Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot

Salisbury said that the letter must have been written ‘by a fool’. This was a deliberate ploy, Salisbury explained afterwards. He wanted to be sure to get his master’s true reaction. Salisbury drew particular attention to the phrase ‘the danger is past as soon as you have burnt the letter’, which, he said, he found quite meaningless. It was his sagacious master – so experienced in the ways of conspiracies in both England and Scotland – who puzzled out the answer. James believed that something to do with ‘powder’ was being suggested – in other words an explosion.

Coughton Court was an appropriate setting for such a solemnity.² It had belonged to the Throckmortons since the early fifteenth century and had been extended in Elizabethan times into a spacious and beautiful house with its ‘stately castle-like Gate-house of freestone’, in the words of the seventeenth-century antiquary Dugdale. Coughton also commanded from its flat roofs amazing views of the surrounding countryside. This was a perspective which would be useful in perilous times of searches by eager poursuivants.

At High Mass on All Saints’ Day, in front of a great gathering of Catholics, Father Garnet preached a sermon on the theme of a Latin hymn from the Office of Lauds: ‘Take away the perfidious people from the territory of the Faithful.’ The government prosecutor, Sir Edward Coke, afterwards used this text to suggest that Garnet had ‘openly’ prayed for ‘the good success’ of the Powder Plot, four days before it was due to happen. Such a prayer supporting treason, declared Coke, counted far more than mere consent, which he suggested Garnet had also given. In fact Garnet’s correspondence around this time provides ample evidence of a concern for Catholic suffering which would justify the use of such a text. In October he wrote to Rome to say that the persecution was now ‘more severe than in [Queen] Bess’ time’, with the judges openly saying that ‘the King will have blood’. He later explained publicly that the text referred to the prospect of ‘sharper’ anti-Catholic laws in the coming Parliament.^‡³

The next day, 2 November, the Coughton party turned to the more melancholy rituals of All Souls Day, feast of the dead. This protracted sojourn of the Digby household at Coughton – Lady Digby and her small sons, of whom the elder Kenelm was only two – did not however pass unremarked. Also on 2 November, Father John Gerard came over to Gayhurst from Harrowden (presumably to say Mass). He was disconcerted to find the household vanished, with only Sir Everard remaining, making visible preparations for his ‘hunting party’. Father Gerard then had a long conversation with Digby in which he asked some searching questions. Was there ‘any matter in hand’? And, if so, did ‘Mr Whalley’ (an alias for Garnet) know about it?

Saturday 2 November was also the day on which the Council resolved to take some action on the question of the threat to Parliament reported to them by Salisbury. Various Privy Councillors came to see the King in his gallery in his Whitehall palace. They told him that it had been decided that the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Suffolk, should ‘view’ the Houses of Parliament ‘both above and below’. Yet, once again, urgency was scarcely the key-note of the proceedings. This expedition would not take place until the Monday, partly to prevent unlawful rumours spreading, and partly because it would be best to make the search ‘the nearer that things were to readiness’.⁵

This decision, along the same lines as Salisbury’s wish to let the Plot ‘ripen’, makes little sense if the Councillors were really in complete ignorance of what was being planned. By Saturday a full week had passed during which Salisbury and selected Councillors had been aware, thanks to the Monteagle Letter, that ‘a terrible blow’ might be struck at Parliament. To leave things as they stood for another forty-eight hours was recklessly irresponsible – unless Salisbury had taken his own steps to secure the safety of the building.

On Sunday evening, 3 November, Thomas Percy, back from the north, had a conference with Catesby and Wintour in London. By now Catesby and Wintour had been urged more than once by Francis Tresham to abandon their venture and flee because of the sinister omen of the Monteagle Letter. But Catesby would still have none of it. Percy, similarly resolute, declared himself ready to ‘abide the uttermost trial’.⁶

Events were now moving at such a pace that one cannot be absolutely certain what Catesby, Wintour and Percy discussed at this meeting. Guy Fawkes’ statement that after ‘sundry consultations’ it was considered easier to abduct the Princess Elizabeth in the midlands rather than the Duke in London ‘where we had not forces enough’ remains, however, more convincing. (As for the fourth royal child, Princess Mary, aged six months, Guido admitted her kidnapping was discussed – but they ‘knew not how to come by her’.) Sir Everard Digby’s departure for Dunchurch, south of Rugby, the next day reinforces Fawkes’ testimony. The point of Dunchurch, Digby stated later, was that it was only eight miles from where the Princess was housed at Coombe Abbey, so that she could be ‘easily surprised’.⁸

Monday 4 November, therefore, saw Sir Everard Digby and seven servants installed at the Red Lion in Dunchurch, near Dunsmore Heath, where the ‘hunting party’ was to take place.^§ He travelled as the gallant he was, taking with him not only servants but a trunk of clothes which included ‘a white satin doublet cut with purple’ and other satin garments thickly encrusted with gold lace. Digby was joined by his uncle Sir Robert Digby and two Littletons, ‘Red Humphrey’ and his very tall, very dark nephew Stephen. These men were not conspirators but they were recusants or had recusant sympathies (Humphrey Littleton, like Thomas Habington, had been among those who had tried to get a Catholic MP elected locally in 1604).⁹

At eleven o’clock on the morning of Monday 4 November, Thomas Percy appeared at Syon House, the great house on the Thames, to the west of London, which belonged to his patron the Earl of Northumberland. This foray, which would bring about the downfall of Northumberland, was actually a fishing expedition on Percy’s part. For all Catesby’s bravado and Percy’s own resolution, the Monteagle Letter could not be dismissed entirely. Percy decided to go down to Syon to find out what rumours, if any, had reached Northumberland (a member of the Privy Council). ‘If ought be amiss,’ he told Wintour and Catesby, ‘I know they will stay [detain] me.’ He used the excuse that he wanted a loan from Northumberland. Percy encountered his patron, talked to him, found to his great relief nothing out of the ordinary about his reception, and set off back to London about one o’clock.¹¹

The timing of this visit was extraordinarily damaging to Northumberland. It was characteristic of the ruthless and self-centred Percy, a middle-aged man without any of the impetuosity forgivable to youth, that he did not seek to protect the man who had treated him so generously. He might at the very least have avoided Northumberland’s company, but Percy did not even warn Northumberland to avoid Parliament next day, as his patron’s subsequent moves demonstrate.

Afterwards Northumberland desperately tried to exculpate himself. Unfortunately he was in the position of a man who, all unawares, has had an encounter with a plague-carrier – and finds out too late to avoid suspicion of having caught the plague himself. He remembered the conversation in the hall at Syon, denied that it had had any treasonable content whatsoever, declared merely that Percy had asked him ‘whether he would command any service’ before going on his way. Yes, he had sent a message after Percy, but that was purely to do with the audits of the northern properties for which Percy collected the rents.¹²

What Northumberland did not know was that Thomas Percy on his return to London also paid a visit to Northumberland’s London home, known as Essex House. There Percy saw his nephew Josceline, who was in the Earl’s service.¹³ No doubt Percy was also testing the waters at Essex House. But the double visit would ensnare Northumberland still further. As for Northumberland himself, he stayed at Syon till after dinner, when he sent for his horses to take him to London, where he would spend the night at Essex House. He had not applied for leave of absence from Parliament, and showed every sign of intending to go there – he had his servant bring up ‘the necessaries for Parliament’ from Syon – apart from one spasm of fatigue which passed.^‖ Even the King, in a handwritten note directed to Salisbury, afterwards drew attention to the innocence of Northumberland’s behaviour: ‘as for his purpose of not going to Parliament, he only said at dinner that he was sleepy for [because of] his early rising that day, but soon after changed his mind and went.’¹⁴

About five or six o’clock in the evening, Thomas Percy assured Wintour, Jack Wright and Robert Keyes that ‘all was well’. After that compromising visit to his nephew at Essex House, Percy went to his own lodging in the Gray’s Inn Road, where he left orders for his four horses to be ready for an extremely early departure the next day. Late that night Robin Catesby set off for the midlands, to take part in the rising, the vital second stage of the Plot, and it seems that Jack Wright, his faithful henchman, and his servant Thomas Bates went with him as well. This public display of armed rebellion was intended to rally Catholics everywhere to the cause. At 10.00pm Guido Fawkes visited Robert Keyes and was handed a watch which Percy had left for him to time the fuse. An hour later John Craddock, a cutler from the Strand, brought Ambrose Rookwood the finest of all the engraved swords with the words ‘The Passion of Christ’ upon them.

But Thomas Percy was quite wrong. All was not well. For the hunters who were themselves being hunted, the last stage of the chase was beginning.

Monday was also the day on which members of the Council, headed by Lord Suffolk as Lord Chamberlain, were due to make their long-delayed search of Parliament, ‘both above and below’. The official story told afterwards was of two searches, with a visit to the omniscient King in between. Nevertheless, Salisbury’s first report of these tumultuous events (to the English ambassadors abroad) mentioned only one search – and that around midnight. Salisbury, however, may have been at this point concerned to simplify, for the sake of foreign consumption, what was certainly a very elaborate tale.¹⁵ What is quite clear is how the search (or searches) ended.

Accepting the King’s version, Lord Suffolk made the first search on Monday, accompanied by among others Lord Monteagle, whom he sent for from Monteagle’s house in the Strand. Suffolk deliberately conducted himself in the most casual manner possible. He took care not to arouse the suspicions of a tall man standing in or near the cellar who appeared to be some kind of servant. In the words of the King, Suffolk merely cast ‘his careless and his rackless [reckless] eye’ over the scene. But his eye was not so careless that it did not observe an enormous amount of firewood – piles of faggots – heaped up in the cellar. Yet the lodging it served was quite small.

That was one surprise. The second came when the party was told by John Whynniard, owner of the house, that his current tenant was none other than Thomas Percy, kinsman and employee of the Earl of Northumberland.¹⁶ That made the unusual quantity of firewood even more astonishing, since Percy was well known to have his own house elsewhere in London and seldom slept at Westminster. The news also provoked from Monteagle a histrionic flash of revelation. Surely Percy must be the author of the anonymous letter? Monteagle told Suffolk that, as soon as he heard the name, he knew Percy must be his man. There was not only Percy’s ‘backwardness’ in religion, that is his Catholicism, which pointed to him, but there was also that ‘old dearness of friendship’ which Percy felt for Monteagle, to explain the warning.

Monteagle – and Salisbury – were of course bound to produce an author, or at least a suspected author, of the letter which they themselves had actually concocted. Percy’s was a convenient name: as tenant of the cellar, there was no question about his involvement in the conspiracy (all the details of which were not yet revealed). But, for the members of the Privy Council not in the know, the name of Percy was somewhat of an embarrassment. On the one hand they were anxious to secure the safety of Parliament. On the other hand, the whole matter – anonymous letter and all – might be ‘nothing but the evaporisation of an idle brain’. Percy’s connection to Northumberland, ‘one of his Majesty’s greatest subjects and councillors’, was well known. They would be ‘loath and dainty [reluctant]’ to interfere unnecessarily in such a way as to cast aspersions on such an august figure.

By this time the hubbub and commotion in the capital was swelling – not only in the Westminster area where the arrest had been made (and ‘John Johnson’ was being held in the King’s chamber) but also in the Strand neighbourhood of the great lords’ houses. These men were being turned out of their beds to fulfil their public responsibilities in a time of crisis. Thus Kit Wright overheard Lord Worcester, a Councillor, summoning Monteagle to go with him and ‘call up’ Northumberland. He rushed round to Tom Wintour at the Duck and Drake, crying ‘the matter is discovered’. Wintour ordered him to make a further check and, when the hue and cry at Essex House was confirmed, correctly deduced that Percy was the man they were seeking. Wintour then told Kit Wright to hasten to Percy’s lodging and ‘bid him begone’. According to his confession, Tom Wintour added: ‘I will stay and see the uttermost.’¹⁸

As news of the calamity which had befallen Guido spread among the conspirators still in London, a desperate dispersal commenced. Men fled on sweating horses, urged on by their panic-ridden masters. Fresh mounts would be needed along the way for in fleet horsemanship lay their only hope of eluding their pursuers. Kit Wright and Thomas Percy now went together, Percy dramatically saying to a passing servant as he went: ‘I am undone.’ At daylight Robert Keyes took to his horse. At this point Rookwood and Tom Wintour were the only conspirators left in London.^a Rookwood was the next to depart. He set out on an epic ride, thanks to his famous horsemanship and the unparalleled quality of his steeds he had arranged along the way (he managed to ride thirty miles in two hours on one horse: an amazing feat for both man and animal). As a result he overtook Keyes, who had only got as far as Highgate, and then Kit Wright and Percy at Little Brickhill, north of Dunstable in Bedfordshire. Finally he caught up with Catesby, Jack Wright and Bates further along the same road. It was thus Rookwood who broke the news of the disaster to Catesby, the man who had planned it all.

In the meantime Catesby and Jack Wright had had an encounter of their own, with a recusant who was returning from London called Henry Huddlestone. The young man’s father lived at Sawston Hall near Cambridge, but Henry, who was related to the Vaux family, had installed his heavily pregnant wife at one of their houses near Harrowden. The meeting was a most unfortunate chance from Huddlestone’s point of view, since although he was friendly with many of the conspirators – and had recently seen them in London – it is clear that he knew nothing of what was being plotted. But he now rode cheerfully along with Catesby and Wright. When Catesby’s horse lost a shoe at Dunstable and had to be reshod, Huddlestone stayed with him. It was not until they met up with Percy that Catesby bade Huddlestone ‘go home to his wife’.¹⁹ From the point of view of the authorities, however, Huddlestone had already been fatally contaminated by this short, innocent journey.

With Rookwood reintegrated into the group – which included Catesby and Bates, the Wright brothers and Percy – six of the Plotters now rode on together in the direction of Dunchurch. They were aided by horses sent out to them by Digby by prearrangement, Percy and Jack Wright throwing off their cloaks into the ditch to make for greater speed. At this point, however, Keyes hived off in the direction of Lord Mordaunt’s house at Drayton where he used to live with his wife the governess, and went to ground in the neighbourhood.

Catesby and his companions reached the family home at Ashby St Ledgers, on the road to Dunchurch, at about six o’clock in the evening. His mother Lady Catesby was at dinner, and Robert Wintour, who had ridden over from Huddington on his way to Dunchurch, was there too. According to Robert Wintour’s testimony, Catesby sent a message that he should join him in the fields, at the edge of the town, bringing his horse: ‘but that I should not let his mother know of his being there’. Robert Wintour duly kept the rendezvous. Catesby told him that ‘Mr Fawkes was taken and the whole plot discovered.’²¹

This was the reality of it all. It says something for Catesby’s courage, the fabulous misguided courage which had buoyed him up since the beginning of the whole mad enterprise and had acted like an elixir on his companions, that even now he had no idea of giving up. It was on to Dunchurch, where Catesby proceeded to persuade Digby, in the words of Milton’s Lucifer: ‘what though the field be lost, all is not lost’. Catesby admitted to the full dreadful details of the conspiracy, which, it is suggested, Digby did not know before. He admitted that the plan had been discovered and that they were all on the run. But, he stoutly maintained, they were still ahead of the game.

Even in his darkest hour, he fantasised of victory, Catesby announcing that the King and Salisbury were both dead. This must be their opportunity: ‘if true Catholics would now stir, he doubted not that they might procure to themselves good conditions’. To Warwick for arms! To Norbrook where their own armaments were also stored! To Hewell Grange, home of Lord Windsor! To Grafton Manor, home of Robert Wintour’s wealthy father-in-law John Talbot who would surely join them! Finally to the west and to Wales, where the restive Catholics would happily join with them …

The London which the conspirators had left behind was in a state of confusion and apprehension. In the words of a contemporary observer: ‘the common people muttered and imagined many things’, and, as for the nobles, they knew not what to say or who to exonerate (or who to suspect): for a time ‘a general jealousy possessed them all’. Running through all of this was a strain of wild if mindless rejoicing, for although it was certainly not clear who had been trying to do what and for why - except that the King had been saved from death – the crowd was not disposed to forego its traditional and exhilarating pastime of lighting bonfires in celebration. The Council made a virtue of necessity: there could be bonfires so long as they were ‘without any danger or disorder’.²³ So the very first flames in commemoration of ‘gunpowder, treason and plot’, flames that would flicker on down the centuries, were lighted on 5 November 1605.

The Council, with Northumberland present, met in the morning in an atmosphere of deepening perplexity concerning the Earl’s position. He left the meeting believing that no restrictions had been placed upon his movements, while many of the lords believed equally strongly that he had been advised to rest quietly in his own house for the time being.^b ²⁵

Northumberland’s man Thomas Percy was the only name known for sure to be associated with the treason, other than that of the prisoner ‘John Johnson’. Nothing illustrates the bizarre nature of this particular day better than two contrasting measures. On the one hand, someone sent off to Simon Foreman, the celebrated astrologer, to get him to work out the probable whereabouts of the fugitive, Percy. On the other hand, a search was put in hand for a collaborative Catholic priest who would persuade the prisoner Johnson that it was his duty to spill the beans.²⁶

Parliament met briefly in the afternoon. The entry in the Commons’ Journal for 5 November (crammed into a small space in the margin) was as follows:²⁷

This last Night the Upper House of Parliament was searched by Sir Thomas Knevett; and one Johnson, Servant to Mr Thomas Percy was there apprehended; who had placed 36 Barrels of Gunpowder in the Vault under the House with a Purpose to blow the King, and the whole company, when they should there assemble.

Afterwards divers other Gentlemen were discovered to be of the Plot.^c

As the conspirators scattered and the Londoners wassailed, ‘John Johnson’ was being interrogated.²⁸ He had so far given away nothing beyond the bare facts that he was a Catholic from Netherdale in Yorkshire and that his father was called Thomas and his mother Edith Jackson (this at least was true) and that he was thirty-six years old (he was actually thirty-five). Certain scars noted on his body – presumably wounds received during his time as a soldier – he claimed to be the effects of pleurisy. A letter addressed to Guy Fawkes, and found in his possession, he explained neatly away by saying that Fawkes was one of his aliases.

Guido’s composure was astonishing. Yes, he had intended to blow up the King and the Lords. No, he had no regrets – except the fact that he had not succeeded. ‘The devil and not God’, he said firmly, was responsible for the discovery of the Plot. No, he had not sought to warn the Catholic peers, he would have contented himself with praying for them. When the King asked ‘Johnson’ how he could ‘conspire so hideous a treason’ against the royal children, and so many souls which had never offended him, Guido did not attempt to deny the charge. He simply answered that a dangerous disease required a desperate remedy (an echo of Catesby’s original words to Wintour, which suggest that the comforting catchphrase had been in general use among the conspirators).

Guido even had the ultimate bravado to tell some of the Scots present that his intention had been to blow them back into Scotland: his xenophobia remained unswerving. From time to time during the interrogation he smiled sorrowfully at his examiners, and told them they had not authority to examine him.

This iron self-control even evoked the admiration of King James. He described the prisoner as seeming to put on ‘a Roman resolution’: he was so constant and unshakeable in his grounds for action that the Councillors thought they had stumbled upon ‘some new Mucius Scaevola born in England’, comparing him to a legendary hero of Ancient Rome, who intended to assassinate the city’s Etruscan enemy Lars Porsena, but slew the wrong man by mistake. Captured and hauled in front of Lars Porsena, Scaevola deliberately held his hand over the fire and let it be burnt off without flinching, in order to demonstrate that he would not give way under torture. In the legend, Lars Porsena was so impressed by Scaevola’s endurance that he ordered his release and made peace with Rome.

The fate of Guy Fawkes, whatever the King’s respect for his fortitude, was to be somewhat different.

^* These and the following details are taken from King James’ own account, published in the so-called King’s Book (printed as King’s History in S.T., II, pp. 195–202). We therefore have his point of view, but Salisbury’s point of view, of course, only in so far as he communicated it to the King.

^† When this hole was broken into in 1858, a palliasse bed, a rope ladder, a small piece of tapestry and a folding leather altar were discovered within. Coughton Court is today leased to the National Trust, although the direct Throckmorton descendants are still closely involved with it. Coughton is proud of its connection to the Gunpowder Plot: a special exhibition has been mounted to commemorate it.

^‡ Father Garnet has been called ‘unwise’ for using such a text (although it formed part of the Office of Lauds for that day): but it is likely that whatever text he used for a sermon so close to the chosen date of the Powder Treason would have been twisted in some way by the government (Anstruther, Vaux, p. 281).

^§ The Red Lion at Dunchurch is now a private residence, known as Guy Fawkes House.

^‖ There were ten bishops and forty peers eligible to sit in the House of Lords, of whom twenty-nine had appointed proxies; but Northumberland was not among them (Anstruther, ‘Powder’, p. 457).

^a No one seems to have thought of contacting Francis Tresham, who since his vain pleas that the action be abandoned was evidently no longer regarded as part of the conspiracy.

^b Possibly Northumberland’s deafness was responsible for this unfortunate mix-up at such a manifestly delicate moment in his fortunes.

^c The original entry has been framed and today hangs in the ‘Noes’ voting lobby of the House of Commons, commemorating what might well have been the most dramatic day in Parliament’s history. There is always a large circle of curious tourists and schoolchildren round it at times of public access (see this page).

XI

Mr Fawkes Is Taken