In the summer of the year 1605, Sir Everard Digby spent a week in
London, and stayed at the lodgings in the Savoy of his friend Roger
Manners,[122] the eldest brother of Sir Oliver Manners, whose conversion
to the Catholic faith has been already noticed. This Roger Manners
married the daughter and heir of the famous Sir Philip Sydney, and
eventually succeeded his father, as fifth Earl of Rutland. Although Sir
Everard stayed with Roger Manners, he "commonlie dieted at the Mearmaid
in Bred Streete."[123] He spent much of his time with the excellent Sir
Oliver Manners, which was all very well; but, unfortunately, Robert
Catesby also "kept him companie" a great deal; without, however, letting
him know what was chiefly occupying him in London just at that time.
Thomas Winter also came to see Sir Everard whilst he was in London, and
his friendship with men who were conspiring to an evil end was
endangering Digby without his knowing it. At that time he had no idea
that any plot was in existence, although he was doubtless aware that
many Catholics were considering what steps could be taken to relieve
their condition; and the fact of his staying with Roger Manners proves
that he had not come to London with any design of conferring with
restless Catholics in a secret or underhand fashion.
[122] S. P. Gunpowder Plot Book, Part I, No. 108.
[123] _Ib._
After his visit to London, Sir Everard seems to have returned to
Gothurst and to have continued his usual innocent country life, with its
duties and pleasures. A letter among the Hatfield MS., written to him on
the eleventh of June--his eldest boy's birthday by the way[124]--treats
of otter-hunting, and it is likely enough that Sir Everard practised
this sport in the Ouse as well as in the other rivers and brooks of
Buckinghamshire.
[124] So it is usually believed, and so wrote Ben Jonson--"Upon his
birthday, the eleventh of June";--so, too, Richard Farrar--"Born on
the day he died, the eleventh of June." But some authorities give a
different date, and the question has been fiercely disputed.
About the end of August, or perhaps early in September, 1605, a large
party met at Gothurst, as guests of Sir Everard and Lady Digby, but with
an ulterior purpose. To pray for the much-oppressed cause of the
Catholic religion in England, for their suffering fellow-religionists,
and for themselves, they had agreed to make a pilgrimage together to the
famous shrine of St Winefride at Holywell, in Flintshire,[125] which
would entail a journey of a hundred and fifty miles.[126] Sir Everard
does not appear to have accompanied it; but, among those assembled at
Gothurst who were to go on the pilgrimage were his young wife, Miss Anne
Vaux, Brooksby and his wife, Thomas Digby, Sir Everard's brother, who
had evidently followed his example and become a Catholic, Sir Francis
Lacon and his daughter, Father Garnet, the Provincial of the Jesuits, a
lay-brother named Nicholas Owen, who usually accompanied him, and Father
Strange, Sir Everard's chaplain, making, with their servants and others,
a party of pilgrims numbering little short of thirty. Later on, Father
Darcy and Father Fisher also joined them.[127]
[125] _Father H. Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot_, by J. H. Pollen, S.
J., p. 15.
[126] A party, including ladies, would not be likely to travel
faster than thirty miles a day over the bad roads, therefore it
would take more than four times as long to go, then, from Gothurst
to Holywell, as it would now take to go from Gothurst to the famous
shrine at Lourdes, in the Pyrenees.
[127] Cal. Sta. Pa. Dom., 1603-10, p. 270.
If, as it seems, Sir Everard did not go with the pilgrimage, the reason
may have been that he was engaged in endeavouring to negotiate the
proposed marriage between young Lord Vaux and a daughter of the Earl of
Suffolk, although it seemed early to do so, as the boy was then only
about fourteen.
"Riding westward,[128] the party of pilgrims would stop for the night at
some Catholic friend's house, and in the morning the two priests would
say Mass. Even at Shrewsbury, when they had to put up at an inn, and at
'a castle in a holt at Denbighshire,' the daily Masses were said without
interruption, and even the servants were present. At St Winefride's
Well, too, though the inn must have been small for so large a number,
the Holy Sacrifice was again offered, and then the ladies went barefoot
to the Well.[129] At Holywell they stopped but one night. Returning next
day, they slept at a farmhouse seven miles from Shrewsbury, and after
that they were again in the circle of their friends."[130]
[128] _Father Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot_, Pollen, p. 18.
[129] Jardine, in his _Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot_ (p. 180),
says that the ladies walked barefoot from Holt, that is to say, a
distance of about twenty miles.
[130] _Father Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot_, pp. 18, 19.
About the end of September (1605) Sir Everard Digby went to stay at
Harrowden with young Lord Vaux. While he was there, his host's mother,
her sister-in-law, Anne Vaux, and Father Garnet came thither on their
return from the pilgrimage. His friend Catesby also arrived from a visit
to Lord Mordaunt[131] at Turville. Anne Vaux, who, as I have said, had
been uneasy about Catesby's proceedings, was in a hurry for his
departure to Flanders, where he was to command an English regiment.
Father Garnet wrote a letter of introduction for him to a Jesuit priest
in that country, and Catesby himself showed this letter to his nervous
cousin, assuring her that he was so anxious to start that he would
spend L500 in obtaining a license[132] to go abroad with his men and
horses, about which, he pretended, there was some difficulty.
[131] Henry, fourth Baron Mordaunt, was suspected of being concerned
in the Gunpowder Plot. He was committed to the Tower, and fined by
the Star Chamber. See Burke's _Dormant and Extinct Peerages_, p.
380.
[132] _Father Garnet and the G. P._, Pollen, p. 21.
After a few days' visit at Harrowden, the family seat of the Vaux's,
which was then in a rather dilapidated condition,[133] Sir Everard Digby
invited Catesby, Mrs Vaux, and Father Garnet to stay with him at
Gothurst; and he started with Catesby to ride home, leaving his other
guests to follow them. The distance between Harrowden and Gothurst was
something like fifteen miles, and Digby and his friend became very
confidential in the course of it.
[133] _Life of Father Gerard_, p. cxxxv.
Perhaps there are few occasions on which it is easier to converse freely
than a long ride with a single companion; in most cases, no one can
possibly be within earshot, therefore the voice need not be unnaturally
lowered; the speakers are not confronting each other, and this prevents
any nervous dread lest the mention of subjects on which either feels
strongly should raise a tell-tale blush or a quiver of a lip or eyelid;
and, if the topic should become embarrassing, the surroundings of those
on horseback enable them to change it more easily, and with less
apparent effort or intention, than under almost any other conditions.
Lastly, the fresh country air, as it is inhaled in the easy exercise of
riding, clears the brain and invigorates the energies, and when is it
fresher or pleasanter than on a fine day at the end of September, such
as we can imagine Sir Everard Digby and Robert Catesby to have enjoyed
on their ride from Harrowden to Gothurst? Both of them, as we read, were
fine men, fine horsemen on fine horses, and old friends; and they must
have made a handsome and well-assorted pair, as they went their way
along the roads, through the woods, and over the commons of
Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire.
Early in their ride, when they were well clear of the outskirts of the
little market town of Wellingborough,[134] beside the famous Red Well of
which, some twenty years later, Charles I. and his Queen were to dwell
in tents, in order to drink its medicinal waters, Catesby told his
companion that he had a communication of the greatest importance to make
to him; that he was only at liberty to convey it upon an oath of
secresy; and that from all others intrusted with the subject of this
communication, the oath had not been accepted unless sealed and
confirmed by Holy Communion--which alone would demonstrate its sacred
and religious nature--but that, in the case of so honourable a man as
Digby, a simple oath would suffice. This was paying a very flattering
compliment, and, when Catesby drew a small poignard, handed it to him,
and asked him to swear secresy upon it,[135] Sir Everard, thinking that
the matter would concern some "stirres in Wales" on behalf of the
persecuted Catholics, of which Catesby had talked at Gothurst during the
summer, took the oath without much hesitation, and returned the little
weapon.
[134] S. P. Dom. James I., G. P. Bk., Part 2, No. 135.
[135] S. P. Dom. James I., G. P. Bk., Part 2, No. 135.
Then Catesby began a long, earnest, and serious discourse. There can be
little doubt that he would first dwell upon the desperate condition of
their co-religionists in Great Britain, the hopelessness of redress or
any improvement in their state, and the likelihood of their persecution
becoming still more intolerable under the incoming parliament. At last,
he told his patient and sympathetic listener that the time had come for
action. They could expect no help from the king, no help from the
parliament, no help from foreign Catholic princes or powers, no help
from a general, an ordinary, and a legitimate rising among their
Catholic fellow-countrymen; there was nothing for it, therefore, but to
help themselves. It was plain enough where, and from whom, their
greatest danger lay. The few must be sacrificed to save the many. He had
been reading his Bible[136]--the very Protestants who so cruelly
oppressed them would commend that--and there he found instances in which
the deliberate assassination of tyrants appeared to be not only
tolerated but commended.
[136] Lingard, Vol. vii. chap. i.
I cannot guarantee that Catesby said exactly all these things to Digby;
I merely enumerate the arguments which he is stated, on good authority,
to have used in persuading those who joined in his plot; and it is well
known that he found no other of his adherents so difficult to convince
as Sir Everard; therefore it is most unlikely that he omitted one of his
pleas in this case.
Between the Catholics and the Protestants, Catesby considered that there
was a regular warfare; no war could be conducted without bloodshed, and
in war all was fair. It might even be maintained that the righteous
Catholics were in the position of executioners, who should carry out the
extreme sentence of death upon the iniquitous and murderous villains
who, under the names of princes and rulers, were persecuting and slaying
God's innocent people. Who were these princes and rulers? King James and
his parliament. They richly deserved to die the death, and unless they
were destroyed they would work even greater evils. Let the sword of
justice fall upon them.
Were the Catholics to rise and invade the houses of parliament with
drawn sabres? No. Such a thing would be impossible. Resort must be had
to stratagem, a method to which holy men had often resorted in ancient
times, as might be read in the sacred pages of the Old Testament. But,
unlike the warriors of Israel, the modern Christian soldier fought less
with the sword than with that much more powerful medium known as
gunpowder. It had already been the principal agent of destruction in
many great battles; let it be used in the strife between the oppressed
English Catholics and the king with his parliament.
Before entering into details of the proposed attack, it would be well to
consider that the end aimed at was not any private revenge or personal
emolument.[137] The sole object was to suppress a most unjust and
barbarous persecution by the only expedient which offered the least
prospect of success. There could be no doubt as to its being lawful,
since God had given to every man the right of repelling force by force.
If Digby should consider the scheme cruel, let him contrast it with the
cruelties exercised during so many years against the English Catholics;
let him calculate the number of innocent martyrs who had been butchered
by the public executioner, or had died from ill-treatment or torture in
prisons; let him estimate the thousands who had been reduced by the
penal laws against recusants, from wealth or competence, to poverty or
beggary; and then let him judge whether the sudden destruction of the
rulers who had been guilty of such fearful persecutions, and avowedly
intended persecutions yet more atrocious, could be condemned on the
charge of cruelty. Nay, more; unless a decisive blow were delivered
very shortly, something like a massacre of Catholics might be expected,
and,[138] "Mr Catesby tould him that the papistes throate should have
been cutte."
[137] Lingard, Vol. vii. chap. i.
[138] S. P. Dom. James I., Vol. xviii. n. 24.
Catesby would then tell his friend and companion, as they rode through
the peaceful Midland scenery, with its horse-chestnuts and its beeches
in their rich autumn colouring, on that September afternoon, how he must
be a man, and nerve himself to hear the means which it was proposed to
employ for carrying out the judgment of God upon their wicked
oppressors.[139] Every Catholic peer was to be warned, or enticed from
the House of Lords on a certain day, and then, by the sudden explosion
of a large quantity of gunpowder, previously placed beneath the Houses
of Parliament, the king and his councillors, his Lords and his Commons,
were to be prevented from doing any further mischief in this world. As
soon as the execution was over, the Catholics would[140] "seize upon the
person of the young prince, if he were not in the Parliament House,
which they much desired. But if he were," in which case, of course, he
would be dead, "then upon the young Duke Charles, who then should be the
next heir, and him they would erect, and with him and by his authority,
the Catholic religion. If that did also fail them, then had they a
resolution to take the Lady Elizabeth, who was in the keeping of the
Lord Harrington in Warwickshire; and so by one means or other, they
would be certain to settle in the crown one of the true heirs of the
same." How loyal they were!
[139] S. P. Dom. James I., Vol. xvi., No. 94, 20 Nov. 1605, B, C,
and D.
[140] _Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot_, p. 85.
On first hearing of this inhuman, detestable, and diabolical scheme, Sir
Everard was overcome with horror, as well he might be, and it was with
the greatest difficulty that Catesby induced him to consider it any
further.[141] If Sir Everard had been a man of firm will and
determination of character, he would have obeyed his conscience and
resolutely followed his own good instincts; but instead of doing so, he
was weak enough to listen with attention and interest to the arguments
of Catesby. To a man of a religious mind like Sir Everard Digby, those
of a Scriptural character would be some of the most persuasive, and his
companion would hardly fail to point out the wholesale massacres and
cruelties apparently sanctioned in the Old Testament.
[141] Lingard, Vol. vii. chap. i.
If he so pleased, he could quote plenty of biblical precedents for
slaying and maiming, on a far larger scale than was proposed in the
Gunpowder Plot, which would be a mere trifle in comparison with some of
the following butcheries:--"They warred against the Midianites," "and
they slew all the males. And they slew the kings of Midian."[142] "They
slew of them in Bezek ten thousand men." "And they slew of Moab at that
time ten thousand men, all lusty, and all men of valour; and there
escaped not a man."[143] "David slew of the Syrians two and twenty
thousand."[144] "The other Jews," "slew of their foes seventy and five
thousand."[145] "Pekah the son of Remaliah slew in Juda an hundred and
twenty thousand in one day, which were all valiant men, because they had
forsaken the Lord God of their fathers,"[146] just as King James and the
English Government had forsaken Him, in Catesby's and Sir Everard's
opinions.
[142] Numbers xxxi. 7, 8. For the benefit of my Protestant readers,
I quote my Scripture from the Anglican version, to show them that
there is nothing "apocryphal" in it.
[143] Judges iii. 29.
[144] 2 Samuel viii. 5.
[145] Esther viii. 16.
[146] 2 Chron. xxviii. 6.
If it were objected that all these fell in battle, and that it was quite
a different thing to murder people by stealth in cold blood, could not
Catesby have replied that "Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent,
and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him [Sisera], and
smote the nail into his temple, and fastened it into the ground: for he
was fast asleep and weary. So he died."[147] Jael Heber's wife was
acting as hostess to a friend who had come into her tent for shelter and
protection, and had fallen asleep. Yet Deborah and Barak sang in honour
of this performance:--[148] "Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of
Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent. He
asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a
lordly dish. She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the
workman's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off
his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. At her
feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell:
where he bowed, there he fell down dead." "So let all thine enemies
perish, O Lord."[149] Might not, and ought not, the English Catholics to
sing much such a song in honour of Catesby, Digby, and their
fellow-conspirators, when the king and the Parliament should be blown
up, and fall, and lie down, at their feet, where they should fall down
dead? Was there not something biblical and appropriate, again, in
destroying the enemies of the Lord with fire? "Behold, they shall be as
stubble; the fire shall burn them."[150] "Thou shalt be fuel for the
fire; thy blood shall be in the midst of the land."[151] And had not the
very gentlest of men, even the God-man, said, "I am come to send fire on
the earth?" Surely, too, if Holy Writ did not specially mention
gunpowder, it constantly threatened one of its ingredients, namely
brimstone, to the wicked!
[147] Judges iv. 21.
[148] Judges v. 24 _seq._
[149] Judges v. 31.
[150] Isaiah xlvii. 14.
[151] Ezekiel xxi. 32.
Under the old dispensation, it was considered a religious duty to fall
upon the enemies of the Lord and slay them; under the new, it would be
as religious a duty to get under them and slay them. This was merely a
detail, a simple reversal of the process, conducing to exactly the same
results, and quite as Scriptural in its character.
A massacre by means of an explosion of gunpowder was neither a novel nor
an exclusively Catholic notion. Persons observed, "There be recounted in
histories many attempts of the same kynds, and some also by Protestants
in our days: as that of them who at Antwerp placed a whole barke of
powder in the great street of that citty, where the prince of Parma with
his nobility was to passe: and that of him in the Hague that would have
blown up the whole councel of Holland upon private revenge."[152]
[152] _Lingard_, Vol. vii. chap, i., footnote.
Within the last half century, had not great earls and statesmen, in
Scotland, conspired together to blow up with gunpowder the Queen's own
husband, as he lay ill in bed, in his house; had not four men been
destroyed by this means,[153] and had not the principal conspirator
"declared," with how much truth or falsehood it is not necessary to
pause here to inquire,[154] "that the Queen"--the very pious
martyr-queen, Mary, herself,--"was a consenting party to the deed,"[155]
and had not that very pious queen married that very conspirator after he
had brought about the murder of her first husband?
[153] _Ib._, Vol. vi. chap. ii.
[154] Recent historical research tends to absolve Mary Queen of
Scots from all imputation of complicity in this horrible crime.
[155] Bellesheim's Hist. Cath. Ch. of Scot., trans. H. Blair, Vol.
iii. p. 112.
It would be scarcely too much to say that, early in the seventeenth
century, the ethics of explosives were not properly understood. Catesby
might argue that gunpowder was a destructive agent, the primary and
natural use of which was to kill directly, and that its indirect use, by
exploding it in a tube, thereby propelling a missile, was a secondary,
less natural, and possibly less legitimate use. And, if it were objected
that to employ it in either way would be right in war, but wrong in
peace, he could bring forward the exceedingly dangerous theory (which
has been made use of by Irish-American dynamitards in the nineteenth
century), that oppressed people, who do not acknowledge the authority of
those who rule over them, may consider themselves at war with those
authorities, a theory which Catesby's Jesuit friends would have
negatived instantly, if he had asked their opinion about it.
Any attempt to prove the iniquity of Catesby's conspiracy is so
unnecessary that I will not waste time in offering one. I have only to
endeavour to imagine the condition of mind in which he and his friends
were able to look upon it with approval, and the arguments they may have
used in its favour.
Next to passages and precedents from Scripture in support of his
diabolical scheme, Catesby would be well aware that its approval by
authorities of the Church, and especially by Fathers of the Society of
Jesus, would have most influence with his friend Sir Everard. To the
surprise of the latter, he informed him that he had laid the matter
before the Provincial of the Society, and had obtained his consent to
the scheme.
He admitted that the Jesuits were not fully aware of all the
particulars; it was not intended to put them to the dangers of
responsibility for the deed itself, or anything connected with it;
already their very priesthood was high treason, and the last thing that
Catesby and his friends desired was to add to their perils; but their
approval of the design in general was of such importance that neither
Catesby himself, nor any of those admitted into the secret, would have
acted without it, and this Catesby declared he had obtained.
Upon a zealous convert, like Sir Everard Digby, such an assurance would
exercise a great influence. Nor was it only of sacerdotal approval that
Catesby boasted; he was able to add that he had obtained the consent, as
well as the assistance, of John Wright, a Catholic layman and a
Yorkshire squire; of Sir Everard's own friend, Thomas Winter; of his
eldest brother, Robert Winter,[156] "an earnest Catholic," at whose
house the pilgrims to St Winefride's Well had stayed for a night on
their way thither; of Ambrose Rookwood, a Catholic,[157] "ever very
devout," who had actually been one of the pilgrims; of John Grant,[158]
"a zealous Roman Catholic," who, like his brother-in-law, Robert
Winter, had entertained the St Winifride's pilgrims for a night in his
walled and moated house, and of Thomas Percy, a relative of the Earl of
Northumberland's, and a very recent and earnest convert to the Church.
[156] _Narrative_, G. P., Gerard, p. 71.
[157] _Ib._, p. 85.
[158] Jardine's _Gunpowder Plot_, p. 52.