by Hogge, Alice
Arden went first, pulling himself bodily along the rope until he reached the wharf. Then it was Gerard’s turn: ‘I gripped the rope with my right hand, and took it in my left. To prevent myself falling I twisted my legs round the rope leaving it free to slide between my shins.’ But now Gerard realized that Arden’s crossing had slackened the rope and where once it had stretched taut across the moat, now it hung loosely. ‘I had gone three or four yards face downwards when suddenly my body swung round with its own weight and I nearly fell. I was still very weak, and with the slack rope and my body hanging underneath I could make practically no progress.’ It took huge effort for Gerard to reach the centre of the rope and there he stuck. ‘My strength was failing and my breath, which was short before I started, seemed altogether spent.’ Three and a half years of imprisonment and two bouts of savage torture had taken their toll.
It was ‘the help of the saints and…the power of [his] friends’ prayers’ that finally, Gerard reckoned, got him to the wall on the far side of the moat, but here his strength gave out altogether, leaving him dangling, his feet just touching the top of the wall. John Lillie seized his legs and pulled him up over the wall and down onto the wharf and Gerard was half carried, half dragged to the waiting boat.
They rowed a good distance from the Tower before putting into shore. From there, Lillie escorted John Arden to Anne Line’s house, while Fulwood took Gerard to Garnet’s latest London base at Spitalfields, to the east of the city, where Nicholas Owen was waiting with horses. As dawn broke, Gerard and Owen were heading west towards the village of Uxbridge, some dozen miles from London on the Oxford road. On the outskirts of the village stood Morecrofts, a house newly leased by the Jesuits. Here, Garnet was expecting them. ‘The rejoicing was great,’ remembered Gerard afterwards.
It just remained to put the final part of Gerard’s plan into operation. Before leaving his cell Gerard had written three letters. The first was to his warder, giving his reasons for escaping; the second was to the new Lieutenant of the Tower, assuring him that the warder had not been privy to the escape; the third was to the Privy Council, justifying his actions and assuring them that neither the warder nor the Lieutenant was in any way culpable. But concern for what might befall the warder led Gerard to go further still and a messenger was dispatched to intercept the man on his way to work that morning. Through this messenger Gerard now promised the warder an annuity of two hundred florins for life and the guarantee of a safe refuge if he left London immediately. The warder accepted and Richard Fulwood accompanied him to a house some hundred miles from London, belonging to friends of Gerard. In time he was joined there by his family, setting up his own house with the money Gerard sent him. He also converted to the Catholic faith.58
On the morning of 5 October the new Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Peyton, sat down to write a letter of his own—to the Privy Council. ‘This night there are escaped two prisoners out of the Tower, viz., John Arden and John Gerard. Their escape was made very little before day, for on going to Arden’s chamber in the morning, I found the ink in his pen very fresh…[The warder] is also gone this morning at the opening of the gates…I have sent hue and cry to Gravesend, and to the Mayor of London for a search to be made in London and all the liberties [outlying districts].’59
Strangely, though, Peyton’s call for a search received little support from the Council. The prevailing view was that if Gerard had friends prepared to help him escape in this manner, then he also had friends prepared to find him a secure hiding place. One Councillor was even reported to have told a gentleman in attendance he was glad Gerard had got away—this was the news that filtered back to Gerard. Garnet, writing to Robert Persons three days later, noted, ‘There is no great enquiry after him.’ Gerard, himself, somewhat coolly recorded, ‘A search was made in one or two places. As far as I could discover, nobody of note was taken.’ This was not arrogance, so much as a realistic appraisal of his worth to the mission. With Elizabeth entering her sixty-fifth year the promise of change was now palpable in the air and after his own enforced absence from the field Gerard was poised to seize whatever chance that change might bring. Few could doubt that the events of the immediate years to come would be vital to the continued existence of English Catholicism. Fewer still could doubt that Gerard had earned the right to be at the centre of those events.60
* * *
* Leading the interrogation was Sir Thomas Egerton, who that year replaced Gerard’s cousin Sir Gilbert Gerard as Master of the Rolls of the Court of Chancery. Egerton was a lapsed Catholic—he had been listed as a recusant in 1577. In 1596 he was appointed Lord Keeper and in 1609 he became Lord Chancellor.
* The thirteen to which he referred were the two Counters, in Poultry and Wood Street, Newgate prison and Ludgate prison (all serving the City); the Bridewell and the Fleet; the Gatehouse and the Convict prison (both in Westminster); the Southwark Counter, the Marshalsea, the King’s Bench, the Clink and the White Lion (all in Southwark). In addition to this, of course, there was the Tower.
* In 1583 Robert Persons wrote to the Rector of the English College in Rome, highlighting Government concern at the numbers of priests it was holding in prison. ‘[O]ur opponents are not so anxious now to capture priests’, he noted, ‘…and so nowadays the heretics are usually annoyed if any priests give themselves away easily. This was the case lately with Lomax, one of your men, who was secretly scolded by the Magistrates because, when seized at port, he guilelessly confessed that he was a priest at the first word from the Magistrates, and so they were forced by his needless confession to send him to prison.’ Father James Lomax was arrested in the summer of 1583. He died in prison early in 1584.
* In most prisons there appear to have been three ranks of paid accommodation, the Master’s Side, the Knight’s Ward and the Twopenny Ward. The penniless were cast into the Hole, a beggar’s ward whose inmates were dependent on alms from the rich for their survival; William Cecil was a long-standing benefactor of the residents of Newgate’s Hole. In 1606 official prison rates were set: according to these, a bed cost 4d for a single occupant, or 6d a night shared between several occupants. Mattresses were 1d extra.
* In 1596 Sir Robert Cecil noted that, of all London’s gaols, the Clink had been particularly corrupted by its Catholic prisoners and that it might be necessary to dismiss the gaoler.
† In March 1583 William Allen wrote: ‘In one of the prisons called the Marshalsea there are, besides the other Catholics, twenty-four priests who live there…Both in this and the other prisons many masses are said every day, with the leave or connivance of the gaolers, who are either bribed or favourable to religion; people from without are admitted from time to time for conference, confession or communion; and more than this, the priests are allowed to go out everyday to different parts of the city and attend to the spiritual needs of the Catholics, on condition that they return to prison for the night.’ On 25 February 1600 forty-eight people were caught attending a Catholic sermon at the Marshalsea. Most of the congregation, as well as the priest (a Scottish Capuchin friar), were visitors.
* Line ran the Jesuits’ boarding house for three years, until her notoriety made it unsafe for her to continue. Soon afterwards she took lodgings in another building, from where she continued sheltering priests. She was arrested on 2 February 1601, charged with harbouring, and executed at Tyburn on 27 February, the last woman to suffer under the 1585 act.
* In another example of papal impartiality, in 1155 Pope Adrian IV (the former Englishman Nicholas Breakspear) granted to King Henry II of England all temporal rights over (and possession of) Ireland.
* Government informers were employed to tag the English exiles, but a letter, dated 2 January 1592, from W. Sterrel, an agent provocateur, to Thomas Phelippes, the Government’s code-master, revealed that the process was not foolproof. Sterrel writes about an informer, Cloudesley, a former servant to Hugh Owen. Cloudesley had just returned from the Continent, but had succeeded in messing up his mission, del
ivering Sterrel’s letters to the wrong people: ‘giving Owen’s to Westmoreland [Charles Neville, the northern rebel], and Westmoreland’s to Holt, which may do hurt, they being of divers factions’. Sadly Sterrel does not reveal the contents or purpose of these letters, but he does suggest Cloudesley should instead be employed ‘about the prisons’, to hunt out information there.
* The credibility of this conspiracy is in doubt, as is that of the so-called Lopez plot, discovered that same month. Sceptics look to the fact that the Earl of Essex, who had taken onto his payroll many of Francis Walsingham’s spies on the latter’s death in 1590, was keen to prove himself indispensable to the ageing Queen after she over-ruled his choice of candidate for the post of Attorney General. Suspicion of the case grows in direct proportion to the number of people apparently so willing—voluntarily—to claim the assassin’s role. Neither is it helped by Daniel’s testimony that when he and Cahill took their leave of the Jesuits they were told ‘to use all haste, as there were an Englishman and a Scotchman appointed for a similar purpose’. Earlier, Cahill had said that his recruiters particularly ‘wanted to employ a tall, resolute, and desperate Irishman’ for the job.
* This did not stop the rumours flying on the Continent, though. On 9 May 1595 Charles Paget, in Brussels, wrote to Thomas Throgmorton, in Rome, saying, ‘In England, executions are out for Fathers Edmonds [Weston], Walpole, and Gerard.’ By this point, of course, Walpole was already dead.
† Unwilling to give his name, so as not to compromise him, Gerard says of the priest that he was someone ‘whom I had occasion to help many times. On his arrival in England I had arranged for him to live in a fine house with some of my best friends’. From this clue it seems likely the priest was Robert Barwise, or Barrows (alias Johnson and Walgrave). Barwise was a Londoner, born in 1563 and educated at Reims. He returned to England in 1589 and during Lent 1593 he stayed at Broadoaks. On 10 March 1594 he was arrested ‘in the Queen’s highway by Newell and Worsley’ and committed to the Clink by Richard Young. Topcliffe mistakenly lists him as a Jesuit and describes him as ‘very dangerous’, but it seems the greatest danger Barwise posed was to his fellow Catholics. While at Broadoaks he ‘rode a gelding of Wiseman’s and wore his cloak, though Wiseman told him it was very dangerous for him to go to his house, because of the often watches and searches’. In 1594 he provided Richard Young with information about a Catholic book called News from Spain and Holland. In 1602 he provided undisclosed evidence to Robert Pooley (which Pooley duly forwarded to Cecil), as well as details of ‘the secret in and out passages of the Jesuits, the conveyance of their closest affairs, and in what places they remain’. Interestingly, at his arrest Barwise admitted knowing John Annias and also mentioned a vague plot to kill Elizabeth and Cecil.
* Carved into the wall of this second storey cell is a heart pierced by an arrow, symbol of one of the five wounds of Christ, and what look like the initials JG.
* There seems to have been no one single torture-chamber in the Tower and frequently prisoners were tortured in their cells, but Gerard’s account does suggest he was taken to the White Tower. There is rumoured to have been an underground passage between the Lieutenant’s lodgings, where his initial examination took place, and the White Tower vaults, and from Gerard’s description of the attendants’ torches it is possible he used this passage now.
* On 7 May Garnet wrote to Aquaviva, ‘The inquisitors say that [Gerard] is very obstinate, as they cannot draw the least word out of his mouth, except that in torment he cries “Jesus”.’
* Pre-1215, most criminal cases were tried by ordeal, the ultimate judge being God, himself. The person who floated during the water ordeal was guilty; the person whose hand remained infection-free after a hot iron had been applied to it was innocent, and so on. In 1215, though, the fourth Lateran Council (Pope Innocent III’s ecumenical conference) banned the ordeals and countries had to find other methods of trial. In England the jury system was already in use in exceptional circumstances, namely when the accused wished to avoid the ordeals, and this system was now adopted for all cases. In mainland Europe the system chosen was that of the Roman-canon law of proof, which laid down strict criteria for conviction: to return a guilty verdict the court needed two eye witness reports or the accused’s own confession; circumstantial evidence was not permitted. However, by a complicated system of grading (a point for one eye witness report, a point for substantial circumstantial evidence, etc.), if the accused was felt to have half-proof against him, and was therefore highly likely to be guilty, he could legally be tortured to see if any further proof could be obtained. The practice was strictly controlled: the accused could not be asked leading questions and all information had to be verified, the aim being to extract evidence that no innocent person could know. The use of judicial torture was finally abolished in the eighteenth century.
* Gerard’s account of this correspondence gives careful advice on the merits of orange juice and lemon juice as invisible inks. The advantages of the latter are that it can be read just as well with water as with heat, and that if the paper is once dried out, the writing disappears again. Orange juice writing can only be read with heat and once the heat has brought it out, it stays out. The advantage of this is that the recipient of an orange juice letter can always tell if his message has been intercepted and read.
* Early in William Weston’s imprisonment friends had offered to buy his liberty in return for his exile. Weston had begged Southwell to dissuade them on the grounds that ‘it was a despicable method of liberation’ and Garnet had banned the escapade. He explained to Aquaviva, ‘Since he [Weston] has, as it were, gained an eminent and illustrious position for himself, he is exposed to the observation of all and it would look shameful for the shepherd to fly from his flock at such a time as this.’
* Old London Bridge had nineteen small arches spanning the river, severely restricting the flow of water and making the current there dangerously strong. An old proverb stated that the bridge was for wise men to go over and for fools to go under.
Ten
‘I know the inconstancy of the people of England,
how they ever mislike the government and have
their eyes fixed upon that person that is next to succeed.’
Queen Elizabeth I
London, 28 April 1603
LEADING THE WAY was the Knight Marshal’s man. Behind him walked two hundred and forty poor women, in lines of four, the servants of the country’s assorted knights, esquires, and gentlemen, all in rank, two porters, four trumpeters, the Rose Pursuivant at Arms, two Sergeant at Arms, the first of the royal standard-bearers and two equerries leading a riderless horse. This was just the beginning. Now came the members of the royal household: the messengers of the chamber, the children of the wood yard, the scullery, the scalding house, and larder, the grooms from the stables, the wheat porters, the men from the counting house. Behind them came the noblemen’s servants, the grooms of the chamber, four more trumpeters, the Bluemantle Pursuivant, another Sergeant at Arms, a second royal standard, a second riderless horse. On and on they came: more members of the royal household, the children and gentlemen of the Chapel Royal, the clerks of the Council, the aldermen of London, two standard-bearers carrying the banners of Wales and of Ireland. Then came the office-holders: the Lord Mayor of London, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Lord Chief Justice, the Principal Secretary of State. Then the noblemen and clergy in order of precedence. Among them walked Tobie Matthew, Bishop of Durham. Thirty-seven years ago, as a young Oxford student, he had witnessed a royal procession similarly designed to strike awe into the hearts of the spectators in the streets; now he was taking part in one. Behind him came four more Sergeant at Arms, a standard bearer carrying the great embroidered Banner of England, the Norroy King at Arms, the Clarenceaux King at Arms, the Gentlemen-Ushers with their white rods. And behind them came the funeral carriage, drawn by four horses ‘trapped in black velvet’.1
She had made so many royal progres
ses in her lifetime, covering almost a third of her kingdom in a deliberate and unprecedented attempt to reach as many of her subjects as possible. This last journey was all too short, from the Palace of Whitehall to Westminster Abbey, just a few hundred metres. On top of the lead coffin was a picture of her, crowned and in her Parliamentary robes; overhanging it was a canopy borne by four noblemen and surrounding them walked the Gentlemen Pensioners, their axes lowered to the ground. And now came the women of the court: the gentlewomen of the Privy Chamber, the noblewomen in order of precedence, the maids of honour of the Privy Chamber. Behind them, bringing up the rear, came the Captain of the Guard. The guardsmen followed five abreast, their halberds also lowered.
Down Whitehall the procession moved in muffled silence, watched by the gathering crowds, and on into Westminster Abbey. Then the great doors swung shut behind it and Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith—the old Plantagenet claims mingled with the new Henrician honour—passed from view to her final resting place. It was the end of a dynasty.