The Gunpowder Plot (History/16th/17th Century History) (17 page)

Then yield thee, coward,

And live to be the show and gaze o’ the time

We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,

Painted upon a pole (V. viii, 23–6)

The planned atrocity was widely regarded as so brutal in design and evil in its scope that a demonic element was certain; ‘night’s black agents’ gave it a wild impetus. The association of evil with darkness is a very old notion ‘but it became the universal thought of England in the winter of 1605–6’. Lancelot Andrewes: ‘In darkness they delighted, dark vaults, dark cellars, and darkness fell upon them for it’. In many contemporary prints this ‘foul and filthy air’ is pierced dramatically by a shaft of light from Heaven. Satanic meddling was not invented by James for polemical purposes, nor for the gratification of massaging his own vibrant sense of self-importance. It was an opinion fully shared by the principal judges of the Scottish bench and by privy councillors.
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It was a traditional view taken of earlier plotters like Bothwell and Gowrie, for James ‘regarded himself and his like as capital objects of dispute between the forces of evil and of good’. A letter from the privy council of Scotland sent to James in November confirms their state of mind: ‘Since the glad tidings came to us of your Majesty’s happy delivery from the abominable conspiracy so inhumanly contrived by the devil and his supporters against your royal person, the Queen and your Majesty’s children.’ On 26 November there was a Proclamation to the Fencibles of Scotland to be prepared to defend James, and it contains the following: ‘this detestable plot which without the concourse of all the devils and malignant spirits within the precinct of this universe, their supporters and deputies upon the face of the earth, could never have been excogitated.’

Despite the bristling sense of horror and terror – it was in a sense a grand succession crisis averted – and James in his twenty minutes 9 November speech to Parliament affirmed that ‘these wretches thought to have blown up in a manner the whole world of this island’, there was no pogrom aimed at the Catholic community. This is a fact that Catholic historians distressed by the ignoble purpose of Catesby and company always whizz over in silent disbelief. Restraints of law, albeit a little stretched, remained and James himself kept his head as far as the papist minority were concerned. When he did mildly broach the idea of sending Prince Henry to Scotland for safety, there was a collective sharp intake of English breath and some mutterings of censure.
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Salisbury’s view of the laws certainly remained unchanged as he told Nicolò Molin that year. It was logical, cool and disciplined: ‘their object [the laws] is undoubtedly to extinguish the Catholic religion in this Kingdom, because we do not think it fit, in a well-governed monarchy, to increase the number of persons who profess to depend on the will of other Princes as the Catholics do . . .’ When a Catholic wrote accusingly to Salisbury in 1606 ‘We know no other means left us in the world, since it is manifest that you serve but as a match, to give fire unto His Majesty . . . for intending all mischiefs against the poor distressed Catholics’, the earl responded that he was not an enemy of the faith itself. Nor importantly did he hold that all of them in England harboured vast reserves of treasonable thoughts. He observed ‘how little assistance was given to these late savage Papists’. He would avoid persecuting Catholics as such, but held his ground on everything else.

Nicolò Molin’s uncensored despatches are helpful in establishing the mood of the nation, on the brink of a collective nervous breakdown, after this great provocation.

The King is in terror; he does not appear nor does he take his meals in public as usual. He lives in the innermost rooms with only Scotchmen [
sic
] about him . . . Catholics fear heretics and vice versa . . . both are armed; foreigners live in terror of their houses being sacked by the mob which is convinced that some, if not all foreign princes, are at the bottom of the plot. The King and council have very prudently thought it advisable to quiet the popular feeling by issuing a proclamation in which they declare that no foreign Sovereign had any part in the conspiracy.

Whether they actually thought this is another matter and their effort to establish the evidence either way had to be undertaken with alacrity. While they did this probe it was certainly prudent to place guards about the residences of foreign diplomats to prevent outbreaks of public wrath, an effort that had the additional attraction of possibly stemming the seepage of evidence. At this time we know the French were regarded with a lively animosity. As Molin noted in the same despatch: ‘The conduct of the French ambassador is much criticised . . . because he would not wait for the letters the Queen was writing for France. He insisted on crossing on Monday [4 November] evening though the weather was bad . . . his passage was both troublesome and dangerous. They argue from this that the Ambassador, if he had not a share in the plot, at least had some knowledge of it . . .’
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The remarked failure of Henri IV to meet Beaumont is far from conclusive, but it is intriguing. And was there then a widely held view in French government circles that the whole plot was a fable, as one report from Paris robustly claimed? It seems unlikely, especially as the report emanated from Dudley Carleton, who was far from neutral in his news reports, unlike the estimable Molin (whose failing was gullibility).* Carleton’s training had been for public life and in 1603 while employed in Paris and not altogether happy there, he received letters from friends urging him to exploit the sound relationship he had established with the Earl of Northumberland. That he did so and successfully may have caused a wrench of displeasure later, but in 1603 he was pleased to be appointed comptroller of Percy’s household and a personal secretary. This meant that he was responsible for assigning the plotters the lease for the space wherein they stored their gunpowder. When he left the earl’s employ in March 1605 he worked for Lord Norris in Spain and then Paris, but his previous connection was part of the reason for his recall to London. John Chamberlain, his friend, could say that Carleton had a poor opinion of Thomas Percy, but a short spell of imprisonment and examination regarding Northumberland was inevitable. Carleton was released in December 1605 but still remained under surveillance for a time. In February 1606 he was to be found out in the Chilterns as he ruefully noted ‘in order to take away the scent of powder’. In fact, it took him very much longer than he would have hoped or expected, and it was not until 1610 that he was appointed to replace Sir Henry Wotton as ambassador to Venice.

* Robert Acton, a former Worcestershire landowner, had moved his family to Llandeilo in Camarthenshire to protect them from recusancy laws, and his lead had been followed by other Catholics. After the Gunpowder plot he omitted, or refused to take the Oath of Allegiance, a fact communicated to Salisbury by the Bishop of St David’s in 1611

* Sir Thomas Lawley, who was with Walsh, reported to Salisbury that ‘the rude people stripped the rest naked’

* Molin was knighted at Whitehall on 23 January 1601.

D
igby and his fellow-prisoners were brought from the Tower on a river-barge to reach Westminster about half an hour before the opening of the trial in late January 1606. Since class distinctions operated in prisons Bates was brought from the Gatehouse in Westminster itself. Together they stood waiting in star chamber for the arrival of the judges and while they were there a contemporary scrutinized them. Evidently he was displeased: ‘It was strange to note their carriage, even in their very countenances.’ Those who let their heads fall, bowed them, were ‘full of doggedness’ while those looking about them were ‘forcing a stern look’; if they failed to pray this was an ugly fault, but if they did pray ‘it were by the dozen upon their beads’. As for those who smoked, they were altogether too nonchalant because they did not seem to mind being hanged.
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Sir John Harington, who was another spectator, declared: ‘I have seen some of the chief [conspirators] and think they bear an evil mark in their foreheads, for more terrible countenances were never looked upon.’ Taken into the hall where spectators buzzed with anticipation and all strained forward to see them, they were helpfully placed on an elevated platform in front of the judges. Queen Anne and Prince Henry were in a concealed chamber or niche from which they could see but not be seen, and it was reported inevitably that James was also somewhere present. Digby tall and dignified in a black satin suit and ‘tuff taffetie gown’ stood with the others although he was arraigned under a separate indictment from them and was tried alone after them. He would plead ‘guilty’, while the others pleaded ‘not guilty’. According to Father Gerard, Digby’s plight stirred some of the courtiers present who lamented his position ‘and said he was the goodliest man in the whole court’.
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The first lawyer to speak for the Crown was the Master of the Rolls, Sir Edward Philips (or Phelips). The matter before the court, he said, was one of treason ‘but of such horror, and monstrous nature’. To murder any man was abominable and if ‘to touch God’s anointed’ was to oppose God himself, then ‘how much more than too monstrous’ was it to murder King, Queen, Prince, State and Government. After discoursing briefly on the chief points of the indictment, and describing the objects of the conspiracy and the plan, Philips sat down to make way for the principal counsel for the prosecution, Sir Edward Coke, Attorney-General for the past nine years. Educated at Norwich Grammar School, Trinity College, Cambridge and the Inner Temple, Coke had risen to prominence as prosecutor at the trial of Dr Lopez (1594) accused of planning to murder Elizabeth; and the Earl of Essex (1601), when his brutal style was unrelenting. Much the same was true of his prosecution of Ralegh (1603) when his vituperation had struck many as excessive. The conspirators could be sure that he would be unsparing to the point of savagery, and even a dour spirit as redoubtable as Fawkes may have felt a pinch of disquiet as Coke rose. If Coke could discomfort them, a terror in language, he would do so. Yet he began conventionally and for him even mildly. The plot had been the greatest treason ever conceived against the greatest king that ever lived. In a rare and somewhat clumsy effort to be even-handed he went on: ‘It is by some given out that they are such men as admit just exception, either desperate in estate, or base or not settled in their wits [here no doubt he gave a baleful glance towards John Grant], such as are
sine religione, sine sede, sine fide, sine re, et sine spe
[without religion, without habitation, without credit, without means, and without hope].’ Yet the truth was they were men of some substance ‘howsoever most perniciously seduced, abused, corrupted, and jesuited, of very competent fortunes and estates’.

Having begun with the laity, the men before him, Coke launched forth on a declamation against ‘those of the spirituality’ who were not yet available for trial. ‘I never yet knew a treason without a Romish priest; but in this there are very many Jesuits, who are known to have dealt and passed through the whole action.’ He named four, beginning not surprisingly with Garnet, as well as ‘their cursory men’ like John Gerard. Working up his revulsion, he went on: ‘the studies and practises of this sect principally consisted in two D’s, to wit, in deposing of Kings and disposing of Kingdomes.’ The effect was that ‘Romish Catholics’ had put themselves under ‘Gunpowder Law, fit for Justices of Hell’. This in turn led him back to Roger Bacon, ‘one of that Romish rabble’, as the supposed inventor of the explosive material. The allusion offered two hits; ‘all friars, religious, and priests were bad’, but still the principal offenders were ‘the seducing Jesuits . . . men that use the reverence of Religion . . . to cover their impiety, blasphemy, treason, and rebellion, and all manner of wickedness’. This last reverberating phrase was laden with deeper meaning to the more widely read in the assembly. Even a loyal (?) recusant like Anthony Copley, imprisoned on the accession of James for the Bye plot, but pardoned after a year in the Gatehouse, had warned briskly of Jesuit activities, and their pro-Spanish leanings which might lead to ‘the rape of your daughter, the buggery of your son or the sodomizing of your sow’.
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When Coke had finished the depositions made by the prisoners on examination in the Tower were read aloud. They were humble, even penitent in tone. Thomas Winter, for example, said: ‘My most honourable Lords – Not out of hope to obtain pardon, for speaking of my temporal past, I may say the fault is greater than can be forgiven . . . since I see such courses are not pleasing to Almighty God, and that all or most material parts have been already confessed.’
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When these items had been read Popham made some remarks to the jury and directed them to consider their verdict which they did after removing to another room. Digby was then arraigned by himself upon a separate indictment charging him with high treason in conspiring the death of the king, with conferring with Catesby in Northamptonshire concerning the plot, assenting to the design and taking the oath of secrecy. As soon as the indictment was read Digby began to make a speech, but was halted and told he had to plead to the charge before launching on any sort of defence. Digby at once said he was guilty and then spoke of the motives which had led him into the action. He began with a denial that it had been ambition or discontent, or even ill-will towards any member of Parliament. Instead he put forward the commanding force of his friendship and affection for Catesby, whose influence over him was so profound that he was bound to risk his inheritance and even his life at the other’s bidding. The second motive was the cause of religion, and for his faith he was glad to risk estate, life, name, memory, posterity ‘and all worldly and earthly felicity whatsoever’. This is the boundless conviction of the fanatic. His third motive was prompted by the broken promises to Catholics, and had as its object the prevention of tougher laws such as they had reason to fear.
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