The Gunpowder Plot

by Antonia Fraser

  Obvious precautions were taken. The Lord Mayors of the City of London and of Westminster were ordered to set a civil watch upon their gates. The ports were all closed and did not reopen until 16 November. An embarrassing situation arose when the enthusiastic mob was found to be demonstrating outside the house of the Spanish Ambassador, assuming that the hated Spaniards were at the bottom of it all. The Council issued a hasty order that the Spanish Ambassador must not be ‘touched with this horrible practice of treason’, which was fair enough, given that he had planned to be present at the Opening of Parliament and would have perished with the others. In general the foreign ambassadors thought it politic to light their own bonfires of thanksgiving and throw money down into the crowd.24 This went not only for the beleaguered Spaniard, and the Ambassador of the Catholic Archdukes, but also for the emissary of the Protestant Dutch: it was no time to be taking chances.

  The Council, with Northumberland present, met in the morning in an atmosphere of deepening perplexity concerning the Earl’s position. He left the meeting believing that no restrictions had been placed upon his movements, while many of the lords believed equally strongly that he had been advised to rest quietly in his own house for the time being.*25

  Northumberland’s man Thomas Percy was the only name known for sure to be associated with the treason, other than that of the prisoner ‘John Johnson’. Nothing illustrates the bizarre nature of this particular day better than two contrasting measures. On the one hand, someone sent off to Simon Foreman, the celebrated astrologer, to get him to work out the probable whereabouts of the fugitive, Percy. On the other hand, a search was put in hand for a collaborative Catholic priest who would persuade the prisoner Johnson that it was his duty to spill the beans.26

  Parliament met briefly in the afternoon. The entry in the Commons’ Journal for 5 November (crammed into a small space in the margin) was as follows:27

  This last Night the Upper House of Parliament was searched by Sir Thomas Knevett; and one Johnson, Servant to Mr Thomas Percy was there apprehended; who had placed 36 Barrels of Gunpowder in the Vault under the House with a Purpose to blow the King, and the whole company, when they should there assemble.

  Afterwards divers other Gentlemen were discovered to be of the Plot.†

  Parliament was then prorogued until Saturday 9 March.

  As the conspirators scattered and the Londoners wassailed, ‘John Johnson’ was being interrogated.28 He had so far given away nothing beyond the bare facts that he was a Catholic from Netherdale in Yorkshire and that his father was called Thomas and his mother Edith Jackson (this at least was true) and that he was thirty-six years old (he was actually thirty-five). Certain scars noted on his body – presumably wounds received during his time as a soldier – he claimed to be the effects of pleurisy. A letter addressed to Guy Fawkes, and found in his possession, he explained neatly away by saying that Fawkes was one of his aliases.

  Guido’s composure was astonishing. Yes, he had intended to blow up the King and the Lords. No, he had no regrets – except the fact that he had not succeeded. ‘The devil and not God’, he said firmly, was responsible for the discovery of the Plot. No, he had not sought to warn the Catholic peers, he would have contented himself with praying for them. When the King asked ‘Johnson’ how he could ‘conspire so hideous a treason’ against the royal children, and so many souls which had never offended him, Guido did not attempt to deny the charge. He simply answered that a dangerous disease required a desperate remedy (an echo of Catesby’s original words to Wintour, which suggest that the comforting catchphrase had been in general use among the conspirators).

  Guido even had the ultimate bravado to tell some of the Scots present that his intention had been to blow them back into Scotland: his xenophobia remained unswerving. From time to time during the interrogation he smiled sorrowfully at his examiners, and told them they had not authority to examine him.

  This iron self-control even evoked the admiration of King James. He described the prisoner as seeming to put on ‘a Roman resolution’: he was so constant and unshakeable in his grounds for action that the Councillors thought they had stumbled upon ‘some new Mucius Scaevola born in England’, comparing him to a legendary hero of Ancient Rome, who intended to assassinate the city’s Etruscan enemy Lars Porsena, but slew the wrong man by mistake. Captured and hauled in front of Lars Porsena, Scaevola deliberately held his hand over the fire and let it be burnt off without flinching, in order to demonstrate that he would not give way under torture. In the legend, Lars Porsena was so impressed by Scaevola’s endurance that he ordered his release and made peace with Rome.

  The fate of Guy Fawkes, whatever the King’s respect for his fortitude, was to be somewhat different.

  * These and the following details are taken from King James’ own account, published in the so-called King’s Book (printed as King’s History in S.T., II, pp. 195–202). We therefore have his point of view, but Salisbury’s point of view, of course, only in so far as he communicated it to the King.

  * When this hole was broken into in 1858, a palliasse bed, a rope ladder, a small piece of tapestry and a folding leather altar were discovered within. Coughton Court is today leased to the National Trust, although the direct Throckmorton descendants are still closely involved with it. Coughton is proud of its connection to the Gunpowder Plot: a special exhibition has been mounted to commemorate it.

  * Father Garnet has been called ‘unwise’ for using such a text (although it formed part of the Office of Lauds for that day): but it is likely that whatever text he used for a sermon so close to the chosen date of the Powder Treason would have been twisted in some way by the government (Anstruther, Vaux, p. 281).

  * The Red Lion at Dunchurch is now a private residence, known as Guy Fawkes House.

  * There were ten bishops and forty peers eligible to sit in the House of Lords, of whom twenty-nine had appointed proxies; but Northumberland was not among them (Anstruther, ‘Powder’, p. 457).

  * No one seems to have thought of contacting Francis Tresham, who since his vain pleas that the action be abandoned was evidently no longer regarded as part of the conspiracy.

  * Possibly Northumberland’s deafness was responsible for this unfortunate mix-up at such a manifestly delicate moment in his fortunes.

  † The original entry has been framed and today hangs in the ‘Noes’ voting lobby of the House of Commons, commemorating what might well have been the most dramatic day in Parliament’s history. There is always a large circle of curious tourists and schoolchildren round it at times of public access (see plate section).

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Gentler Tortures

  The gentler tortures are to be first used unto him [Guy Fawkes]…

  …and so God speed your good work. – James R

  LETTER OF KING JAMES I

  6 November 1605

  The decision to apply torture to ‘John Johnson’ was taken by the King on 6 November. Throughout the day the veteran Lord Chief Justice Sir John Popham pursued his investigations. Now in his mid-seventies, Popham was ‘a huge, heavy, ugly man’. He was also implacable and ‘inordinately cruel’ in his hatred of the Catholics. His main line of attack was to go for those known Catholic subversives who had precipitately vanished from their usual haunts. Thus the servants of the extravagant, showy Ambrose Rookwood were examined on this day and his goods at Clopton – those incriminating crucifixes, beads and vestments – were seized.1

  It is of course impossible to be certain how much of this process was helped on by Tresham’s confidences to Monteagle, which were relayed forward. By the evening, however, the Lord Chief Justice had discovered enough to tell Salisbury that in addition to Percy he had ‘pregnant suspicion… concerning Robert Catesby, Ambrose Rookwood, one Keyes, Thomas Wynter [sic], John Wright and Christopher Wright and some suspicion of one Grant’.2 Apart from Tresham, it will be seen that three names were missing at this stage: Digby, Robert Wintour and Bates. The omission of Bates
may be due to his inferior status, which made him less immediately interesting to the government. But the omission of Digby and Robert Wintour, both of whom operated in the midlands, suggests that the original source may well have been Francis Tresham, who from his London base would not necessarily have known of their involvement.

  For all these advances, the obduracy of ‘John Johnson’ continued to enrage and baffle the authorities. Who on earth was he, with his scarred body and his mysterious past? Catholic subversives were supposed to be known to the government and closely watched, in an England which in its supervisory aspects met the criteria of a modern police state. But Guido stoutly maintained his false identity, allowing his comrades, as he hoped – if only it had been true! – time to get clear of the country.

  Guido was now transferred to the Tower of London. The King himself drew up a list of questions that were to be put to him there, headed by the vital question ‘as to what he is, For I can never yet hear of any man that knows him’. After that, there followed many others including ‘When and where he learned to speak French?’ and ‘If he was a Papist, who brought him up in it?’ (There was evidently a strong suspicion that this ‘John Johnson’ was a Catholic priest.)3

  The decision to put Guido to the torture was one that needed the authority either of the King or of the Privy Council, using the royal prerogative. King James himself took an active interest in the whole topic and his rights of decision in the matter. When Ralegh had been arrested in 1603 for possible conspiracy in the Main Plot, it had been the King who ‘gave charge no torture should be used’. In the case of ‘John Johnson’, he reached a different decision.

  Torture as such was contrary to English common law, or, as Sir Edward Coke in his capacity as a jurist would write in his Third Institute: ‘there is no law to warrant tortures in this land’.* Coke, who was now in his fifties, had been the Attorney-General since 1594. (Before that, he had been in turn Solicitor-General and Speaker of the House of Commons.) He was a man who thoroughly understood the ways of the world, having married two extremely rich women. The second of these, Lady Hatton, twenty-six years his junior, was rich in connections too, being a member of the Cecil family. Immensely skilful – if at the same time pitiless and unscrupulous – he would in the words of Aubrey ‘play with a case as a cat would with a mouse’.4

  What Coke blandly ignored, in his emphasis on the rule of law, was that use of torture, supported by the royal prerogative, had actually been on the increase in England under the Tudors. Far from being a mediaeval survival, torture was one of the novel weapons in the armoury of Henry VIII’s servant Thomas Cromwell, who had seemingly learnt much about this useful European practice during his travels abroad for Cardinal Wolsey.5

  Torture was in theory reserved for exceptional circumstances, but, since these special circumstances included any suggestion of treason, a long list of Catholic priests had suffered frightfully in the time of Queen Elizabeth. (They were subject to torture, the government was careful to point out, not for their religion but for their supposed treason.) Among the leading characters in this narrative, both Father John Gerard and Little John had been tortured in the 1590s.

  The uncovering of any conspiracy – and there had been a great number of them under Elizabeth, connected to the rescue of Mary Queen of Scots – was bound to be followed by the avid use of torture. Francis Throckmorton, a cousin of Catesby and Tresham, had been ‘often racked’ for his part in a plot of 1583. Then there were the servants of great men, such as those of the Duke of Norfolk, whom Burghley discreetly had tortured, under ‘the Queen’s signet’. Thomas Norton, the rackmaster, was said to have boasted of pulling one unfortunate fellow, called Alexander Briant, ‘one good foot longer than ever God made him’. Sometimes there was not even the excuse of treason. Gypsies were tortured in Bridewell in 1596 to answer the truth about their ‘lewd behaviour’; a boy Humfrey was ‘lightly tortured’ (no arms to be dislocated) in Nottingham for suspected complicity in a burglary.6

  Such indiscriminate use – and the fact that it was against common law – made for a lingering popular uneasiness on the subject of torture. In 1592 the ‘often exercise of the rack in the Tower’ was said to be ‘odious and much spoken of by the people’.* This uneasiness was not of course shared by the authorities, who were in the business of extracting information as fast as possible. Another method of applying pressure was by starvation, known as ‘pinching’. Prisoners – including priests – would be incarcerated without food or water in dark subterranean dungeons, the only moisture being drops falling from the dank roof.7

  This method took time to produce results. For those who were investigating a genuinely treasonable conspiracy, speed might be of the essence in probing its depths, as was undoubtedly the case with the dangerous criminal ‘John Johnson’. Yet it is notable that Thomas Norton finally got into trouble for going beyond the permissible limits regarding torture and was forced to explain that he had not actually carried out his grotesque boast about lengthening Alexander Briant, but had only threatened to carry it out. In any case he had admired the ‘poor unlearned’ fellow’s courage. (Briant was in fact not so poor and unlearned: he was a disguised priest.)8

  Torture of course had its rules. No one was supposed to be tortured to death: this would have been counter-productive apart from anything else. For this reason, maimed or mutilated people – such as Little John since his accident – were not supposed to be subjected to it because they might be too weak to survive. If a session failed to provide the desired information, the victim should not in theory be tortured over and over again, on the reasonable assumption that he might not have had the information in the first place, and therefore had no truthful means of ending his torment. This was a rule which was generally ignored, especially in the case of priests. Lastly, torture was supposed to be increased gradually.

  The letter which the King signed on 6 November specified that for ‘such a desperate fellow’ as John Johnson, if he would not otherwise confess, ‘the gentler Tortures are to be first used unto him et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur’ – and so by degrees proceeding to the worst. He concluded, ‘and so God speed your good work’, signing himself ‘James R’ (see plate section).9 The gentler tortures referred to the manacles and the worst to the rack. By the 1590s, the manacles had become the method most favoured by the authorities, as they were inexpensive and easy to operate for those who applied them. The traitor – or suspect – was hung up by his wrists against a wall, using iron gauntlets which could be gradually tightened; wood supports beneath the feet would be removed and the prisoner would be left dangling for several hours, sometimes longer. As the vicious Richard Topcliffe observed of Campion (whom he tortured more than ten times): ‘it will be as though he were dancing a trick or figure’. There were survivors of the manacles – notably Father Gerard – but there were also those such as his fellow Jesuit Father Henry Walpole whose hands were permanently maimed.10

  There was only one rack in England, housed at the Tower of London. The rack was a large open frame of oak, raised from the ground. The prisoner was laid on it with his back to the floor, his wrists and ankles attached by cords to rollers at either end. Levers were operated which stretched the prisoner, quite slowly, while he was urged to confess. The rack, inevitably, caused permanent damage and dislocation to the prisoner. So feared was the instrument, indeed, that sometimes the mere sight of it was enough to cow the prisoner into giving information.11

  It is not absolutely certain that in the case of Guy Fawkes the authorities proceeded from manacles to the rack, although the King’s letter clearly envisaged that it might be necessary to move on to ‘the worst’, in order to break this iron man. Sir Edward Hoby, a well-informed observer and a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, wrote to Brussels that only the manacles had been used. ‘Yet the common voice’, in the words of Father Gerard, ‘was that he was extremely racked in the first few days.’ Priests subsequently held in the Tower certainly heard that Fawkes had been racke
d, and observers who saw Guido on the next occasion he was displayed in public witnessed a sick man, utterly broken in body.12 Thus the balance of probability is in favour of the rack. Men did manage to hold out against the manacles – and Guido was nothing if not strong – but against the rack never, or hardly ever.

  What is certain is that some time on 7 November, following the application of torture, they broke him – they broke Guido’s body and in so doing they broke at last his spirit.* Hoby had a meaningful phrase for it: ‘Since Johnson’s being in the Tower, he beginneth to speak English.’ His courage was still high the night before, as Sir William Waad, Lieutenant of the Tower, reported to Salisbury.13 (As Lieutenant, Waad was always present at these sessions of torture.)

  Guido’s conversation with Waad was revealing. Here was no common criminal but, in a certain warped way, an idealist – or perhaps fanatic was the appropriate word: ‘He [Johnson] told us that since he undertook this action he did every day pray to God he might perform that which might be for the advancement of the Catholic Faith and saving his own soul.’ To explain his silence, Guido revealed that he had taken an oath to say nothing in company with his (so far nameless) comrades, and they had all then partaken of the Sacrament. But he was careful to add that the (similarly nameless) priest who gave them the Sacrament ‘knew nothing about it’.14 This oath had been sworn, and this illegal Sacrament administered, in England, which of course whetted the appetite of his interrogators. Nevertheless Guido still hoped to be able to endure long enough not to have to break his vow.

  To Waad’s amazement, Guido even managed to pass the night of 6 November resting peacefully ‘as a man devoid of all trouble of mind’ – although he had been warned of what lay in store for him. Waad told the prisoner that ‘if he held his resolution of mind to be so silent’, he must realise that the state was equally resolved to proceed with that severity which was necessary in a case of such great consequence. ‘Therefore I willed him to prepare himself.’15