Towards the end of the last chapter, I showed that the conspirators were
for the most part in fairly comfortable circumstances, and that some of
them were rich. It was not necessary to my purpose to enter into details
concerning Guy Fawkes, who was an adventurer and a mere tool, or
concerning Thomas Bates, who was Catesby's servant. Nor did I mention
the Littletons--one a wealthy man, and the other a younger son, and a
cousin of the former; for, although they joined in the rising after the
discovery of the plot, and suffered death for it, they do not appear to
have been among the sworn conspirators beforehand. But, before
dismissing the subject of the riches or poverty of the plotters, I have
something more to say.
Sir Everard Digby was chiefly enlisted by Catesby on account of his
wealth. He promised to contribute L1500 towards the scheme, and to
furnish, in addition, as much armour and as many arms, men, and horses
as he might be able. Another large landowner was enlisted even later
than Sir Everard, and for the same purpose. This was Catesby's cousin,
Francis Tresham, of Rushton, in Northamptonshire. He, like Catesby and
Percy, had been implicated in the rebellion of the Earl of Essex, so a
plot was no novelty to him, and he consented to help the new one with
money to the extent of L2000. Funds, again, were to be found in another
quarter.[200] "Mr Percy himself promised all he could get out of the Earl
of Northumberland's rents,"--in other language, he promised to embezzle,
and apparently with the pious Catesby's full consent, every penny he was
able of his master's money--"which was about L4000." Here, therefore, we
have a fund of L7500, to say nothing of what Catesby and the other
conspirators may have spent in the early stages of the plot.
[200] Thomas Winter's Confession. S.P., Gunpowder Plot Book, n. 114.
In the reign of James I., a sovereign sterling was worth very much more
than it is at present; some people say ten times as much;[201] so if
they are right, the Gunpowder Plot Fund amounted to L75,000 of our
money.
[201] See Dr Jessop, in _One Generation of a Norfolk House_, p. 285.
What became of it? All the work done was voluntary and unpaid. The
hiring of the cellar under the houses of Parliament could not have been
a very heavy outlay; very many hundreds of pounds cannot have been spent
in gunpowder; and if a good deal may have been invested in horses, that
would only exhaust a comparatively small portion of so large a fund.
Most likely the conspirators defrayed their own personal expenses while
working for the plot, and even if they charged them to the fund, the men
were so few in numbers that they cannot have amounted to much. Can it be
that some immense bribe was given, or promised, to Guy Fawkes for the
excessively dangerous part which he was to play in the drama? This is
far from unlikely!
The fugitives, after the discovery of the plot, carried a good deal of
cash with them as they rode about, trying to raise an insurrection. Sir
Everard Digby alone took[202] "above L1000 in ready coin" with him.
According to the authority quoted, this would be the equivalent of
L10,000 nowadays, a large amount to carry about the country. Yet, as
will be seen when the proper time comes, he apparently made no use of
it. The financial aspects of the Gunpowder Plot are as curious as they
are incomprehensible.
[202] _Narrative of the G. P._, Gerard, p. 92.
After giving his solemn promise not to divulge the conspiracy, Sir
Everard evidently could say nothing about it to Lady Digby. It must have
been a terrible trial to have the burden of that awful secret, with all
its dangers to himself and those dear to him, on his mind when he looked
upon his innocent, holy, and loving young wife, with her little boy,
Kenelm, now two years old, toddling after her, and her baby, which had
been born early in that year, in her arms, as she walked about the
long, low rooms and corridors of Gothurst, or wandered about its sloping
gardens and along the banks of the River Ouse. While the worst fear in
her mind as she did so would be a visit from pursuivants, her husband
knew of far more terrible dangers by which their hitherto happy home was
threatened.
Already he was beginning to take precautions against possible failure
and its fearful consequences. Of course, at Gothurst, as at every other
house frequented by priests, there was a "priests' hole"; but Sir
Everard now ordered preparations for concealment to be made upon a much
more elaborate scale. It is nearly certain that the most celebrated of
all artificers in priests' hiding-places was staying at Gothurst just at
this very time. His real name was Nicholas Owen, but he usually went by
the name of "Little John." He was a Jesuit lay-brother, and he usually
accompanied Father Garnet in his travels. It is recorded that he went to
Gothurst with Father Garnet on his way to Holywell, and it may be
assumed that he was with him when he returned. Nothing, therefore, would
be simpler or easier for Sir Everard than, on the plea of a desire to
increase his precautions for priests in case of a raid from pursuivants,
to ask Little John to superintend the making of intricate places of
concealment which should serve as refuges for himself and his
fellow-conspirators in case of discovery, failure, or pursuit.
He could not have found a better workman for this purpose. Father Gerard
writes of him:--[203]"He it was that made our hiding-places; in fact he
made the one to which I owed my safety." As he probably made the very
curious hiding-places in Sir Everard Digby's house, I may claim to say
something about him. Brother Foley calls him[204] "that useful, cunning
joiner of those times," who "died a martyr for the faith, suspended from
a Topcliff rack in the Tower of London, where he was divers times hung
up for several hours together, to compel him to betray the hiding-places
he had made, up and down the land; but not a word could they force from
his sealed and faithful lips." "The authorities, shocked at their own
cruelty, gave out that he destroyed himself."[205] A Protestant writer
accordingly calls him[206] "that Owen who ript out his own bowells in
the Tower." Father Gerard denies this story at great length,[207]
stating that the poor man suffered from hernia, and that although "the
civil law doth forbid to torture any man that is broken," the
executioners "girded" the afflicted part "with a plate of iron to keep
in" the portion which threatened to protrude, but that "the extremity of
pain (which is most in that kind of torment), about the breast" and the
seat of the hernia, "did force out" the interior, "and so the iron did
serve but to cut and wound his body, which, perhaps, did afterwards put
them in mind to give out that he had ripped his" part in question, "with
a knife. Which, besides all the former reasons, is in itself improbable,
if not impossible. For first, in that case, knives are not allowed but
only in the time of meat, whilst one stands by, and those such as are
broad at the point, and will only cut towards the midst."
[203] _Life of Father J. Gerard_, p. lvii.
[204] _Records, S. J._ Series I., p. 297.
[205] _Ib._, p. 675, footnote.
[206] _The Foot out of the Snare._ By John Zee, London, 1624.
[207] _Gunpowder Plot_, p. 188-9.
As to his skill in making hiding-places, a Jesuit, Father Tanner, wrote
of him that[208] "With incomparable skill he knew how to conduct priests
to a place of safety along subterranean passages, to hide them between
walls, to bury them in impenetrable recesses, and to entangle them in
labyrinths and a thousand windings. But what was much more difficult of
accomplishment, he so disguised the entrances to these as to make them
most unlike what they really were." "When he was about to design" a
hiding-place, he commenced the work by "receiving the Most Holy
Eucharist, sought to aid its progress by continual prayer, and offered
the completion of it to God alone, accepting of no other reward for his
toil than the merit of charity and the consolation of labouring for the
good of Catholics."
[208] _Collectanea S. J._ See _Records of the Eng. Prov. S. J._,
Vol. iv. pp. 247, 248.
As I have shown, it may pretty safely be assumed that he was at Gothurst
early in October 1605, just after Sir Everard Digby had been initiated
into the plot; and, as the hiding-places at Gothurst about to be
described are believed to have been made between his initiation and the
discovery, with a view to concealment in connection with the gunpowder
plot, the work must in that case have been done during October.
[Illustration: GOTHURST
_The mark * shows the position of the secret room_
_Dawsors Ph Sc_]
Lipscomb thus describes them:--[209] "In one of the apartments was
formerly shewn a movable floor, which, to ordinary observers, offered
nothing remarkable in its appearance, but was made to revolve on a
pivot, which, by a secret bolt, disclosed underneath it another room
(receiving light from the lower part of a mullioned window, not
discoverable exteriorily, unless at a very great distance)." From this
secret room, he says "there were private passages of ingress and
egress," "almost impossible of detection, even by the occupiers of the
Mansion. Here were also some remarkably ingenious cabinets and drawers,
for the deposit of papers, &c." Mr Walter Carlile, the son of the owner,
and the occupier of Gothurst, or Gayhurst, as it is now called, informs
me that Lipscomb's description of the secret room is perfectly correct;
that, although it was demolished twenty years ago, greatly to his own
regret, there are still all the traces of where it was and how it was
managed; and that the "priest's hole" and some secret passages are yet
in existence.
[209] _Hist. and Antiquities of the Co. of Bucks_, Vol. iv. p. 159.
The secret room was not in the principal front, with its picturesque
porch and gables; but at the end, at the right; that is to say, on the
right as one stood facing the front. In the middle of this end of the
house was a solid, square-headed projection, and it was the upper half
of the room on the first floor of this projection which was converted
into the secret room. The result was that, in this secret chamber the
window came down to the floor, but did not rise to the top of the room,
being in fact the upper half of the window which lighted the room
beneath it. As the entire window was almost twice as high as it was
broad, and divided into two equal parts, it was very well adapted for
the purpose.
Lipscomb was probably right in calling this "a very artful contrivance
for the concealment of the parties to the Gunpowder Plot"; there is
certainly a tradition to the same effect, and, as will have been
observed, I have adopted it; at the same time I will say candidly that I
sometimes ask myself whether, after all, the "contrivance," with its
pivotted floor, may not have been only intended as a hiding-place for
priests, and not for conspirators, a theory which is somewhat supported
by the knowledge that Sir Everard Digby was going to leave and shut up
Gothurst a few days before the explosion was to take place, and even
still earlier was going to send his wife and children to Mr
Throgmorton's house at Coughton, which he had taken for them.
The energies of the conspirators, especially those of such an earnest
Catholic as Sir Everard Digby, would be stimulated during October by the
news that, that very month, two priests and a layman had been put to
death for their religion. [210] "They were executed together with sixteen
thieves and eight other malefactors; and their heads were placed on
London Bridge." A Spanish lady of high birth, who had come to England in
the preceding May, wrote:--[211] "We can hardly go out to walk without
seeing the heads and limbs of some of our dear and holy ones stuck up on
the gates that divide the streets, and the birds of the air perching
upon them; which makes me think of the verse in the Psalms, 'They have
given the dead bodies of thy servants to be meat for the fowls of the
air,'" etc. Admitting that there may have been some exaggeration in this
statement, it was by no means devoid of foundation in fact. The reports
of such things would give the conspiracy the colour of a crusade, to men
anxious to see it assume that hue.
[210] _Before and after the Gunpowder Plot._ By E. Healy Thompson,
p. 4.
[211] _Life of Luisa de Carvajal._ By Lady Georgiana Fullerton, p.
226.
We shall presently see that Sir Everard intended to turn his steps
towards Wales, when the blow should have been struck, making sure of the
support of Catholics so persecuted as the Welsh and the inhabitants of
the border counties. Here is something about them. Less than five months
before the attempt to blow up the houses of parliament, the Protestant
Bishop of Hereford wrote to Salisbury:--[212] "On Wednesday last, at
evening, Sir James Scudamore and other justices of the peace, with such
aid as I could give them, went unto the Darren and other places
adjoining to make search and apprehend Jesuits and priests ... and did
make diligent search all that night and day following, from village to
village, from house to house, about thirty miles compass, near the
confines of Monmouthshire, where they found altars, images, books of
superstition, relics of idolatry, but left all desolate of men and
women. Except here and there an aged woman or a child, all were fled
into Wales, and but one man apprehended; all that circuit of rude
barbarous people carried headlong into these desperate courses by
priests (whereof there is great store) and principal gentlemen, lords of
towns and manors there. They are all fled into the woods, and there they
will lurk until the assizes be past." Rumours of the searches on the
part of the "justices of the peace," "with such aid" as the Bishop of
Hereford "could give them," would reach Gothurst and provoke Sir
Everard. They remind one of the remark made by Cardinal Bellarmine on
the Gunpowder Plot:--[213] "I excuse not the crime, I loathe unnatural
murders, I execrate conspiracies, but no one can deny that provocation
was given."
[212] S. P. Dom. James I., Vol. xiv. n. 52, June 22, 1605.
[213] Reply to the King's _Triplici nodo triplex cuneus_. See _The
Month_, No. 366, p. 501.
The plan of campaign was doubtless discussed at great length at Gothurst
during the early part of the month of October. Parliament was to meet at
the beginning of November, and the great attempt was intended to be made
about the 5th. No time, therefore, was to be lost in making provision
for every contingency. Sir Everard was still anxious as to whether all
the Catholic peers, and those peers who were friendly to Catholics,
could, with any certainty, be induced to absent themselves from the
House at the time of the explosion.
"Assure yourself," said Catesby to him, "that such of the nobility as
are worth saving shall be preserved, and yet know not of the
matter."[214] As to the remainder of the lords, he declared that he
regarded them as "atheists, fools, and cowards, and that lusty bodies
would be better for the commonwealth than they."[215] There was
considerable wrangling as to which of the peers were to be saved, and
there was some diversity of opinion on the question--whether this or
that Protestant lord was well-enough disposed towards Catholics and
their religion to be worth rescue. For instance, some would have it that
the Earl of Northumberland was likely to become a Catholic; but his
relative, Percy the conspirator, said that[216] "for matters of
relligion" he "trobled not much himselfe." Notwithstanding this
statement, Percy earnestly begged that he might be one of the peers to
be spared,[217] which was indeed only fair, considering that his rents
were to be stolen for the purposes of the plot. Francis Tresham pleaded
for his two brothers-in-law, Stourton and Mounteagle, both of whom were
Catholics; Keyes for his great friend, Mordaunt; Fawkes for Montague,
several for Arundel, and so on.
[214] Digby's Exam., 2nd Dec. 1605. S.P.O. Jardine's _Gunpowder
Plot_, pp. 75-6.
[215] Keyes' Exam., 30th Nov. 1605. S.P.O. Jardine, p. 75.
[216] Cal. Sta. Pa., 1603-10, p. 262.
[217] Jardine, p. 74.
As to the plan of proceedings, when the explosion should have taken
place with success, the great principle was to be to rally the Catholic
gentry with their servants and retainers for a general rising in a
central district. Gothurst was considered too far east for this purpose,
and Warwickshire was selected as the base of operations for the
volunteer Catholic army. It was true that that army did not yet exist;
that the number of men at present initiated into the conspiracy was very
small; and that the spirit in which the Catholics would receive the news
of the wholesale massacre of the King and his Parliament remained to be
proved; but Catesby and his confederates, Sir Everard apparently among
the number, were very sanguine.
Catesby, the originator, organiser, and leader of the whole proceeding,
was to have the management of the grand explosion and the conduct of
matters in London immediately afterwards, while Digby was to have the
charge of the rising in Warwickshire, where Catesby was to join him, as
occasion might serve. As a nucleus of his hoped-for army, Sir Everard
was to take so many of his retainers as he could muster, with a quantity
of arms in carts, to Dunchurch, a place very near Rugby, and to invite a
large number of his trustworthy friends, likely to join in the cause, to
come there with their horses and servants for a great "hunting-match" on
Dunsmoor Heath.
Country gentlemen in our own times have often wondered what this
"hunting-match" could be. Possibly it may have been a coursing meeting.
The foundation of the rules of coursing, in its modern sense, was the
code drawn up by the Duke of Norfolk in the reign of Elizabeth,[218] and
as Sir Everard had been a good deal at the Court of that Queen, and was
devoted to field sports, it is not unreasonable to infer that the
so-called "hunting-match" may have been ostensibly what we should call a
coursing-meeting, with, perhaps, some hawking added. It was arranged
that on the arrival of the guests invited to take part in it at
Dunchurch, Sir Everard was to hint to them that a decisive blow of some
sort was about to be struck in London, although they were not to be
enlightened as to its nature until the news should arrive of its
success. On the receipt of this news, Digby was at once to despatch a
party to seize the Princess Elizabeth at the house of her governor, Lord
Harington--he had been created Baron Harington of Exton in 1603--at his
house near Coventry, and if Catesby should fail to secure the persons of
the Prince of Wales or the Duke of York in the South, Digby was to
proclaim her Queen. The little volunteer army in Warwickshire was then
to seize the horses at Warwick Castle and the store of armour at Whewell
Grange, Lord Windsor's house in Worcestershire, "and by that time," said
Catesby, in unfolding his plan, "I hope some friends will come and take
our parts."[219]
[218] _The Greyhound_, by Hugh Dalziel, 1887.
[219] R. Winter's Letter to the Lords. S.P.O. 21st Jan. 1605.
Jardine, p. 73.
Sir Everard was not going to leave his wife and children at Gothurst,
between the great rallying centre of his expected army in Warwickshire
and the possible opposing army which, in case of failure, might approach
from London. On the contrary, he was anxious to place them on the
further side of Warwickshire, so that the band of Catholic warriors
might lie between them and the source of danger; at the same time he
wished to have them within easy reach; and, for this purpose, he hired
or borrowed from Mr Throckmorton, a house called Coughton (containing
many "secret recesses"[220]), near Alcester, and about twenty-five
miles from the primary rallying point at Dunchurch.
[220] _Records of the Eng. Prov. S. J._, Vol. iv. p. 34, footnote.
Sir Everard said in his examination in Nov. 1605, that he "did borrow a
howse of Mr Thomas Throckmorton for one moneth, purposing to take it
longer, or to enquire out some other if that were not to be had, if" his
"wife should like to live there."[221]
[221] S. P. Domestic, James I., Vol. xvi. No. 94.
Being, in those days, a quadrangular house,[222] it could easily be
defended in case of need. It is impossible that Sir Everard can have
given Lady Digby the real reason for which he proposed to remove her
there: the secret which he was keeping from her can scarcely have failed
to cause some restraint between them, and it would be but natural that
she should feel considerable uneasiness. Why, she would ask herself,
should her husband, who had hitherto shared everything with her, now
have something in hand which he was evidently concealing?
[222] Gorton's Topography, Vol. i. p. 518. The house at present
belongs to Sir N. W. Throckmorton, Bart.
Another inmate at Gothurst was in a state of great anxiety, namely
Father Garnet. The exertions to which his lay companion, "Little John,"
was put, at his host's request, to increase the secret passages and make
a hidden room, may have aroused his suspicions still further; but, after
all, Gothurst would be no more ramified with such places of concealment
than certain other houses; for instance, at Hendlip Hall, about four
miles from Worcester, a house to which Father Garnet was to go within
two months, to spend several weeks, a house, moreover, of much the same
date as Gothurst, there was[223] "scarcely an apartment that" had "not
secret ways of going in or going out"; some had "back stair cases
concealed in the walls; others" "places of retreat in their chimneys;
some" "trap-doors, and all" presented "a picture of gloom, insecurity,
and suspicion." And well might the inmates of a Catholic family live in
"gloom, insecurity, and suspicion," in those days of pursuivants, fines,
hangings, and quarterings.
[223] _Beauties of England_, Vol. xv., Part I., p. 184. Jardine, p.
182. Nash, in his _Worcestershire_, quotes from Ashmole MSS., Vol.
804, fol. 93, the following:--"Eleven secret corners and conveyances
were found in the said house, all of them having books, massing
stuff, and popish trumpery in them, only two excepted."
Father Gerard, who was a frequent visitor at Gothurst, observed with
surprise that Sir Everard had a far larger number of horses than he had
been accustomed to keep;[224] but, when it occurred to him that this
might be because he was, for some reason or other, better off than
before, he found that, on the contrary, he had been selling his
farm-stock, and even some land, which puzzled him much, particularly in
so prudent and careful a man, and the more so since he was aware that
Sir Everard was going to pay the fine required of recusants by the
statute, and was therefore in no danger of having his stock taken from
him compulsorily.
[224] _Life of Father J. Gerard_, p. ccxxxvi.
Although Sir Everard Digby had been led by Catesby to believe that some
of the Jesuit Fathers had given their approval to the Gunpowder Plot,
and had special reasons, as we have seen, for imagining Father Garnet to
be one of these, he does not appear to have thought that Father Gerard
knew anything about the matter, or would have consented to it if he had
known of it: for, on his arraignment, he declared that Father Gerard was
ignorant of it, and that he had never mentioned it to him,[225] "alleging
the reason," "because, he said, he feared lest" that Father "should
dissuade him from it." So here we find him acting in opposition to his
greatest friend--his "brother," as he called him--the priest who had
received him into the Church, and was his chief spiritual adviser. A
good Catholic might lawfully act in opposition to the opinion of his
confessor or director in matters open to difference of view, especially
when that opinion was only suspected, and had not been delivered; but on
such an all-important question as this, he might have been expected to
consult Gerard, although it must be remembered that he had been assured
by Catesby that another Jesuit had approved of the plot.
[225] Father Gerard's letter to the Bishop of Chalcedon. See _Life
of Father Gerard_, p. ccxxxviii.
There is one consideration on this subject which is of the highest
importance, namely, that Garnet was the Provincial, that is to say the
superior and the very highest authority among the Jesuits in England,
at that time, and therefore the Jesuit of all others most in
communication with Rome, and most likely to know the mind of the General
of his Order as well as that of the Holy Father himself.
During October, not only Catesby, but other conspirators visited
Gothurst. Among these was Fawkes, the adventurer who was intended to be
actual perpetrator of the terrible deed. He was not altogether ill-born,
being a member of an at least respectable family in Yorkshire, his
father having been Registrar and Advocate of the Consistory Court of
York Minster.[226] He was thirty-five years old, and he had seen much of
the world, having entered the Spanish army in Flanders and been at the
taking of Calais by the Archduke Albert in 1596.[227] He was a man, too,
who made some profession of devotion as a Catholic.[228] Father Greenway
describes him as[229] "a man of great piety, of exemplary temperance, of
mild and cheerful demeanour, an enemy of broils and disputes, a faithful
friend, and remarkable for his punctual attendance upon religious
observances." He had been to Spain, on the private embassy to Philip II.
with Christopher Wright, and he had a brother then a barrister in one of
the Inns of Court in London. Therefore he was not ill-fitted by his
antecedents to be received as a guest at Gothurst, shrink as we may
from the idea of such a man being admitted to the house of the gentle
Lady Digby.
[226] Jardine's G. P., p. 36.
[227] Beeton's Encyclopaedia, Vol. i.
[228] Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot, by J. Gerard, pp. 59, 60.
[229] Jardine, p. 38.
This intending actor in a very dark deed arrived in dull, stormy, and
gloomy weather. Much rain had fallen, and the dead leaves lay wet and
dank about the gables and recesses of Gothurst. There were, then, none
of the modern arrangements of hot-water pipes, or other contrivances for
keeping out the cold in a large stone house, of which luxurious people
avail themselves so freely in these days, and the long rooms must have
felt chilly, on the October nights, beyond a certain radius from the
piles of burning logs in the large open grates.
People talking secrets do not find the family or social circle round the
fire a very convenient place in which to interchange their confidences,
and Sir Everard Digby and Guy Fawkes had good reason one evening, when
supper was ended, for withdrawing to a dark and distant corner to
discuss the terrible scheme in which both were so deeply engrossed;
neither Sir Everard's wife nor his chaplain, nor Father Garnet, nor
either of the ladies who were staying in the house, could be permitted
to hear a word of their whisperings about the details and prospects of
the fatal plot; so the two conspirators were obliged to forego the
warmth of the cheerful fire until their conversation should be ended.
A damp chill, in spite of the flickering light from the burning wood,
seems to have suggested to the host the probable condition of a certain
fireless cellar in Westminster; for he muttered in a low tone to his
guest[230] "that he was much afraid that the Powder in the cellar was
grown dank, and that some new must be provided, lest that should not
take fire," words which show that, having once yielded to the
temptations of Catesby, the ill-fated youth had thrown himself heart and
soul into the diabolical conspiracy. The biographer of Sir Everard Digby
may well wish that he had never been guilty of any such speech.
[230] _Gunpowder Treason_, Barlow, p. 68.