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

by Haynes, Alan

  Catesby’s rides that autumn were all to a purpose. Accompanied as ever by Bates he rode on to Bedfordshire and stopped at Turvey for a meeting with Lord Mordaunt. But the visit was brief and later on Catesby spoke scornfully of him. Whatever the reason for quitting Turvey, Catesby was soon on his way to Harrowden (South Buckinghamshire) the seat of young Lord Vaux, because Sir Everard Digby of Stoke Dry, Rutland, one of the greatest landowners in the eastern Midlands, was now there and Catesby wanted to talk man to man before the ladies returned with Garnet. By every objective reckoning – he was married with two young children – Digby ought to have been beyond the most artful persuasion of the turbulent plotter.* Especially so at this time because Lord Vaux, a boy of fourteen and the nephew of Anne, was just now betrothed. Digby’s ward was marked out for marriage to the daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, currently one of the most important figures of the Jacobean privy council. Catesby felt with a striking rush of tact that he could not immediately broach the plot to Digby at such a time; the juxtaposition of marriage and mass murder was too difficult even for him, but he stayed on at the house when entreated to do so. His presence was a shock to Garnet when within a few days the rest of the pilgrims returned, and Greenway must also have arrived separately since Bates later testified to seeing them ‘all together with my master at my Lord Vaux’s’. It was not a particularly comfortable house and somewhat dilapidated, so Digby in a buoyant mood invited the gathering to remove to Gothurst, a mere fifteen miles away, and he proposed that he and Catesby should ride ahead. The fine October morning gave the two renowned horsemen time to talk freely on dangerous topics out of hearing of all save perhaps Bates. Catesby was poised to reveal the plan.7

  When they had gone some distance along the deserted road he told Digby that he had something important to say requiring an oath of the listener. Gentlemen of name and blood had been required to seal the oath with the sacrament, but Digby was known as so honourable a man that his simple corporal oath would suffice. Having flattered his companion (victim) Catesby drew his dagger and holding it out asked Digby if he would swear like the rest. Sir Everard agreed and repeated the oath of secrecy, expecting to hear of some attempt for the Catholic cause. Catesby then bluntly stated the whole matter and for a stomach-churning moment in silence Digby saw the true gap between reflection and intention. If he had not been seated on his horse it is not fanciful to suppose that his legs might have buckled with the buffet that took him to the edge. The anticipation of a fall into calamity made him fumble a response and he just managed to temporize when Catesby pressed for his consent and company in the project. As they approached Gothurst in silence Digby, who saw his comfortable future in brick and stone and glass as long as he did not deviate from the road before him, asked Catesby what would happen to their friends, the Catholic lords, if they took the other way. The reply had the authentic froideur of the enthralled fanatic. ‘Assure yourself that such of the nobility as are worth saving shall be preserved and yet know not of the matter.’

  Digby too may have longed to know nothing of the matter, and he asked if Catesby had placed it before Garnet or other Jesuits. Catesby affirmed that he had indeed and would not have acted without their approval. Seeing Digby’s pained hesitation he then named the others in the plot, but his listener still felt he needed more time to consider such an extreme action. Feeling that Digby’s full consent to join was of vital importance Catesby said that when they reached Gothurst he would show him the texts of their religion which allowed acts of violence against heretic princes. This seemed one way to head off a possible approach to Garnet in confession, since the Provincial seemed bound to contradict him and express his disapproval of the plot. Listening to the highly charged arguments for violence Digby began to doubt now his own particular hesitations and perturbations. In his initial reaction he had registered horror but its fullness began to ebb a little, for though in his private life he was a kind, moral and chivalrous man, he was also the type of religious sentimentalist who when his scruples were subdued could become unfeeling and cold-blooded. Besides ‘his friendship and love to Mr Catesby prevailed’.8

  When Catesby arrived back at his lodgings in the Strand for the beginning of Michaelmas term on 9 October, he gave a dinner at William Patrick’s ordinary a few doors along. The guests were Lord Mordaunt, Sir Josceline Percy (a brother of the Earl of Northumberland), Francis Tresham, Thomas Winter, John Ashfield (married to Anne Winter), the playwright Ben Jonson and an unknown who may well have been the latter’s close friend, Sir John Roe. A day or so after this Catesby and his associates rode off to Stratford, and their fortnight in the country was in part spent at Clopton by invitation of Ambrose Rookwood, who had moved there with his family because for strategic reasons his stable of quality horses had to be relocated to a position central to the plan. We know that Thomas Rookwood was there, as well as John Grant, one of the Winter brothers (possibly Robert) who helped Ned Bushell, also there, live impecuniously on an annuity of £50; one of the Wright brothers, Catesby and several more.9 Strong agitation was now manifesting itself among the women linked to these men, and among women quite remote from the projectors. Anne Vaux, for example, went to Garnet to make clear that she feared some trouble or disorder and that other wives and friends had already asked her where they could retreat in safety until the ‘burst’ (uproar) was over with the opening of Parliament. They had taken their hint not so much from people as from the horses in numbers far beyond domestic requirements at Huddington and Norbrook. When Catesby had arrived at Harrowden just before he prevailed over Digby, he had soothed her agitation by showing her a letter of introduction from Garnet to a Jesuit in the Spanish Netherlands where he claimed he intended to go. First deal with certain home matters and then obtain an exit permit such as had been given to Thomas Throckmorton. Such a thing would be worth the £500 he was prepared to spend. Once away with his troop of three hundred horsemen he would enter the service of the archdukes since recruitment by them was legal since the peace of the previous year. It was a most useful piece of dissembling he used with others. Stephen Littleton of Holbeach House and his cousin Humphrey Littleton, brother of John Littleton, MP of Hagley House, convicted of treason in the Essex conspiracy, and who had died in prison in July 1601, were prominent figures in the Catholic community in the Midlands. Though friends of the Winters they were not thought suitable for the engineering of the plot, but Catesby while staying with Robert Winter did regale the Littletons with talk of his troop and suggested they might join it. Since Stephen Littleton was financially secure he was promised a command post and Catesby even offered to take one of Humphrey’s illegitimate sons as his page. Then he invited them to the famous hunting party to meet at Dunchurch, where after sport he would tell them of the final plans for quitting the country.

  Garnet meanwhile had Anne Vaux begging him to avert any mischief. He was aware of the signs himself, having observed Digby increase his stable of quality horses and Nicholas Owen start work on the device of a revolving floor into secret rooms and passages. With Catesby around both Garnet and Anne Vaux were uncomfortable at Gothurst, and as Digby arranged to rent the Throckmorton house at Coughton, Garnet promised to go there and celebrate Allhallowtide. Owen had worked there too but later demolition for alterations seems to have removed some of his handiwork. Probably Garnet had left Gothurst before the arrival of Guy Fawkes for whom Catesby had sent. The weather even pitched in to make things a little more troublesome with storms that tore at trees, rattled shutters and spooked horses. But the ride to Gothurst seemed essential, for Digby had promised £1,500 to support the plot after Thomas Percy had failed to pay the rent due at Michaelmas on the properties at Westminster. Fawkes was summoned therefore to take charge of any money and on his return to London, acting in his role as Percy’s trusted servant John Johnson, he paid Henry Ferrers what was owed. He thought too about purchasing a topping-up supply of gunpowder, but there was another critical use for money. It was needed to hire the ship that would
take him abroad after he had fired the powder train and ridden to Greenwich. He had been hired for his specific skills in blasting and was not required to take part in the rising that was intended.

  Money, money, money! Still more was needed, Catesby knew it and the richest man known to the core of plotters was Francis Tresham of Rushton (Northants). His father, the very public Catholic Sir Thomas Tresham, proclaimer of the king’s accession in his county, had died in September, leaving his son a rent roll of more than £3,000 a year at a time of heavily touted Catholic impoverishment. Sir Thomas probably died with some trepidation about his son, hitherto ‘a wild unstayed man’, now in his late thirties, whose mother Muriel had been a Throckmorton. Having fallen in with his cousins, Baynham and the Wright brothers in the Essex revolt, he had had to pay off court favourites to escape the wrath of the government. He had helped Christopher Wright go on his Spanish mission and had discussed armed revolt with his brother-in-law Monteagle, when they saw Garnet with Catesby at Fremland in July. Now married and conspicuously richer it seems very likely that his aggressive inclinations had been modified by the delightful bulk of his inheritance. Tresham’s highly significant interview with Catesby took place on the afternoon of Monday 14 October at the Clerkenwell house of Lord Stourton, another brother-in-law. According to the account given later by Tresham he said: ‘It would not be a means to advance our religion but to overthrow it, for the odiousness of the fact would be such as that would make the whole Kingdom to turn their fury upon such as were taken for Catholics, and not to spare man or woman so affected.’ He developed then an interesting line of argument that if the then rulers of the kingdom were removed in such a cataclysmic act, the power remaining would fall into the hands of the Puritans and their ministers who would be supported by the Dutch.10 ‘The act seemed unto me to be very damnable.’ Catesby bluntly made retort ‘that the necessity of Catholics enforced them to try dangerous courses’. It was, of course, a necessity that had just been put on hold for Tresham. He tried another approach, endeavouring to persuade Catesby to defer until the end of the Parliament to see how Catholics fared under new laws. Go off to the Spanish Netherlands, he suggested, take your fellow plotters and take £100 to seal the matter. Yet in a perplexing addition he promised to give Catesby £2,000 at a later date, saying ‘You know Robin that nothing but a bad cause can make me a coward.’

  Meanwhile, there was a virtually simultaneous meeting of other plotters at the Bell Inn, Daventry, as the innkeeper, Matthew Young, later testified. Guy Fawkes arrived, having ridden from his rarely visited home county, and he ordered meals for a predicted group of six. Presently Thomas Winter arrived with one of his servants, and Bates and Kit Wright came from nearby Ashby St Legers. They expected John Wright as well, but when he failed to turn up Bates asked the innkeeper if there was anyone about to ride with a message to Lapworth. The commission fell to one William Rogers, the local blacksmith who did the outing by moonlight and returned with John Wright by seven o’clock the next morning. Thomas Winter immediately took him aside to show him an important letter he had just received (it must have been from Catesby) to inform him of Tresham’s admittance to the plot – a step taken entirely on the initiative of the gentleman in red. There was a half-hour discussion before the group breakfasted together and departed.

  The unsatisfactory induction of Tresham to the cause had led him to quit London at speed for his Northamptonshire home. At the great house there was a flurry of activity as within a few days he discharged his servants, hid family papers (which were not rediscovered until 1838), and shut up the house and required his mother and sisters to remove with him back to London. In company again with Catesby he seems to have reiterated that his support of the plot would be only financial. By now the sworn plotters were in, or making towards London, save for Thomas Percy and Digby who was selling cattle and sheep at Gothurst. Garnet and Anne Vaux were both at White Webbs for a few days, though the house had been more or less annexed by the conspirators and the atmosphere would have been tense. Probably both of them flinched for slightly different reasons when on 18 October Tresham (Anne’s favourite cousin) turned up there for a meeting with Catesby, Thomas Winter and Fawkes.

  Then the most compelling question was how could Catholic peers be excluded from a massacre of their enemies. Uneasy that pity could still topple his plot, Catesby took a shrewd calculated risk in allowing a general discussion to develop because the simple notion of warning the especially favoured was deemed too loose. Thomas Percy naturally had a special care for the Earl of Northumberland, of whom there was some talk that he might be made Protector to conduct the government during a minority. Apparently it was Percy’s task, following the explosion, to use his free access to court to kidnap the five-year-old Prince Charles. The Scottish nursemaid of the boy later gave written testimony that during October Percy showed a notable interest in her charge. Everyone was eager to warn young Thomas Howard, recently restored to his ancient title of Earl of Arundel. Catesby’s contribution on him was to make the grotesque suggestion that the boy should receive a minor wound to keep him in his house and bed. Everyone was eager to save Lords Vaux and Montagu, and Tresham was vehement on behalf of his two brothers-in-law, Monteagle and Stourton. With Robert Keyes he spoke too on behalf of Lord Mordaunt which led a derisive Catesby to declare that ‘he would not for the chamber full of diamonds acquaint him with the secret, for that he knew he could not keep it.’ Besides, Mordaunt was expected to stay away out of choice rather than sit robed in the House of Lords while Protestant peers were with James at a service in Westminster Abbey. Catesby’s bold and brutal rider to all this was that ‘the innocent must perish with the guilty, sooner than ruin the chances of success’.

  On 23 October a clutch of conspirators again dined at the Irish Boy, and the following day an even larger gathering took place at the Mitre tavern in Bread Street, which ran from West Cheapside south to the river. There a watchful and discreet customer eavesdropped on the conversation and reported after the destruction of the plot ‘there met at dinner . . . the Lord Mordaunt [so the plot itself evidently did not figure in the talk], Sir Josceline Percy, Sir William Monson, Sir Mark Ive, Mr Robert Catesby, Dr Taylor belonging to the Archdukes’ ambassador, Mr Pickering, esq of Northants, Mr Hakluyt, and Spero Pettingar.’* The reason the government was concentrating its attention on watching those in touch with the archdukes was that it was hoping to learn something about the proposed English troop of Catesby and Sir Charles Percy.11 Writing to Sir Thomas Lake who was with the king at Royston, Salisbury wrote in a confident mood: ‘let his Majesty know that I dare boldly say no shower nor storm shall mar our harvest, except it should come from the middle region.’ The last phrase could very well refer to the Spanish Netherlands rather than the English Midlands because the Secretary intended to make service with the archdukes virtually synonymous with treason.

  One of those in service was Peter Philips (born c. 1561) who on November 5 was in Brussels attending Mass at the private chapel of Archduke Albert. Like his countryman William Byrd, the retiring, almost invisible long term member of the English Chapel Royal, Philips was a life Catholic, but unlike Byrd he was self-exiled abroad from the 1580s, and was now archducal chaplain and organist.**

  * John Donne characterized the skill of Phelippes as ‘the art of decipherment and finding some treeason in any intercepted letter’.

  * Arrested at the time of the plot, he was repeatedly examined in the Tower and held there until 1611.

  * There is a fine, rarely seen, portrait of Digby in a private collection.

  * Spero Pettingar remains a mystery although there is a letter dated April 20, 1599, written in Dublin by Henry Cuffe and addressed to Edward Reynolds, secretary to the Earl of Essex (d. 1601), which in passing mentions him. So who was Pettingar and what did he do to work his way into the confidence of the ultra-cautious Catesby?

  ** And where was William Byrd on the fateful day? Not in London, of course, but most likely at home in Stondo
n Massey, deep in rural Essex.

  SEVEN

  Treason’s Discovery

  The cryptic letter to William Parker, Lord Monteagle, can be seen in two ways today just as it was when it was penned. First, that it was a genuine effort by a writer deeply concerned for Monteagle’s safety to prevent his lordship’s untimely death. Second, that it was a ruse of some sort to help deconstruct a plot that a watchful government suspected was underway, but about which it had too few details. Whichever view is taken, and there may be one or two delicate variations of both, it will be useful to sketch the character and career of the man who received it. Monteagle was the eldest son of Edward Parker, tenth Baron Morley and possessed a solidly Catholic background. His paternal grandfather had gone abroad in the late 1560s to join English Catholic exiles. His mother was a Stanley, daughter and heiress of the third Baron Monteagle, and it was from her he held his title; his wife was Elizabeth Tresham. With a cluster of friends Monteagle had been at the infamous performance of Richard II, in early February 1601 given as a clumsy curtain-raiser to the Essex revolt. Like Catesby and his brother-in-law Francis Tresham, he had been lucky to escape with a fine, but unlike the former he did not remain fired up with anger, although he was under house arrest at Bethnal Green and restrictions on his movements banned him from entering London for a time.