The Gunpowder Plot

by Antonia Fraser

  Thomas Bates, Catesby’s servant, was taken prisoner in Staffordshire, and Robert Keyes, who had broken away from the Dunchurch meeting, was also caught. Sir Everard Digby, who had intended to turn himself in to Sir Fulke Greville at Warwick, was discovered by a small posse of pursuers with two servants concealed in ‘a dry pit’. Excited cries of ‘Here he is! Here he is!’ were met by the imperturbable reply of the gallant horseman: ‘Here he is indeed! What then?’ Since Digby did not intend to surrender to such small fry, he advanced his horse ‘in the manner of curvetting’ – that is, in an expert equestrian leap.11 He would have broken out of the encirclement had he not spied reinforcements of several hundred men coming up behind the posse. He then gave himself up to the most senior-looking man among them. These conspirators, also, were eventually taken to London.

  By December, only Robert Wintour, of the surviving comrades, was still at liberty. In London, Francis Tresham was arrested, following Guido’s denunciation on 12 November, and taken to the Tower three days later. Three leading Catholic peers, Lord Montague, Lord Mordaunt and Lord Stourton, who all had embarrassing connections to the abortive Plot, were also taken to the Tower. Lord Montague had not only briefly employed Guy Fawkes, but had probably been tipped off by Catesby not to attend Parliament; Lord Mordaunt was Keyes’ patron as well as being connected to him by marriage and had planned to be absent because he disliked the coming legislation; Lord Stourton was Tresham’s brother-in-law, and Guido had said he would have been detained from the Opening by some kind of accident. The prisoners in the Tower were joined on 27 November by the Earl of Northumberland, transferred from Lambeth.

  While plans for the intensive interrogation of the Plotters and their presumed allies were being worked out by the government in London, the English recusant community was suffering exactly that kind of relentless investigation which it had feared for so long. There was now no reason for the authorities to let sleeping recusants – and their priests – lie. On the one hand, further information about the recent wicked conspiracy must be sought, and on the other hand old scores might be paid off (there was always a degree of vindictiveness about the poursuivants’ action, nor were they above making a financial profit from it). The desire to make a good thing out of the Powder Treason was not however confined to one rank in society. One of the communications on this subject to Salisbury was that of Susan Countess of Kent who was quite sure – on no particular grounds – that a certain Mr William Willoughby must have been mixed up in the conspiracy. As a result of his presumed villainy, she suggested that she might have his £200 living in Suffolk.12

  White Webbs, in Enfield Chase, was searched on 11 November and found to have ‘many trap doors and passages’. Anne Vaux, alias Mrs Perkins, was of course absent and had been for some time, since Father Garnet judged the house too dangerous a refuge. But four servants were found there: James Johnson, who was about forty, Elizabeth Shepheard, the wife of the coachman, Margaret Walker, in her twenties, who had been in the service of ‘Mrs Perkins’ for three years, and Jane Robinson, aged fourteen, who was known as the ‘Little Girl’. While all admitted to being ‘obstinate Papists’, they denied at first that the Mass had ever been said at White Webbs.13

  Then the terrified Jane Robinson gave the game away. She said that there had been a Mass said within the last month but she could remember nothing about the priest except he was ‘apparelled like a gentleman’. Father Garnet, the alleged brother of Mrs Perkins, had been known as Mr Meaze there; and yes, in answer to questioning, he had had quite separate apartments from Mrs Perkins. This was probably intended to establish that Mr Meaze was in fact a priest, not a bona-fide brother of Mrs Perkins, whose true identity was not at this point known. But the question marked the beginning of officialdom’s prurient interest in the relationship of ‘Mr Meaze’ and ‘Mrs Perkins’, which would continue till the day of the former’s death, and cause him great pain. James Johnson was now taken up to London and held in the Gatehouse prison.

  The long-anticipated search of Harrowden took place over nine days beginning on 12 November. Father Gerard, an unseen, well-hidden presence throughout, was a veteran of such searches, and knew, like all the recusants, the importance of absolute attention to detail. Candles could not even be lit in the kind of dark hole where a priest was concealed, lest the characteristic smell of snuffed-out wax gave the game away. During one search, at Braddocks near Saffron Walden in the 1590s, Gerard had had to exist for four days on two biscuits and a pot of quince jelly which his hostess, Mrs Wiseman, happened to have in her hand as the poursuivants burst in and he was bundled away.

  At Harrowden, Gerard was able to sit down but not to stand up in his refuge. But on this occasion he did not starve, since this hiding-place contained one of Little John’s characteristic devices, a tube through which he could receive food. After about four days, Eliza Vaux distracted the attention of the authorities by prudently revealing a hiding-place which contained ‘many Popish books’ and other objects of devotion, ‘but no man in it’, said the disgruntled government report. The search let up a little after this. Thus Gerard could be brought out at night and warmed by the fire. On 21 November, the searchers finally departed, quite convinced that no one could have survived their inspection.14 Father Gerard was safe.

  By the time the search was abandoned, Eliza Vaux had already been taken away to London under arrest, and had undergone her first interrogation. She was, after all, in deep trouble already with her unfortunate letter to Agnes Lady Wenman and her ill-timed efforts to suborn Sir Richard Verney into releasing her friends. Even her father, Sir John Roper, who was Clerk of the Common Pleas, wrote her an angry letter of remonstrance over her behaviour. Now over seventy, he was determined not to die without acquiring the peerage he believed to be his due. All Roper’s succulent presents to Salisbury, including fruit, falcons, game and ‘a great standing bowl’, were likely to go to waste if his own daughter let the side down by recusancy. And maybe – with the news of this frightful treason – she had let the side down with something worse than that… But Eliza Vaux, as a widow with a cause, was perfectly capable of standing up for herself: as Sir Thomas Tresham and the late Lord Vaux had discovered.

  She responded to Sir John with equal indignation. In a letter addressed to ‘my loving father’ and signed ‘your obedient daughter’, she craved her father’s blessing, but the text between these conventional salutations was anything but submissive. Eliza professed her absolute amazement that her father could for one moment believe that she had had anything to do with the recent conspiracy. As it was, it would be another eleven years and a colossal amount of money expended before Sir John Roper finally got his peerage; he spent the last two years of his life gratifyingly entitled Lord Teynham.15

  In front of the Council, Eliza Vaux was equally spirited.16 She refused to admit a number of things. Most importantly, she absolutely refused to give way on the subject of Father Gerard’s priesthood. She swore she had not known that Gerard and the others were priests, since they looked ‘nothing like priests’; she had taken them for Catholic gentlemen. (This was a vital denial since the penalties for harbouring priests could include death.) She also absolutely refused to admit that Father Gerard had been or was now at Harrowden. She said she had no idea of his whereabouts, but, if she had, she would not give them away to save her own life or anyone else’s.

  One of the Councillors who had always been friendly to her – probably Northampton – now escorted her courteously to the door. ‘Have a little pity on yourself and your children,’ he said in a low voice. ‘And tell them what they wish to know. If you don’t you will have to die.’

  But Eliza answered in a loud, bold voice: ‘Then I would rather die, my Lord.’ Her servants listening outside the door burst into tears. Northampton’s words had of course been intended purely to cow her – which they did not succeed in doing – and Eliza Vaux did not die.

  She was put into the custody of an alderman, Sir John Swynnerton, in London, a
nd made to remain with him for many months until a plea to Salisbury got her bail. At this point Eliza cunningly manipulated the contemporary image of a female as both frail and indiscreet. How on earth could she have been entrusted with the details of the treason? Who would dream of putting ‘their lives and estates in the power and secrecy of a woman’?17 Her questions were wonderfully disingenuous for someone who had been breaking the law with courage and consistency for years. The truth was that the discovery of Father Gerard (or any other priest) at Harrowden could have destroyed her and her family, but the secret structures of Little John preserved them all. The only inevitable casualty was the match between Edward Lord Vaux and Lady Elizabeth Howard. Within two months, the girl had been married off to a grand old widower, forty years her senior.

  Eliza Vaux had handled herself and her secrets well. The wives of the actual conspirators were in far more parlous situation, from which bravery and bluff could not rescue them. Six wives, among other women connected to minor figures in the Plot, were brought up to London, and housed, like Eliza Vaux, by the City aldermen. Martha Wright Percy and Dorothy Wintour Grant, sisters as well as wives of Plotters, were in a specially fraught situation. Then there were Dorothy and Margaret Wright, wives of Jack and Kit, Christiana Keyes, the governess wife of Robert, and Elizabeth Rookwood (Martha Bates does not seem to have been rated worthy of arrest). Notification from the Sheriff to the government following these arrests drew attention to one poignant aspect of the wives’ removal to London. He had, he said, ‘taken care and charge of these women’s children until your honours’ pleasures be further known’.18

  The conspirators’ homes were searched and in many cases looted. Goods sought were seized at Ashby St Ledgers, although this was the property of Lady Catesby rather than of her son. Huddington Court was similarly treated. By 17 November, nothing of any real value was said to be left there, since so much had been taken away every day; although some devotional objects and books to do with the Mass were discovered in a hollow in the wall a few weeks later.19 Even John Talbot, Robert Wintour’s staunchly patriotic father-in-law, had his house searched and arms and papers removed. (These papers, not surprisingly, revealed nothing to do with the treason.)

  One of the most piteous situations was that of Mary Lady Digby. Brought up as a wealthy young woman, she found that great possessions now made her an outstanding target for rapacity. Gayhurst was ransacked. ‘Base people’ were everywhere. Even the servants’ belongings (which were certainly not forfeit) were simply transported away. The cattle and grain were sold at half price.

  As for Mary herself, the Sheriff would not let her have ‘apparel’ to send to her husband in the Tower, nor for herself ‘linens for present wearing about my body’ (underwear). In a desperate plea to Salisbury, Mary wrote that the Sheriff – who would probably make over a thousand pounds profit ‘underhand’ – was dealing in all the properties at Gayhurst ‘as though they were absolutely his’. As a result, she was utterly destitute, having nowhere for herself and her children ‘to abide in’ and nothing for their maintenance. Judging from the official records, it does not seem that Mary Digby exaggerated. The Sheriff himself wrote proudly: ‘All goods are carried away, even to the very floor of the great parlour.’20

  In the Tower of London, that fire and brimstone which had been so miraculously averted from Parliament was being brought down upon the heads of the erstwhile conspirators. Coke afterwards said that the interrogations had taken ‘twenty and three several days’ altogether (in a ten-week period), with a separate commission set up to examine the lesser folk – not only minor people who had become involved at Dunchurch but serving people and bystanders who could act as witnesses.21 The Lieutenant’s Lodgings, under the control of Sir William Waad, were used for the important interrogations. Waad, now in his sixties, had been made Lieutenant of the Tower in August. The appointment marked a long career of diplomacy and intrigue in the service of Salisbury’s father Burghley, and it was Waad who had first ransacked, then skilfully rearranged the papers of Mary Queen of Scots in 1586. It was also Waad, involved in the discovery of all the major conspiracies of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean times, who was responsible for the interrogations centring on the Main and Bye Plots of 1603. Significantly ‘that villain Waad’ was later accused by Lord Cobham of tricking him into signing a piece of blank white paper so that Waad could forge his confession. Like Sir Edward Popham, Waad had a vindictive dislike of Catholics beyond the call of duty, and as Clerk of the Privy Council had been ardent in the pursuit of priests and recusants.22

  In October 1608 he erected a monument to his work on the discovery of the Powder Treason, which ended by quoting, in Hebrew, the Book of Job: ‘He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death.’* Where the Catholics were concerned, bringing deep things out of darkness was certainly the aim of Sir William Waad.

  Only two of the ‘confessions’ which resulted from these numerous interrogations were ever made officially public. These appeared in the so-called King’s Book, printed for the general edification about the end of November.23 The King’s Book had a wide circulation, stimulating popular interest in the recent dramatic – and potentially horrifying – events still further. (Among those stimulated by it may well have been Shakespeare as he worked on his new play, Macbeth.) The two statements printed in the King’s Book were a version of Guy Fawkes’ original full confession of 8 November, revised on 17 November, and the confession of Thomas Wintour signed on 23 November. Otherwise, the state papers provide various versions of the numerous interviews, while Coke quoted from them, freely adapted according to the needs of his prosecution, at the coming trials.

  Was torture used once more? There was no further official sanction for torture given this year, other than the King’s letter of authorisation concerning Guido and ‘the gentler tortures’ already quoted. The eager recommendation to Salisbury by Lord Dunfermline, the Lord Chancellor of Scotland, that ‘the prisoners should be confined apart, in darkness, and examined by torchlight, and that the tortures be slow and at intervals, as being most effectual’, is no proof that Salisbury actually followed his suggestion, although it does indicate the kind of atmosphere then prevailing.* More concrete evidence of the use of torture is provided by a letter from Salisbury himself, dated 4 December. In a document which is difficult to interpret in any other sense, he complained of the conspirators’ obstinate refusal to incriminate the priests, ‘yea, what torture soever they be put to’.24

  It suggests that some at least of the Plotters had been subject to the manacles, or perhaps they had simply been shown the rack to terrify them: a method of interrogation which could be construed as needing no authorisation. The same technique may have been used over the trial of Ralegh. Coke denied that a certain witness had been threatened with the rack, answering smoothly: ‘we told him he deserved the Rack, but did not threaten him with it’.25 Since Salisbury and the government were now trying to entrap men who were innocent – the priests – in the same net as the guilty – the conspirators – they were no longer engaged in simply laying bare the truth. In order to achieve false or partially false confessions, torture and its threat might indeed be necessary.

  A candidate for torture may have been the young recusant Henry Huddlestone, who made a series of confessions about that fatal meeting on the road with Catesby, and his expedition thereafter with the priests. Father Strange, captured with him, was certainly tortured at some point (‘grievously racked’), although probably not until the next wave of interrogations in 1606.26

  Yet the first confessions, those of November, did not provide that precise, strong link between the priests and the Plot which would have been convenient for the government. In his declaration of 13 November (the day after his arrest) Francis Tresham, while generally exculpating himself, did implicate Father Garnet in the abortive negotiations with Spain of 1602 – the so-called Spanish Treason.27 This was helpful so far as it went, because the Spanish T
reason was otherwise a somewhat tricky subject for the government to handle. It was undoubtedly a treasonable venture, whether described by Wintour or Guy Fawkes, for it was certainly treason to seek the armed assistance of a foreign power in order to overthrow the existing government of England. However, times had changed and there was absolutely no advantage, and a great deal of possible disadvantage, in berating the Spanish King in the new warm climate following the Anglo-Spanish Treaty. To make the Spanish Treason a Jesuit-inspired enterprise was the tactful solution.

  In exactly the same way, the government were concerned to impose the names of their enemies Hugh Owen, Sir William Stanley and Father William Baldwin upon the conspiracy. Since the Plot already contained quite enough genuinely treasonable material, this imposition was for their own wider purposes. It has been noted that Salisbury had been quick off the mark in demanding the extradition of the detested Owen from the Spanish Netherlands. In the two published confessions of Guido and Tom Wintour, if collated with the various drafts and versions still in existence, there is evidence that these names were deliberately introduced. Salisbury let himself go about ‘that creature Owen’ in a letter to Sir Thomas Edmondes of 2 December. He instructed the Ambassador in Brussels carefully on the version of the Plot which must be spread among Owen’s friends. It should be ‘as evident as the sun in the clearest day’ that Stanley, Father Baldwin and Owen were all involved ‘in this matter of the gunpowder’. Furthermore, Baldwin, via Owen, and ‘Owen directly of himself’ had been ‘particular conspirators’.28

  In short, a Cold War was being conducted (and had long been conducted) with the Catholic intriguers across the water. This meant that matters of veracity were less important than the wider issue of ensuring Protestant success.