What was the Gunpowder Plot? The Traditional Story Tested by Original Evidence by John Gerard (top 10 most read books in the world .TXT) 📕

In times when statesmen could approve such methods of political action, it was inevitable that violent enterprises should have come to be considered the natural resource of those out of power, and it is very clear that there were numerous individuals, of whom no one party had the monopoly, who were ready at any moment to risk everything for the cause they served, and such men, although their proclivities were well known, did not suffer much in public esteem.

The Gunpowder Conspirators were eminently men of this stamp, and notoriously so. So well was their character known, that when, in 1596, eight years before the commencement of the Plot, Queen Elizabeth had been unwell, the Lords of the Council, as a precautionary measure arrested some of the principal amongst them, Catesby, the two Wrights, Tresham, and others, as being persons who would certainly give trouble should a chance occur.[85] Since that time they had not improved their record. All those above-named, as well as Thomas Winter, Christopher Wright, Percy, Grant, and perhaps others, had been engaged in the ill-starred rebellion of Essex, on which occasion Catesby was wounded, and both he and Tresham came remarkably near being hanged.[86] They had likewise been variously implicated in all the seditious attempts which had since been made--Catesby and Tresham being named by Sir Edward Coke as being engaged with Watson in the "Bye." Thomas Winter, Christopher Wright, and Faukes, had, if we may believe the same authority, been sent to Spain on treasonable embassies.[87] Grant made himself very conspicuous by frequently resisting the officers of the law when they appeared to search his house.[88] John Wright and Percy had, at least till a very recent period, been notorious bravoes, who made a point of picking a quarrel with any man who was reported to be a good swordsman, they being both expert with the weapon.[89]

It is evident that men of this stamp were not unlikely to prove restive under such treatment as was meted out to the Catholics, from which moreover, as gentlemen, they themselves suffered in a special degree. Lord Castlemaine remarks that loose people may usually be drawn into a plot when statesmen lay gins, and that it was no hard thing for a Secretary of State, should he desire any such thing, to know of turbulent and ambitious spirits to be his unconscious instruments,[90] and it is obvious that no great perspicacity would have been required to fix upon those who had given such evidence of their disposition as had these men.

It must, at the same time, be confessed that the character of the plotters is one of the most perplexing features of the Plot. The crime contemplated was without parallel in its brutal and senseless atrocity. There had, it is true, been powder-plots before, notably that which had effected the destruction of the king's own father, Lord Darnley, a fact undoubtedly calculated to make much impression upon the timorous mind of James. But what marked off our Gunpowder Plot from all others, was the wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter in which it must have resulted, and the absence of any possibility that the cause could be benefited which the conspirators had at heart. It was at once reprobated and denounced by the Catholics of England, and by the friends and near relatives of the conspirators themselves.[91] It might be supposed that those who undertook such an enterprise were criminals of the deepest dye, and ruffians of a more than usually repulsive type. In spite, however, of the turbulent element in their character of which we have seen something, such a judgment would, in the opinion of historians, be altogether erroneous. Far from their being utterly unredeemed villains, it appears, in fact, that apart from the one monstrous transgression which has made them infamous, they should be distinguished in the annals of crime as the least disreputable gang of conspirators who ever plotted a treason. On this point we have ample evidence from those who are by no means their friends. "Atrocious as their whole undertaking was," writes Mr. Gardiner,[92] "great as must have been the moral obliquity of their minds before they could have conceived such a project, there was at least nothing mean or selfish about them. They boldly risked their lives for what they honestly believed to be the cause of God and of their country. Theirs was a crime which it would never have entered into the heart of any man to commit who was not raised above the low aims of the ordinary criminal." Similarly Mr. Jardine, a still less friendly witness, tells us[93] that "several at least of the conspirators were men of mild and amiable manners, averse to tumults and bloodshed, and dwelling quietly amidst the humanities of domestic life," a description which he applies especially to Rokewood and Digby; while of Guy Faukes himself he says[94] that, according to the accounts which we hear of him, he is not to be regarded as a mercenary ruffian, ready for hire to do any deed of blood; but as a zealot, misled by misguided fanaticism, who was, however, by no means destitute either of piety or of humanity. Moreover, as Mr. Jardine farther remarks, the conspirators as a body were of the class which we should least expect to find engaged in desperate enterprises, being, as Sir E. Coke described them, "gentlemen of good houses, of excellent parts, and of very competent fortunes and estates," none of them, except perhaps Catesby, being in pecuniary difficulties, while several--notably Robert Winter, Rokewood, Digby, Tresham, and Grant--were men of large possessions. It has also been observed by a recent biographer of Sir Everard Digby,[95] that, for the furtherance of their projects after the explosion, the confederates were able to provide a sum equal at least to £75,000 of our money--a sufficient proof of their worldly position.

That men of such a class should so lightly and easily have adopted a scheme so desperate and atrocious as that of "murdering a kingdom in its representatives," is undoubtedly not the least incomprehensible feature of this strange story. At the same time it must not be forgotten that there is another, and a very different account of these men, which comes to us on the authority of a Catholic priest living in England at the time,[96] who speaks of the conspirators as follows:

"They were a few wicked and desperate wretches, whom many Protestants termed Papists, although the priests and the true Catholics knew them not to be such.... They were never frequenters of Catholic Sacraments with any priest, as I could ever learn; and, as all the Protestant Courts will witness, not one of them was a convicted or known Catholic or Recusant."[97]

Similarly Cornwallis, writing from Madrid,[98] reported that the king and Estate of Spain were "much grieved that they being atheists and devils in their inward parts, should paint their outside with Catholicism."

In view of evidence so contradictory, it is difficult, if not impossible, to form a confident judgment as to the real character of those whose history we are attempting to trace; but, leaving aside what is matter of doubt, the undisputed facts of their previous career appear to show unmistakably that they were just the men who would be ready to look to violence for a remedy of existing evils, and to whom it would not be difficult to suggest its adoption.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] When James came to the throne Cecil was but a knight. He was created Baron Cecil of Essendon, May 13th, 1603; Viscount Cranborne, August 20th, 1604; Earl of Salisbury, May 4th, 1605.

[35] Robert, as the second son, did not succeed to his father's title, which devolved upon Thomas, the eldest, who was created Earl of Exeter on the same day on which Robert became Earl of Salisbury.

[36] Fragmenta Regalia, 37. Ed. 1642.

[37] He was but little above five feet in height, and, in the phrase of the time, a "Crouchback." King James, who was not a man of much delicacy in such matters, was fond of giving him nicknames in consequence. Cecil wrote to Sir Thomas Lake, October 24th, 1605: "I see nothing y^t I can doe, can procure me so much favor, as to be sure one whole day what title I shall have another. For from Essenden to Cranborne, from Cranborne to Salisbury, from Salisbury to Beagle, from Beagle to Thom Derry, from Thom Derry to Parret which I hate most, I have been so walked, as I think by y^t I come to Theobalds, I shall be called Tare or Sophie." (R.O. Dom. James I. xv. 105.)

[38] History, i. 92.

[39] In the same document James I. is spoken of as "the most judycious, learned, and rareste kinge, that ever this worlde produced." (R.O. Dom. James I. xxviii. 29.)

[40] Digby to the King, S. P., Spain, Aug. 8. Gardiner, History, ii. 216.

[41] At the trial of Essex, Cecil exclaimed, "I pray God to consume me where I stand, if I hate not the Spaniard as much as any man living." (Bruce, Introduction to Secret Correspondence of Sir R. Cecil, xxxiii.)

Of the Spanish pension Mr. Gardiner, after endeavouring to show that originally Cecil's acceptance of it may have been comparatively innocent, thus continues (History of England, i. 216): "But it is plain that, even if this is the explanation of his original intentions, such a comparatively innocent connection with Spain soon extended itself to something worse, and that he consented to furnish the ambassadors, from time to time, with information on the policy and intentions of the English Government.... Of the persistence with which he exacted payment there can be no doubt whatever. Five years later, when the opposition between the two governments became more decided, he asked for an increase of his payments, and demanded that they should be made in large sums as each piece of information was given."

At the same time it appears highly probable that he was similarly in the pay of France. Ibid.

[42] Queen Elizabeth regarded as treasonable any discussion of the question of the succession.

[43] Gardiner, i. 215.

[44] Chamberlain to Carleton, July 9th, 1612, R.O.

[45] "Tout ce que vous a dit le Comte de Salisbury touchant le mariage d'Espagne est rempli de deguisements et artifices à son accoutumée.... Toutefois, je ne veux pas jurer qu'ils négocient plus sincerement et de meilleur foi avec lesdites Espagnols qu'avec nous. Ils corromproient par trop leur naturel, s'ils le faisoient, pour des gens qui ne leur scauroient guère de gré."--Le Fèvre de la Boderie, Ambassade, i. 170.

[46] (Of the Earl of Northumberland.) "On tient le Comte de Salisbury pour principal auteur de sa persécution, comme celui qui veut ne laisser personne en pied qui puisse lui faire tête." De la Boderie. Ibid. 178.

[47] R.O. Dom. James I. lxix. 56.

[48] Ibid., May 27, 1612. Bishop Goodman, no enemy of Cecil, is inclined to believe that at the time of the secretary's death there was a warrant out for his arrest. Court of King James, i. 45.

[49] The first of these epigrams, in Latin, concludes thus:

Sero, Recurve, moreris sed serio; Sero, jaces (bis mortuus) sed serio: Sero saluti publicæ, serio tuæ.

The second is in English:

Whiles two RR's, both crouchbacks, stood at the helm, The one spilt the blood royall, the other the realm.

A marginal note explains that these were, "Richard Duke of Gloster, and Robert Earl of Salisburie;" the anagram, of which title is "A silie burs." He also styles the late minister a monkey (cercopithecus) and hobgoblin (empusa).

[50] Osborne, Traditional Memoirs, p. 236 (ed. 1811).

[51] Court of King James, i. 44.

[52] Traditional Memoirs, 181.

[53] This feeling was expressed in lampoons quoted by Osborne, e.g.:

"Here lies Hobinall, our pastor while here, That once in a quarter our fleeces did sheare. For oblation to Pan his custom was thus, He first gave a trifle, then offer'd up us: And through