What was the Gunpowder Plot? The Traditional Story Tested by Original Evidence, John Gerard [ebook reader with android os TXT] 📗

Meanwhile the English ambassadors abroad were no less active and vigilant than the informers at home, and while clearly aware that there was some danger on foot, never doubted that the king's government would not be caught napping.

On the 9th of October, Sir Thomas Edmondes wrote to Cecil from Brussels[216] to warn him of suspicious symptoms in the Low Countries; and on the following day Cecil wrote to Edmondes[217] expressing apprehensions of trouble from the Jesuits abroad. On the same day, October 10th, Sir Thomas Parry wrote from Paris to the secretary,[218] of a petition which the Catholics were preparing against the meeting of Parliament, "and some further designs upon refusal;" and in another letter informed Edmondes:[219] "somewhat is at present in hand amongst these desperate hypocrites, which I trust God shall divert, by the vigilant care of his Majesty's faithful servants and friends abroad, and prudence of his council at home."

That such confidence was not misplaced is shown by Cecil's assurance to Sir Thomas Parry,[220] mentioned above, that the proceedings of the priests were never unknown to Government.

Amongst the papers at Hatfield is a curious note, anonymous and undated, giving information of a plot involving murder and treason, which, like the letter to Monteagle, simulates rather too obviously the workmanship of an illiterate person, and artfully insinuates that the design in question is undertaken in the name of religion, and chiefly favoured by the priests.[221]

Another remarkable document is preserved in the same collection. This is a letter written to Sir Everard Digby, June 11th, 1605, and treating of an otter hunt to be undertaken when the hay shall be cut. It has, however, been endorsed by Salisbury, "Letter written to Sir Everard Digby--Powder Treason."[222] Not only is it hard to see how the terms of the document lend themselves to such an interpretation, but the date at which it was written was fully three months prior to Digby's initiation in the conspiracy. The idea is certainly suggested that, far from being passive and indolent, the authorities were sedulously seeking pretexts to entangle as many as possible of those "great of name," concerning whom we have already heard from one of their informers. This much, at any rate, seems clear. Those at the centre of this complex web of espionage, to whom were addressed all these informations and admonitions, cannot have been, as they protested somewhat overmuch, in a state of careless inactivity, depending for security only upon the protection of the Almighty, "who," as the secretary afterwards piously declared, "blessed us in our slumber [and] will not forsake us now that we are awake."[223]

The slumber would at least appear not to have been dreamless. On the one hand, the secretary was evidently much exercised by a threatened rapprochement between his royal master and Pope Clement VIII., who, through a Scotch Catholic gentleman, Sir James Lindsay, had sent a friendly message to King James, which had elicited a courteous and almost cordial reply.[224] The significance of this Cecil strenuously endeavoured, in a letter to the Duke of Lenox,[225] to explain away, and in February, 1604-5, we find him assuring the Archbishop of York with an earnestness somewhat suspicious,[226] "I love not to procure or yield any toleration; a matter which I well know no creature living durst propound to our religious Sovereign." For himself, he thus declares: "I will be much less than I am, or rather nothing at all, before I shall become an instrument of such a miserable change." Nevertheless, on the 17th of April following, he was fain to acknowledge, in writing to Parry,[227] that the news of Pope Clement's death had much eased him in his mind.

It would, however, appear that the spectre of possible toleration still haunted him, and that he felt it necessary to commit the king to a course of severity. In a minute of September 12th, 1605, addressed to the same ambassador, which has been corrected and amended with an amount of care sufficiently testifying to the importance of the subject,[228] after speaking of "the plots and business of the priests," and the tendency of Englishmen going abroad "in this time of peace" to become Catholics, he thus continues: "Only this is it wherein my own heart receiveth comfort, that we live under a most religious and understanding Prince, who sticketh not to publish, as well in his own particular, as in the form of his government, how contrary that religion is to his resolution, and how far he will be from ever gracing [it]." He goes on to declare that nothing will so avail to make his Majesty withdraw his countenance from any man as such "falling away."

About the same time as this was written, we are told by a writer, almost a contemporary,[229] that a dependent of Cecil's warned a Catholic gentleman, by name Buck, of a "wicked design" which his master had in hand against the papists.

On the 17th of October, more than a week before the first hint of danger is said to have been breathed, we find the minister writing to Sir Thomas Edmondes, at Brussels,[230] in terms which certainly appear to couple together the growing danger of conversions to Catholicism, of which we have heard above, and the remedy soon to be supplied by the new policy which the discovery of the Plot so effectively established. He speaks of the "insolencies" of the priests and Jesuits, who are doing much injury by infecting with their poison "every youth that cometh amongst them;" ominously adding, "which liberty must, for one cause or another, be retrenched."

There can be no doubt that the issue of the Gunpowder Plot was eminently calculated to work such an effect; and even more would seem to have been anticipated from it than was actually realized, for the secretary, we are told, promised King James that in consequence of it not a single Jesuit should remain in England.

In the accounts supplied to us as to the manner of the "discovery," we obtain much interesting information from the utterances of the government itself. In studying these we cannot fail to notice an evident effort to reconcile two conflicting interests. On the one hand, that the king and the nation should be properly impressed with a sense of their marvellous deliverance, it was essential to represent the catastrophe as having been imminent, which could not be unless the preparations for it had been altogether unsuspected; and it was likewise desirable to magnify the divine sagacity of the monarch, which had been the instrument of Providence to avert a disaster otherwise inevitable. On the other hand, however, it should not be made to appear that those to whose keeping the public safety was intrusted had shown themselves culpably negligent or incompetent; and it had therefore to be insinuated that, after all, they were not without "sufficient advertisement" of danger, and even of danger specifically connected with the actual conspirators, and directed against the Parliament. But, again, lest such information should appear suspiciously accurate, the actual plotters had to be merged in a larger body of their co-religionists, and their design to be represented in vague and general terms. At the time, no doubt, this was effective enough. Now however that we know, by the light of subsequent investigations, who exactly were engaged, and what was in hand, it is possible to estimate these declarations at their true value.[231]

Except with the aid of such an explanation as this, it seems impossible to understand the endless inconsistencies and contradictions of the official narrative. This we have in four forms, all coming to us on the highest authority, but addressed to different audiences, and hopelessly at variance upon almost every point. One is that given to the world as the "King's Book,"[232] containing, as Mr. Jardine tells us, the version which it was desired that the general public should accept. A second was furnished by Cecil himself to the ambassadors at Madrid and Brussels, and the Lord Deputy in Ireland,[233] and a third to the ambassador at Paris.[234] We have likewise the minute of November 7th, already mentioned as perhaps intended for the information of the Privy Council, which, although it has seemingly served as the basis of the story told in the "King's Book," contradicts that story in various not unimportant particulars.

We shall afterwards have to examine in some detail the divergencies of these several narratives: at present we are concerned only with the intimation which they afford of a previous knowledge of the Plot on the part of the government. In the "King's Book"--which was not only to be disseminated broadcast at home, but to be translated and spread abroad, and, moreover, to be suited to the taste of its supposed author--the preternatural acuteness of the monarch is extolled in terms of most preposterous flattery, and his secretary is represented as altogether incredulous of danger, and unwilling to be convinced even by his royal master's wonderful interpretation of the mysterious warning. Nevertheless, not only is mention parenthetically introduced of the minister's "customable and watchful care of the king and State, boiling within him," of his laying up these things in his heart, "like the Blessed Virgin Mary," and being unable to rest till he had followed the matter farther,--but it is dexterously intimated that, for all his hardness of belief, he was sufficiently well informed before the warning came to hand, and that "this accident did put him in mind of divers advertisements he had received from beyond the seas, wherewith he had acquainted as well the king himself, as divers of his Privy Councillors, concerning some business the Papists were in, both at home and abroad, making combination amongst them for some combination against this Parliament time," their object being to approach the king with a petition for toleration, "which should be delivered in some such order, and so well backed, as the king should be loth to refuse their requests; like the sturdy beggars craving alms with one open hand, but carrying a stone in the other, in case of refusal."

As prepared for the Privy Council, the account, though substantially the same, was somewhat more explicit. The secretary was fully aware, so the Lords were told, "that some practices might be doubted," and he "had, any time these three months, acquainted the King, and some of his Majesty's inward Counsellors, that the priests and laymen abroad and at home were full of the papists of this kingdom, seeking still to lay some plot for procuring at this Parliament exercise of their religion."

In his letter to the ambassadors Cecil was able to speak more plainly, for this document was not to meet the eye of James. Accordingly, he not only acknowledges that on seeing the Monteagle letter he at once divined the truth, and understood all about the powder, and moreover reverses the parts played by his Majesty and himself--making the former incredulous in spite of what he himself could urge in support of his opinion--but he goes on to give his previous information a far more definite complexion: "Not but that I had sufficient advertisement that most of these that now are fled [i.e. the conspirators]--being all notorious Recusants--with many others of that kind, had a practice in hand for some stir this Parliament." He, moreover, describes the plotters, in terms already cited, as "gentlemen spent in their fortunes and fit for all alterations."

In view of all this it is quite impossible to believe the account given of themselves by those who were responsible for the public safety, and to suppose that they were not only so neglectful of their duty, but so incredibly foolish, and so unlike themselves, as to permit a gross and palpable peril to approach unnoticed. If, on the other hand, as appears to be certain, the information with which they were supplied were copious and minute, erring by excess far more than by defect, if, instead of lethargy and carelessness, we