The Gunpowder Plot

by Antonia Fraser

  There was, however, no mention of the conspiracy which would become the Powder Treason. Moreover, when Turner went on to Paris in October and passed papers to the English Ambassador there, Sir Thomas Parry, about ‘disaffected [English] subjects’ he still knew nothing of the projected ‘blow’. Parry, however, took his time in passing all this on. Turner’s report on the dangerous state of the stable door did not reach England until 28 November, over three weeks after the horse had bolted. In essence, Turner’s information belonged to a diffused pattern of invasion reports, rather than anything more concrete.28

  Nevertheless, Turner had picked up something, even if he had not picked up everything. In a report on 21 April, he related how Guy Fawkes – who was of course a well-known figure in the Flemish mercenary world – would be brought to England by Father Greenway (the alias of Father Tesimond). Here he would be introduced to ‘Mr Catesby’, who would put him in touch with other ‘honourable friends of the nobility and others who would have arms and horses in readiness’ for this July sortie.29 There are clear omissions here. Invasion reports had been two a penny for some time – as, for that matter, had unfulfilled plans for such an invasion, including those of Wintour and Fawkes himself. Apart from the specific lethal nature of the Powder Treason (which we must believe Turner would have relished to reveal, had he known it) Guy Fawkes’ alias of John Johnson is missing, which is an important point when we consider that he was not about to leave for England, but had been installed as Johnson in a Westminster lodging for nearly a year. Yet Turner had established Guy Fawkes, if not John Johnson, as a man to be watched and he had connected his name to Catesby’s – already known as one of the Essex troublemakers – and to that of Greenway/Tesimond. This information must have taken its place in the huge mesh of other reports which Salisbury received, even if its significance was not immediately realised.

  Turner’s alarm about a July invasion-that-never-was leads on to the far more crucial question of who knew about the Powder Treason in England. For it was in England, where the conspiracy was actually being hatched, that betrayal was infinitely more likely to take place.

  Who knew? First of all, there were the servants, that ever present body of the ‘inferior sort’, in the Privy Council’s dismissive phrase, which nevertheless all through history has had unrivalled opportunities for keyhole knowledge. The hierarchical nature of society meant that servants nearly always followed the views of their masters with fanatical loyalty, since they would probably be casually condemned for them anyway (witness the number of servants, like Robert Grissold of Lancaster, who died with their masters, the priests). Then there was that other body, the faithful Catholic gentlewomen of recusant England, the women already trusted with the lives of their pastors, the wives and close relations of the conspirators. There must be a strong presumption that, in whispers conducted in corners, in veiled allusions in innocent domestic correspondence, the news spread.

  At Easter 1605, a very odd incident had taken place involving Eliza Vaux which was never satisfactorily explained.30 (It goes without saying that the conspirators’ wives, notably the admirable Gertrude Talbot Wintour of Huddington, would deny having any scrap of foreknowledge, but with a family’s future at stake such a denial may not have represented the whole truth; what a wife knows privately about her husband’s plans is in any case unquantifiable.) Eliza Vaux herself was at this time properly concerned with her duty to marry off her eldest son Edward, 4th Baron Vaux of Harrowden, who was seventeen. Lord Northampton, who took on the duty of arranging a suitably worldly match, selected Lady Elizabeth Howard, one of the numerous daughters from the brood of his nephew the Earl of Suffolk and the avaricious but beautiful Catherine.

  Lady Elizabeth Howard was on paper an excellent choice. She was well connected due to her parents’ position at court and, like all the Howard girls, she was extremely pretty. It is clear from what happened afterwards that the young Edward Vaux fell deeply in love with her. Unfortunately the advantageous marriage hung fire, and Eliza Vaux, getting increasingly impatient at the delay, correctly assessed the reason. It was because she and her son were both considered to be ‘obstinate Papists’.

  Eliza had a close woman friend, Agnes Lady Wenman, who was the daughter of Sir George Fermor of Easton Neston, not so far away from Harrowden, and yet another cousin of the family (her grandmother had been a Vaux). Since her marriage Agnes Wenman had lived at Thame Park, near Oxford. Eliza Vaux expected to get a sympathetic hearing from Agnes on the subject of the delayed match, not least because she had influenced her friend in the direction of Catholicism during Sir Richard Wenman’s absence in the Low Countries, or, as that gentleman preferred to put it, Eliza Vaux had ‘corrupted his wife in religion’. Father John Gerard himself taught Lady Wenman how to meditate, and she began to spend up to two hours a day in spiritual reading. At Easter – 31 March – Eliza Vaux indiscreetly confided to Agnes Wenman in a letter that she expected the marriage would soon take place after all, since something extraordinary was going to take place.31

  ‘Fast and pray,’ wrote Eliza Vaux, or words to that effect, ‘that that may come to pass that we purpose, which if it do, we shall see Tottenham turned French.’ (This was contemporary slang for some kind of miraculous event.) What Eliza Vaux did not expect was that this letter would be opened in Agnes Wenman’s absence by her mother-in-law Lady Tasborough. The latter, who interpreted the reference as being to the arrival of Catholic toleration, showed the letter to Sir Richard. Even though he remembered the phrase slightly differently – ‘She did hope and look that shortly Tottenham would turn French’ – the hint of conspiracy was salted away in his mind. The letter itself vanished before November, leaving Eliza to take refuge in the traditional excuse of a blank memory. She claimed she had no recollection of the phrase or what she meant by it.32

  Tottenham did not turn French, and the compromising Wenman letter was exposed only by chance, aided perhaps by the malice of a mother-in-law. It conveys, however, in a private communication from one woman to another, an atmosphere of excitement and Catholic hope, even if its precise meaning remains mysterious. (But it is surely unlikely that the reference was to toleration, given the Anglo-Spanish situation.) How many other hints were dropped at this period can only be suspected, given that in the dreadful aftermath of 5 November such incriminating letters would, where possible, have been quickly destroyed.

  There was, however, a third body in England, beyond the mainly silent servants and the mainly discreet gentlewomen, who might on the face of it have known about the Plot and remained quiet on the subject. These were the hidden, watchful priests. At the beginning of the summer, Father Henry Garnet reported unhappily to Rome that the Catholics in England had reached ‘a stage of desperation’ which made them deeply resentful of the ongoing Jesuit commands to hold back from violence.33 At this stage, he too was acting on suspicion rather than direct information.

  Meanwhile, the secret Catholic community tried to maintain those rituals which were so precious to it. One of the chief of these was the Feast of Corpus Christi (the Blessed Sacrament) following Trinity Sunday, celebrated this year on 16 June. Although instituted comparatively recently in ecclesiastical terms, it had become a great feast of the late mediaeval Church, involving a procession, banners and music. All of these things were far more conspicuous, and thus difficult to conceal, than a Mass said in an upper room at 2.00 a.m. (a popular hour for the Mass, when it was hoped that the searchers would not intrude). This particular Corpus Christi was celebrated at the home of Sir John Tyrrel, at Fremland in Essex. Involving ‘a solemn procession about a great garden’, it was watched by spies, although the priests managed to get away safely afterwards.34 What the spies did not know was that a week earlier Father Garnet had found himself having a conversation, seemingly casual, yet uncomfortably memorable all the same, with his friend Robin Catesby.

  The conversation took place in London on 9 June, at a room in Thames Street, an extremely narrow lane which ran parallel w
ith the river west from the Tower of London. In the course of a discussion concerning the war in Flanders, Robin Catesby threw in an enquiry to do with the morality of ‘killing innocents’. Garnet duly answered according to Catholic theology. It was a case of double-effect, as Garnet propounded it to Catesby. In ending a siege in wartime ‘oftentime… such things were done’: that is, the assault which ended it would result in the capture of an enemy position, but at the same time it might cause the death of women and children. From Catesby to Garnet, there was certainly no mention of ‘anything against the King’, let alone gunpowder. As Garnet confessed later concerning Catesby’s enquiry: ‘I thought the question to be an idle question’: if anything, it referred to some project Garnet believed Catesby entertained, to do with raising a regiment for Flanders.35

  If we accept Garnet’s version to be the truth, then he was still in genuine ignorance of any specific design when Father Tesimond sought him out in the Thames Street room, shortly before 24 July. Oswald Tesimond was a lively northerner whose bluff appearance – his ‘good, red complexion’, black hair and beard – owed something to these origins. But Tesimond, who had been trained in the English College in Rome, after years abroad was now a sophisticated fellow, as indicated outwardly by the fact that his clothes were ‘much after the Italian fashion’.36 He had been back in England for about seven years. An intelligent and thoughtful man, he was a great admirer of the calm wisdom of the Superior of the English Jesuits, Father Garnet.

  What he now told Garnet could in no way be shrugged off as ‘idle’. For Father Tesimond had recently heard the confession of Robin Catesby. In a state of extraordinary distress, Tesimond now sought out his Superior in order to share the appalling burden of what he had heard. Like Catesby, he proposed to impart what he had to say under the seal of the confessional.

  * 1 January was not employed until 1752; although it is used in the dating of this narrative to avoid confusion.

  * It was a small market town of some fifteen thousand inhabitants as late as 1700 and began to develop only in the late eighteenth century.

  * The day before, letters patent were issued to transform Robert Cecil, currently known as Viscount Cranborne, into the Earl of Salisbury, the name by which he will henceforth be known.

  * The office of Protector was a familiar – if not exactly popular – one in English history from the reign of Edward VI who succeeded to the throne at nine; while Scotland under King James, crowned king at thirteen months, had needed a series of regents.

  * The diaries of Pepys, sixty years on, bear ample witness to the success of these enterprises: Westminster Yard was a favourite rendez-vous, where he shopped for prostitutes among other goods on offer.

  * The Palace of Westminster was redesigned in 1840 by Sir Charles Barry, following the fire of 1834. Fortunately William Capon, an enthusiast for architectural research, had made an elaborate survey of the old palace in 1799 and 1823, illustrating it with a map which was eventually acquired by the Society of Antiquaries (see plate section).

  * There can be no doubt that a substantial amount of gunpowder was placed in the ‘cellar’, as the recent publication of the official receipt for it, on its return to the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London, has demonstrated (Rodger, pp. 124–5).

  * With elements of potassium, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon and sulphur making it up, gunpowder ignited at between 550 and 600 degrees Fahrenheit.

  CHAPTER NINE

  There Is a Risk…

  There is a risk that some private endeavour may commit treason or use force against the King.

  FATHER HENRY GARNET

  in a letter to Rome, 24 July 1605)

  ‘I would to God that I had never heard of the Powder Treason,’ Father Garnet cried ‘very passionately’ eight months later.1 But from late July 1605 he had heard of it. The question was, under what circumstances, and with what obligations to those whom the conspiracy threatened? The revelation from Father Tesimond to Garnet provided one of the most anguishing aspects of the whole episode. Certainly Father Garnet’s secret knowledge was enough to make the rest of his life a torment, first of uncertainty, later of horrified certainty. When he first heard the news, however, it represented the nightmare scenario, which he had so long dreaded, come true – or threatening to come true.

  Father Tesimond makes it quite clear in his Narrative that Catesby had for some time been expressing his impatience with Father Garnet’s lukewarmness and ‘excessive patience’. The previous summer, they had all been together, the two priests and Catesby, sitting over a meal when Father Garnet took the opportunity to speak a few ‘grave words’ on the subject of the Pope. It was his ‘express order’ that the English Catholics should live in peace and leave the reconversion of their country to Providence. But Catesby refused to accept the message in silence. Instead, as they got up from the table, he referred pointedly to those who had grown weary of putting up with persecution. People were saying openly that such doctrines of non-resistance took away from the Catholics their spirit and energy, leaving them ‘flaccid and poor-spirited’. Making it clear that he was speaking for others as well as himself, Catesby said that the English Catholics were now in a worse situation than slaves, despised by their enemies as ‘God’s lunatics’.2

  Perhaps all of this could have been dismissed, or at least tolerated, as the outpourings of an active, frustrated, but fundamentally sound son of the Church. But Catesby’s final defiant remarks could hardly be construed in this light. Whatever the Pope’s words, said Catesby, people were asking whether any authority on earth could take away from them the right given ‘by nature’ to defend their own lives from the violence of others. It was a point of view, of course, with which Garnet profoundly disagreed. He continued to argue with Catesby – when he had the opportunity.

  Father Tesimond bears witness that the conspirator began to avoid Garnet’s company after their meeting so as not to receive this ‘prohibition’, which evidently made Catesby uneasy. In early July, Father Garnet, backed up by a letter from Aquaviva, went back to Fremland, where he found Catesby with his cousin Francis Tresham and his cousin by marriage Lord Monteagle. Yet again he preached against them ‘rushing headlong into mischief’. As a result, a compromise was reached by which it was agreed that Sir Edmund Baynham should go to Rome and present the desperate plight of the English Catholics. Father Garnet was under the impression that he had managed to avert disaster.3

  In late July – shortly before the Feast of St James, on 25 July – Father Garnet discovered that he had failed. He had learnt of the existence of a plan which was ‘a most horrible thing, the like of which was never heard of’. He had failed to prevent the inception of the conspiracy. Whether he could or would prevent the implementation of this plan remained to be seen.4

  Everything Catesby told Father Tesimond was under the seal of the confessional. It was afterwards strongly maintained by both Father Garnet and Father Tesimond that Tesimond also consulted his spiritual adviser (and his Superior) under the same seal. But what he had to say was likely to be long drawn out, as well as distressing in its content. In a fit of kindness, Father Garnet suggested that instead of kneeling, as would have been customary, Father Tesimond should continue his own confession as they walked together in the garden. It was one of those small gestures which seemed unimportant at the time but was to have terrible unforeseen consequences.

  Tesimond came ‘to confess and ask advice’; he also received permission in advance from ‘his own penitent’ (Catesby) to do so. As to the validity of the conditions under which Tesimond made his own confession, neither priest ever gave up on this point. The most that Garnet conceded – under appalling pressure – was that, if the consultation had not actually taken place ‘in confession’, nevertheless ‘he conceived it to be delivered in confession’.5 This, from the theological point of view, came to the same thing, since Garnet would then, in good faith, consider himself to be bound by the confessional rules.

  Catholic rules concernin
g confession were perfectly clear. Under canon law, all information received under the seal was privileged: that is, it could not be divulged under any circumstances (unless, of course, the penitent concerned gave permission). However, this rule would not apply to information received in a more generalised way, nor to a ‘confidence’, provided the seal itself was not invoked. According to Father Garnet, writing to Tesimond afterwards – who never contradicted him – Tesimond was unquestionably making a confession, not imparting a confidence, in spite of the unusual circumstances in which he made it.6

  It is extremely difficult for the non-Catholic mind – and even perhaps a Catholic one – to grapple with the question of Garnet’s foreknowledge, if it is put in the baldest terms. A priest hears in advance that Parliament is to be blown up, with appalling loss of human life; is he really to say nothing, and allow this horror to proceed?* The heart of the matter was what action Garnet should have taken thereafter. Catesby and his companions were terrorists – or terrorists by intention; their terrorism had its own internal dynamic by which it was either justified or not. None of that was anything to do with the priests, who neither then nor thereafter ever claimed any justification for the conspiracy and were genuinely appalled by it. Where then did their duty lie?

  Perhaps the correct priestly reaction was expressed most clearly by Father Garnet himself: ‘The confessor himself is bound to find all lawful means to hinder and discover the treason.’7 Even if Garnet could not use the knowledge specifically gained in the confessional, that did not mean he would have to remain passive and allow events to unfold.