The Gunpowder Plot

by Antonia Fraser

  PART ONE

  Before the Fruit Was Ripe

  It were very small wisdom… for pulling of unripe fruit to hazard the breaking of my neck…

  KING JAMES

  to the Earl of Northumberland

  CHAPTER ONE

  Whose Head for the Crown?

  Thus you see this crown [of England] is not like to fall to the ground for want of heads that claim to wear it, but upon whose head it will fall is by many doubted.

  THOMAS WILSON

  The State of England, 1600

  We now step back from the light of the new reign into the shadows of the 1590s: for that is where the story of the Gunpowder Plot begins. It is necessary to do so in order to explain how these significant Catholic expectations – the joyous ‘Papist’ welcome given to James I – came to be aroused.

  The end of the sixteenth century was an uneasy time in England. Harvests were bad, prices were high. As the Queen grew old, men everywhere were filled with foreboding about the future. The execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587 had removed one focus of Catholic plotting; yet the departure of Queen Mary as a candidate did nothing to simplify the complicated question of the English succession. That subject which Elizabeth would not have publicly discussed was nevertheless secretly debated high and low, in England, in Scotland, elsewhere in Europe, throughout the last fifteen years of her reign.

  Furthermore, the launching of the Spanish Armada against England the year after Queen Mary’s death, with other armed Spanish intrusions during the decade, aroused an understandable paranoia on the subject of Spain and its Catholic monarch Philip II. In 1602 a play called Alarum for London recalled to audiences the sacking of Antwerp twenty-five years earlier. Two small children ran on to the stage in a state of terror pursued by ‘Spaniards’ with drawn swords shouting ‘Kill, kill, kill!’1 From the Spanish point of view, the support which the Elizabethan government gave to the Protestant rebels in the Spanish-controlled areas in the Low Countries was intolerably subversive, given that England was geographically so well placed to make threats. But, as the English saw it, the narrow seas which divided England from the Low Countries could just as easily be crossed in the opposite direction by doughty Spaniards shouting ‘Kill, kill, kill!’ These same Spaniards might bring with them a Catholic monarch to succeed – or even replace – Elizabeth.

  The reaction of the average English Protestant to Spain was well summed up by one of Cecil’s agents resident there. It was, he wrote, an ‘ill-pleasing country where a virtuous mind takes small delight, unless it be by learning to abhor vice by continually beholding the hideous face thereof’.2 Of course English merchants continued to trade merrily with Spain, as merchants of all countries and all periods have defied ideological boundaries in the uplifting cause of commerce. Nevertheless, they shuddered, and with some reason, at the hovering vulture of the Spanish Inquisition, ready with its cruel claws to tear fine freedom-loving English Protestants to shreds.

  In this context the unresolved subject of the English royal succession and the possibility of a Papist monarch proved a fertile field for anxiety, speculation and intrigue. Four hundred years later it is all too easy to suppose that the accession of James VI of Scotland, to be transformed into James I of England, was not only inevitable, but widely known to be inevitable, following the death of his mother.*3 The truth is very different. The wise saying of the historian F. W. Maitland – that we should always be aware that what now lies in the past, once lay in the future – has never been more relevant.

  A quick glance at the Tudor family tree (see p. xii) might seem to indicate that after the death of Elizabeth – the last of Henry VIII’s offspring, all of whom were childless – the crown would straightforwardly pass to the descendants of Henry’s sisters, Margaret and Mary, with the descendants of Margaret (the elder sister) having first claim. Alas, nothing was quite that simple.

  The first complication was caused by the will of Henry VIII which had specifically barred the descendants of Margaret, who had married James IV of Scotland, from the throne on the ground that they were foreigners (that is, Scots). This meant that in the 1590s Queen Margaret’s two greatgrandchildren, James of Scotland and Lady Arbella Stuart, descended from her second marriage to the Earl of Angus, had no legal claim to the throne. It was true that Arbella had actually been born in England and brought up there by her formidable maternal grandmother, Bess of Hardwicke, which perhaps annulled her ‘foreign’ descent. Unfortunately, Queen Margaret’s marriage to Angus, in the lifetime of his first wife, had been of highly dubious validity.

  What then of the descendants of Henry VIII’s other sister, Mary? These were comparatively numerous for the unphiloprogenitive Tudors, all born, as well as living, in England. Regrettably, dubious marriages abounded here too, beginning with that of Mary herself to the Duke of Suffolk. Then Queen Elizabeth heartily disliked many of the Suffolk descendants. Perhaps that in itself would not have been a fatal handicap (sympathy for a putative successor was not a hallmark of the Queen’s style – she detested Arbella Stuart and once described James as ‘that false Scots urchin’).4 But it must be said that in this case the senior grandchildren of the ravishing Mary and the virile Duke of Suffolk were a sorry lot.

  Was the disagreeable, pushy Lady Catherine Grey or the dwarf Lady Mary Grey – she was under four foot tall – to sit upon the throne of ‘Great Harry’s daughter’, as Elizabeth persistently described herself right up to the end of her life? It was also the throne of Astraea, Cynthia, the Virgin Queen, to quote other numinous titles Queen Elizabeth had gathered to herself. Fortunately, from Elizabeth’s point of view, Lady Catherine died in the 1560s and Lady Mary ten years later. The latter had married far beneath her, a Sergeant Porter, and had had no children. But Lady Catherine left behind a legacy of trouble, with a secret marriage to Edward Seymour Lord Hertford that was probably not valid and a couple of sons of dubious legitimacy.

  The Queen’s continuing resentment of this branch of the family was fully displayed when she sent Catherine Grey’s son Edward Seymour Lord Beauchamp to the Tower in 1595 for trying to prove that he was in fact legitimate. Beauchamp was not a particularly impressive character. Ferdinando 5th Earl of Derby, who descended through his mother from the junior Suffolk branch, was, however, a great territorial magnate, a man of noble stature as well as noble blood. There might have been something to be said for Lord Derby as a contender. But Derby himself showed no interest in pressing his claim; to do so, he believed, would be ‘treasonous’.5 He died in 1594, leaving only daughters. His royal rights, such as they were, passed to the eldest, Lady Anne Stanley, born in 1580 and thus a young woman of notionally marriageable age in the mid 1590s.

  All of this meant that neither of Henry VIII’s sisters – the direct Tudor line from Henry VII – provided potential successors with an untarnished claim to the throne. But if the English field was thrown wide open there were of course numerous noble houses in whose veins flowed a trickle of royal blood from previous dynasties, not least that of Edward III. These included the families of Huntingdon, Barrington and Rutland via Edward’s fourth son, Edmund of York, as well as the Staffords, and the Earls of Essex and Northumberland via a younger son, Thomas of Woodstock. Such claims might seem remote: and yet English history had seen some remote claims to the throne succeed before now, notably those of Henry IV and Henry VII, and perhaps would do so again.

  *

  The Catholic point of view on the succession was equally complicated, but seen from the other side of the looking-glass. To begin with, Elizabeth herself was considered a bastard by foreign Catholics. (Neither Henry’s divorce from Queen Catherine of Aragon nor his subsequent marriage to ‘La Concubina’ Anne Boleyn was recognised by the Pope.) Queen Elizabeth was understandably extremely sensitive on this issue, which for her raised questions of security – and English Catholic loyalties. As she herself pointed out concerning ‘their chief pastor’ the Pope, he had ‘pronounced sentence against me while yet I was in my mot
her’s womb’.6

  That was bad enough. But in 1570 Pope Pius V had gone much further. In a bull Regnans in Excelsis, which was to have a catastrophic effect on the fortunes of English Catholics, he formally excommunicated the English Queen and released her subjects from their allegiance to her. However, the news of the Bull spread slowly if at all among the ranks of Elizabeth’s humbler subjects, whose problems maintaining their religion to any degree were of a different nature.7 Yet, if the Bull’s commands were to be obeyed, Elizabeth could actually be deposed at the Pope’s behest. She could even arguably – and there was indeed much argument on the subject – be assassinated as a kind of sanctified vengeance. In short, excommunication was a fearful weapon, but it was also a double-edged one. It might threaten Elizabeth with deposition or even death. But it also incised the message that all English Catholics, however lowly, however obedient, were potential traitors to their country at the orders of ‘their chief pastor’.

  In the 1590s, when efforts to dislodge Elizabeth by Spanish invasion had failed, the Pope and the other Catholic powers began to look beyond her lifetime just as the English themselves were surreptitiously doing. A Catholic successor to replace Mary Queen of Scots as a figurehead of the True Religion now became the desired aim. At this point the genealogical net was cast extremely wide, to an extent which seems extraordinary to the modern mind, but was much more plausible in the late sixteenth century. The concept of a sovereign was essentially that of a human being with the appropriate grandezza – majesty – which Queen Elizabeth knew so well how to display. In this way, mightiness of royal command could finally count for more than nearness in royal blood. This, at any rate, was what the Catholic apologists, trawling for candidates, found themselves arguing.

  In this connection The Book of Succession, published in 1595, was a seminal work.8 It was allegedly by one R. Doleman, but the actual author was the leading English Jesuit (resident in Rome) Father Robert Persons. The book had the effect of infuriating King James of Scotland. He was also genuinely alarmed. Its preamble declared ‘by many proofs and arguments’ that a candidate’s position as the nearest successor ‘by ancestry of blood’ was still not enough to guarantee him (or her) the crown. There had to be ‘other conditions and requisite circumstances’ in favour of his (or her) succession: this implied a paramount need for a strong Catholic monarch. James, a Protestant, clearly did not satisfy such conditions.

  The Jesuit in his book brought into play such dignitaries as the Dukes of Parma and Savoy. Both these princes were of course Catholics, descended in the Lancastrian line from John of Gaunt, yet another son of Edward III. In the fashion of the time, it was understood that their somewhat remote claim could be reinforced by suitable marriages. In a sense, the Duke of Savoy had already done so, by marrying a daughter of Philip II who shared his Gaunt descent. When his wife died in 1597, the Duke became once more in royal terms an eligible bachelor, and there were suggestions that he might marry an English royal contender such as Lady Arbella Stuart or even Lord Derby’s daughter Lady Anne Stanley. These names were also mentioned in connection with the Duke of Parma.

  But the most desirable candidate according to The Book of Succession was the favourite daughter of Philip II, the Archduchess Isabella. First, she shared the ubiquitous Lancastrian blood of John of Gaunt. Secondly, through her mother, a French princess descended from the Dukes of Brittany, she could advance an even more ancient claim. This was based on the pledge of feudal allegiance made by William the Conqueror of England five hundred years earlier to the Dukes of Brittany. Such daring excursions into the remote mists of royal history were, however, of much less importance than the fact that Isabella was a powerful Spanish princess, married to another Habsburg, the Archduke Albert of Austria.

  To press the claims of Isabella meant of course advancing the cause of Spain. But the Catholic elements in Rome and elsewhere, who were more favourable to France than Spain, were hardly happy at such a development; any additional dimension to the Habsburg Empire worried them. Even the name of the French King, Henri IV, was introduced as a possible contender for the English throne, more because the French were in constant fear of encirclement by Spain than because they believed in his English blood.9

  For all such challenges, the Archduchess Isabella had a great deal of genuine Catholic support to succeed Queen Elizabeth. This remarkable woman came of a long tradition of able and admirable Habsburg princesses who acted as deputies for menfolk sometimes less accomplished than themselves. Isabella Clara Eugenia was born on 12 August 1566 (she was two months younger than King James). She was named by her mother for St Eugenia, to whom the Queen had prayed; for St Clara, whose feast day it was; and for her great ancestress Isabella of Castile.10 Perhaps the latter was the greatest influence, for Isabella displayed many of the same traits.

  She was in her late twenties, still unmarried, when she came to the English Catholic seminary at Valladolid with her father, Philip II, and her half-brother, the future Philip III. Father Robert Persons raved over the entire family. The Spanish King was compared to Constantine the Great, and his children to Constantine’s offspring Constans and Constantia, but Isabella in particular took his fancy: ‘nay, the Infanta seemed to resemble not only the piety of Constantia, but even the very zeal, wisdom, fortitude and other virtues of our country woman St Helena herself’.* Philip II was said to love Isabella with a special tenderness in memory of her mother, the wife he had adored, who died young. But even without the aid of sentimental recollection, Isabella was well equipped to be a father’s favourite, being not only beautiful (in youth) but also clever enough to be Philip II’s intellectual companion.

  Isabella’s celebrated piety did not prevent her having a strong practical streak which made her the generous patron of religious women, founding convents with a lavish hand. She became a benevolent helper of young English Catholic women in the Low Countries fleeing from the harsh religious laws of their own land. ‘I will be a mother to you,’ she said, arranging a vast banquet in their honour. But the Archduchess also knew how to enjoy the life of a royal. She made herself popular by attending national festivities and even confessed engagingly to a taste for wine. ‘I am such a drinker,’ she remarked on one occasion in Basle, accepting a glass. And she was an excellent horsewoman, not only presenting prizes but taking part in competitions.11

  Her stamina showed itself when her father decided, shortly before he died, to appoint her as joint Regent of the Spanish Netherlands with her husband (and first cousin) the Archduke Albert. Isabella herself was well over thirty when she married, while Albert was nearly forty and had to be released from the religious vows he had taken in order to make this marriage of state and convenience. He was a serious, scholarly man who unlike Isabella was slow to laugh and relax; but the formal Habsburg mask concealed a kind heart and decent instincts.

  Both Albert and Isabella took to their task with zest: indeed ‘the Archdukes’ as they were generally known (just as Ferdinand and Isabella had been known as ‘the Catholic Kings’) might be said to have gone native in Flanders. They quickly came to sympathise with the problems of the independent-minded population there, rather than with those of Mother Spain, creating in the process what has been described as an ‘embryonic national identity’ which would reappear in modern Belgium.12 Isabella was generous, gracious and good. Her youthful beauty, which had been the pride of the Spanish court, had faded and she had become rather stout. Nevertheless she bore herself with great dignity. In short, here was a princess who in her person and her quality was, unlike the feeble English Greys, well suited to occupy the throne of ‘Great Harry’.

  There were, however, a number of difficulties. An obvious one was that Isabella Clara Eugenia was a foreigner, a member of the Spanish race so detested by many righteous Englishmen. Yet although it was true, as the Archduke Albert observed, that there was a ‘universal desire of all men to have a King of their own nation’, this desire was not always fulfilled.13 Once again, we must beware of hi
ndsight. We must remember that European royalties frequently did come to occupy foreign thrones.* Furthermore, James himself, as a Scot, was also considered to be a foreigner. English prejudice against the Scots, although riddled with contempt rather than fear, was equally vituperative (it could be argued that contempt for a potential monarch was more of a drawback than fear).

  As a potential Queen of England, however, Isabella did suffer from two distinct disadvantages. First, there was the question of her sex, given the disenchantment with female rule which grew towards the end of Elizabeth’s life. Secondly, like Elizabeth, she was childless. Her inability to bear children seems to have been known or suspected in advance of her marriage to Albert.14 The elaborate provisions drawn up for the rule of ‘the Archdukes’ in the Spanish Netherlands – by which they were not exactly independent of Spain, but not entirely dependent upon it either – laid down that Flanders was to return to the Spanish crown if the Archdukes had no issue (and, if there was a child, it was to marry back into the Spanish royal family, which came to the same thing). Certainly by 1603 it was generally known among European royalties that ‘so great a lady’ had to endure the sorrow of ‘not enjoying the sweet name of mother’. The prospect of another disputed succession on Isabella’s death – or, worse still, direct domination by the Spanish crown – was a nightmare. In brief, Isabella would never be more than ‘a temporary solution’.15

  The third and perhaps most potent disadvantage was the ambivalent attitude of the Spanish Habsburgs themselves. Philip II had resigned his so-called rights to the English throne to his daughter as early as 1587 (he imagined these rights had been consigned to him in her last testament by Mary Queen of Scots). In the period leading up to Elizabeth’s death, Philip’s indecisive son Philip III never quite made up his mind what line to pursue on the subject and nor did his Council. Yet some official line had to be pursued, and official military support given, if a claim which was so genealogically vague was to be enforced.