The Gunpowder Plot

by Antonia Fraser

  Northampton was the next to make a speech, referring in elaborate terms to the favour which had been shown Digby by the late Queen Elizabeth and by King James. Northampton, too, was determined to put an end to the rumours that before he inherited the English crown King James had promised ‘some further hope and comfort’ for the Catholics. So he held forth on the subject of James’ lifelong Protestantism: that faith which James ‘had sucked from the breast of his nurse’ (but not of course from the breast of his Catholic mother – for once, the name of Mary Queen of Scots was not dragged in). Lastly Salisbury himself thought it necessary to return to the theme of the King’s alleged promises yet again. No promises had been broken. There were no promises. Never at any time had King James given ‘the least hope, much less promise of toleration’.34

  At the conclusion of Salisbury’s speech, Serjeant-at-Law Phillips asked for the judgement of the court on the seven conspirators found guilty, and upon Sir Everard Digby, guilty on his own confession. After a few remarks from the Lord Chief Justice, the jury was directed to consider its verdict. It can have surprised no one present in Westminster Hall on that icy late January day that the verdict was equally chilling: Guilty, all of them.

  The Lord Chief Justice then pronounced judgement of high treason upon all the prisoners. Seven of them listened to him in silence. Once more the exception was Sir Everard Digby. As the court rose, Digby cried out impulsively: ‘If I may but hear any of your lordships say, you forgive me, I shall go more cheerfully to the gallows.’ His speech had aroused a feeling of compassion if not of mercy – or perhaps it was his youth, the nobility of his bearing, the sense of utter waste. For the lords told him: ‘God forgive you, and we do.’

  * The phrase ‘Devil of the Vault’, which took a hold on the popular imagination, was originally used by Bishop Barlow in his sermon of 10 November (Nowak, p.41).

  * Hindlip House burnt down shortly after this description was written and was totally rebuilt. No trace of its exotic unlawful past remains: its reincarnation has in fact brought it strictly within the law, for it is now the Headquarters of the West Mercia Police Authority. However, the Church of St James, close by, contains a fine and colourful memorial to the Habington family of Hindlip, including coats of arms.

  * There was no mention of the statute under which they were being tried but it was presumably that of 1352 (25 Edw. st. 5 Cap. 2), which made it treason ‘to compass or imagine the death of the king, his queen or the royal heir’ (Bellamy, p. 9).

  PART FIVE

  The Shadow of Death

  He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death.

  JOB, 12:22

  quoted in the Tower of London Memorial of the Powder Treason

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Heart of a Traitor

  Behold the heart of a traitor!

  Traditional cry of the executioner

  The eight condemned men were put to death in two batches on consecutive days. On Thursday 30 January, Sir Everard Digby, Robert Wintour and John Grant were fetched from the Tower of London and Thomas Bates was brought from the Gatehouse. The time for executions was around eight o’clock in the morning, dark and bleak at this time of year. The site chosen on the first day was the western end of the churchyard of St Paul’s ‘over and against the Bishop of London’s house’. Not everyone, however, approved of the decision. Sir Arthur Gorges, a poet and a friend of Ralegh, who had sailed with him against the Spaniards, protested to Salisbury against the quartering of ‘these wicked and bloody conspirators’ being carried out in a place of such ‘happy memory’, for it was here that Queen Elizabeth herself had thanked God for her nation’s deliverance from the Armada.1

  The custom of conveying certain miscreants to their place of death by dragging them at the horse’s tail, to which the Attorney-General had alluded at the trial, tended to rob the executioner of the material upon which to do his appointed work. The damaging ordeal also robbed the public of the full ceremony, which it much enjoyed. This included speeches from the condemned men as well as those prolonged indignities to still-breathing bodies so graphically described by Sir Edward Coke. Therefore, in the case of important prisoners such as the Powder Plotters, it was government policy to convey them singly, each strapped to a wicker hurdle, used as a kind of sledge.2

  This open passage through the crowd had, however, its own dangers. First, there was the possibility – however remote – of rescue. Secondly, in the case of known Catholics, tiresome recusant devotions might interrupt the desired spiritual process of last-minute repentance. Thirdly, there was the question of the wretches’ wives and womenfolk, who had not seen their men for several months, since that dreadful day in early November when the reckless stand at Holbeach had been planned.* Recusants’ wives, or the friends of condemned priests, often tried to say a last goodbye in this manner. Thus armed men were stationed at doorways along the route from seven in the morning: ‘one able and sufficient person with a halberd in his hand’ for every dwelling house in the open street.3

  Even so, the women managed to get themselves into the crowds, and at the windows. There is a story of one little Digby boy calling out, ‘Tata, Tata,’ at the moment when his father was being drawn by on his hurdle, his face low down so that, in Coke’s words, he should not pollute the common air. Thomas Bates’ wife Martha was one of those who managed to find a place in the crowd; she was rewarded by finding that her husband was on the leading hurdle, presumably because he had joined the melancholy procession from the other direction, the Gatehouse being in Westminster. Eluding the halberdiers, Martha Bates managed to throw herself on her husband as he lay on his hurdle; she wailed aloud against the wretched fortune which had brought him to this ‘untimely end’.

  Bates, practical man to the last, took the opportunity to tell Martha where he had deposited a bag of money (originally entrusted to him by Jack Wright), and he begged his wife to hang on to it for her own relief and that of their children. Afterwards Martha got into trouble with the authorities over this bequest – perhaps they thought Bates’ last instructions had been on some more conspiratorial level. But in the end she was allowed to keep the money.

  At St Paul’s, Sir Everard Digby was the first to mount the scaffold. He had spent his last days in the Tower writing letters to ‘my dearest wife’ Mary and then to Kenelm and John.4 He urged the latter pair to support each other as brothers, and avoid the bad examples of Cain and Abel, and Philip of Macedon’s sons (one of whom had murdered the other). Otherwise Everard Digby wrote poetry which expressed his own resignation to his fate – and explains perhaps further the affection in which contemporaries, even religious enemies, held him:

  Who’s that which knocks? Oh, stay, my Lord, I come:

  I know that call, since first it made me know

  Myself, which makes me now with joy to run

  Lest he be gone that can my duty show.

  Jesu, my Lord, I know thee by the Cross

  Thou offer’st me, but not unto my loss.

  In spite of Digby’s resolution and his ‘manly aspect’, it was noted that his colour was pale and ‘his eye heavy’. But he was determined to speak out strongly. He declared that he held what he had done to be no offence, according to his own conscience, informed by his own religion, but he acknowledged that he had broken the law. For this, he asked forgiveness of God, of the King and of the whole kingdom. Even at this moment, however, Digby took pains to deny that Father Gerard or the other Jesuits had known anything of the Plot. He then refused to pray with the attendant Protestant preachers and instead took refuge in ‘vain and superstitious crossing’, as one hostile observer noted, and ‘mumbling to himself’ in Latin.5

  These private Catholic devotions performed, Digby reverted to the gallant courtier he had always been in public. He said goodbye to all the nobles who had been his friends – it was established procedure that dignitaries should witness state executions – with careful attention to their rank. He
spoke to them all, as they said to each other afterwards, in such a cheerful and friendly manner, ‘as he was wont to do when he went from Court or out of the City, to his own house in the country’.6

  What followed however was not to be so casual or so pleasant. Digby was hung from the halter for a very short time before being cut down and he was therefore fully conscious when he was subjected to the prescribed penalties. Anthony à Wood had an extraordinary story to tell about what happened next.* ‘When the executioner plucked out his heart and according to the manner held it up saying ‘‘Here is the heart of a traitor’’, Sir Everard made answer: ‘‘Thou liest’’.’ Even if such a spirited riposte – any riposte – would have been anatomically possible under the circumstances, the fact that such a story was told is still further proof of the esteem in which Sir Everard Digby was held. As it was, the common people ‘marvelled at his fortitude’ and talked ‘almost of nothing else’.7

  Robert Wintour was the second to ascend the scaffold. He said little and was praying quietly to himself as he went to his death. John Grant, coming next, was the only one of the conspirators who actually justified what they had tried to do, and refused to confess to any offence, for it had been ‘no sin against God’. A report by Salisbury to Edmondes in Brussels confirmed this obduracy. It was a defiance which was later embroidered by Protestant propaganda, with Grant claiming that the spiritual merits of the Plot would expiate all the sins he had committed in his life. ‘Abominably blinded’ by the fire at Holbeach, he allowed himself to be led quietly up the ladder to the halter, resistance being impossible. After crossing himself, he went to his death.8

  From the point of view of the onlookers, Thomas Bates was a more satisfactory criminal than these men with their crossings and their mumbled Latin prayers. If you could not be valiant – though misguided – like Sir Everard Digby, it was better to be abjectly penitent like Bates. He spoke of being inspired by affection for his master, Catesby, which had caused him to forget his duty ‘to God, his King and Country’. This led Father Gerard to say afterwards that it was ‘no marvel’ that Bates had shown less courage than his companions, since he had acted for human rather than divine love; but Gerard concluded his verdict on a charitable note: ‘It is to be hoped he found mercy at God’s hands.’ In general, Bates seemed deeply sorry for what he had done. He asked forgiveness of God and he also asked forgiveness of the King, and of the whole kingdom, praying humbly for ‘the preservation of them all’.9

  The four remaining executions took place in the Old Palace Yard at Westminster the next day, Friday 31 January. Possibly the patriotic reproaches of Sir Arthur Gorges had found echoes on other breasts, but more likely it was intended to put to death the major criminals – Tom Wintour and Guy Fawkes – in the very place which they had planned to demolish in order to hammer home the message of their wickedness. The route from the Tower was in consequence longer. In the course of it, Elizabeth Rookwood managed to watch her husband pass on his hurdle from the window of their lodgings in the Strand. As for Rookwood himself, he asked to be informed when he reached the appointed spot so that he could open his eyes and have one last glimpse of his beautiful wife (otherwise he kept his eyes shut in prayer). When he reached this point Ambrose Rookwood raised himself up as far as he could – he was tied with ropes – and called out: ‘Pray for me, pray for me!’

  ‘I will, and be of good courage,’ his wife shouted back. ‘Offer thyself wholly to God. I, for my part, do as freely restore thee to God as He gave thee unto me.’*10

  Tom Wintour was the first of these men to mount the scaffold. He was ‘a very pale and dead colour’. The spectators were anxious to hear a speech but Wintour, for all his pallor, riposted firmly that this was ‘no time to discourse: he was come to die’. He too, like Digby, acquitted the Jesuits, including Father Tesimond, of all guilt, and asked for the prayers of all Catholics. Finally, crossing himself, he declared that he died a true Catholic. On the whole, professions of repentance were more likely to secure the hoped-for prolonged hanging which would result in unconsciousness. Although Tom Wintour had seemed ‘after a sort, as it were, sorry for his offence’, either his firm last-minute protestation of his Catholicism or his defence of the Jesuits denied him any relief. He was cut down after only ‘a swing or two with a halter’.11

  Ambrose Rookwood came next. He did choose to make a speech. This was a model of repentance, since he first freely confessed his sin in seeking to spill blood, and then asked God to bless the King, the Queen and all the ‘royal progeny’, that they might live long ‘to reign in peace and happiness over this kingdom’. It was true that at the last Rookwood proceeded ‘to spoil all the pottage with one filthy weed’, in the words of an observer – evidently a Protestant – for Rookwood finally besought God to make the King a Catholic. But Rookwood’s earlier sorrowful words seem to have been enough to secure him a long hanging, and he was more or less at his last gasp when he was cut down.12

  Robert Keyes determined not to accept his fate passively. ‘With small or no show of repentance’, he went ‘stoutly’ up the ladder. Once at the top, and with his neck in the halter, he did not wait for the hangman’s ‘turn’ but turned himself off, with a violent leap into space. His intention was presumably to die quickly (although Father Gerard glossed this as meaning that Keyes wanted to die at a moment of his own choosing, with his mind set on his prayers, rather than be taken by surprise by the hangman). Unfortunately, the plan did not work. The halter broke, and he was taken, alive, to the quartering block.13

  Guy Fawkes, ‘the great devil of all’, was the last to mount the scaffold. He did not make a long speech – he was probably not capable of it, since a contemporary reported his body as being visibly ‘weak with torture and sickness’. He did ask forgiveness of the King and state, but at the same time kept up his ‘crosses and idle ceremonies’. His last ordeal was to mount the ladder. He was scarcely able to do so, and had to be helped up by the hangman. Guido did, however, mount high enough for his neck to be broken with the fall.14 Perhaps it was the physical punishment which he had endured in the months past which spared his consciousness at the end.

  As Salisbury pointed out to Edmondes, all eight men had died Catholics. Nothing that had happened had caused them to abandon the religion for which they had sacrificed their liberty and finally their lives.

  A few days after these executions, Father Garnet was sent for by the authorities to be brought to London. His treatment remained gracious, especially if one reflects on the recent ordeals of the men who were said to be his co-conspirators. While still at the house of Sir Henry Bromley, Father Garnet had been permitted to celebrate the lovely feast of Candlemas – the last feast of the Christian cycle before the beginning of Lent – together with Sir Henry and his family. A great white wax candle with ‘Jesus’ and ‘Maria’ on the sides, which had been confiscated at Hindlip, was produced. Father Garnet took it in his hands and passed it to Father Oldcorne, saying that he was glad to have carried ‘a holy candle on Candlemas Day’. Then all present drank the King’s health with their heads bared.15 As an episode, it was a conspicuous illustration of the paradox of Catholic loyalty.

  Nor was the Jesuit’s dignity sacrificed in any way during the journey. Father Garnet was still very weak after his eight-day ordeal and his swollen legs were causing him pain. Salisbury ordered that he should be given the best horse, and his hospitality en route was paid for by the King (which meant that it was not stinted).

  When a Puritan minister accompanying the cortège attempted to involve him in theological debate, Father Garnet immediately saw the dangers in this kind of exercise. Silence might be construed as inability to answer, while too impassioned a defence of the Catholic viewpoint could be held as evidence against him. Garnet consulted Sir Henry Bromley. The result was a discussion, in effect chaired by Sir Henry, in which the Puritan ranted at length without interruption, and Garnet then proceeded to speak ‘briefly and clearly’ as well as displaying remarkable erudition
(the Puritans were wont to claim erudition as their special province). Sir Henry Bromley was much impressed and the egregious minister much disappointed.16

  In London, Father Garnet was at first lodged in the Gatehouse prison in Westminster. His companion in hiding at Hindlip, Father Oldcorne, was also placed there, although housed in a separate cell. The arrival of the Superior of the Jesuits, with a fellow Jesuit, created a sensation in the Gatehouse prison. A flock of prisoners crowded at the entrance. Garnet cried out in a loud voice to know whether any of them were Catholics. When many replied that they were, Father Garnet responded: ‘God help you all! And myself as well who come to keep you company here for the same cause.’17 Father Garnet’s nephew, Thomas Garnet, also a priest, who operated under an alias, was among the many Catholics currently held at the Gatehouse.

  This interest in and response to Father Garnet draws attention to the ambivalent nature of Jacobean prisons as far as recusants were concerned. Prisons could serve as hotbeds of Catholicism, as well as centres for persecution. Paradoxically, it was often easier for recusants to attend a clandestine Mass in a prison containing priests than in the outside world. By modern standards, there was even a kind of informality prevalent in Jacobean prisons: inmates could send out to buy food, and, if necessary, could make purchases by stretching out money from prison windows. Obviously, more than mere food – information, letters – could be obtained by these means. In certain prisons, prostitutes and thieves would bribe their jailers to let them out under cover of darkness to go about their work, returning at dawn having earned the necessary money to make themselves comfortable.