Interestingly enough, the powder was described officially as ‘decayed’. A cynical clerk in the Royal Ordnance might have reflected that the danger to the King and all the rest of them had not really been so great after all. This powder (unlike the wretched stuff which had burnt up the conspirators at Holbeach) would not have exploded anyway. The straightforward explanation for this failure in the Plotters’ arrangements is that the powder had once again separated in its elements – as had happened previously – and that Guido had simply not realised the fact (unless of course the ‘decay’ had taken place in the two days following 5 November). A rider to this, of a more Machiavellian nature, involves the Earl of Salisbury. One may question whether he really tolerated with equanimity the presence of a substance such as gunpowder in the vault at Westminster, in such large quantities and for so long. Perhaps a discreet search had established that the powder no longer constituted a real threat to anyone – except of course to Guy Fawkes himself by incriminating him.
Now that the government was so demonstrably on the winning side, an amazing quantity of people of all sorts, high and low, stepped forward to flag their loyalty by providing information. One of the first to do so was Lady Tasborough, mother-in-law to Agnes Lady Wenman, the bosom friend of Eliza Vaux. She thought it helpful to communicate the contents of that fatal letter of April which, it will be remembered, she had opened in her daughter-in-law’s absence. On 5 November itself Lord Chief Justice Popham was already able to communicate to Salisbury details of Eliza’s unfortunate prophecy – ‘we shall see Tottenham turn French’ – which proved that she ‘expected something was about to take place’. Popham’s comments on this were not encouraging for Eliza’s future. Since two Jesuits, Gerard and Whalley (an alias for Garnet), made Harrowden ‘the chiefest place of their access’, therefore ‘she may know somewhat’.35 All this was in advance of Henry Huddlestone’s capture and Eliza’s frantic efforts to free the priests, which scarcely improved her chances of eluding the attentions of the Privy Council.
Others rapidly discounted any connection to the traitors. There were, for example, those who stepped forward gratuitously to point out – in case there was any doubt – that they had not seen the conspirators for at least ten years. Where Catholicism was concerned, Ben Jonson reflected cynically that immediately after the Plot’s discovery there were ‘five hundred gentlemen less’ professing that religion. On 7 November, Jonson himself, uneasily aware of his known connection to the Plotters, came before the Privy Council. He had tried to contact an undercover priest who wanted a safe conduct in exchange for information but had failed to find him, in spite of the help of the (Catholic) chaplain to the Venetian Ambassador.
Two days later Sir Walter Ralegh (whose wife, Elizabeth Throckmorton, was a first cousin of Lady Catesby) utterly denied any connection with the recent treason, which he said he would have given his life to uncover. He recalled to mind his many services to his country, and desperately tried to distance himself from a plot which he termed ‘this more than devilish invention’. On the same day, the Earl of Dorset, father-in-law of Viscount Montague, asked him anxiously whether he had known anything ‘either directly or indirectly’ which would have stopped him coming to Parliament.36
All the while Guy Fawkes sweated in the Tower, first to resist his torturers, then to give them in some measure what they wanted – or at any rate enough to relieve his torment. So far as the evidence can be pieced together, he revealed his true identity on 7 November and said that the Plot was confined to five (unnamed) people. His important confession was that on 8 November.37 This confession named at last names, although it did not identify any Catholic priests. Nor for that matter did Guido incriminate prominent English Catholics or reveal the identity of the Protector, although he did talk at length about the plans for the proclamation of the Princess Elizabeth.
The third confession of 9 November, attested in front of Commissioners on 10 November, must be assumed to be the product of prolonged bouts of torture, growing increasingly severe.38 Guido named Francis Tresham at this point, although he ascribed to him a comparatively minor role, and he named the priest who had administered the Sacrament following the oath as Father Gerard (but Guido stuck to his point that Gerard had not known what was going on). It is quite possible that Salisbury was present at this session since Waad wrote to him, saying that Fawkes wanted to see him. At all events, one new revelation was exactly what Salisbury wanted to hear. Here at last as a result of torture was the name – or so Coke would pretend later – of the government’s bête noire, Hugh Owen of Flanders.
The signatures of Fawkes, declining in strength and coherence as the interrogation proceeded, provide, even today, their own mute testimonial to what he suffered (see plate section). The last ‘Guido’ – his chosen name, his name of exile – was scarcely more than a scrawl, and little helpless jabs of the pen beside it showed what it had cost Fawkes even to write as much as this.
* In 1215 Magna Carta, that cornerstone of English liberties, had expressly forbidden torture (Jardine, Torture, p. 48).
* It should be pointed out that England was not alone in the practice. The Spanish Inquisition – the ‘Holy Office’ – employed torture: this was one of the aspects of England’s hereditary Catholic enemy, Spain, which had aroused disgust and horror among the English, especially those merchants who might fall foul of the Inquisition, during the reign of Elizabeth I.
* There is a lack of documentary evidence to show conclusively where Guy Fawkes was held and tortured; traditionally he was held in the Bloody Tower, but tortured in the White Tower, in rooms below the present wooden (ground) floor; he may also have been held in a room, now vanished, in what looks like the thickness of the wall. Prisoners, in general, were tortured in subterranean areas and often held near by in advance to maximise the terror (Geoffrey Parnell, Keeper of Tower History, to the author; Yeoman Warders to the author).
* Torture was a judicial procedure that had been known among the Romans, when slaves were frequently subjected to it.
* There are various traditions at Huddington associated with this dramatic arrival: Gertrude Wintour is supposed to have stationed herself at her window, waiting for the messenger from London: if he waved his hat when he came into view, all was well, but if he rode with his head covered, all was lost. An inscription on a windowpane in the main bedchamber, ‘past cark [hope], past care’, may refer to Gertrude’s despair. ‘Lady Wintour’s Walk’ in the woods is said to be haunted by her restless ghost. (Huddington owner to the author; Hamilton, I, pp. 182–3.)
* According to local tradition, Stephan Littleton’s young groom, Gideon Grove, managed to mount a horse and break out of the courtyard in the confusion of fire and smoke; he got as far as some fenland near Wombourne where the soldiers caught and killed him. His ghost, as commemorated in a ballad by the nineteenth-century Rhymer Greensill, is said to haunt the spot as a ‘Phantom Rider’. (Black Country Bugle, October–November 1972; local information to the author.)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Fire and Brimstone
It may well be called a roaring, nay a thundering sin of fire and brimstone, from the which God hath so miraculously delivered us all.
KING JAMES
to Parliament, 9 November 1605
King James’ speech to Parliament on Saturday 9 November was a fine flowery piece of oratory. As the .discoverer of the Plot, he certainly blew his own trumpet royally.1 At the same time, he showed courage – he did after all believe that he had been the intended victim of an explosion only four days earlier. Even more admirably, James showed himself merciful towards the English Catholics who had not been involved in the Powder Treason as it did not follow ‘that all professing the Romish religion were guilty of the same’. The ‘seduced’ Papists could still be good subjects. He expressly mentioned the fact that the souls of some Catholics would be saved and criticised the harshness of the Puritans ‘that will admit no salvation to any Papist’.
Although th
is policy of mildness and conciliation faded, as the extent of the Jesuit priests’ involvement – their alleged involvement – was signalled by a vengeful government, it is as well to remember that the Powder Treason was in the early days seen by the King for exactly what it was: the work of a few Catholic fanatics.
Naturally King James recalled his own troubled history. Monarchs, ‘like the high Trees’, were subject to more tempests than ordinary mortals, and the King himself had suffered from more tempests than most monarchs: he had been first threatened ‘while I was yet in my mother’s belly’. Now God had miraculously delivered them all from ‘a roaring, nay a thundering sin of fire and brimstone’.
Then the King outlined the various unique elements which went to make up this particular treason. First, there was the sheer cruelty of the Plot itself which had threatened to destroy so many innocent people with no distinction made ‘of young nor of old, of great nor of small, of man nor of woman’. Considering the various ways of putting mankind to death, he had no hesitation in picking on fire as the ‘most raging and merciless’, because there was no pity to be expected and no appeal against it. (A man might pity his fellow man at the last moment, and in any case a defence could be mounted; as to the ‘unreasonable’ wild animals, even the lions pitied Daniel…)**
The second element was one on which some might have had other views. The King insisted that there were small grounds if any to justify the conspiracy – only religion, and that was scarcely enough. The third element was the truly miraculous one, and on this the King really let himself go. This was his own unequalled brilliance in discerning what was about to happen. Regardless of his own trusting nature – ‘I ever did hold Suspicion to be the sickness of a Tyrant’ – he had been inspired to interpret the Monteagle Letter as indicating ‘this horrible form of blowing us up all by Powder’.
The King solemnly told the assembled peers that he would have had one consolation if the Plot had succeeded. At least he would have died ‘in the most Honourable and best company’, rather than in ‘an ale-house or a stew’ (a brothel). Concerning the conspirators, he quoted another King, the Biblical David: ‘they had fallen into the trap which they themselves had made’. Moving on from the Bible to Ancient Rome he emphasised the need for thanksgiving. For if Scipio, ‘an Ethnic [that is, neither Jewish nor Christian] led only by the light of Nature’, had called on his people to give thanks for his victory over Hannibal, how much more necessary was it for Christians to express their gratitude! ‘The Mercy of God is above all his works,’ said the King.
In the House of Commons, the point was well taken. Sir Edward Hexter moved that the Speaker of the House ‘should make manifest the thankfulness of the House to God, for his [the King’s] safe Deliverance’. For the future, ‘they would all, and every one of them be ready with the uttermost Drop of their Blood’. Parliament was now once more prorogued – until 21 January 1606 – since, as the King pointed out, all their energies would be needed in the unravelling of the recent wicked conspiracy. The chosen day was, incidentally, a Tuesday, like 5 August 1600 and 5 November 1605. Since the King had twice been ‘delivered’ on this propitious day of the week, he thought it ‘not amiss’ that the experiment of meeting on a Tuesday should be repeated.2
Salisbury was left to write to the English ambassadors abroad an elaborate letter of explanation of what had occurred. These included Edmondes in Brussels, Parry in Paris and Cornwallis in Spain. Fortunately King James had taken pains in his speech to establish that the Catholic foreign powers were not suspected of complicity – ‘no King or Prince of honour will ever abase himself so much’. The government proclamation against the conspirators had indeed ended with the most slavish defence of the Catholic powers’ integrity: ‘we cannot admit so inhumane a thought as their involvement’. The way was open for these rulers to send back to London formal expressions of sheer horror at what had been so grossly plotted.3
Of course the powers and potentates revealed their own preoccupations. The Duke of Lerma, the Spanish King’s privado (favourite), while describing the conspirators as ‘atheists and devils’, hoped to hear that there were also Puritans ‘in the mixture’. Zuñiga, the Spanish envoy in London (he who had prudently lit bonfires and thrown money to the crowd on 5 November), believed that Thomas Percy had been in charge of the operation and that he was ‘a heretic’, in other words a Protestant, who was known to favour France over Spain. With equal conviction and equal inaccuracy the French King was quite sure that the Spanish ministers must have had a hand ‘in so deep a practice’.4
On Sunday 10 November, Salisbury, armed with Guido’s confession, was able at last to set in motion proceedings to extradite Hugh Owen from Flanders. Owen angrily rebutted the charge: ‘I would take my oath’, he wrote to Lerma in Spain, that he had known nothing about the conspiracy. The cautious Archdukes, worried by the lack of proof, contented themselves with putting Owen and his secretary under house arrest.5
Much more gratifying for the government was the sermon of the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Barlow, at Paul’s Cross on this same Sunday. It was to be the first in a long line of such exhortatory sermons on the subject of the Powder Treason. Described as ‘one of the ripest in learning’, Barlow had been part of the team associated with producing the Authorised Version of the Bible after the Hampton Court conference. Since he, like the King, would have been present in the House of Lords at the moment of the explosion, his awareness of his own narrow escape must have lent him a particular fervour. In any case Barlow, a man who had already given two sermons at Paul’s Cross, one praising Essex on his return from Ireland in 1596, and another justifying his execution five years later (with detailed instructions from Salisbury), had surely been primed over what to say.6
Yet again the party line was to vilify Guy Fawkes, and to see the Plot as the work of fanatics. In contrast to many, many subsequent sermons, the English Catholics were not attacked as such, just as King James had been careful to distinguish good Papists from bad. But the main thrust of Barlow’s sermon was an extraordinary panegyric of his sovereign in terms which made even James’ own self-glorification seem rather flat. The King was not only a ‘universal scholar, acute in arguing, subtle in distinguishing, logical in discussing’, he was also ‘a faithful Christian’: and so forth and so on, in what has been described as an evocation of the King as ‘something of a Christ figure’.7
An awareness of having had a narrow escape was not of course confined to the King and Dr Barlow. Queen Anne, that famously fruitful vine, found herself being congratulated all over again on her fecundity in every loyal address. Yet, in her case, once sheer relief – for she would certainly have been present at the Opening – had given way to a more sober consideration of the future, she could appreciate the shadows falling over her Catholicism. As James’ Queen Consort, she had attended Protestant services (although without taking the Sacrament); she had agreed to the baptism of the Princess Mary in the Protestant rite in May, while she herself had similarly undergone the ceremony of ‘churching’ (the purification of a woman after childbirth) in the Protestant rite. At the same time, she maintained her position as a closet Catholic – literally so, since her Mass had to be heard extremely privately in her own apartments.
This graceful ambivalence might not survive in the post-Plot atmosphere of England, and in fact Queen Anne was careful to evade meeting the emissaries of the Catholic powers. She declined to meet Baron Hoboken, envoy of the Archdukes, for two years, thanks to their laggard response to the Hugh Owen business. A convenient fever also caused her to cancel an audience with Zuñiga immediately after the Plot’s discovery, lest the Queen’s patriotism be suspect. When she did meet the Spaniard, towards the end of November, she spoke at length about her grief at the unfortunate plight of Catholics, and her desire to help them.8 But in the future her active Catholic sympathies found their expression chiefly in trying to secure grand Catholic marriages for her children.
Another member of the Royal Family who becam
e aware of her own escape as details of the Plot emerged was the nine-year-old Princess Elizabeth. When the alarm came from Warwick, she had been bundled off to Coventry, which was thought to be safer than Coombe Abbey. In her case, she had escaped abduction rather than death, but she made it clear to her guardian Lord Harington that what had been proposed for her by the conspirators would have been a fate worse than death. Lord Harington reported: ‘Her Highness doth often say ‘‘What a Queen should I have been by this means? I had rather been with my Royal Father in the Parliament-house, than wear the Crown on such condition’’.’ Not surprisingly, the shock of it all left the little girl ‘very ill and troubled’.9
If Queen Anne was justified in bewailing, however ineffectively, the unfortunate plight of the English Catholics, that of the conspirators was infinitely worse. Those at Holbeach – Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood and John Grant, all in bad physical shape – were taken first to Worcester in the custody of the Sheriff and then to the Tower of London. Meanwhile the bodies of Robert Catesby and Thomas Percy were exhumed from their midland graves by orders of the government, and their heads cut off. The intention was to exhibit the decapitated heads at the corners of the Parliament House which they had planned to blow up. (The blacksmith who forged the ironwork to make this possible was paid 23 shillings and 9 pence.) Among those who inspected these grisly relics en route to London was Lord Harington himself, who thought that ‘more terrible countenances were never looked upon’. He discerned a special evil mark on their foreheads, a description one suspects that he passed on to his royal charge to fuel her understandable fears still further.*10
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