Gunpowder, Treason and Plot

by Lettice Cooper

  Kit Wright was a young daredevil who joined the Earl of Essex in his revolt against Queen Elizabeth just before the end of her reign. He had been imprisoned and fined as a punishment, and he was as poor as the other young men. Only Robert Winter was able to contribute a substantial sum of money to the enterprise.

  These two new recruits joined the other conspirators in Whyniard’s house, and helped with the hard, slow work on the tunnel. With Robert Winter’s money they bought gunpowder and stored it in Catesby’s house across the river.

  They also supplied themselves with guns and plenty of ammunition. They were all determined, if they were surprised at their tunnelling, to die fighting. But no one thought of examining the narrow slip of a house next to the Parliament House.

  On February 10th, the King made a long speech in the Council Chamber. He declared that any Papists who hoped that he would tolerate the practice of their religion would be disappointed. He had never intended to make things easier for them, and if he thought his sons would be more lenient to Catholics than he was, he would disinherit them and make his daughter his heir. He would strengthen the laws against Catholics, and insist that they should be applied without mercy.

  This speech, which most people thought had been inspired by Cecil, made the young men in the cellar of Whyniard’s house work even harder. Each night after dark they carried out buckets full of rubble from the hole they were making and buried the stuff in the garden.

  While they were eating or resting, Catesby, who was the real organizer of the plot, explained his plans to the others.

  “Prince Henry, being the heir to the throne, will attend the Opening of Parliament with his father and mother, so he will be blown up too.”

  Robert Winter looked unhappy and said that the boy was very young.

  “He is forward for his age, and already a staunch Protestant. They would rally to him, he is much loved. No, we must make Princess Elizabeth our Queen, and bring her up in the Catholic faith.”

  “And the young Prince Charles?”

  “We must take possession of him, too. But he is such a weak and sickly child that it is unlikely that he will live much longer. He cannot yet walk at four years old.”

  “The Princess Elizabeth lives most of the year at Combe Abbey in Warwickshire, in the care of her governess, Lady Hartington. I shall arrange a hunting party on the day after the Opening of Parliament and shall invite all the Catholic gentlemen of good faith in the area. We shall seize the Princess and raise the standard of revolt. If we need to establish ourselves in a fortress, there is John Grant’s house at Norbrook which is well defended by wall and moat. Grant will do anything for our cause. He has taken the oath of secrecy and joins us.”

  “So now we are nine,” Tom Winter said.

  “No, ten,” Catesby answered. “I have lately observed my servant, Tom Bates, looking at me most strangely. I asked him what ailed him. He said that he felt sure that I was about some dangerous business, and that it was connected with Whyniard’s house and Parliament House. Since he was so near the mark, I thought it safest to tell him the truth. He took the oath of secrecy on the Missal. He is a good honest fellow, devoted to me. We are perfectly safe in trusting him. So, now, let us work again at the tunnel for it is clear that the fate of every Catholic in England hangs upon these few square feet of stone wall.”

  The young men took up their picks again. They worked in shifts all day and took turns to bury the rubble at night. Only John Johnson ever went out by the front door of the house to buy food or anything else they needed, and to bring back news. One night, Tom Bates rowed over after dark from Catesby’s house, and brought them a few barrels of gunpowder. The young men lived like moles burrowing in the dark. Only Guy Fawkes knew, and Catesby was beginning to suspect, what little progress they had made through the nine-foot wall of solid stone.

  Then, one day, when they were working doggedly in the hole they heard an extraordinary sound ahead of them. It was a rattling, rushing noise, as if a great piece of the wall were falling.

  The conspirators were startled. Could it be that all their chipping and hammering had dislodged some stones on the other side where they hoped to break through? If so, their attempt was bound to be discovered. The young men hastily lowered their tools and crawled out of the hole to wait until Guy Fawkes went to try and find out what had happened.

  He came back an hour or two later. He was not a man whose face ever showed much expression, it was always hard to judge if anything surprised or excited him, but this time the others saw at once that he had something important to tell them. They crowded round him.

  “What news, Guy? What news?”

  “The best of news. It may be we can put away our picks. There is a cellar to let under Parliament House. It belongs to a vendor of coal, Andrew Bright, who is moving his stock to a larger and more convenient place. The noise that you heard was the fall of coal as his present stock was being moved out. If we can rent the cellar, we shall need no tunnel. We can store our gunpowder there under piles of ordinary firewood, and we shall be able to lay our mine immediately below the floor of Parliament House. I hear that Bright is away in Yorkshire arranging for shipments of coal, but his wife, Ellen, has the keys of the cellar. We should see her at once.”

  “You, Tom Percy,” Catesby exclaimed. “You have the lease of this house. You must see Mrs. Bright and tell her that you have a lot of furniture and other goods stored in this cellar and that you need another cellar for fuel. Do not offer her too high a price so as to make her suspicious, but make sure of getting the cellar whatever bargain you have to strike with her. We will find the money somehow. And tell Mrs. Bright that your servant, John Johnson, who is the caretaker of this house, and a most honest, trustworthy fellow who has been in your service for years, will keep the keys of her cellar, and look after everything there.”

  Tom Percy was successful. On March 25th of that year, 1605, Mrs. Ellen Bright gave him the lease of the cellar under Parliament House, for which Percy agreed to pay a rent of five pounds a year.

  The plotters felt that Heaven was on their side. Now they need no longer lie hidden in Whyniard’s house; there was no back-breaking work to do in cramped positions, no more creeping out at night with heavy sacks of rubble.

  All the conspirators would have to do now would be to fill the cellar under Parliament House with gunpowder, to prepare a Catholic uprising in the country, and to keep the secret until the Opening of Parliament on October 3rd.

  Chapter 6

  The Vault

  The cellar was just what they needed. Right underneath the Great Hall of Parliament House, it was seventy feet long and twentyfour feet wide. It was vaulted, there was plenty of room for storage, and it was so damp and dark that nobody was likely to be interested in it for any other purpose.

  The conspirators already had twenty barrels of gunpowder hidden in Catesby’s house across the river. They ferried these over, a few at a time, by night and stored them in Whyniard’s house. On a wet, dark night when the streets were empty they rolled them into the vault and covered them with stones and iron bars.

  The supposed John Johnson ordered three thousand logs of wood to be delivered to the cellar entrance. Master Percy, he remarked to the man who sold the wood, needed a great deal of fuel; belonging as he did to a noble family, he had many valuable pieces of furniture, and tapestries and hangings. He kept the best of these in Whyniard’s house, and he was anxious to keep the house well-heated so as to preserve his possessions from damp, but the cellar there was not large enough to accommodate all the fuel he needed. Besides, some of the furniture was stored in the cellar at Whyniard’s. It was so lucky, John Johnson said, that Master Percy had been able to hire this fine vaulted cellar that nobody wanted, so that he could lay in supplies for next winter.

  The conspirators carefully arranged the wooden billets on top of the stones and iron bars that hid the barrels of gunpowder. They did this work with great thoroughness so that not an inch of anything b
ut wood was to be seen. Now everything was ready for the Opening of Parliament on October 3rd.

  But it was only April. They had to keep the secret, and also keep themselves for six months. Robert Catesby, always the leader, called a meeting of the conspirators in the ground-floor room of Whyniard’s house.

  “In getting possession of the vault under Parliament House,” he said, “we have had a stroke of good fortune such as none of us dreamed of. All our preparations are made there. Now it is better that none of us should go near the vault, not even John Johnson,” he smiled at Guy Fawkes, “even that valuable and trusted servant, should only go occasionally in the coming months to make sure that all is well.

  “But we are in a difficult situation. The first of our difficulties is money. We have spent what we had on gunpowder and wood. I have been paying the rent of my house across the river, and the rent of this house, and the hire of the vault. I am cleaned out, gentlemen, I know that most of us are in the same case. What are we to do?”

  There was a thoughtful silence; since they were all known to be Catholic none of them could get employment. Tom Percy was lucky because he lived in the household of his cousin, who supported him in return for his services, and, as the custom was, kept him supplied with horses, servants and clothes, but did not pay him a salary. Robert Winter, who, for some months, had been supplying the conspirators with money to live on, did not dare to draw any more from his estate for fear it should be noticed.

  “We must scatter for the time being,” Robert Catesby said. “Each must look after himself as best he can. But we must have money for our plans. We need arms and horses for the uprising in the Midlands. I can see only one way of getting funds; we must add to our number. We must carefully select and invite to join us one or two loyal and devout Catholics who are also rich.”

  “Have you such in mind?” Jack Wright asked.

  “I can think of several,” Catesby said. “But here I want to ask something of you all. I believe that I know one or two men who might join us, and who would be willing and able to supply money for the cause; they are men known to you too, Tom Percy. But I think that since they have rich estates and also young children they might only consent to join us if they could do so in secret. If their names are known to me and to Tom Percy, would you be willing, the rest of you, not to know who they are, if I find that they will only give their support on those terms?”

  There was a silence. The conspirators looked moody and doubtful. They did not like it much. To have others admitted to this secret but not know who those others were? It was asking a lot of them. They had been willing to take the full risk. Why should these newcomers not do the same? Why could not Catesby tell them the names of these people? They were all in danger and the danger ought to be equally shared.

  “What do you say, Guy?” Catesby asked.

  “That I do not like it. That you should try to find men who are willing to take the same risk as we do, and to let their names be known to us since they are bound to know ours.”

  “And if I cannot find such men?”

  “Then I suppose you must do as you suggest. But unless you can answer for these men as for yourself, it would be better to manage without their money.”

  Catesby looked round the uneasy group. He exerted all his charm, all his power of commanding and persuading other men.

  “What I am asking all of you to do is to trust me.” He jerked forward the hilt of his sword and laid his hand on the engraving of the crucifixion. “I swear by Christ’s death that I will ask no man to join us unless I can answer for him as for myself. Are you satisfied?”

  “We must be,” Guy Fawkes said. “If you cannot find men who are prepared to trust the rest of us, and to put their lives in our hands as ours will be in theirs.”

  He guessed that Robin Catesby, who was inclined to act first and to ask his fellow conspirators to agree afterwards, had already approached the men he was thinking of, and that they must have demanded that their names should only be known to Catesby and to Percy.

  The other young men, who were all devoted to Robin Catesby and admired him with an enthusiasm that Guy Fawkes did not entirely share, were more easily satisfied.

  “We will trust you, Robin. Choose men for whom you can answer as for yourself, and we need ask no further.”

  “Let them give us their money,” Jack Wright said, “and they are truly committed to our cause. They can keep their names to themselves.”

  Catesby turned to Guy Fawkes.

  “For you, Guy, I have a plan. For the moment, there is nothing more for John Johnson to do. His master Tom Percy can send him into the country on some errand and himself keep the keys of this house and of the vault. As soon as we can raise some money, Guy, my plan is that you should sail again to the Low Countries, and should see our good Catholic friends who are soldiering there, Sir William Stanley and Captain Hugh Owen. You should tell them of our plan. They are brave and experienced soldiers; as soon as the uprising starts in this country they are the men whom we shall need to command our levies. Are you willing, all of you, that Guy should reveal our plan to Stanley and Owen?”

  “So long as they take the oath,” Robert Keyes said. “They must be told nothing; nothing at all until they have heard Mass with Guy and have received the Sacrament with him, and sworn on the Missal not to reveal what he tells them to anyone else in the world.”

  “I will see that they do that,” Guy Fawkes said grimly. “They shall know nothing until after they have taken the oath.” He thought that too many people were now being admitted to the secret.

  “I shall not broach the matter with them at all, unless I think them suitable,” he added.

  Catesby, who knew that he could manage all the others together more easily than he could manage Guy Fawkes, made haste to agree.

  “By May, Guy, you shall have funds for your journey. The rest of you must scatter for a time, but keep me informed as to where you are. I will at once approach the men I am thinking of and ask them for funds for our cause. Then I will prepare for the uprising in the Midlands, and I shall need some of you to help me. I have already found a place to store arms near Ashby St. Leger. And I have a horse breeder, a good Catholic, Master Benock, who knows every stable in the district. He is making a list for me of the strongest and swiftest horses in Catholic hands.”

  The plotters separated, glad to get out of their cramped quarters in Whyniard’s house, but uneasy about the long wait of six months during which the secret must be kept. Catesby went off with Tom Percy to Bath where the Earl of Northumberland had some lodgings which he was quite willing to lend to his cousin. Guy Fawkes prepared for the journey to the Netherlands. The other young men went to the homes of their families or friends to wait for a summons from Catesby or, if none came, until October 3rd.

  Chapter 7

  A Time of Waiting

  In Bath, Robert Catesby and Tom Percy settled down for some weeks in the comfortable lodgings lent to them by the Earl of Northumberland.

  It was a great relief not to have to spend the daylight hours chipping at a hard stone wall, and to be able to go to bed at night instead of carrying heavy sacks of chippings outside and digging holes for them in the garden.

  Catesby revealed to Tom Percy the names of the men he wanted to ask to join the conspiracy and to contribute money for it.

  “We need zealous Catholics, thoroughly trustworthy, but still rich enough to be able to help us with funds. So many Catholics have been heavily fined, and have lost their estates, that it limits the number of men we can choose from. I have three in mind—Ambrose Rookwood, Everard Digby and Francis Tresham.”

  They discussed the three men, all of whom Tom Percy also knew. He agreed that they would be suitable, and was quite willing that Robin should approach them.

  Robin Catesby rode first to visit Ambrose Rookwood at his home, Coldham Hall near Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk.

  Rookwood was the head of an old Catholic family, who had refused to abandon the
ir religion during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. They had been punished for their obstinacy; Ambrose Rookwood had just appeared before a Court of Sessions, and had been declared a recusant because he refused to attend the services of the Church of England.

  There was a secret chapel in Coldham Hall, which was so arranged that it looked like an ordinary room, except when Mass was being said there. Close to it was a hiding hole for priests, with an entrance behind one of the panels in the hall. Ambrose Rookwood had lived undisturbed with his charming wife and his two boys. He had given shelter to a good many priests and had heard them say Mass, so far without interruption. But he often wondered how long this luck was likely to last since the King had declared his intention of dealing even more strictly with Catholics.

  Ambrose Rookwood was not only devoted to his religion. Like most of the other people who knew him, he was devoted to Robin Catesby. There would have been no gunpowder plot at all but for Catesby’s strong influence over his friends. Ambrose Rookwood was so eager to imitate Robin in every way that he too had the crucifixion engraved on his sword.

  When he learned that there was a secret enterprise to defend the Catholic faith, in which Robin wanted him to share, he immediately took the oath of secrecy.

  The two young men heard Mass together in Rookwood’s private chapel and Catesby told him about the gunpowder plot. Rookwood agreed to join, although he well knew that he risked his estate and his life, and the happiness of his wife and children. He was quite willing to contribute money; better spend it that way than pay it in fines as he might be ordered to do at any moment. Catesby rode back to Bath through the leafy summer lanes very well content with his new recruit.

  On June 9th of that year, 1605, King James summoned all the judges in the country to a conference. He spoke to them himself, urging them to ferret out all the notable Catholics in their district and to enforce the full penalties of the law on them. Cecil, the most bitter enemy of the Catholics, was made Earl of Salisbury, as a reward for his services.