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

by Hogge, Alice

  Indeed, what is surprising, on examination of their story, is how few of the missionaries can be held accountable for anything other than their State-forbidden priesthood, a fact recognized by Catholic commentators of the day. A letter of c.1592 makes the point clearly: ‘If some priests have fallen, yet can it not be much marvelled at, considering the rigour of the persecution: but, sure, it is a manifest miracle, that, among so many, so few scandals have risen…[For] their attire, conversation, and manner of life must here, of force, be still different from their profession; the examples and occasions that move them to sin, infinite: and therefore, no doubt, a wonderful goodness of God that so few have fallen.’23

  Religion has been used to justify too many acts of inhumanity to enumerate. Robert Catesby, said Garnet, ‘was so resolved…that it was lawful…to take arms for religion, that no man could dissuade [him]’; paradoxically, Catesby needed to claim Jesuit backing for his plot every bit as much as did the Government. But fear has inspired just as many acts of inhumanity. Elizabeth’s Government was, with reason, supremely fearful of the Catholic Church; James’s inherited that fear. Both preached regular sermons on their own essential decency and reasonableness (in marked contrast to what they perceived as the king-killing doctrines of Rome), both endorsed State-sanctioned acts of inhumanity: forced internments, show trials, revenge punishments, and the erosion of the common law. The argument goes that it is reductive to judge the past by the standards of today. Still, that does not mean we cannot examine the choices made in a fearful and uncertain past, better to evaluate those available to us in a fearful and uncertain present.

  * * *

  * The verse of the National Anthem, calling on God to confound the King’s enemies and ‘frustrate their knavish tricks’, was reportedly first sung in the hall of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, in London’s Threadneedle Street, as part of just such an act of thanksgiving.

  * In a further piece of spin, the laws by which the English Catholic Church had progressively been dismantled since the time of Henry VIII’s first quarrel with Rome became the ‘sundry necessary and religious laws for [the] preservation of Church and State’.

  * These were William of Orange; Henri IV, and Louis IV of France; Elizabeth I, James I, Charles I, and Charles II of England; and Presidents Harrison, Taylor, Garfield, McKinley and Lincoln.

  * Curiously, John F. Kennedy was called before a meeting of Protestant ministers to reassure them that he would not become a Vatican puppet if elected to the presidency. His response appears eminently Elizabethan in its essential ambiguity and in its recognition of a divided loyalty: ‘If my Church attempted to influence me in a way which was improper or which affected adversely my responsibilities as a public servant, then I would reply to them that this was an improper action on their part and that it was one to which I could not subscribe.’

  Author’s Note

  It is a truism that history books say as much, if not more, about the period in which they are written than they do about the period about which they are written. We are creatures of our time, moulded by the multifarious ideas and images thrust our way, and by the preoccupations of the day; we cannot look at the past save through the prism of our own immediate present. I have been struck again and again during the writing of this book by the parallels between this period (and the events contained therein), and our own. Yet I have been wary of making such parallels explicit, believing that to do so would be an act of disrespect towards the men and women about whom I have been writing. Nonetheless, to ignore them also seems to be, at some level, an act of negligence.

  On 8 November 2001 the Harvard law professor and prominent civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times, arguing in favour of ‘torture warrants’: mandates, issued on a case-by-case basis by a US high court judge, permitting the use of torture on a detainee (in fact, ‘torture warrants’ precisely akin to those issued by England’s Privy Council in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). In December 2001 the hastily compiled new British Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Securities Act made permissible the indefinite detention without trial of certain suspects. On 11 August 2004 the British Court of Appeal ruled that evidence extracted under torture in third countries was admissible as evidence, provided that the UK Government had ‘neither procured the torture nor connived at it’. On 20 November 2004 the New Scientist magazine featured a wide-ranging discussion about the accuracy of evidence elicited under torture. These four instances fit into a wider pattern of debate about the acceptable treatment of potential terrorists, as the West seeks to respond to the trauma inflicted upon it by the events of 11 September 2001. Once again the country stands trembling at the spectre of young men of a contrary religion, trained in martyrdom, hurling themselves at these shores. There are as many dissimilarities between these two situations as there are similarities. In the former category one can place motive and means: the myth of the assassin-priest has been replaced by the reality of the suicide-bomber. But the terms of engagement with the problem remain much the same—and they revolve around that one loaded word ‘potential’. For in this clash of ideologies, in which the battle-lines have been identified, in an act of risky over-simplification, as purely faith-based, how does one distinguish those members of that contrary faith engaged in the conflict from those members with no such designs?1

  It is the unenviable task of the British Government to find a method of distinguishing combatant from non-combatant, within an acceptable legal and ethical framework. It is the even less enviable task of British Muslims to see any overt denotement of their faith and culture taken as evidence of their disloyalty to the State, and every gesture of dilution rewarded with the sobriquet ‘moderate’, meaning loyal; to see suspicion in every glance; to see their co-religionists held without trial, no demonstrable evidence brought against them; to see an identity being forced upon them, without their having any say in the matter. ‘How can a man truly swear that he does abjure a position which he never held?’ asked English Catholics of the Oath of Allegiance. We seem in danger of asking British Muslims to do similarly.2

  We are closer to our sixteenth-century forebears than we might care to admit, in our willingness to assume that the values by which we order our lives are incontestable. We are no less likely than they were to inflict suffering on any given minority of our population. Indeed, it might be argued that we have now factored the probability of minority suffering into our ethical decisionmaking: utilitarianism, the perfect philosophy for the politician, depending as it does on majority consensus, now appears to have become our default moral position in every crisis. And our rampant defence of the majority good—it is this that makes the use of torture justifiable, argues its new wave of defenders—permits all too much room for minority pain. More worrying still, it also gives unwarranted scope for majority fear to dominate the process of moral reasoning.

  If these thoughts seem to sit uneasily at the tail end of what anyone would, correctly, regard as a popular history book, then I should explain that I offer them only because they have dominated so much of the process of this book’s writing.

  Appendix

  Of those houses mentioned in this book several are open to the public. Oxburgh Hall is near King’s Lynn in Norfolk; Baddesley Clinton is near Knowle in Warwickshire: both are managed by the National Trust. Coughton Court, near Alcester in Warwickshire, also managed by the Trust, has a permanent exhibition detailing the house’s links with the Gunpowder Plot. Stonor Park, near Henley-on-Thames, has a permanent exhibition illustrating the life of Edmund Campion, and visitors there can see the rooms believed to have housed the press on which Campion’s Decem Rationes was printed. Sadly there have been casualties among the houses no less than among their owners. Hindlip Hall is now the site of the headquarters of West Mercia Constabulary; Harrowden Hall is home to Wellingborough Golf Club.

  Lastly, I’d like to draw the reader’s attention to a house not featured in this book, but worth visiting. This is Harvi
ngton Hall, near Kidderminster in Worcestershire. Harvington belonged to Humphrey Pakington, a recusant and a close friend of Thomas Habington at nearby Hindlip. This friendship makes it likely that Pakington was known to the Jesuits, and still extant at Harvington is a cluster of hiding-places believed to be by Nicholas Owen.

  The hides are situated around the massive Great Staircase, the design of which dates from about 1600. Given the upheaval to the household that its construction would have caused, it makes sense to suppose that it and its surrounding hides were built of a piece (the former providing cover for the latter), some time after this date.

  Climb the Great Staircase at Harvington today, to the top landing, and before you is a set of five steps leading up to what is known as the Nine Worthies Passage.* Place your fingers under the top two treads of these steps and they hinge back to reveal a small triangular hide, suitable for books and massing equipment. In the far wall of this hide is a gap, once covered by a secret door (probably camouflaged to look like brickwork), through which you can climb to a larger, man-sized hide beyond.

  Carry on along the passage and you come to the Marble Room, with a triangular fireplace built into the far corner. This fireplace has no chimney-stack beneath it and extends only as far as the ceiling: it is entirely false. If you were to climb up it, through its carefully blackened surrounds, you would enter a bewildering maze of attics above, with a second hide built into the end garret.

  Below the Marble Room is Dr Dodd’s Library. At the far end of this library, opposite the window, is a small raised stage, once used as a bookcupboard. The back wall of it is panelled; the sides would once have been panelled too, but now they consist of bare brick and upright timber beams. In the darkest recesses of this stage is a timber beam, the end of which can be raised. It pivots open to reveal a hide beyond, eight foot long, three foot wide and five foot high—luxury in terms of hiding-places—with a small wooden joint-stool as furniture. This stool is too big to pass through the ten-inch-wide entrance to the hide, so it must have been built, or assembled, in situ. The hide was discovered by accident in 1897 by boys playing in the, then, derelict hall. It and its companion pieces are some of the very finest hiding-places ever to have been built. They provide enduring evidence of the genius of Nicholas Owen.

  * * *

  * The existing staircase is a replica: the original was dismantled and moved to Coughton Court in 1910.

  Endnotes

  CHAPTER ONE

  1 Neale, II, pp. 108-9; Mattingley, p. 159; Somerset, p. 451.

  2 Mattingley, pp. 159-60.

  3 Ibid., p. 161.

  4 Ibid.

  5 Ibid., pp. 166-7; Somerset, pp. 451-2; Neale, II, p. 193.

  6 Milne-Tyte, pp. 10, 14, 23; Somerset, p. 446.

  7 Milne-Tyte, pp. 10, 17, 18, 29; Wernham, p. 342; Elton, p. 356.

  8 Milne-Tyte, pp. 45, 129-30; Mattingley, p. 166.

  9 Milne-Tyte, p. 10; Somerset, p. 458.

  10 Milne-Tyte, pp. 32-33.

  11 Somerset, p. 458; Milne-Tyte, pp. 18, 41; C.S.P. Spanish, IV, pp. 373, 479-83.

  12 Harleian Miscellany, I, pp. 119ff.; Somerset, pp. 458-9; Milne-Tyte, p. 84.

  13 Milne-Tyte, pp. 84, 90, 101-2, 151.

  14 Milne-Tyte, pp. 112-13, 145; C.S.P. Spanish, IV, pp. 419, 479-83.

  15 Milne-Tyte, pp. 107-8.

  16 C.S.P. Spanish, IV, p. 493; Caraman, Garnet, pp. 82-3; Harleian Miscellany, I, pp. 132-3.

  17 Harleian Miscellany, I, p. 115; Davies, Europe, p. 520; MacCulloch, pp. xix-xx.

  18 Somerset, p. 467; Caraman, Garnet, p. 83.

  19 Gerard, p. 9 and note; Morris, Condition, p. 280; Jessopp, p. 161; Elton, p. 370.

  20 Gerard, pp. 9ff.; Morris, Condition, pp. 280ff.

  21 Gerard, p. 1; Morris, Condition, pp. ix-xi.

  22 Gerard, p. 2.

  23 Davies, Europe, p. 496; Gerard, pp. 2-3.

  24 Gerard, p. 3; S.P. Domestic 12/clxviii/35.

  25 Gerard, pp. 3-4.

  26 Gerard, pp. 4-5.

  27 Gerard, p. 6.

  28 Gerard, pp. 7-8, 213 note; S.P. Domestic 12/cxcix/95-6, 12/ccxvii/3, 12/ccxvii/81; Devlin, Life, p. 248.

  29 Gerard, p. 8.

  30 Neale, II, pp. 37ff.; Tierney, III, pp. xxxiii-xxxvii; Aydelotte, pp. 54-5.

  31 Gerard, pp. 10-11.

  32 Gerard, pp. 11-12; Jessopp, p. 162.

  33 Gerard, pp. 12-13.

  34 Gerard, p. 13; Jessopp, p. 162.

  35 Gerard, pp. 13-14; Jessopp, pp. 162, 225.

  36 Gerard, p. 14.

  37 Ibid., pp. 14-15.

  38 Ibid., p. 15; Jessopp, p. 164.

  39 Strype, III, pp. 87-92; Devlin, Life, p. 175.

  40 Devlin, Life, p. 172.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1 V.C.H. Oxford, IV, p. 74; Parish Registers of St Peter-le-Bailey; Salter, Properties, p. 203; Salter, Survey, II, pp. 120-22; Hodgetts, Owens, p. 427; Hogge, pp. 291ff.

  2 Hogge, pp. 291-2; V.C.H. Oxford, IV, pp. 86, 401; Salter, Survey, II, p. 123; Salter, Names, pp. 11-12.

  3 R.C.H.M. Oxford, pp. 156-8; V.C.H. Oxford, IV, pp. 296-300.

  4 V.C.H. Oxford, IV, pp. 85, 365; R.C.H.M. Oxford, p. 155.

  5 McCoog, p. 40; McConica, p. 364.

  6 McCoog, p. 40; McConica, p. 125.

  7 McCoog, p. 40; McConica, p. 125.

  8 McCoog, p. 40; McConica, p. 128.

  9 McConica, p. 365; Rashdall, pp. 106-7.

  10 V.C.H. Oxford, IV, p. 12.

  11 McConica, pp. 368-72, 404; McCoog, pp. 43-4.

  12 McCoog, p. 45; Fowler, p. 97.

  13 McCoog, pp. 47-9; V.C.H. Oxford, III, pp. 20, 238, 251.

  14 Fowler, pp. 97, 357; McCoog, p. 49; McConica, pp. 375, 377.

  15 Wernham, pp. 99, 181, 208; S.P. Domestic 11/1/7.

  16 Plowden, p. 25.

  17 Tierney, II, pp. ccxxix, 120.

  18 Neale, I, p. 44; Plowden, p. 18.

  19 Elton, p. 264; Plowden, p. 18; Tierney, I, pp. 176, 186-7; Neale, I, p. 57.

  20 Neale, I, pp. 35, 83; C.S.P. Spanish, I, p. 64; Sander, p. 282 note; Plowden, p. 36.

  21 Sander, p. 244.

  22 Neale, I, pp. 78-9; Sander, pp. 268, 283-5; Duffy, pp. 567-8.

  23 McCoog, p. 251; Plowden, p. 48.

  24 Gerard, pp. 18-19 and note, 221 note.

  25 C.S.P. Spanish, I, pp. 217-18; V.C.H. Oxford, IV, p. 412; McCoog, p. 54; Rowlands, p. 157.

  26 McConica, p. 405; Tierney, II, p. 143.

  27 C.S.P. Domestic 1547-1580, p. 186; Rashdall, pp. 111-15; McConica, pp. 381, 408; McCoog, pp. 50-51; V.C.H. Oxford, III, p. 159.

  28 Somerset, pp. 122-3.

  29 C.S.P. Spanish, I, pp. 156, 217-18; McCoog, p. 51.

  30 C.S.P. Spanish, I, p. 303.

  31 McConica, pp. 397ff.; Duncan-Jones, pp. 35ff.; Wallace, pp. 60-64; A. Wood, History, pp. 154ff.; Plummer, pp. 197ff.

  32 C.S.P. Spanish, I, pp. 178-9.

  33 Simpson, Campion, pp. 12-14; McCoog, p. 87; Watkins, pp. 83, 89.

  34 Jessopp, p. 102.

  35 Haile, pp. 2ff, 77; Clancy, p. 8.

  CHAPTER THREE

  1 Sander, p. 261; Tierney, III, pp. 7-8.

  2 McCoog, p. 251 note.

  3 Plowden, pp. 89-91; Haile, p. 108.

  4 Neale, I, pp. 185-6.

  5 Davies, Europe, pp. 496-502; Clancy, p. 7.

  6 Tierney, III, p. 87.

  7 Challoner, p. 5; Allen, pp. 108-9; Haile, p. 140.

  8 Haile, p. 119.

  9 Ibid., pp. 34-5, 47.

  10 Plowden, pp. 59-60; Haile, p. 58; Knox, Letters, p. 21.

  11 Haile, pp. 71-5.

  12 Ibid., pp. 77-80.

  13 Plowden, p. 63.

  14 Neale, I, pp. 116-17.

  15 Magee, pp. 31-2.

  16 S.P. Domestic 12/xxi/10, 12/xxiii/9; Richard II, I.iii.176.

  17 Gerard, p. 1; Cook, p. 42; Devlin, Life, p. 17.

  18 S.P. Domestic 12/xxiii/9; Devlin, Life, p. 10.

  19 Devlin, Life, p. 16.

  20 Knox, Diaries
, p. lxxvi; Haile, pp. 80ff.

  21 Haile, pp. 127, 128, 185.

  22 Ibid., pp. 134-7, 144.

  23 Knox, Diaries, pp. lvii-lviii; Munday, Life, p. 12.

  24 Munday, Life, pp. 12ff.

  25 Ibid., pp. 15, 28; Porter, p. 13.

  26 Munday, Life, pp. 21-7; Haile, p. 82.

  27 Haile, pp. 149-50, 151, 154; Knox, Letters, pp. 178-9, 247-8, 264-5.

  28 Haile, p. 146; Knox, Diaries, p. xlvi; C.S.P. Spanish IV, p. 37.

  29 Haile, p. 140.

  30 Allen, p. 105.

  31 Ibid.

  32 Haile, p. 140; Challoner, p. 5; Allen, pp. 105-6.

  33 Haile, p. 141; Challoner, p. 5; Plowden, p. 121.

  34 Allen, pp. 107-108; Haile, p. 141; Challoner, p. 6.

  35 Haile, p. 141.

  36 Clancy, p. 140; Simpson, Campion, pp. 69-70; Knox, Diaries, p. lxxxii; McCoog, p. 293 and note.

  37 Simpson, Campion, p. 7.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1 Simpson, Campion, pp. 378-9; Haile, pp. 85-6.

  2 Simpson, Campion, pp. 1ff., 28-9; Haile, p. 86.

  3 Simpson, Campion, pp. 73-4.

  4 Davies, Europe, p. 496.

  5 E. Waugh, Campion, p. 69.

  6 Plowden, pp. 145-6; Harmsen, p. 9.

  7 Plowden, pp. 152-3; E. Waugh, Campion, pp. 70-71.

  8 C.R.S. 39, p. 4; E. Waugh, Campion, p. 102.

  9 C.R.S. 39, pp. xii-xiii, 319-21; E. Waugh, Campion, pp. 72-3.

  10 Simpson, Campion, pp. 151, 154-6.

  11 E. Waugh, Campion, pp. 75-9.

  12 C.R.S. 39, p. xiii; Simpson, Campion, pp. 143, 146; E. Waugh, Campion, p. 80; Meyer, p. 271.

  13 E. Waugh, Campion, pp. 80-81; Simpson, Campion, pp. 148-9.

  14 Somerset, pp. 321, 325.

  15 Wernham, pp. 333, 358; Somerset, p. 326.

  16 C.R.S. 39, p. xiii.

  17 Simpson, Campion, p. 170; Plowden, p. 149.

  18 McCoog, p. 68; E. Waugh, Campion, p. 82.

  19 Simpson, Campion, pp. 174-6; Plowden, p. 155.

  20 C.R.S. 39, p. xv; E. Waugh, Campion, p. 99.

  21 C.R.S. 39, p. xv; Foley, III, p. 661.