God’s Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests & the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot

by Hogge, Alice

  On the evening of Friday, 5 April the search was officially called off.* Mrs Wiseman and her daughters were released, along with the Catholic servants, and, once the pursuivants had finally departed the house, John Gerard was lifted bodily from the hide in which he had crouched for the last four days. All this time he had eaten nothing but the quince jelly thrust upon him by his hostess as the raid began. In an extraordinary gesture of solidarity—part desire to share his suffering, part means of ascertaining how long he could survive without food—Mrs Wiseman had starved herself for the same period. ‘When I came out,’ wrote Gerard afterwards, ‘I found her face so changed that she looked a different person; and had it not been for her voice and her dress I doubt whether I would have recognised her.’ But any relief at the near miraculous nature of their escape was misplaced. No one yet suspected John Frank to be an informer.* 46

  As soon as he was rested enough to travel, Gerard left Broadoaks, lying low at a nearby friend’s house for a fortnight to recuperate properly. Then he headed for London. William Wiseman was still being held prisoner in the Wood Street Counter and the Jesuit was keen to see if there was anything he could do for him, but with London’s Catholics in disarray following Topcliffe’s raids it was imperative Gerard first find a safe place of refuge. Nicholas Owen was drafted in to help him in this search; meanwhile, Gerard shifted precariously between the Strand house of Anne, Countess of Arundel and a house belonging to the Wisemans somewhere in Holborn. It was there, at around ten o’clock on the evening of 23 April, that John Frank arrived with a letter from Mrs Wiseman, which he said required Gerard’s urgent attention. And it was there just two hours later that the pursuivants arrived, hammering on the door to wake Gerard and Owen, both asleep in the upstairs chamber.47

  This time there was no way out: the chamber had only one exit; the house did not have a hiding place (Owen had just sufficient time to burn Mrs Wiseman’s letter before armed men burst into the room). And this time there could be no pretence as to his real identity: Gerard recognized one of the pursuivants, probably from his time in the Marshalsea prison ten years before.* Gerard and Owen were ordered to get dressed. Their room was searched for incriminating evidence. Then both men were led away under escort.48

  * * *

  * Before long he would write of his travels, ‘I had so many friends on my route and so close to one another that I hardly ever had to put up at a tavern in a journey of a hundred and fifty miles.’ On the assumption that he rode an average distance of about twenty to thirty miles a day (avoiding main roads), this would give some indication of Catholic density at the time.

  * Matins was traditionally a midnight office that might also be recited at daybreak. Within the Church of England the term now refers specifically to Morning Prayer.

  * In 1583 Whitgift published his Twenty-Four Articles, the fiercest challenge to Puritanism yet, reinforcing episcopal authority and declaring that the Book of Common Prayer contained nothing contrary to the word of God: both were the antithesis of Puritan belief. Although unpopular with Privy Councillors, many of whom had Puritan leanings, Whitgift acted with the complete support of Elizabeth.

  * As late as 1569 the vicar of Ashford in Kent declared that those children who died before baptism were the ‘firebrands of Hell’.

  * The churching of women after childbirth (referred to here by Garnet as childing) was a medieval practice continued after the Reformation by the Anglican Church. The ceremony was one of thanksgiving for a safe deliverance and represented society’s recognition of the woman as a mother. However, the ritual was ringed with superstitious beliefs (frequently enforced by the more orthodox Anglican clergy), in particular that the unchurched woman was unclean and should not leave her house until she had been purified.

  * Any priest who died on the mission had to be disposed of with great care, for it was dangerous to bring out a corpse for burial that could not legally be accounted for. When the London-based Jesuit John Curry died of an illness in 1596 ‘he was buried in a secret place,’ wrote Gerard, ‘for all priests who live in hiding on the mission are also buried in hiding’. Whether the words ‘secret place’ refer to a priest-hole is unclear, but it seems that some priests were buried in the houses in which they had died.

  * John Owen’s first taste of the mission was disastrous. He landed at Rye in October 1584, but was arrested in Winchester just four months later, on 28 February 1585. At first he gave his name as John Gardiner, until he was brought before a member of the cathedral staff who had known him at Oxford, at which point he confessed his true identity. He was banished around Michaelmas that year, but by the end of January 1586 he was back in England. Within two months he had been re-arrested, at Battle, in Sussex. This led to his eventual conviction and recantation at the Chichester assizes in 1588.

  * This information came from William Borlas of the English fleet, who reported to Sir Francis Walsingham that, on the San Mateo’s capture, ‘I was the means that the best sort [including the ship’s commander, Don Diego Pimentel] were saved, the rest were cast overboard and slain at the entry.’

  * With Lord Montague’s death Lady Montague’s seeming immunity from investigation suffered slightly. In the summer of 1593 Richard Topcliffe was ordered to conduct three separate searches of her houses, for eight ‘divers and dangerous persons’, including two named priests. It was emphasized, however, that the searches were to ‘be done with regard to the quality of the lady’. The outcome is not recorded.

  * From this was born the concept of the Church Papist, despised by everyone of unwavering religious conviction, but seized on by anyone with half an eye to surviving the immediate future (with any degree of comfort) as the only practical option available to them. A seventeenth-century writer defined a Church Papist as ‘one that parts religion between his conscience and his purse, and comes to church not to serve God, but the King. The fear of the Law makes him wear the mark of the Gospel, which he useth, not as a means to save his soul, but his charges. He loves Popery well, but is loath to lose by it, and though he be something scared by the Bulls of Rome, yet he is struck with more terror at the apparitor [an officer of the ecclesiastical court]. Once a month, he presents himself at the church to keep off the churchwardens, and brings in his body to save his bail; kneels with the congregation, but prays by himself and asks God’s forgiveness for coming thither. If he be forced to stay out a sermon, he puts his hat over his eyes and frowns out the hour; and when he comes home, he thinks to make amends for his fault by abusing the preacher. His main subtlety is to shift off the Communion, for which he is never unfurnished of a quarrel, and will be sure always to be out of charity at Easter. He would make a bad martyr, and a good traveller, for his conscience is so large he could never wander from it, and in Constantinople would be circumcised with a mental reservation. His wife is more zealous in her devotion, and therefore more costly, and he bates her in tyres what she stands him in religion.’ The fine polish of this attack goes some way towards indicating just how common the public/private male/female face of Catholic observance had become by this period.

  * Hoskins was born in Herefordshire in 1568. He became a Jesuit in 1593 and served the English mission for six years, before being recalled to Brussels. He died in Spain in 1615. Sir John Fortescue built Salden House towards the end of the sixteenth century. Queen Elizabeth may have visited it in 1602; James I certainly did in 1603. Only a fragment of the house remains, converted into a farmhouse; sadly nothing is left of the original interior. Thanks to Francis Fortescue’s refusal to convert, the family never suffered for its faith and local tradition reports the Fortescues living at Salden in great splendour with as many as sixty servants.

  * If a husband died before his wife, two-thirds of her jointure could be seized in payment of her outstanding recusancy fines. The Exchequer Roll of 1593-94 reveals sixty such instances.

  † Traditionally bishops were able to call down secular punishment on an excommunicated person by applying to the Court of Chancery.
Chancery would then issue a writ to the county sheriff, ordering the arrest of the excommunicate until such time as he/she conformed. In 1563 a Parliamentary Act [5 Eliz. c.23] stipulated that a regular return of these writs should be made to the Court of the Queen’s Bench to enforce the practice.

  * Curiously, the Commons played a moderating role in this Parliament, reserving their real energy to debate whether the bill applied to all recusants or just Catholic recusants; the Government insisted on the former (an indication of its increasing animosity towards the Puritans), the largely Puritan Commons insisted on the latter. The Government won, but whether the Commons’ comparative leniency towards Catholics was a result of growing identification with their fellow persecuted or growing self-confidence is unclear. An additional clause to this legislation, poached from a bill introduced in the Lords, prevented all Catholics over the age of sixteen from travelling five miles from their place of residence without a licence, on penalty of exile. It was specifically designed to prevent Catholics from evading indictment for recusancy by moving about.

  * The punishment was finally removed from the statute book in 1827; the last recorded case of its being invoked came eighty-six years earlier in 1741. From then on all those refusing to plead were adjudged to have entered a plea of not guilty. Convicted felons forfeited their estate to the Crown, whereas those who died as a result of peine forte et dure did not—this may have been one of the few compelling reasons to choose such a fate.

  * The younger brother, John, died as a novice in Rome in 1592. Thomas died of consumption at St Omer in 1596. During their time abroad they took as aliases names used by Gerard during his stay in East Anglia: John became Starkey, Thomas, Standish, in tribute to their mentor.

  * Drury died in Antwerp on 10 September 1593 as a novice of the Society.

  * Gerard was cheerfully honest about his failures as much as his successes. He spent many hours with Lady Rich, the sister of the Earl of Essex, but in the end she was persuaded against conversion by her lover, Lord Mountjoy. However, on her death in 1634, it appears she was reconciled to the Catholic Church by an unnamed Jesuit.

  * This was probably Henry Grey of Enville in Staffordshire. Grey was married to Anne, daughter of William, Lord Windsor, who was known to Garnet from the Hurleyford conference. Though clearly no Catholic himself, his marriage makes it possible he was possessed of Catholic sympathies, hence his reported outburst.

  * The arresting officers, Robert Watson and Edward Vaughan, revealed to Sir Robert Cecil that when asked if he were a Jesuit, Wallis replied, ‘no, I am not learned, and would to God I were worthy enough to carry their shoes’. They also revealed that when the suspects were questioned, their answers ‘all seemed to vary, and not one could tell an even tale’.

  * On 20 May 1594 William Cecil wrote to the justices in charge of the raid, Francis Barrington and Mr Frank (no relation to John Frank), asking for a report on the behaviour of two pursuivants—Worsley and Newell—during the search. It seemed Mrs Wiseman had complained about their ‘bad demeanour’. Sadly, there is no record of the follow-up to this complaint. The problem was not unusual, though. One Government informer wrote to Walsingham, warning him of the behaviour of Anthony Munday, employed by Topcliffe ‘to guard and to take bonds of recusants’. According to the agent, Munday’s ‘dealing hath been very rigorous, and yet done very small good, but rather much hurt; for in one place, under pretence to seek for Agnus Deis and hallowed grains, he carried from a widow 40 [pounds], the which he took out of a chest. A few of these matters will either raise a rebellion, or cause your officers to be murdered’. This complaint rather gave the lie to Topcliffe’s assertion, made to Lord Keeper Puckering, that Munday was ‘a man who wants no wit’.

  * Little is known about Frank. For a time he was employed by Thomas Wiseman, who recommended him to his brother on his departure abroad. He had a house in London, which Gerard used as a staging post for Catholics leaving for the Continent, and he had free access to Broadoaks, despite the fact that he was not a Catholic himself. His motives for this surprising betrayal of the Wisemans are unclear, as is his subsequent fate (though he later admitted to Gerard that he only came to suspect him as a priest because of the great respect in which he was held by the family).

  * Worsley and Newell, the two pursuivants who had so offended Mrs Wiseman during the Broadoaks search, led the Holborn arrests. It is not clear which of them recognized Gerard. Newell would later take part in a raid on the Derbyshire house of Gerard’s sister, Mrs Jennison.

  Nine

  ‘As soon as thou comest before the gate of the prison, do but think thou art entering into Hell, and it will extenuate somewhat of thy misery.’

  Geffray Mynshall, 1618

  Royal Commissioners:* Who sent you over here?

  John Gerard: The Superiors of the Society.

  Commissioners: Why?

  Gerard: To bring back wandering souls to their Maker.

  Commissioners: No, you were sent to seduce people from the Queen’s allegiance to the Pope’s, and to meddle in State business.

  Day Two of Gerard’s arrest and the questions—and accusations—were flowing.1

  From Holborn, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, 24 April 1594, John Gerard and Nicholas Owen were conducted to the house of the pursuivant who had recognized Gerard. There they spent the remainder of that night. Soon after daybreak Owen was taken away for interrogation while Gerard was handcuffed and locked in his room. Twenty-four hours later it was his turn to appear before the Commissioners.2

  There are no transcripts of these first examinations other than Gerard’s own, so neither the accuracy of his recall nor its impartiality can be verified. According to him, though, his first answer was a lie. When his inquisitors demanded his name, he gave an alias. It was a last-ditch response, automatic and not a little desperate, for it was unlikely the pursuivant known to Gerard had not passed this information on. Sure enough, the commissioners made it clear they now knew not only his real name, but also his profession. Gerard moved quickly to limit the damage: ‘I said [to them] that I would be quite frank and give straight answers to all questions concerning myself, but added I would say nothing which would involve others.’ For the rest of the session he talked openly about the Jesuits’ injunction not to deal in political matters, but refused to give away any details of his landing in England, or where he had stayed for the last six years, so as not to implicate anyone else. Finally he was committed to the Counter in the Poultry, a prison four doors to the west of St Mildred’s Church, in the maze of streets that made up London’s Cheapside.3

  The Counter in the Poultry ‘hath been there…time out of mind’, observed London chronicler John Stow. To the playwright Thomas Dekker it was one of London’s ‘thirteen strong houses of sorrow’.* In such a place, wrote Dekker, with an insider’s experience, ‘the prisoner hath his heart wasting away sometimes a whole ‘prenticeship of years in cares…O what a deal of wretchedness can make shift to lie in a little room!’ John Gerard’s cell in the Counter was a very little room. ‘It was a small garret which had only a bed in it and such a low ceiling that I could not stand upright except near the bed…The doorway was so low that I could not enter the room on my feet, and even when I crawled down on my knees I had to stoop to get through. But this proved an advantage, since it helped to keep out the smell of the privy next door.’ It was the stench of an Elizabethan prison that wore the prisoners down, even more so than their confinement. James Younger, the priestturned-informer (and an internee of the Poultry Counter just the year before Gerard), had complained to Lord Keeper Puckering, ‘such is the corruption and unsavoury air of the place in which I remain that my body is not able any longer to sustain those annoyances, but fainteth continually’. Poet Edmund Gayton would put it even more succinctly, in the following century:

  …the Prison smelt of lice,

  Of urine, and of seige [excrement] and mice

  And rats’ turds.4

  Like all political
prisoners Gerard was held in solitary confinement. In addition, his legs were shackled. This was standard punishment for the worst sorts of criminals, but one from which the payment of a specific fee—‘for easement of irons’—could usually buy relief. In Gerard’s case, though, he was rumoured to have welcomed the additional suffering, as a letter from Henry Garnet to Claudio Aquaviva some years later revealed.

  ‘When he was first taken and the gaoler put very heavy irons on his legs, he [Gerard] gave him some money. The following day the gaoler, thinking that if he took off the irons, he would doubtless give him more, took them off but got nothing. After some days he came to put them on again and received a reward; and then taking them off did not get a farthing. They went on playing thus with one another several times, but at last the gaoler, seeing that he did not give him anything for taking off his irons, left him for a long time in confinement, so that the great toe of one foot was for almost two years [afterwards] in great danger of mortification.’

  Gerard, himself, only noted, ‘I did not feel the least bit sorry for myself. Quite the contrary. I became very happy—so good is God to the least of his servants.’ With each new misery he endured, he was moving a step nearer martyrdom.5

  Three or four days into his imprisonment, Gerard was led out once again for interrogation. This time he faced more practised adversaries than the Royal Commissioners: Richard Young, Chief Magistrate for Middlesex, and Richard Topcliffe. Young, so prominent in the search for Southwell and in the recent arrest of Mrs Wiseman, began with a question about the places where Gerard had lived since his return to England and about the Catholics he knew. Gerard refused to answer. Now Topcliffe entered the fray; sixty-two-year-old priest-hunter faced twenty-nine-year-old priest. The scene, as reported afterwards by Gerard, was a bravura display of bluster by the older man, bravado by the younger: ‘Topcliffe looked up at me and glared. “You know who I am? I am Topcliffe. No doubt you have often heard people talk about me?” He said this to scare me. And to heighten the effect he slapped his sword on the table close to his hand as though he intended to use it, if occasion arose. But his acting was lost on me. I was not in the least frightened.’ Hereafter, wrote Gerard, ‘I was deliberately rude to him.’ The meeting ended with Topcliffe laying out the charges against Gerard.6