God’s Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests & the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot

by Hogge, Alice

  The Bellamys’ grief did not end there. The following year Topcliffe contacted Richard Bellamy, requesting he make over his farm at Preston, worth one hundred marks a year, to Nicholas Jones. There was no need to put in writing the veiled threat behind this petition. And when Bellamy refused, retribution was swift to follow: Justice Young was detailed to ride out to Harrow and arrest the family. Richard Bellamy and his wife were taken to the Gatehouse, their two younger daughters were sent to the Clink prison and their two sons were sent to St Katherine’s prison. Once again the family was suffering disproportionate agonies for someone else’s actions.47

  Richard Bellamy would remain in the Gatehouse for the next ten years, before departing England for the Low Countries. There, he would die in poverty. Mrs Bellamy’s fate is unknown, though one report mentions she died in the Gatehouse. Audrey and Mary Bellamy, Anne’s sisters, would remain loyal to the Catholic faith and seem to have spent the rest of their lives in and out of prison; Thomas Bellamy and his brother Faith would eventually admit defeat and conform to the Anglican Church. Their Uxendon estate was sold off in 1603. As for Anne Bellamy, she was said to have continued at Somerby under Topcliffe’s protection for the next three years, but from there the trail goes cold. Hers was a wretched outcome. In keeping with the attitudes of the period she was held responsible for her pregnancy and undeserving of sympathy. To her brother her troubles had come about as a direct result of ‘her lewd behaviour’. It mattered little that he remained convinced to the end that Topcliffe had raped her. That rape, no less than her betrayal of Southwell, was accounted her own fault.48

  On 18 February 1595, without warning, Robert Southwell was removed from the Tower of London and taken to Newgate prison, set in the city walls (on today’s Newgate Street) and widely considered ‘the most severe of the twelve London gaols’. There, he was led down into ‘a subterranean cell of evil repute’ called Limbo. The name was apt—particularly so, given Southwell’s own limbo-like state for the last two and a half years—for the cell was regarded as a staging post to the scaffold, a waiting room for death. It seemed the Government had overcome its initial reluctance to kill him and was now about to proceed against him with an almost indecent haste. Speculation as to why this should have been was widespread among Southwell’s friends, but the most likely explanation for it lies in the accusation levelled at him at his trial: Southwell would be charged with instructing Catholics in deceit, in teaching them how to lie.49

  When Garnet had written to Claudio Aquaviva years earlier, describing the raid on Baddesley Clinton, he had included a telling sentence in his account. It came in reference to a young layman of the Vaux household who, on the pursuivants’ arrival, had taken to his heels for nearby woods. When captured and interrogated later, he had sworn vehemently that he was no priest, an answer the pursuivants were happy to accept, ‘believing at that time that none could deny that he was a priest without committing sin’. This simple statement reflected years of agonizing on the missionaries’ part. The problem was this: as soon as a priest was run to ground the question would be put to him, ‘Are you a priest?’ On his next words hung his own life and that of the owner of the house in which he had been arrested. It might have been easy to make a swift and sure denial. It would also have been sacrilege.50

  This was no new dilemma. The matter of the legitimacy of an untruth, if truth and justice were believed to be at odds, had perplexed philosophers and theologians for centuries. St Augustine had seemed to settle the matter definitively by ruling that any lie was intrinsically evil, regardless of circumstances, because it corrupted the essential function of language. But the Reformation had thrown this ruling into uncertainty. Suddenly, as Catholicism and Protestantism slugged it out for supremacy, the question of whether one could lie and deny one’s faith had become a matter of some urgency. Martin Luther, ever the pragmatist, had ruled that an untruth, while always evil, was sometimes permissible. Catholic theologians were not so sure. For help, they looked to the law courts. In response, the theory of equivocation was born.51

  According to this theory, if a man were unjustly questioned he might respond ambiguously, choosing words ambiguous in themselves or ambiguous in the context in which they were spoken. What constituted unjust questioning was not so subjective as it might appear (though it would have been unsurprising if the English Government had felt differently), for it was a privilege under common law that no man should be forced to incriminate himself; which action confessing to the priesthood (or to sheltering a priest) undoubtedly was. The use of equivocation was only permitted, though, in legitimate self-defence, not deliberately to mislead, and the user must have in mind a sense in which his words could be held to be true. By this reckoning, a Catholic householder, asked whether he was concealing a priest, might answer No, meaning, No, you have no right to ask me that question. If these qualifying safeguards seemed somewhat like hair-splitting, they reflected the deep conviction among most Catholics that lying was still irredeemably sinful, no matter the motive.* For the missionaries, though, the problem was much more than one simply of lying. Henry Garnet described his beliefs to Aquaviva thus: ‘that Judas sinned by betraying Christ, but that Peter sinned also by denying Him’. To deny one’s priesthood was an evil stretching back to the very first days of the faith.52

  It is one of the many surprising points of the mission’s history that, in between running for their lives, ministering to England’s Catholics, organizing the building of hiding places and creating an underground nation wide network of priests, the missionaries, themselves, still found time to debate the morality of equivocation. A series of letters between Garnet and Aquaviva reveals just how uncomfortable most priests felt at the prospect of denying their calling.† As Garnet explained, ‘their reason is that the canons of the apostles contain an instruction that anyone who denies his priesthood through fear is to be degraded; and they are uncertain whether this canon is merely human sanction or whether it asserts a divine principle’. For his part, Garnet was anxious that the use of ‘a thousand ambiguities’ risked diluting what were, to him, incontrovertible truths. Characteristically, Aquaviva ruled in favour of equivocation and Garnet responded obediently, ‘now that we have your theologian’s answer that this is lawful, many for the first time are now acting on this opinion’. Southwell’s promotion of this opinion would be his undoing.53

  On 20 February 1595, just two days after Southwell’s transfer from the Tower, a popular hanging took place at Tyburn. ‘Almost all the city went out to see the execution,’ wrote Garnet. At precisely the same time Southwell was taken by road the couple of miles from Newgate to Westminster Hall. In spite of this diversion word had leaked out and the courtroom was packed. Armed halberdiers guided Southwell’s steps to the bar, where, with his hands freed, he ‘put off his hat and made obeisance’ to the men before him: Chief Justice Sir John Popham, Attorney General Sir Edward Coke and Richard Topcliffe. Then the Clerk of the Assizes read out the charges. ‘Robert Southwell…You are indicted…for that you, since the first year of the Queen’s Majesty’s reign that now is, did pass without licence out of her highness’ dominions beyond the seas, and there received order of priesthood from the pretended and usurped authority of the Bishop of Rome, and did return, and was found like a vile traitor at one Bellamy’s house, nigh a place called Harrow Hill in Middlesex.’ The court waited expectantly. Then Southwell replied, ‘I confess I am a Catholic priest, and I thank God for it, but no traitor; neither can any law make it treason to be a priest.’54

  The indictment was a formality: Southwell’s ordination was not at issue, neither was his return to England. The question of whether this was carried out with treasonable intent could be—and was—debated long into the afternoon, but in the end it had little bearing on what was already a foregone conclusion. The real drama of the day was provided by the prosecution’s surprise witness. The moment came after a long and angry denunciation of the Jesuit order by Sir Edward Coke. Turning to the jury Coke excla
imed, ‘They pretend conscience; but you shall see how far they are from it’ and into the courtroom walked Mrs Nicholas Jones.55

  Anne Bellamy took the stand. Her testimony came with a devastating simplicity. Southwell, she said, ‘had told her that if upon oath she were asked whether she had seen a priest or not, she might lawfully say no, though she had seen one, keeping this meaning in mind that she did not see any with intent to betray him’. It was damning evidence and the panel leapt at it. Did this mean the Jesuits advocated perjury? Were they teaching their flock to dissemble? Were all Catholics liars? There followed a debate in which Southwell attempted to explain the nature and value of equivocation and Richard Topcliffe shouted him down. ‘Suppose,’ argued Southwell, struggling to find some common ground between him and his accusers, ‘that the French King should invade her Majesty, and that she (which God forefend) should by her enemies be enforced to fly to some private house for her safety, where none knew her being, but Mr. Attorney; and that Mr. Attorney’s refusal to swear, being thereunto urged, should be a confession of her being in the house,…I say, Mr. Attorney were neither her Majesty’s good subject nor friend.’ It was an intelligent argument, but no one was prepared to rise to its challenge. Sir John Popham said that he should refuse to swear, but would debate no further, Sir Edward Coke that the cases were not sufficiently similar to merit a response. The jury was dismissed to consider the evidence.56

  It was gone just fifteen minutes. When it returned, its verdict came as no surprise. Southwell responded, ‘I pray God forgive all them that any way are accessory to my death’; his sentence was read, his hands were re-tied and he was ushered out of the hall. Briefly, it was discussed whether it were better to send him back to Newgate by river and avoid the crowds, but it was agreed Southwell ‘would go quiet enough, and so he went joyfully with them through the streets where many of his friends and acquaintances awaited his coming’. Those who saw him testified they had never known ‘him to look better or more cheerful’.57

  The following morning, Friday, 21 February 1595, at first light, Southwell was led from his cell to the street outside Newgate prison. There he was bound to a hurdle, feet uppermost, his head level with the cobbles, and the execution party set off. Westwards towards Holborn it went, before skirting along the northern edge of Lincoln’s Inn to St Giles in the Field. As a free man this had been Southwell’s dominion, the extent of his ministry; now the streets were lined with friends and the curious, eager to see how the Jesuit would behave on this, his last journey. Midway, a kinswoman struggled forward to speak to him. Southwell thanked her, but begged her to be careful. For the rest of the time he prayed, ‘holding up his hands and face as well as he could, towards heaven’.58

  The horses’ breath steamed in the raw morning air, their hooves quietened by the damp turf, while, behind them, the hurdle carved great gouges in the mud as the procession moved out into open countryside, along what today is Oxford Street, towards its final destination, Tyburn. Here, a large crowd had assembled and rising from among them was the gallows, three posts embedded in the ground, connected at the top by three crossbars from which a noose was suspended. Beneath it, a cart was standing ready and nearby was the hangman’s table, the knives laid out upon it, and beside it the fire and the cauldron, offering fitful heat to those who had made it to the front of the throng. Southwell was untied from the hurdle and led to the end of the cart. Here, he wiped the mud from his face, scanning the crowd before throwing the handkerchief into its midst. The reports of his execution fail to say who caught the cloth, other than that it was ‘one of the Society’. Perhaps Henry Garnet, who had made it a part of his office to witness the deaths of so many of his missionaries, was the face in the crowd Southwell searched for. If so, it was the last service he could offer his friend.59

  Southwell was lifted into the cart. This was the moment he had waited for all his life. ‘Take now your rest in the shade,’ he had written nine years earlier, ‘and open your mouths to draw in breath, so that when your hour comes, you too may go down into the sun-scorched arena.’ Tyburn in February had become Southwell’s sun-scorched arena now and he was ready. He commended into God’s hands the Queen, his country and his soul. The hangman stripped him to his shirt and placed the noose about his neck. ‘While we live we conquer, nor shall we be less victorious if we die,’ he had written. Now he made the sign of the cross, murmuring, ‘In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.’ And slowly the cart was drawn away.60

  It took the hangman pulling on his legs before Southwell’s body finally stopped moving, for the rope had been clumsily fixed about his neck. Three times one of the attending officers moved in to cut him down alive, but the crowd reacted angrily and from their number Lord Mountjoy stepped forward to stay the man. When the disembowelling was finished and Southwell’s head was held aloft to the people there was silence; ‘no one was heard to cry “Traitor, traitor!” as before times they were wont to do’. His head was set upon London Bridge and his four quarters upon four gates in the city walls. It remained to be seen what effect his death would have upon the mission, but for now Southwell had had his wish. The captive had been set free.

  * * *

  * Many of the facts—including details of the missionaries’ secret landing places and their use of aliases—were supplied by the seminary priest-turned-informer John Cecil. Cecil had returned to England early in 1591, along with James Younger and the Jesuit Richard Blount, disguised as a returning prisoner of war.

  * Lollardy—the movement that grew up in response to Wycliffe’s teachings—was very popular among Oxford’s academics (Wycliffe, himself, was a member of Merton College) and the university was heavily penalized as a result. Undoubtedly this contributed to Oxford’s reluctance to embrace Protestantism in the sixteenth century.

  * England was not alone in trying to regulate its printing industry post-Reformation; in 1535 François I of France—a country bordered to the east by Protestant states—would issue a ban on the printing of all books on pain of death.

  * In 1581 Jenks went to work for Robert Persons in London. There, he was betrayed and arrested and by April of that year he was back in Oxford gaol. On his release he fled abroad to Douai, where he became baker to the English College. He died in 1610.

  * Elizabeth was keen to devise a new method of execution for Babington, even worse than hanging, drawing and quartering. However, William Cecil advised that the hangman should simply delay the conspirators’ deaths for as long as possible, ‘protracting of the same, both to the extremity of the pains in the action, and to the sight of the people to behold it’. This decision was amended after the first batch of executions when the Crown expressed revulsion at the savagery.

  * Norfolk—England’s only duke and Elizabeth’s cousin—had placed himself at the head of the anti-Cecil faction at Court. Though no committed Catholic himself, he allied himself with the northern rebels; he also planned to marry Mary, Queen of Scots. These facts, plus his connection with Roberto Ridolfi, a Florentine banker whose chief interest in life, apart from the many legitimate financial dealings which kept him in London, was in stirring up an invasion of England, were enough to guarantee his execution for treason.

  * While Arundel House made for a highly dramatic location for Southwell’s new base, it is also possible that he spent some time at another of the Countess’s houses, near Spitalfields. Certainly, Spitalfields would have been a safer refuge, but sadly there is no evidence of precisely how he lived at this period.

  * Tyrrell, still incarcerated in the Clink prison, had had a hard time picking up any clues to Southwell’s whereabouts. One misguided attempt saw him bringing evidence against Southwell’s cousin, also Robert, recently knighted by Elizabeth. But on Friday, 4 November, he struck lucky, giving ‘information of one Mr S—, a priest that for certain did lie at the Lord Vaux his house, by which means Justice Young went himself thither in the morning and made a search’.

  * The dangers of intemperate publishing were
well illustrated by the case of Leicester’s Commonwealth, a vitriolic book, printed in Paris, that accused the Earl of Leicester of every vice under the sun. Its likely authors were Charles Arundel (a member of the Howard family) and Lord Paget: both Catholics, but, more importantly, both rabid anti-Dudleyites. It is certain, though, that Robert Persons was aware of what they were up to: when Ralph Emerson, the Jesuits’ assistant, travelled to England in 1584, he carried several copies of the book with him. On his arrest these copies were seized. Elizabeth was furious. She banned the book, saying ‘none but the devil himself’ could believe its lies. Soon the Jesuits and, in particular, Persons were being blamed for the work. It did little to further the English Catholic cause.

  * If the Supplication’s call for peace risked being unpopular, it was also an early acknowledgement by Southwell that the ending of the war with Spain was England’s Catholics’ best, perhaps only, hope of survival.

  * Religious tolerance was rejected as an ideal at this period. The 1598 Edict of Nantes, which allowed French Huguenots to worship in public, was more an armed truce than an essay in freedom, recognition by the French King that France’s religious wars must cease for the good of the State. It was condemned by the Vatican and by the Bishop of Geneva, who wrote to the Pope, ‘At bottom, it leaves everybody free to think wrongly and act accordingly.’ That same year the Jesuit Prefect of Studies at the English College in Rome, Father Henry Tichbourne, declared that England’s Catholics must never accept religious toleration, even if offered to them by the Government. Toleration, he wrote, ‘was so dangerous that what rigour of laws could not compass in so many years, this liberty and lenity will effectuate in twenty days’. William Allen regarded toleration as desirable only as the ‘next best’ thing to a full return to the Catholic Church. Robert Persons was a staunch opponent of toleration, reportedly commenting in 1597: ‘It has been seen that in England in the first 12 years when the Queen did not persecute Catholics there remained practically none, and with persecution the faith has come to be enkindled. In Germany it has been seen that with liberty of conscience heresy has increased.’ Only towards the end of his life did he shift his position, writing that Catholic princes might tolerate heretics ‘when they are so multiplied, as they cannot be restrained without greater scandal [and] tumult’. For those prepared to entertain any idea of toleration, and they were in the minority, liberty of conscience was a necessary evil rather than a demonstrable good, entirely at odds with the charitable Christian desire to save the world from the sin of heresy.