The Real Guy Fawkes

by Nick Holland

  It seemed incredible to the likes of Cecil, Coke and Popham that the plotters could have had no leader within the nobility, a figurehead who would become de facto King if their plan succeeded. Suspicion fell squarely upon the Earl of Northumberland, as he had Catholic sympathies as well as royal blood, and could trace his lineage back to King Henry II. He was also under suspicion because of his close ties to Thomas Percy, and his meeting with Percy on 4 November was seen as especially damning evidence. Percy was put on trial for treason on three counts:6 seeking to be the head of the Catholics, admitting Thomas Percy to the Gentleman Pensioners without making him take the oath of supremacy, and sending a warning to Thomas Percy.

  The Earl of Northumberland was lucky to escape with his life, particularly as his deafness and stutter made him a less than impressive figure during his trial. He was instead stripped of all his titles, fined the huge sum of £30,000, later reduced to £11,000, and committed to the Tower of London where he would spend the next fifteen years.7

  Those on the periphery of the plot could also expect little mercy. Stephen Littleton, who had fled from his home Holbeche House, was executed at Stafford alongside Henry Morgan.8 Stephen’s uncle Humphrey Littleton, for the crime of hiding his nephew, was also executed, along with two of his servants, Perks and Burford.9

  By mid-January, with the help of Thomas Bates’s later recanted confession, it was time to target the Jesuits. On 15 January 1506 a proclamation was issued against Father Garnet, Father Gerard, and Father Tesimond. This notice, pinned up at prominent locations across the country, warned that any person found harbouring the priests, or concealing information regarding their whereabouts, would be deemed no less guilty ‘than those that had been actors and counsellors of the main treason itself’.10

  Father Gerard, a seasoned veteran at escaping perilous situations, managed to escape to the continent within days. Things looked more worrying for Father Tesimond (Father Greenway), as he was apprehended on a London street while reading his own proclamation notice. A man seized him by the arm; Tesimond protested his innocence but allowed himself to be led away. Tesimond, however, had learned well at the same York school that Guy Fawkes and the Wright brothers attended. Once in a quiet alleyway, Tesimond turned on the man who had apprehended him and being bigger and stronger soon got the better of him and escaped.11 Hiding at the bottom of a boat underneath a pile of pig carcasses, Father Tesimond also reached the safety of the continent.

  Father Henry Garnet was not so fortunate. The man who had nothing to do with the organising of the gunpowder plot, who had tried his hardest not to hear about it, and who had often preached on behalf of a peaceful solution, was arrested, tortured, and, on 3 May 1606, hung, drawn and quartered.12 It was said that Garnet’s blood splattered a husk of corn, upon which his face appeared. This miraculous piece of corn was placed inside a silver reliquary, and the story of its existence became widespread, much to the annoyance of the government who tried to have it suppressed.13

  Also rounded up and executed at this time were Jesuits with little or no relation to the plot, including Guy’s former schoolmate Father Oldcorne. Nicholas Owen, the maker of priest holes, was arrested and tortured to death, and Father Strange, another Jesuit with no connection at all to the gunpowder conspiracy, was tortured so severely that he spent the remaining thirty-three years of his life ‘in extreme debility and severe suffering’.14 Even servants were under suspicion, as shown by the arrest of James Johnson, servant to Anne Vaux (who was herself questioned) at White Webbs. James knew nothing of the plot, and yet he too was tortured until he was left permanently disabled.15

  The gunpowder plot caused widespread revulsion among the English populace, stirred up by anti-Catholic pamphlets as well as by the rhetoric of people like Sir Edward Coke. It had a long-lasting effect on how Catholics were perceived in the country. In 1613, a bill was defeated in Parliament that would have made it compulsory for Catholics to wear red hats or multi-coloured stockings so that they could always be identified.16 Such anti-Catholic measures were not confined to the seventeenth century, as Catholics were barred from voting until 1829, and even today Catholics are not allowed a place in the line of succession to the throne.

  Guy Fawkes had wanted to raise the Catholic faith in England to a position of glory once more, but in that aim he failed utterly. The actions of Guy, Catesby and the other plotters set back the Catholic cause and led to renewed persecutions, both financial and physical.

  Guy himself became a hate figure, a demon incarnate, and yet in recent decades he has started to acquire a rather different reputation. While impossible to condone the atrocious act he would have undertaken, people are recognising at least that he was a man of courage and conviction, rather than being a mercenary motivated by thoughts of earthly rewards. He is now often proclaimed, jocularly, as ‘the last person to enter Parliament with honest intentions’. Guy Fawkes has also become a figurehead for modern day anarchists and libertarians, and for contemporary protesters in support of a plethora of causes. Guy Fawkes masks are now seen at protests across the world, peaceful and not so peaceful, worn by those who share his sense of passion for following a belief.

  So we return to the question posed at the start of this book: was the real Guy Fawkes a fool, a fanatic, or a freedom fighter? He was a dangerous combination of all three; a man who believed completely in the validity of his actions while at the same time being a slave to fortune. Guy saw himself and those of his faith, those he loved, as being persecuted; he recognised no hope in education, saw no chance of social change; in Guy’s mind peaceable solutions had been tried, and had failed. Marginalised people like Guy Fawkes can become tigers backed into corners, and throughout the centuries some of them, like Guy, have enacted, or attempted to enact, extreme and violent solutions of their own. As Guy Fawkes himself said on the day after he was captured, ‘A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy’.17

  The deep emotions that drove Guy to contemplate cold-blooded atrocities will always be present in a dark corner of the human spirit, which is why the story of Guy Fawkes is as important and relevant today as it has ever been.

  Notes

  Prologue

  1. This was the conclusion of explosives expert Dr Sidney Alford. See chapter fifteen.

  Chapter 1

  1. Pettegree, Andrew, Brand Luther, p. 70

  2. Loughlin, Susan, Insurrection: Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell and the Pilgrimage of Grace, p. 18

  3. Hargrave, William, History and Description of the Ancient City of York, p. 127

  4. Elton, Geoffrey Rudolph, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary, p. 192

  5. Palliser, David Michael, The Reformation in York, 1534-1553, Issue 40, pp. 8-9

  6. Palliser, Davide Michael, Tudor York, p. 262

  7. Ritchie, Carson I.A., The Ecclesiastical Courts of York, p. 57

  8. State Papers, SP14/216/19, Examination of John Johnson in Response to Interrogatories, 6 November 1605

  9. Baptismal record of Guy Fawkes, now in the archive collection of York Minster

  10. Longley, Katherine M., Recusant History 1973, volume 12

  Chapter 2

  1. The original can now be seen at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, built by Sir Robert Cecil.

  2. Known to history as Lady Jane Grey, she should more accurately be styled Queen Jane. While she was never crowned, she was legally named as successor to King Edward VI and proclaimed queen upon his death (for other examples of monarchs who were not crowned, we have only to look back as far as King Edward VIII). History also remembers her as the ‘nine-day Queen’, but while she reigned for nine days after the public declaration of her as queen, she had been proclaimed ruler by the Privy Council four days earlier

  3. Haigh, Christopher, The English Reformation Revised, p. 175

  4. Deiter, Kristen, The Tower of London in English Renaissance Drama: Icon of Opposition, p. 51

  5. For a full translation of the 1570 Papal Bull, ‘Regnans in Excelsis
’, see: www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius05/p5regnans.htm

  6. Allen, Cardinal William, An Admonition to the Nobility and People of England and Ireland, p. xi

  7. Butler, Alban, Lives of the Saints: August, p. 68

  8. Lingard, John, The History of England, from the First Invasion by the Romans to the Commonwealth, Volume VI, p. 30

  9. Whitelock, Anna, Elizabeth’s Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen’s Court, p. 304

  10. Strachey, Lytton, Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History, pp. 261-3

  11. Lemon, Rebecca, Treason by Words, p. 80

  Chapter 3

  1. Kotar, S.L. and Gessler, J.E., Smallpox: A History, p. 10

  2. Brandon, Ed and David, Curiosities of York, p. 26

  3. A lease of 8 July 1579 confirms Edith Fawkes as leaseholder of: ‘a dwelling house or tenement in Stonegate within the City of York... Bounding on the south side upon the tenement of John Brockett Public Notary’, Dean and Chapter Register of Leases 1543-87 - f 304r ll 22-2, ms. in York Library

  4. As confirmed by the burial of an unnamed ‘servant of Mr Brocket’ in 1574, recorded in the parish register of St. Helen’s Church, Stonegate, York

  5. ‘The nine-men’s-morris is filled up with mud, and the quaint mazes in the wanton green, For lack of tread are indistinguishable’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II Scene I, lines 83-5)

  6. Maynard, Jean Olwyn, Margaret Clitherow, p.15

  7. For more on the history of St. Peter’s School, see: www.stpetersyork.org.uk/st_peters/about/history_of_st_peters

  8. Morley, Paul, The North: and Almost Everything in it, p. 93

  9. Johnston, A.F. and Rogerson, M, Records of Early English Drama: York, p. 418

  10. Raine, A., A History of St Peter’s School, York AD 627 To the Present Day, p. 85

  11. Drysdale, R., Over Ancient Ways: A Portait of St Peter’s School, York, p. 16

  12. Morris, John, The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers Related by Themselves, p. 143

  Chapter 4

  1. Daily Telegraph, 31 October 2015

  2. Ibid.

  3. Wagner, John A. and Schmid, Susan Walters, Encyclopedia of Tudor England, Volume 1, p. 889

  4. Edward Fawkes’ burial record is at St. Michal-le-Belfrey Church, York, but it shows that he was interred at the adjacent York Minster

  5. Rosenthal, Alexander S., Crown under Law: Richard Hooker, John Locke, and the Ascent of Modern Constitutionalism, p. 7

  6. York Archbishop’s Registers, 1519-1588, University of York archives

  7. Dethridge, David, Great Anglican Divines – Edmund Grindal, Cross Way, Winter 1985 issue

  8. Brook, Benjamin, The Lives of the Puritans, p. 282

  9. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, April 1965, p. 130

  10. Maynard, Jean Olywn, Margaret Clitherow, p. 37

  11. Mullett, Michael, Historical Dictionary of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, p. 6

  12. Garnet, Henry, Portrait of Guy Fawkes: An Experiment in Biography, p.163

  13. Ibid. p. 165

  14. William Shakespeare’s will, prepared on 25 March 1616, a month before he died, is in the National Archives, London. It can be read online at: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/dol/images/examples/pdfs/shakespeare.pdf

  15. Camm, Bede, Forgotten Shrines: An Account of Some Old Catholic Halls and Families in England, p. 147

  Chapter 5

  1. State Papers, SP14/216/18, Interrogatories of James I for John Johnson, 6 November 1605

  2. State Papers, SP14/216/17, Examination of John Johnson, 6 November 1605

  3. Morris, T.A., Europe and England in the Sixteenth Century, p. 333

  4. Butler, Alban, Lives of the Saints: August, p. 225

  5. Morris, John, The Catholics of York Under Elizabeth, p. 345

  6. Longley, Katherine, Saint Margaret Clitherow, p. 178

  7. Ibid. p. 68

  8. See the diagram linking ‘Conspirators’ Relationships’ at the front of Antonia Fraser’s The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605

  9. Flower, William, The Visitation of Yorkshire in the Years 1563 and 1564, p. 333

  10. Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, The Trials of Margaret Clitherow, p. 17

  11. Maynard, Jean Olwen, Margaret Clitherow, p. 27

  12. Doran, Susan and Jones, Norman, The Elizabethan World, p. 137

  13. ‘Sufferings of Mrs. Foster at York’, The Gentleman’s Magazine, Volume 167, 1840, p. 465

  14. Hildyard, Christopher, The Antiquities of York City, and the Civil Government Thereof, p. 82

  15. Recusant History, Volume 20, 1991, p. 419

  16. Butler, Alban, Lives of the Saints, Volume 1, p. 469

  17. Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, The Trials of Margaret Clitherow, p. 87

  18. Maynard, Jean Olwen, Margaret Clitherow, p. 59

  19. Lake, Peter and Questier, Michael, The Trials of Margaret Clitherow, p. 107

  20. Margaret Clitherow had inherited property in Davygate, York, upon the death of her mother in 1585. After Margaret’s killing it was acquired by Henry May

  Chapter 6

  1. Father Oswald Tesimond wrote of Guy: ‘He was also – something decidedly rare among soldiery, although it was immediately evident to all – a very devout man, of exemplary life and commendable reticence.’ Edwards, Father Francis (ed.), The Narrative of Oswald Tesimond Alias Greenway, p. 69

  2. A letter on Guy’s behalf from his cousin Father Richard Collinge, written in 1599, says that Guy ‘hath left a pretty living here in this country which his mother being married to an unthrifty husband since his departure I think hath wasted away.’ Garnet, Henry, Portrait of Guy Fawkes, p. 46

  3. For details of Denis Bainbridge’s family, see Wills & Administrations from Knaresborough Court Rolls 1506-1858, volume 1, pp. 179-80

  4. Pullein, Catherine, The Pulleyns of Yorkshire, p. 94

  5. A guise that survived even after the start of his interrogations in the Tower of London

  6. Guy was sent to Spain in 1603 to speak to King Philip III, son of the man who had ordered the original Armada to England

  7. Aveling, Hugh, The Catholic Recusants of the West Riding of Yorkshire 1558-1790, p. 217

  8. See note 2 above. Father Collinge also referred to Bainbridge as a man who was ‘ornamental’ rather than ‘useful’

  9. The Claro Community Archaeology Project continue to work on this, and their activities include the use of digs and water divination

  10. A List of the Roman Catholics in the County of York in 1604, ms. in the Bodleain library, Oxford (part of the Rawlinson Manuscripts, reference B. 452)

  11. The Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Volume 69, p.180

  12. Wills and Administrations from Knaresborough Court Rolls, Volume One, p. 180

  13. For the online record of the marriage, see familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.2.1/MZMK-RB1

  14. A List of the Roman Catholics in the County of York in 1604, ms. in the Bodleain library, Oxford (part of the Rawlinson Manuscripts, reference B. 452)

  15. Peacock, Edward (ed.), A List of the Roman Catholics in the County of York in 1604, p. 121

  Chapter 7

  1. The ‘Curse of Cowdray’ has been passed down orally, and latterly in books, since the sixteenth century, and while it takes varied forms it always centres upon the destruction of the family through fire and water

  2. Sir Henry Owen was the son of Sir David Owen, who was himself the illegitimate son of Owen Tudor, founder of the Tudor dynasty, and therefore uncle of King Henry VII, the father of Henry VIII

  3. Coudreye had been the family seat of the Bohun family since it was built in the late thirteenth century. It came into the Owen family after the death of Mary Bohun, who was the first wife of Sir David Owen

  4. Sir Anthony had already been given several positions in court by Queen Mary, and his wife Magdalen Dacre was one of the ladies in Queen Mary’s wedding procession

  5. King Henry VIII stayed at Cowdray on three occasions (1538,
1539, and 1545), and it was also visited by his son Edward VI (1552) and his daughter Elizabeth I (1591)

  6. The 1581 act, the ‘Act to retain the Queen’s Majesty’s subjects in their obedience’ also made it possible to imprison anyone who heard a Catholic mass for a year, and to keep them in prison until they paid their fine

  7. Garnet, Henry, Portrait of Guy Fawkes, p.168

  8. Ibid., pp. 169-70

  9. For this calculation, and to see other possible conversion amounts see www.measuringworth.com

  10. Garnet, Henry, Portrait of Guy Fawkes, p. 171

  11. The claim of the second marquis came after he was arrested and interrogated following the failure of the gunpowder plot, so his remarks can be seen as an attempt to mitigate any knowledge he had of Guy Fawkes

  12. Cooper, M., Memoirs of the Life of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, pp. 23-5

  13. Although Catesby avoided execution for his minor role in the Essex rebellion, his heavy fine meant that he had to sell his manor house at Chastleton in Oxfordshire

  14. Lingard, John, The History of England, Volume IV, p. 345

  15. Queen Mary reigned from 1553 until her death in 1558. A popular monarch initially, she soon became known for her cruel treatment of Protestants, and gained the name of ‘Bloody Mary’ for having over 280 Protestants burned at the stake during her reign

  16. McDermott, James, England and the Spanish Armada, p. 280

  17. Archer, Jayne Elisabeth and Knight, Sarah, The Progresses, Pageants and Entertainments of Queen Elizabeth I, pp. 189-205

  18. Archer, Jayne Elisabeth and Knight, Sarah, p. 190

  19. Ambrose Rookwood became one of Guy’s fellow gunpowder conspirators

  20. Connelly, Roland, The Women of the Catholic Resistance in England, 1540-1680, p. 132

  21. Montague’s letter to the Earl of Dorset is dated 13 November 1605. Getting his excuses in early did not prevent the viscount from being arrested and imprisoned, although he was later released without charge

  22. Scott, Sir Sibbald David, Viscount Montague’s Book of Orders and Rules, p. 22