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

6177).

[252] The letter is printed in Archæologia, xxviii. 422, by Mr. Bruce, who argues from it Monteagle's complicity with the Plot. Mr. Jardine's reply is found ibid. xxix. 80.

[253] According to T. Winter's famous declaration, Monteagle, within ten days before the meeting of Parliament, told Catesby and the others that the Prince of Wales was not going to attend the opening ceremony, wherefore they resolved to "leave the Duke alone," and make arrangements to secure the elder brother.

The original of Winter's declaration, dated November 25th, which is at Hatfield, contains these and other particulars, which are altogether omitted in a "copy" of the same in the Record Office, dated, remarkably enough, on November the 23rd. It is from the latter that the version in the "King's Book" was printed.

[254] De Beaumont to Villeroy, September 17th, 1605.

[255] Mr. Gardiner alludes to it, History, i. 254 (note), but apparently attaches no importance to it.

[256] Brit. Museum, Add. MSS. 19402 fol. 143. See the letter in full, Appendix H.

[257] Discourse of the Manner of the Discovery (the "King's Book").

[258] Winwood, Memorials, ii. 170, etc. (November 9th). In the entry book of the Earl of Salisbury's letters (Phillipps' MSS. 6297, f. 39) this is described as "being the same that was sent to all his Majestie's Embassadors and Ministers abroade." To Parry, however, quite a different account was furnished.

[259] Cecil to Sir T. Parry, P.R.O. France, bundle 132 (November 6th).

[260] Gerard, Narrative, p. 101.

[261] Vol. ii. 15. The partisans of the government at the time appear to have solved the difficulty by invoking the direct guidance of Heaven:

"For thus the Lord in's all-protecting grace, Ten days before the Parliament began, Ordained that one of that most trayterous race Did meet the Lord Mounteagles Serving-man, Who about Seven a clocke at night was sent Upon some errand, and as thus he went, Crossing the street a fellow to him came, A man to him unknowen, of personage tall, In's hand a Letter, and he gave the same Unto this Serving-man, and therewithall Did strictly charge him to take speciall heede To give it into's Masters hand with speede."

Mischeefes Mystery (1617).

[262] Here again evidence was found of the direct guidance of Heaven:

"And thus with loyall heart away he goes, Thereto resolved whatever should betide, To th' Court he went this matter to disclose, To th' Earle of Salsb'ryes chamber soone he hide, Whither heavens finger doubtless him directed, As the best meanes to have this fact detected."

Mischeefes Mystery.

[263] In the account forwarded to the ambassadors, there is a curious contradiction. In the general sketch of the discovery with which it opens, it is said that Faukes was captured "in the place itself," with his lantern, "making his preparations." Afterwards, in the detailed narrative of the proceedings, that he was taken outside. The fact is, that the first portion of this letter is taken bodily from that of November 6th to Parry, wherein the arrest of Faukes in the vault was a principal point. Between the 6th and the 9th this part of the story had been altered, but it does not seem to have been noticed that a remnant of the earlier version still existed in the introductory portion.

It will be remarked that the account of November 6th makes no mention of the visit of the chamberlain to the vault, nor that of November 9th to the presence of Faukes at the time of this visit. The minute of November 7th says that Faukes admitted the chamberlain to the vault.

[264] Criminal Trials, ii. 3-5.

[265] Narrative, p. 100.

[266] This word is cancelled in the original draft.

[267] To Sir T. Edmondes, January 22nd, 1605-6.--Stowe MSS., 168, 73, f. 301.

[268] Viz., the complicity of the Jesuits, "not only as being casually acquainted with the Plot," but as having been "principall comforters, to instruct the consciences of some of these wicked Traytors, in the lawfulnesse of the Act and meritoriousnesse of the same."

On this it is enough to remark that when Father Garnet, the chief of the said Jesuits, came afterwards to be tried, no attempt whatever was made to prove any such thing. Cecil therefore wrote thus, and made so grave an assertion, without having any evidence in his hands to justify it.

[269] That King James alone solved the enigma was put forth as an article of faith. In the preamble to the Act for the solemnization of the 5th of November, Parliament declared that the treason "would have turned to utter ruin of this whole kingdom, had it not pleased Almighty God, by inspiring the king's most excellent Majesty with a divine Spirit, to discover some dark phrases of a letter...." In like manner, the monarch himself, in his speech to the Houses, of November 9th, informed them: "I did upon the instant interpret and apprehend some dark phrases therein, contrary to the ordinary grammar construction of them, and in another sort, than I am sure any divine or lawyer in any university would have taken them."

This "dark phrase" was the sentence--"For the danger is past as soon as you have burnt the letter," which the royal sage interpreted to mean "as quickly," and that by these words "should be closely understood the suddenty and quickness of the danger, which should be as quickly performed and at an end as that paper should be of blazing up in the fire."

Of this famous interpretation Mr. Gardiner says that it is "certainly absurd;" while Mr. Jardine is of opinion that the words in question "must appear to every common understanding mere nonsense."

When it was proposed in the House of Commons (January 31st, 1605-6,) to pass a vote of thanks to Lord Monteagle for his share in the "discovery," one Mr. Fuller objected that this would be to detract from the honour of his Majesty, for "the true discoverer was the king."

The reader will perhaps be reminded of Sir Walter Scott's inimitable picture of the king's satisfaction in this notable achievement.

"Do I not ken the smell of pouther, think ye? Who else nosed out the Fifth of November, save our royal selves? Cecil, and Suffolk, and all of them, were at fault, like sae mony mongrel tikes, when I puzzled it out; and trow ye that I cannot smell pouther? Why, 'sblood, man, Joannes Barclaius thought my ingine was in some manner inspiration, and terms his history of the plot, Series patefacti divinitus parricidii; and Spondanus, in like manner, saith of us, Divinitus evasit."--Fortunes of Nigel, c. xxvii.

[270] Relation ..., November 7th, 1605 (P.R.O.).

[271] Narrative, f. 68 b.--Stonyhurst MSS.

[272] F. 66. It will be remembered that this episode is not mentioned by Cecil in his version of November 6th. Bishop Goodman's opinion is that this and other points of the story were contrived for stage effect: "The King must have the honour to interpret that it was by gunpowder; and the very night before the parliament began it was to be discovered, to make the matter the more odious, and the deliverance the more miraculous. No less than the lord chamberlain must search for it and discover it, and Faux with his dark lantern must be apprehended." (Court of King James, p. 105.)

[273] T. Winter, November 23rd, 1605.

[274] There is, of course, abundant contradiction upon this point, as all others, but the balance of evidence appears to point to 2 a.m. or thereabouts.

[275] The customary hour for the meeting of the Houses was 9 a.m., or even earlier. (Journals of Parliament.)

[276] The list of those present is given in the Lords' Journals; it is headed by the Lord Chancellor (Ellesmere), and includes the Archbishop of Canterbury, fourteen bishops, and thirty-one peers, of whom Lord Monteagle was one. In 1598, as Mr. Atkinson tells us in his preface to the lately published volume of the Calendar of Irish State Papers, the cellars of the Dublin Law Courts were used as a powder magazine. The English Privy Council, startled to hear of this remarkable arrangement, pointed out that it might probably further diminish the number of loyal subjects in that kingdom, but were quaintly reassured by the Irish Lords Justices, who explained that, in view of the troublous state of the times, the sittings of the courts had been discontinued, and were not likely to be resumed for the present.

[277] The only allusion to it I have been able to find occurs in the Politician's Catechism (1658), p. 95: "Yet the barells, wherein the powder was, are kept as reliques, and were often shown to the king and his posterity, that they might not entertain the least thought of clemency towards the Catholique Religion. There is not an ignorant Minister or Tub-preacher, who doth not (when all other matter fails) remit his auditors to the Gunpowder Treason, and describe those tubs very pathetically, the only reliques thought fit by them to be kept in memory."

[278] Journals of the House of Lords, November 1st and 2nd, 1678.

[279] Ibid., November 2nd, 1678.

[280] I have already remarked upon Faukes' statement that he was arrested in quite a different place from any mentioned in the government accounts. It should be added, that as to the person who arrested him, there is a somewhat similar discrepancy of evidence. The honour is universally assigned by the official accounts to Sir T. Knyvet, who in the following year was created a peer, which shows that he undoubtedly rendered some valuable service on the occasion. An epitaph, however, in St. Anne's Church, Aldersgate (printed in Maitland's History of London, p. 1065, 3rd ed.), declares that it was Peter Heiwood, of Heywood, Lancashire, "who apprehended Guy Faux, with his dark Lanthorn; and for his zealous Prosecution of Papists, as Justice of Peace, was stabbed, in Westminster Hall, by John James, a Dominican Friar, A.D. 1640." No trace of this assassination can be found, nor does the name of John James occur in the Dominican records. It is, however, a curious coincidence that the "Guy Faukes' Lantern," exhibited in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, bears the inscription: "Laterna ilia ipsa quâ usus est, et cum qua deprehensus Guido Faux in cryptâ subterraneâ, ubi domo [sic] Parliamenti difflandae operam dabat. Ex dono Robti. Heywood nuper Academiae Procuratoris, Ap. 4^o, 1641." See the epitaph in full, Appendix I.

[281] To J. Chamberlain, 10th-20th November, 1605. P.R.O. France, b. 132, f. 335 b.

[282] The Council appears at this time to have met in the Painted Chamber, and, without at all wishing to lay too much stress upon this point, I cannot but remark that the supposition that this was the original scene assigned to the operations of Faukes would solve various difficulties:

Beneath the Painted Chamber was a vaulted cellar, answering to the description we have so frequently heard, whereas under the House of Lords was neither a cellar nor a vault. This crypt beneath the Painted Chamber has been constantly shown as "Guy Faukes' Cellar." In prints of the period, Faukes is usually represented as going to blow up this chamber, never the House of Lords.

[283] To Chamberlain, November 13th (O.S.), 1605. P.R.O.

[284] Thus M. Bouillet, in the latest edition of his Dictionnaire d'histoire et géographie, speaks as follows: "Le ministre cupide et orgueilleux, Cécil, semble avoir été l'âme du complot, et l'avoir découvert lui même au moment propice, après avoir présenté à l'esprit faible de Jacques I. les dangers auxquels il était en but de la part des Catholiques."

Gazeau and Prampain (Hist. Mod., tome i.) speak of the conspiracy as "cette plaisanterie;" and say of the conspirators, "Dans une cave, ils avaient déposé 36 barils contenant (ou soi-disant tels) de la poudre."

[285] P.R.O. Gunpowder Plot Book, 39 (November 7).

[286] In Herring's Pietas Pontificia (1606) the king is described as coming to the House:

"Magna cum Pompa, stipatorumque Caterva, Palmatisque, Togis, Gemmis, auroque refulgent: Ingens fit Populi concursus, compita complens, Turbis se adglomerant densis, spectantque Triumphum."

[287] Faukes himself says--examination of November 16th--that the touchwood would have burnt a quarter of an hour.

[288] See Appendix K, Myths of the Powder Plot.

[289] In connection with this appears an interesting example of the