I told him that there were many gentlemen in England who would not forsake their country until they had tried their uttermost, and rather venture their lives than forsake her in this misery; and to add one more to our number as a fit man, both for counsel and execution of whatsoever we should resolve, wished for Mr Fawkes who I had heard good commendation of. He told me the gentleman deserved no less, but was at Brussels, and that if he came not, as happily he might, before my departure, he would send him shortly after into England.4
This paragraph from Wintour’s confession reveals much about the esteem in which Guy Fawkes was held in 1604. Hugh Owen is full of praise for Fawkes, and although he is able to command Fawkes at will (saying that he will send him on to England) it seems that Guy has some degree of autonomy. He is in Brussels, far from any fighting, but may or may not appear in Dunkirk in the next few days. This could be an indication that Guy has left the life of a soldier behind, and instead become someone like Hugh Owen himself – an intelligencer, a spy and agitator for the Catholic cause.
Taking his leave of Owen, Wintour next made his way to Ostend hoping to speak to another of the leading Catholic exiles – Sir William Stanley. Wintour was disappointed in this endeavour as well, as he discovered that Stanley was away in Spain on another of his secretive missions. After two days, however, Stanley arrived in Ostend, and spent a period of four days with Thomas Wintour.
All this information is known from Wintour’s confession, but there is further information that is conspicuous by its absence. Wintour is careful not to implicate Owen or Stanley in the gunpowder plot. But it is highly unlikely that neither man knew about it or had a hand in it. Even though they had spent long years in exile from England, they had a network of connections within it, and their machinations were probably at the heart of many of the plots during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It is difficult to believe that Stanley and Wintour spent four days in each other’s company without talking about the specifics of Catesby’s plan, but you won’t find any mention of such a conversation in Wintour’s confession. Wintour does admit to talking to Stanley about Guy Fawkes, and gets a similarly glowing report to the one given by Hugh Owen a week earlier:
I came to speak of Mr. Fawkes whose company I wished over into England. I asked of his sufficiency in the wars, and told him we should need such as he, if occasion required. He gave very good commendations of him.5
After four days alongside Stanley there was still no sign of Guy, so Wintour announced that he was leaving for Nieuwpoort, but as he was saying his goodbyes a shadow fell across them and a tall man entered the room before saluting them both. He was not only tall in stature but broad and powerfully built as well; he had an abundance of reddish-brown hair, a bushy red beard and a long flowing moustache6. He had the tanned skin of a man who spent time in the field rather than in the halls of some stately home, and his unflinching gaze spoke of his confidence as well as hinting at an inner menace.
Stanley smiled at the puzzled expression on Wintour’s face, before explaining, ‘This is the gentleman that you wished for’.7
It was no coincidence that Guy Fawkes arrived just as Thomas Wintour was about to depart. It seems likely that he had been in Dunkirk during the days that Wintour spent with William Stanley, waiting for a pre-arranged signal and deliberately holding back his presence so that his master Stanley could get as much information as possible from Wintour about his plans, and Guy’s potential role in them.
If Wintour’s confession is to be believed, even at this point he didn’t give Guy any details of what Catesby had planned, instead telling him obliquely,
I told him some good friends of his wished his company in England; and that if it pleased him to come to Dunkirk, we would have further conference, whither I was then going: so taking my leave of both, I departed. About two days after came Mr Fawkes to Dunkirk, where I told him that we were on a resolution to do somewhat in England if the peace with Spain helped us not, but had as yet resolved upon nothing.8
Once again, we can read between the lines and assume that Wintour revealed a little bit more than he admitted in his confession, a confession designed to remove suspicion fro
m Hugh Owen and William Stanley.
Would the merest hint of a plan, and an admission that they had so far ‘resolved upon nothing’ be enough to bring Guy Fawkes back to England? It is more likely that Guy spent two days being debriefed by Sir William Stanley before journeying onto Dunkirk, where Wintour gave more than a hint that they planned to take direct action against King James. This was exactly the sort of plan Guy would have supported; no more hot, humid months waiting within whitewashed walls in Valladolid, he would breathe the fresh air of home again, and he would be breathing it with a purpose he had long dreamed of: revenge for Margaret Clitherow, revenge for Robert Middleton, revenge for all those who had lost their property, liberty and lives.
However much was revealed to Guy, it was enough to convince him where his duty lay, and in late April 1604 both he and Thomas Wintour were on a ship to Greenwich. Guy was sailing to his place in the plot and to his black place in history, but what exactly was he being recruited for? Primarily he was recruited because of his experience in mining and the use of explosives, gained in encounters such as the Siege of Calais. It’s all too easy, however, to dismiss this as Guy’s only role, for as Thomas Wintour said in his meeting with Hugh Owen, he was wanted not only to oversee the execution of the plot, but for his counsel and help in organising it.
Another reason behind his recruitment was that Catesby prized Guy not merely as a practical and courageous man, but for his strong links to Hugh Owen and William Stanley. These links could be used if necessary, Catesby reasoned, to bring armed men to England in support of an uprising, or to gain extra supplies of weaponry or gunpowder.
Guy stepped out of the boat at Greenwich a very different man to the one who had stepped into a boat alongside his cousin Robert Collinge a decade earlier. He knew that an uprising or rebellion was being planned, even if he didn’t as yet know all the details, and that inevitably this meant his own life would be in grave danger. So be it, he had faced death many times in the Low Countries, and his homeland would be as good a place to die as any other if that was what God had ordained for him. Until that moment came, whenever and however it came, he would continue to do what he had always done: he would serve, and he would fight.
Guy and Thomas Wintour rowed up the Thames from the docks at Greenwich to Catesby’s riverside residence at Lambeth, a distance of eight miles, a gruelling journey which took the men about an hour.
Catesby was impressed at his first sight of Guy Fawkes (or at least his first sight of him since he left Cowdray House): here was a man who was fitted to hard work, and one who would not shirk in the face of danger. Guy is likely to have been impressed with Robert Catesby too. He was imposing not just because his remarkable self-confidence and the force of his character, but by his physical stature too,9 with his six foot plus frame being at least half a foot taller than the average man of this time.
Guy, although used to being among strangers, was pleased to see a familiar face in the Lambeth dwelling, even if both he and Jack Wright had changed physically from their school days together. It was further confirmation that he had made the right decision, and that fate was now showing him the path to take. Guy and Thomas were given food and wine to replenish their energy, and it is likely that Guy would then have met another old boy of St. Peter’s school in Oswald Tesimond, under the name of Father Greenway, who was never far from Catesby when he was at home.
Guy stayed in Lambeth for several days, during which Catesby and Wright explained the state of England as they saw it – how hopes of tolerance for their religion under King James were gone, and how they could expect a persecution in excess even of that driven by Queen Elizabeth and her courtiers. As yet, however, there was no disclosure of the plot itself; that had to wait until another man arrived at the house.
Thomas Percy received the curt summons from Catesby, presumably similar to the one he had earlier sent to the Wintours, with glee. The scantness of information was itself a sign that things were to be discussed that couldn’t be safely committed to paper, and his mind travelled back to that day a year earlier when Catesby had promised to tell him later of a plan he was formulating; this would be Catesby’s ‘most sure way’ revealed at last.
Percy strode into the house with his characteristic confidence and loudness. Surveying the scene before him he gained further encouragement at the men seated around the room, particularly the sight of his old fighting partner Jack Wright. Here indeed were Thomas Percy’s kind of plotters, and before uttering another word he famously cried out, ‘Shall we always, gentlemen, talk and never do anything?’10
These words would have brought a smile to the men’s lips, for after the failure of Thomas Wintour’s talks with the Constable of Castile there was little doubt that this time they would turn their rhetoric into action. It is also telling that Percy didn’t seem at all surprised to see Guy Fawkes among the gathering, and was prepared to speak openly with him present at a time when unknown people could easily be Cecil’s spies or men who would sell you to the devil and the gallows for the right reward. This could be taken as an indication that Percy and Guy were known to each other, presumably from Scotton.
The five men were now gathered, but Catesby still remained silent on the details of his plan; all would be revealed in the proper time and place – that time and place being the Duck and Drake on 20 May 1604. The choice of a public inn for such a private, and potentially deadly, conversation may seem strange, but Elizabethan and Jacobean inns were different to today’s public houses. They typically had many rooms that could be hired for a fee, and there was always background noise to stop prying ears hearing what they shouldn’t.
Among those in the know, there were inns that specifically, if secretly, catered for the Catholic community, and where priests could often be found; the Duck and Drake was just such a place. Another example of the use of inns for this purpose was in 1586 when Anthony Babington, who came from a wealthy Derbyshire family who owned large properties of their own in the county and beyond,11 instead chose to plot the assassination of Queen Elizabeth in London inns.12
We have seen how an integral part of the gunpowder conspirator’s meeting was the mass said by Father Gerard, but while this was all the incriminating evidence the government would need, the Jesuit priest remained unaware of what the men were gathering for.13 Before mass was said, the five conspirators had gathered in another room for an essential part of the proceedings: it was there that Guy Fawkes and Thomas Percy placed their hand upon a primer, a book of prayers and devotions to be said at certain times of the day, and repeated what Catesby, Jack Wright and Thomas Wintour had already done – an oath of fellowship and an oath of secrecy. They swore before the others present, but more importantly before God himself, that they would keep secret whatever they were about to hear, on pain of death and eternal damnation. Swords were unsheathed before them as a symbol of what anyone who broke the oath could expect, but it was the thought of punishment after death that carried the most weight.
The oath was taken without any hesitation. Without yet being told the plan, Guy had pledged his silence and his life. From that room the five entered mass with Father Gerard, the communion bread and wine further sealing the new bond between them. With the mass over Gerard left the room, ignorant of their plans but undoubtedly able to feel the tension in the air. The men were alone, and it was now that Robert Catesby finally revealed the plan in its minutiae.14 They would find a suitable property near to the House of Lords, and from there tunnel under the building before planting enough gunpowder to completely destroy it and anyone within. At the same time, a group of men would seize the Lady Elizabeth, daughter of King James, with a view to installing her as the puppet queen to a new Catholic regime.15
Guy wholeheartedly approved of the plan.16 Any qualms he had about killing had been lost on the battlefields of Flanders, and he had no doubt that he and the men around him were fighting for a just cause. Guy was prepared to offer his all for his faith, for his country, and for the new brotherho
od he had indissolubly entered into.
Chapter 15
The Unknown Servant
I will do such things—
What they are yet I know not, but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I’ll weep?
No, I’ll not weep.
William Shakespeare, King Lear1
The act the five conspirators had just committed themselves to carrying out was horrific on a human scale, and yet we can imagine the elation they felt as Catesby’s plans were revealed. At this point in time the terrible outcome of the plot, the scores of dead, the limbless and wounded, were inconsequential when compared to the thought of the blow they were about to strike for the Catholic cause in which they so fervently believed.
As he returned to his lodgings, Guy, who may at this point have been taking a room at Catesby’s residence or at the London properties of Thomas Wintour or Thomas Percy, would have felt a calmness that eluded the others. He had seen the dread and deadly outcome of gunpowder explosions, but his time as a soldier had taught him that the end justifies the means. Guy was not lacking in compassion for those he loved and valued, but the ending of his enemies lives, even on a grand scale, was an act akin to the snuffing out of a candle.
Before taking their leave of each other from the Duck and Drake, the five had discussions as to their individual roles within the plot. Guy was understandably given the vital task of organising the mining of the tunnel and the dynamite. One of the first tasks was to find a suitable property near to the House of Lords. This search occupied the first few weeks following their meeting, until fate intervened in their favour.
The Earl of Northumberland was in charge of the King’s Gentleman Pensioners. It was a title which belied their actual duties, for in fact they were the King’s personal bodyguards. Northumberland had the authority to recruit suitable men for this prestigious role; whoever was chosen would have to be of noble stock and character, devoted to the King, trustworthy, honest and reliable, brave and willing to fight when necessary. These last two qualities were perhaps the only ones possessed by the man Northumberland appointed to the Gentleman Pensioners on 9 June 1604: his perennial favourite, Thomas Percy.
