Gunpowder, Treason and Plot

by Lettice Cooper

  He did not yet know what he had been summoned to England for. He knew that for several days Robert Catesby had been watching him and testing him for some secret purpose. He sometimes smiled sardonically, knowing well that he had carried out enterprises and encountered risks such as this fine young gentleman, flaunting about in his scarlet doublets and his jewelled hat bands, had never heard of.

  All the others knew the secret. Tom Winter, and Jack Wright with whom Guy Fawkes has been at school in York, and another Yorkshireman, Thomas Percy, who was cousin to the Earl of Northumberland. Tom Percy was older than the rest of them, a red-faced, white-haired swashbuckler of nearly fifty, who in his youth had often picked a quarrel for the sheer pleasure of fighting. Before King James came down to England to sit upon the throne, Tom Percy had ridden up to Scotland to beg him to show mercy to Catholics during his reign. James had promised to do so and had already broken his promises. Tom Percy regarded this, as he had regarded so many things in his stormy life, as a personal insult. He was furious with the King.

  “If they do not tell me their secret tonight,” Guy Fawkes muttered to himself, “I shall go back to Flanders.”

  All he knew about the plan for the evening was that a priest would be there to say Mass. For any Catholic priest caught celebrating Mass in England the penalty was death, so it was not surprising that they should have to meet in this out-of-the-way part of London after dark.

  When Guy Fawkes reached the house, the other four were already there, in a state of suppressed excitement.

  Catesby held a Missal, the Catholic prayer book, in his long thin hands. He put it down on a table. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Before I reveal what I have to tell tonight, let us all swear an oath of secrecy. Let us lay our hands upon this book. You will swear by the Blessed Trinity, and by the Sacrament you are now to receive, never to disclose directly or indirectly by word or circumstance the matter that shall be proposed to you to keep secret, nor to desist from the executing thereof until the rest shall give you leave.”

  In turn Guy Fawkes, Tom Percy, Tom Winter and Jack Wright each laid a hand upon the Missal, and swore as Robin Catesby had told them to do. He himself took the oath last. Then they all went into another room. Altar vessels and a small silver crucifix stood upon a table which had been covered with an embroidered cloth. Father Gerard waited by this temporary altar. He was a priest of the Jesuit order, who had already been imprisoned and tortured in the Tower of London, but has escaped by climbing down a rope into the moat. He still risked his life constantly by carrying out his priestly offices wherever they were wanted.

  He said Mass now and gave the sacrament to the five men. He had not been informed why they wanted to receive it together, and as soon as the service was over, he left the house and slipped away into the dark. It was safer for him to know nothing of Catesby’s plan, and safer for any priest if even faithful Catholics did not know his next hiding place.

  As soon as he had gone, Robin Catesby told the others of his plan to blow up the King, Lords and Commons in the Parliament on the opening day.

  Guy Fawkes had no scruples about joining in the plot. He thought that the situation of Catholics was so desperate that a desperate remedy was needed. All the young men managed somehow to separate being Catholics in their minds from behaving like Christians.

  Guy Fawkes considered the practical problems of the scheme. “It could be done,” he said, “provided that we can get possession of a house near enough to Parliament House so that we can tunnel through and lay a mine underneath it.”

  Catesby nodded. “I had thought of that. I have been looking around and making inquiries. There is a house just right for our purpose. Its wall adjoins the wall of Parliament House. It belongs to Master Whyniard, the Keeper of the King’s Wardrobe, but he does not use it himself. It is let to a Master Ferris.”

  “Then how are we to get possession of it?”

  “You must do that, Percy. Your Cousin of Northumberland is powerful at court. You must persuade your cousin that you need this house for yourself and that no other will do. The Earl must speak to Whyniard to turn this Ferris out and let the house to you.”

  “But I cannot live there. Everyone knows that I am agent for my cousin in Northumberland, that I am almost always with him in his house, and have to ride North to his estates on business for him. How can I suddenly go and live in another house away from my cousin? Besides, I have never made any secret of my religion. If I move to a house near the Parliament House, Cecil’s spies are likely to keep a watch on it, and perhaps search it.”

  “Of course you cannot live there,” Catesby agreed. “None of us who are known to the Government spies must ever be seen crossing the threshold. The house will be occupied for the time being by your servant, John Johnson, a very honest, decent man whose face has hardly ever been seen in London, certainly not for a dozen years. A quiet, soberly dressed man like John Johnson can live in your house as caretaker and go in and out about his ordinary business without attracting notice.”

  Thomas Percy looked puzzled. “But I have no such servant. I know no John Johnson.”

  “Not by that name perhaps,” Catesby said smiling. “But you do know him. As soon as you have got possession of the house you will give him the keys and he will be in charge of the whole place from attic to cellar. Especially the cellar. Have I said right, Fawkes? Are you willing to play the part of John Johnson?”

  Guy Fawkes considered for a minute, frowning thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said, “I will do it.”

  Catesby nodded as if he had expected no other answer. “So do you, Tom Percy, arrange as soon as you can to rent Whyniard’s house. If the present tenant’s lease is still running, your cousin the Earl must use his influence to have him put out before his time.”

  “Have you been inside this house?” Guy Fawkes asked.

  “No, but I have been all around the outside very carefully at night after dark when there was such a storm of rain and wind that no one was likely to hear me.”

  “Is the cellar wall of stone?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then if Parliament is to reopen in February of next year we must begin our tunnelling this autumn. Meanwhile we have to lay in a good store of gunpowder.”

  “I had that in mind,” Catesby said, “when I rented my house on the opposite bank. It is lonely there among the marshes, few people come except those who come to see me. We can store the gunpowder there and when we have Whyniard’s house we can ferry it across the river by night, a barrel or two at a time. In the same way we can take in tools, and anything else we need.”

  Catesby stood up and flung his heavy crimson cloak round his shoulders. “We must not all leave this house at the same time. But gentlemen, before we separate, I must remind you that to blow up Parliament House with everyone in it can only be part of our design. We must stir up Catholics all over the country to be ready for great events. It will not be enough to dispose of the King and his heir. If we are to establish a Catholic rule in England we must make preparations so that the sudden blow will be followed by a general uprising.”

  Chapter 4

  Entry by Night

  On a dark night of December of the same year, 1604, a boat was moored at the landing stage below Robert Catesby’s house. His servant, Thomas Bates, kneeling on a plank that he had laid across the marshy ground, was tying pieces of sacking round the blades of the oars so that they would only make a muffled noise as they struck the water.

  Through the noise of the rain and the slapping of water against the boat he heard footsteps on the rickety stairs that led up to the house.

  “Tom!”

  “I am here, Sir. I have just finished muffling the oars.”

  Catesby, with Tom Winter and Jack Wright, and another young man called Robert Keyes, came down to the landing stage. They moved cautiously on the steps, as each one was heavily laden. Keyes was one of the household of a Catholic peer, Lord Mordaunt, who lived in Bedfordshire. He was a close friend
of Catesby’s and had been asked to join the band because they needed another man to collect and guard the necessary stores in Robert Catesby’s house while he and his cousin rode about the country stirring up their Catholic friends to be ready for an uprising.

  “I will get in,” Catesby said. “You hand the packages to me. I will stow them safely on board.” He stepped down into the boat and held out his arms. “The tools first.”

  The other young men put into his arms several bundles of tools carefully sewn up in sacking, not only to keep out the damp, but to make sure that there would be no clink of metal in case anyone should be about when they were unloaded at the other side of the river.

  “Now the food.”

  Bags of flour and salt, a cold capon, cooked by Thomas Bates, and wrapped in a linen cloth, a small keg of ale, a barrel of salt fish, a package of dried herbs, a box of apples. Catesby took them all and stowed them away in the boat.

  “Now, Tom, Jack, in with you.”

  As Tom Winter settled to his oar, the keg of ale rolled against his leg. He kicked it away.

  “A pox on it, Robin! You have provisioned us for a siege. Was it necessary to take all this food?”

  “We must do nothing to draw attention to the house. It is so near the Parliament House that the least thing might cause Cecil’s spies to search it. If John Johnson, living alone there as caretaker, were suddenly to buy food for four people in the shops it could be enough to cause talk.”

  “You are right, Robin.” It had always been the same. When they played games together as boys, Robin had thought of possibilities that would never have occurred to Tom and Jack.

  Robert Catesby called softly to Keyes and Tom Bates. “One of us will slip across at night before Christmas. If you have any urgent need to speak to me hang a carpet out of my bedroom window in the morning and I will come. God be with you.”

  Almost without a sound the boat vanished into the rain and the dark.

  Thomas Bates shook his head doubtfully as he walked back with Keyes to Catesby’s house. He had not been told what the plan was, but he guessed enough to make him very anxious. He was devoted to his master.

  In the boat there was silence for a few minutes as the muffled oars dipped and rose. The water was choppy, rocking the boat. The rain beat down upon their heads. To keep up his spirits Tom Winter began to whistle the tune of a Christmas carol.

  “Only ten days till Christmas,” Catesby muttered, “and till the Opening of Parliament on February 7th only another six weeks. We have so much to do in the time.”

  As they came near to the Westminster bank, they could just discern the dark shape of the Parliament House. They rowed past it. The house that Tom Percy had managed to rent from Whyniard stood next to the Parliament House. It had a long narrow slip of garden running down to the river bank. It was a small house with only one room upstairs, one on the ground floor, and the cellar below on which their hopes were set. There was no landing stage, but the supposed caretaker, John Johnson, who of course was really Guy Fawkes, had been laying down some planks, and had driven in a pole and fixed a staple with a chain so that it was possible to moor a boat.

  He was there now on the bank, carrying a horn lantern with one shutter closed and the other half open so that it shed a pale gleam of light to guide them to his makeshift landing stage. They heard his deep voice on the bank above them.

  “A yard further on. All is quiet above at the house. All is well. Hand me the supplies.”

  “Take the tools first.” Catesby handed up the precious bundles.

  Guy Fawkes grasped them. Yes, these were the things that mattered, more than any supply of food, more perhaps than the eager young men in the boat. If he had the tools, Fawkes thought, he might be able to manage almost as well without the others. There were moments when he felt that they were like boys playing a game, whereas he was an experienced soldier conducting a military operation.

  Next morning, when they began to try to make a tunnel through the cellar walls, it irked him that he so often had to leave them. John Johnson, the caretaker, was the only one of the party who dared show himself. He had to answer if anyone knocked at the door of the house. People sometimes came to ask for Ferris, whose lease had been so ruthlessly cut short so that the Earl of Northumberland’s cousin, Tom Percy, could have the house when he wanted it. Besides, John Johnson had to go about and do his shopping as usual; he had to show himself at the door or window; it would not be wise to let people think that the house was empty. John Johnson acted as sentry and lookout man all day, while the other three struggled, with more energy than experience, to make a tunnel. After dark, John Johnson could help them and could do his share of the tiresome job of carrying out the buckets of rubble that they had dislodged and burying them in the garden.

  Tom Percy, as the present tenant of the house, was also free to come in and out, when he could do so without attracting notice. He slipped in whenever he could to lend a hand with the work, or to set Guy Fawkes free from keeping watch.

  Robert Catesby and his two cousins had never done such difficult work in their lives. They did not know how to do it, and although Guy Fawkes was well able to show them he could not in a few days make them as expert with the pick as they were with the swords and horses they had grown up with. But they stuck to it, fired by their burning sense of the injustice done to Catholics and by their determination to change it.

  Catesby often wondered, as he tried to swing his pick in a cramped space, how the preparations for the uprising in the country were going on. Had the Catholics whom he had visited begun to buy horses? Had they laid in any store of powder? Had they alerted other people who could be trusted and arranged a signal? How far would they be ready by February 7th? At other times Catesby wondered gloomily if the tunnel would be ready by then.

  Christmas Eve was a day of triumph. They had, at last, broken through the cellar wall, and reached the foundation wall of Parliament House. True, they would have to tunnel through that, and it was of stone and reputed to be nine feet thick. But at least they had come to the end of the first stage, and sometimes it had seemed to them that they never would, so they were greatly encouraged. They carefully set props of wood, the way Fawkes had shown them, to hold up the last foot of their tunnel, and then crawled back into the cellar and climbed the stairs to the ground-floor room, stamping their cold feet and swinging their cramped arms.

  Guy Fawkes was out shopping. He had gone to buy as much extra food as he thought wise so that they could have a Christmas meal.

  He opened the front door and came in laden with bundles.

  Robert Catesby cried out triumphantly, “We are through the cellar wall. We can touch the foundation wall of Parliament House with our tools.”

  Then he stopped short for he felt that something was wrong. Guy Fawkes lowered his armful of bundles onto the table.

  “I have just seen a new proclamation about the date of the Opening of Parliament. It is postponed, from February 7th next year to October 3rd.”

  Chapter 5

  The Conspiracy Grows

  In the Palace of Whitehall, only a few hundred yards from the house where the conspirators were digging their tunnel, King James and his court celebrated Christmas with all the traditional rejoicings.

  The King, who had come from the poor country of Scotland, was delighted to find himself so much richer as King of England. This Christmas he poured out extravagant presents on his three children, Prince Henry who was nine years old, Princess Elizabeth who was eight, and Prince Charles, a delicate child of four, who was, though nobody then expected it, to come to the throne next as Charles I.

  The Queen, who had been Princess Anne of Denmark, loved dressing up and acting and dancing. She particularly wished to appear in a masque, a performance which included acting, singing and dancing. The poet Ben Jonson and the architect Inigo Jones combined this Christmas to compose a masque for her. The Queen and her ladies wore dresses stitched with gold, and spangled with jewels. The whol
e court wore new rich clothes and feasted and danced and sang all night.

  In and out of this magnificence but indifferent to it, went Cecil, the King’s chief Minister, a small, pale, hunchbacked man, always intent on the business of the realm. He had been chief Minister to Queen Elizabeth in the last years of her reign, as his father had been through all the early part of it. Because Cecil was very small, King James nicknamed him “the little beagle.” The little beagle had inherited from his father an all-absorbing care for the welfare of the country and a deep distrust of Catholics, who, to his mind, were always likely to cause trouble and to act inside the country as secret allies of hostile foreign powers.

  The conspirators in Whyniard’s house did not spend a cheerful Christmas. Since none of them except the supposed John Johnson dared to show themselves outside they had no opportunity of hearing Mass. Catesby, his two cousins and Tom Percy were beginning to realize that it was going to be very difficult to tunnel through a nine-foot stone wall even though there would be so much more time than they had expected before the opening of Parliament.

  In other ways, this added to their difficulties. Owing to the heavy fines imposed on Catholics, all the young men were poor; Guy Fawkes had lived for years on his soldier’s pay and he was not now earning it. All of them were short of money to live on and they needed extra money to buy gunpowder with; they would need arms and horses for the uprising which they hoped to organize in the Midlands. They decided to invite two other men to join them, Jack Wright’s younger brother, Christopher or Kit, and Tom Winter’s elder brother, Robert.

  Robert, although a devout Catholic, had been luckier than the others. He had not been fined or imprisoned; he lived quietly in his beautiful house at Huddington in Worcestershire where he had a secret chapel in which Mass was often celebrated. He had guessed from his brother Tom’s obvious preoccupation that something was going on. When Catesby and Tom told him what they proposed to do, Robert allowed himself to be drawn into the plot by family feeling and because of his religion, but he was never quite easy in his mind about the terrible destruction that they were planning.