The Real Guy Fawkes

by Nick Holland

  This was a view that quickly prevailed among the population of England. Guy and his fellow conspirators were not fighting for a cause, they were simply agents of evil seeking the destruction of the country itself, and the greatest devil of all was the man who would have put light to the fuse. In a sermon delivered after the news had spread, William Barlow, the Bishop of Rochester, described Guy as a ‘blood sucker’ and, using a description that would stick, he labelled Guy as ‘the devil of the vault’.10 Guy Fawkes, insisted Barlow, had wanted to pull down the moon and the sun, not from Heaven to Earth, but into the bottomless pit in which he and Satan lived.

  From the moment Doubleday had forced him to the floor and bound his hands, just four hours earlier, Guy knew that all that awaited him now was interrogation, pain, torture and then execution. There was no other possible outcome, and so calling to his mind his soldier’s spirit, and the examples of countless saints he had read about, he vowed to endure all.

  His calm, measured demeanour was menacing, the flickering candles around the royal bedchamber a reminder of how close the man had come to snuffing out their own brief candles. Nevertheless, even though this man was their deadly foe, the King and his chief minister Cecil were impressed by him.

  Robert Cecil wrote to Sir Charles Cornwallis in Spain to inform him of the plot, the arrest and the man’s responses to their questioning.11 There is a grudging respect in Cecil’s description:

  He [Guy Fawkes] is no more dismayed, – nay, scarce any more troubled, than if he were taken for a poor robbery on the highway. To the impatient and hurried questions that were put to him with some violence and passion, he answered calmly and firmly that “his name was John Johnson, and that he was a servant of Thomas Percy – that when the King had come to the Parliament House that day, and the Upper House had been sitting, he meant to have fired the match, and fled for his own safety before the powder had taken fire; and that if he had not been apprehended that night, he had blown up the Upper House, when the Kings, Lords, Bishops, and others had been there’.12

  The King was alarmed at this forthright proclamation and asked Guy, or John Johnson as he thought he was named, why he had wanted to kill him? Guy told the King it was because he was a heretic and the Pope had excommunicated him. Looking the King in the eye once more, Guy solemnly declared that his only sorrow was that he had not been able to carry out his plan.13

  This insolence was unheard of in the presence of the King, who was after all God’s representative on Earth as Henry VIII had asserted. Guy’s answers brought a succession of slaps, kicks and punches to his defenceless body, Cecil’s letter to Cornwallis admits as much when he talks of questions being put to him with violence and passion, but the captive remained unbowed physically and mentally. Guy may have been thinking of the questioning of Jesus by Pontius Pilate. Pilate asks why he won’t answer his questions, and explains that he has the power to release him and the power to crucify him, to which Jesus replies that he would have no power over him unless it was given to him from above.14

  Guards had now been positioned around the palace, and in the streets leading up to it, and the gates to the building had been locked. In Whitehall, the questioning continued, but Guy continued to amaze the members of the Privy Council present with his courage and sanguinity. One of the councillors was heard to say that in John Johnson they had another Mucius Scaevola.15

  Gaius Mucius Scaevola was a Roman soldier of legend. Captured by enemy Etruscans, brought before the King, Scaevola declared that he came there to kill his enemy, and he was as ready to die as he was to kill. To show that Romans act bravely and suffered bravely he thrust his hand into a fire and held it there. The king was amazed at this act, and had the soldier released.16 There was no such hope for Guy. With daylight breaking across London, the King ordered him to be taken away to the Tower of London under the care of the ever watchful, and ever cruel, Sir William Waad.17

  By the dawn of Tuesday morning, news of the great discovery was already out. Many of the lords and parliamentarians had already started to gather around Westminster, as the opening was due to have taken place at nine o’clock in the morning. Under the circumstances Parliament’s opening was prorogued yet again, although a brief meeting was held in the chamber to discuss what had happened. The Journal of the House of Commons recorded,

  This last Night the Upper House of Parliament was searched by Sir Tho. Knyvett; and one Johnson, Servant to Mr. Thomas Percy, was there apprehended; who had placed Thirty-six Barrels of Gunpowder in the Vault under the House, with a Purpose to blow King, and the whole Company, when they should there assemble.18

  Word of the arrest was common knowledge long before the speech in Parliament however, and it had reached the ears of Kit Wright by five o’clock in the morning,19 while Guy was still being interrogated by the King. The younger Wright brother had been unable to sleep well, for obvious reasons, and had taken to pacing the streets, watching his breath form white plumes in the bracing morning air.

  By a strange coincidence, into the picture once more comes Lord Monteagle. Wright must have been surprised to see Monteagle up at the early hour as well, Kit bowing before him as his position demanded. It was a surprise that turned to sickening fear when the baron told him, ‘rise and come along to Essex House, for I am going to call up my Lord of Northumberland’.20

  Instantly aware that something was very wrong, Kit instead made his way to the Duck and Drake Inn where Thomas Wintour was staying, and burst into his room saying ‘the matter is discovered’.21 This news was so alarming that at first Wintour refused to believe it, and sent Kit Wright to Essex House, the palatial London residence of the Earl of Northumberland, to see if he could get more definite information.22

  Kit Wright never got as far as Essex House, for on the approach he saw a man named John Lepton climb onto his horse, before calling out, ‘will your Lordship have any more with me?’ On being answered in the negative, Lepton spurred on his horse and rode away up Fleet Street as fast as he could.23 At this sight, Kit made haste back to the Duck and Drake.

  Wright correctly guessed what this meant. Lepton had been talking to members of the Privy Council who had gathered at Essex House to see if the Earl of Northumberland knew of Thomas Percy’s whereabouts. He had now been given the task of hunting Percy down. Lepton was a Groom of the Privy Chamber and renowned for his ability as a horseman. So assiduous was he in his task that he eventually, and erroneously, ended up in Scotland on the hunt for the fugitive Percy.24

  Thomas Wintour understood the news too, and a maudlin mood descended in his chamber. But even now he was not a man to panic. Instructing Wright to find Percy and warn him, he said that he would remain in London to assess the situation and join the others in the Midlands later.

  Thomas Percy had taken the precaution of not staying in his own London residence on Gray’s Inn Road on the night of the 4th, but instead renting a room known only to his fellow conspirators. It was a wise precaution for a warrant had been issued for his arrest after the initial questioning of Guy Fawkes – as yet Percy was the only person known to have any connection to the would-be regicide John Johnson.

  John Lepton and the men of the Privy Council failed to find him, but Percy was instead woken up by Kit Wright bringing him the news he least wanted to hear. Percy dressed quickly, and he and Wright mounted their horses and rode swiftly northwards. Seeing one of his servants, Percy called out, ‘I am undone!’25 Meanwhile, Robert Keyes and Ambrose Rookwood, who had been staying with a Mrs Moore near Temple Bar, were also given the unwelcome news. By whom remains unknown, although it seems likely to have been Thomas Wintour or Kit Wright en route to Thomas Percy, but whoever the messenger was, Keyes and Rookwood soon joined the exodus northwards.26

  Thomas Wintour resigned himself to his fate, or was possessed of incredible personal bravery, or had an unshakeable conviction in Guy Fawkes’ ability to withstand questioning, possibly all three, for now he knew that Thomas Percy was a wanted man, he knew that arrest, and
with it torture, could be his fate at any moment. Even so, before dismissing Kit Wright, he had insisted that he would ‘stay and see the uttermost’.27

  Demonstrating audacious, or fatalistic, calm, Wintour now made his way to the gates of Parliament itself. He found pike-carrying guards blocking the entranceways, and was himself blocked by a guard on King’s Street. Turning back, Wintour heard one of the guards say, ‘There is a treason discovered in which the King and his Lords shall have been blown up’.28 Declaring himself ‘fully satisfied that all was known’,29 a strange choice of words in the circumstances, Thomas Wintour returned to the Duck and Drake, gathered his belongings, mounted his gelding and finally abandoned London.

  Guy Fawkes was now the only conspirator of the thirteen still in the capital, but of course he had little say in the matter. The Tower of London was his new home, and while some of the cells within it were relatively luxurious and equipped to receive noble inmates, Guy’s chamber in the White Tower was cold, cramped and unsanitary.

  His initial questioning was undertaken by the Lord Chief Justice himself, Sir John Popham, helped by the Attorney General Sir Edward Coke,29 although Sir William Waad lurked nearby itching to begin his work. The stranger, John Johnson, told them of his time as a soldier in Flanders for the Spanish army, and admitted again that he had intended to blow up Parliament on that day, with the King and his lords and bishops within it.30

  Once again, Guy was blunt and defiant in his answers. When asked what would have happened if the Queen and the royal children had also been present, Guy stated that he would not have helped them, and when asked what he would have done about any Catholics who may have been present and caught up in the explosion, Guy stated that he would have prayed for them.31

  It is notable that Guy mentions no names other than that of Thomas Percy, which was already known, and that he had met Spinola, William Stanley, Hugh Owen, and Father Greenway (the alias being used by Oswald Tesimond) in Flanders.32 Guy knew that he was now a breathing corpse, and his last task on this earth would be to keep the identity of his fellow conspirators secret for as long as possible. This would give them a chance to escape from the country, or even to carry out their uprising in the Midlands. In Guy’s mind there was still hope for the aim of the plot, that is the restoration of Catholicism to supremacy in England, even though there was no hope for himself.

  The document of this initial Tower interrogation, signed by ‘Jhon Jhonson’ on every page, was an unsatisfactory one for Popham, Coke and Cecil. Could it really be believed that Johnson and Percy had carried out this plot without any help whatsoever? In a letter written on the evening of 5 November, Popham tells Cecil that he had ‘pregnant suspicions’ of Catholics including, among others, Robert Catesby, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, John Grant, Jack Wright, Christopher Wright, and Thomas Wintour.33 At this stage, however, there is no evidence given, and it seems that Popham is merely naming men who were known Catholics and known as potential troublemakers rather than acting upon any evidence he had prised out of John Johnson.

  Darkness closed in on the solitary man lying in his stone-floored cell, but he slept soundly with no dreams of yesterday or tomorrow. Guy Fawkes had resisted his first period of questioning, and his comrades in arms remained free, but for all of them there was much worse to come.

  Chapter 22

  By Steps, Proceeding to the Worst

  Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

  Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

  For those, whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,

  Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

  John Donne, Sonnet X

  For Guy Fawkes the night of 5 November 1605 must have been a terrifying one. Despite the brave exterior he maintained he knew that sooner or later torture would be used on him, and that eventually he would be condemned to the only death worthy of a man who had tried to kill his king: being hung, drawn and quartered.

  For others in London, however, it was a night of celebration. Word spread about the King’s salvation, one that could only have resulted from divine providence. To mark this modern day passover, this time with death passing over the people of England rather than the people of Israel, bonfires were lit across the capital and beyond. It is a ritual that survives to this day with the lighting of communal bonfires on the fifth night of November, and in fact it was compulsory until 1859 under the rules of the Bonfire Observance of 5th November Act of 1605.1

  The sixth of November saw more questions put to Guy, but while Popham and Coke were the men asking them, they were actually written by King James in person. The King was taking a keen interest in the questioning of the man known as John Johnson, as well he might if he felt that plotters against him were still at large, and had created a list of sixteen questions to put to Johnson.2 The first of the royal questions, or interrogatories as they were known, shows just how little they knew about Guy at this time:

  ‘As what he is, for I can never yet hear of any man that knows him?’3

  Guy’s answer to this question was straightforward and less than revealing:

  ‘He saith his name is John Johnson’.4

  The first night of imprisonment in the White Tower had obviously done nothing to dampen Guy’s defiance, and he was unswerving in the adherence to his original story. Even so, there are elements of the questions put to Guy that catch our attention. One such question set by the King, the twelfth question, asks when and where Johnson learned to speak French.5 Guy’s answer is that he learned to speak French firstly in England and then on his last journey overseas,6 but the question is more interesting than the answer. Just how did they know that Guy spoke French? Having assumed the role of Yorkshire servant John Johnson it is hardly likely that he would have engaged in a French discourse with his captors. It seems to me that this relates to the next question:

  ‘What gentlewoman’s letter it was, that was found upon him’?7

  Guy answers that the letter is from a woman married to an Englishman named Bostock in Flanders. As stated earlier, it’s an obvious assumption to link this woman with his commander Colonel Bostock who was killed at the Battle of Nieuwpoort. The sequence of questioning makes me conclude that it was this letter that was written in French, proving that Guy could speak the language. We now have a letter in French from a woman he knew in Flanders, that Guy carried with him everywhere he went for more than five years, and that he held close to him on that fateful night of 4 November even though its existence could blow his cover as it contained his real name.8 This has the hallmarks of a love letter from a woman who meant a great deal to Guy, and whose memory he would always cherish.

  Once again, the confession was signed not only in the name of John Johnson, but also by the Earls of Nottingham and Northampton, and by Sir Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury.9 The presence of these great men of state at the questioning of Guy Fawkes was a mark of the desperation the court as a whole. It was clear to all that there must have been felt by others involved in the plot, if only to finance the acquisition of the property and gunpowder, and these unknown and unseen enemies could at that very moment be planning a new atrocity.

  If the earls had felt their mere presence would be enough to subdue Johnson, they were wrong. He had been less than fulsome in his answers, and his obfuscation was buying precious time for whoever had worked alongside him. Things could not continue as they were. King James gave Sir William Waad the permission he had been looking for, writing, ‘If he will not otherwise confess, the gentler tortures are to be first used unto him, et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur’.10

  The Latin at the end of the royal instruction means ‘and then by steps proceeding to the worst’. The message was clear – the prisoner was to be spared no torture if he would not confess fully and plausibly. This sentence causes controversy even today, with some commentators saying that it was unlikely torture was used, or if it was used that it was used sparingly. This is the danger of projecting modern values onto a
seventeenth century reality.

  King James was a believer in the efficacy of torture, and in Scotland he had been keen to join in the torture himself when it was applied to Agnes Sampson11 and possibly others. He also saw no moral difficulty in the administration of torture when it was used upon those who had committed evil acts or who intended to commit evil acts. This was a commonly held view, as James and many in England at that time saw Guy Fawkes as something less than human – something infernal, the devil from the vault. In that circumstance, it would be a weakness to deal with the prisoner as if he were a man like any other, one deserving of respect or compassion.

  Nevertheless there were, even then, legal problems around the use of torture. Torture was forbidden within Magna Carta,12 but in truth Magna Carta was a document that was very little observed and the common law could be circumvented in exceptional circumstances, and especially with the express permission of the sovereign.

  The surreptitious use of torture was widespread, although it was then typically denied by officials. Nicholas Owen, for example, was tortured to death, and yet the official line was that he had somehow torn open his own stomach. Father Tesimond’s account shows that the government account was little believed:

  Owen’s enemies were motivated by a desire to cover up their own cruelty. This [torture] had been inflicted on him in violation of their own laws, which forbid that anyone should be killed by torture. But their stupid and wicked inventions were all in vain. No one, not even our enemies, allowed them probability or gave them credence.13

  The same spin, to use a fitting modern phrase, was used regarding Guy, yet the evidence of extreme torture was seen not only by comparing his signature before and after torture, but could also be seen months later at the time of Guy’s execution when he could barely walk and had to be carried to the scaffold. Once again Father Tesimond was scornful of the official account given in the King’s Book: