The Gunpowder Plot: Terror & Faith in 1605 (43 page)

Garnet and Oldcorne were taken to Sir Henry Bromley’s home at Holt Castle until further orders concerning their fate were received from London. They were neither shackled, nor held in collars, nor in any other way treated brutally. Although the whole basis of the official proclamation was that the Jesuits had been the prime persuaders in the recent devilish Plot, their treatment was in no sense that normally meted out to desperadoes. There was a paradox here. Sir Henry Bromley told Garnet that although the proclamation meant that he had to hold him ‘strait’ yet he honoured him as ‘a learned man and a worthy priest’.
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In London, Parliament had reassembled on Tuesday 21
January; it had not met since that Saturday in November when the King had made his celebrated speech. In the Commons one of the first actions was to consider measures of safety, with reference to ‘the Danger of Papistical Practices’. Two days later Sir Edward Montague, the Member for Northamptonshire, introduced a bill, drafted by himself, for a public thanksgiving to be said annually on 5 November. Sir Edward was often thought to be numbered among the Puritans, being ‘a man of plain and downright English spirit’.
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He was eager to be reinstated in the King’s favour after delivering a petition against the suspension of non-conforming clergy which had annoyed James. The Papists’ disgrace provided a perfect opening. Montague now introduced the concept of a plain and downright English festival which survived in one form or another for nearly four hundred years.

A more immediate festivity – of a sort – awaited the curious, many months before 5 November 1606. On Monday 27 January, the day of the capture of Father Garnet and Father Oldcorne, the trial of the eight surviving conspirators began in Westminster Hall. Seven of them were brought by barge from the Tower of London to Whitehall, early in the morning: these were Guy Fawkes, Thomas and Robert Wintour, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Everard Digby and Robert Keyes. Thomas Bates’ inferior status was marked by the fact that he was held in the less important Gatehouse prison. So ‘these wretches’, compared to whom villains of the Ancient World such as Nero and Caligula were said to be mere ‘fly-killers’, prepared to face judgement.
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The decision was never in doubt. The mere fact that these men were on trial for high treason meant that they would inevitably be found guilty, and equally inevitably sentenced to death. Refinements such as defending counsel were unknown. In the nineteenth century, Lord Macaulay would describe the process as ‘merely a murder preceded by the uttering of certain gibberish and the performance of certain mummeries’. Yet one should be wary of too much anachronistic indignation. These were the rules of a treason trial at the time, proceedings which
were quite literally intended as a show trial, one where the guilt of the prisoners would be demonstrated publicly. For this reason, the government encouraged popular attendance at such events. The real trial had already taken place in the form of interrogations before the Privy Council. It was here that guilt or otherwise was decided, since guilt was not a foregone conclusion at this point. Not every prisoner brought before the Privy Council as a suspect traitor was sent for trial.
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The prisoners were kept together in the Star Chamber for a short while before being brought into Westminster Hall. Here they were displayed on a scaffold which had been specially devised, and subjected to the fascinated scrutiny of the spectators. These included some secret watchers as well as many members of both Houses of Parliament. (There was a complaint the next day that MPs had been jostled and their reserved places ‘pestered with others not of the House’; a committee was set up to investigate.) Among the secret watchers was the King himself, who occupied a room where he could see without being seen. He was said to have been present from eight in the morning until seven at night. Queen Anne and Prince Henry, not quite twelve years old – two potential victims of the Plot – were concealed in another secluded watch-post. Two private rooms were also erected so that foreign ambassadors and other notables could attend the trial discreetly.
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As for what they saw, a contemporary description conveys the sense of horrified wonder at the sight of the eight murderous ‘wretches’. Some hung down their heads ‘as if their hearts were full of doggedness’, while others forced ‘a stern look, as if they would frighten death with a frown’. None of them gave the impression of praying ‘except it were by the dozen upon their beads’. (The Plotters were actually saying the rosary, a Catholic form of prayer much scorned by Protestants, beads being among the devotional objects which were unlawful.) One particular detail must have maddened King James. It was noticed throughout the trial that the conspirators were ‘taking tobacco, as if hanging were no trouble to them’. Yet only in
1604 the King had energetically denounced smoking – ‘a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs’ – in his
Counterblaste to Tobacco.
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The conspirators’ addiction was yet another proof of their moral obloquy.

The Lords Commissioners who sat in trial consisted of the Earls of Suffolk, Worcester, Northampton and Devonshire, as well as Salisbury, Sir John Popham as Lord Chief Justice, Sir Thomas Fleming as Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and two Justices of the Common Pleas, Sir Thomas Walmsley and Sir Peter Warburton. Of the peers, Worcester had been considered a Papist in the previous reign, and Northampton a Church Papist, but men of Catholic sympathies were of course specially keen to demonstrate their horror of the Powder Treason. Seven of the conspirators – Sir Everard Digby was the exception – were tried on the same indictment.
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This list of ‘false traitors’ to the King began, significantly, with the names and common aliases of the three Jesuits, Garnet, Tesimond and Gerard, who were described as ‘not yet taken’ since the morning’s dramatic news had not reached London. The list then passed on to Thomas Wintour, followed by Guido Fawkes, ‘otherwise called Guido Johnson’, Robert Keyes and Thomas Bates, ‘yeoman’. The names of the four slain conspirators came next: Catesby, Percy, the two Wrights, coupled with that of Francis Tresham, ‘lately dead’. The names of the other three surviving conspirators, Robert Wintour, John Grant and Ambrose Rookwood, occurred in the course of the same indictment, an extremely long document which certainly did not underplay the drama of the occasion.

All seven of these conspirators pleaded ‘Not Guilty’, including Guy Fawkes. These pleas caused the authorities some surprise, as the previous confessions of the prisoners were ‘notorious’. Guy Fawkes, in particular, had freely admitted his
guilt from the first moment of his apprehension on 5 November. Digby had to be tried separately since, alone among his comrades, he pleaded ‘Guilty’.

Sir Edward Phillips, Serjeant-at-Law, now sprang into action with what was termed the ‘declaration’. His words were magisterial, eloquent and damning: ‘The tongue of man never delivered, the ear of man never heard, the heart of man never conceived, or the malice of hellish or earthly devil ever practised…’ such a treason. For if it was ‘abominable to murder the least’ of God’s creatures, then how much more abominable to murder ‘Such a King, Such a Queen, Such a Prince, Such a progeny, Such a State, Such a government…’.
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The Attorney-General Sir Edward Coke was the next to speak and he did not spare himself – or his audience. He made an extremely long speech, a fact he himself acknowledged when he used the word ‘copious’ of what was to follow: he did not intend to be ‘so succinct as usual’.
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One important aspect of this speech was however a negative one. Throughout, Coke implicitly denied that King James had made any promises of toleration to the Catholics before his accession. This was hardly surprising, given that Salisbury had written to Coke privately in advance in order to ‘renew’ his memory on the subject. Coke was to underline the fact that certain persons had gone to Spain to stir up an invasion ‘as soon as the Queen’s breath was out of her body’. This emphasis was the King’s express wish and Salisbury explained his reason. The King was aware that there were some men who would suggest that only despair at the King’s behaviour towards the Catholics, his severity, had produced ‘such works of discontentment’ as the recent treason.

The point was evidently important to James and one can guess why. Those vague Scottish promises of toleration were now a very long way away in the King’s scope of things and such politically embarrassing intrigues of another time, another country, were best not recalled. It was far better to present the Catholics as a nest of malcontents from the word go, plotting
to destroy the King ‘before his Majesty’s face was ever seen’ – that is, in advance of his arrival in England. One may perhaps hear the delicate whisper of the King’s guilty conscience in this firm rebuttal.

Salisbury’s further instructions – all in his own handwriting – were interesting too. Monteagle was to be lauded for his part in the discovery of the Plot, but care was to be taken by Coke not to vary from the King’s own account, already published. Coke, in short, was not to give credence to a story ‘lewdly given out’ that Monteagle had once been part of the Plot, and had betrayed it to Salisbury, still less that one of the conspirators had actually written the anonymous letter. (Monteagle’s name was also obliterated in the published account of the Spanish Treason, as related by Francis Tresham.) Salisbury’s last note was characteristic: ‘You must remember to lay Owen as foul in this as you can.’
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Coke did not fail Salisbury and he did not fail King James. The Spanish Treason, including the two thousand horses promised by the English Catholics, featured strongly. So did the oaths taken by the conspirators and the alleged administration of the Sacrament – by Garnet, Tesimond and other Jesuits – to sanctify them. (Guy Fawkes’ specific denial while being examined that Father Gerard knew anything of the Plot when he gave the Sacrament in May 1604 was not mentioned. To make quite sure this damaging statement was omitted, Coke underlined the passage in the examination in red and marked in the margin ‘hucusque’ – thus far and no further.)
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The Spanish King was however courteously handled. His Ambassador, listening intently in his private closet, must have been relieved to find that ‘foreign princes’ were (by the King’s direct instructions) ‘reverently and respectfully spoken of. The priests, in contrast, were execrated. Their traitorous advice, their outright encouragement were underlined at every point, giving a picture of the Jesuits’ behaviour which was so far at variance with the truth that it would have been laughable if it had not been so tragic – and so sinister.

With a flurry of classical and Biblical quotations, Coke
described the Powder Treason as having three roots, all planted and watered by the Jesuits. ‘I never yet knew a treason without a Romish priest,’ he declared, ‘but in this, there are very many Jesuits.’ In short the ‘seducing Jesuits’ were the principal offenders. All the old stories of the Jesuits seeking to remove crowns from rulers were trotted out, how the practices of ‘this sect’ principally consisted in ‘two Ds, to wit, the deposing of kings, and disposing of kingdoms’. As for absolution, Catesby had received it in advance from the Jesuits and been encouraged to believe that his potential crime was ‘both lawful and meritorious’. After that, ‘he persuaded and settled’ the rest of the Plotters when they raised some doubts, telling Rookwood, for example, that Father Garnet had given him absolution for the action, even if it involved ‘the destruction of many innocents’.

The emotive subject of equivocation was also introduced by Coke. This was the art of lying as practised by Catholics – or so the government would have it. (The Catholics themselves, as we shall see in the next chapter, viewed it rather differently.) Coke spoke of how the ‘perfidious and perjurious equivocating’ of the conspirators, abetted and justified by the Jesuits, had allowed them not only to conceal the truth but also to swear to things which they themselves knew to be totally false. This was because ‘certain heretical, treasonable and damnable books’, including one which Coke entitled ‘Of Equivocation’, had been discovered among Francis Tresham’s possessions. It was a subject to which Coke would return with eloquence in the future. In the meantime, the shade of Francis Tresham was beginning to haunt Father Garnet.

Coke’s editorial concoction of what had actually taken place was accompanied by an even more colourful evocation of the horrors which might have taken place. Coke focused in turn on the probable fate of the Queen, Prince Henry ‘the future hope’, and, in a sense worst of all, the young Princess Elizabeth – ‘God knoweth what would have become of her.’ As he got into his stride, Coke even managed to feel sorry not only for the men and beasts who would have suffered from
the explosion but also for the very buildings of the neighbourhood: ‘insensible creatures, churches and houses, and all places near adjoining’ – a remarkably modern concern.

When, however, Coke came to his delineation of the penalties traditionally meted out to traitors, he showed himself a man of his own time. Each condemned prisoner would be drawn along to his death, backwards at a horse’s tail because he ‘hath been retrograde to nature’: his head should be near the ground, being not entitled to the common air. He was to be put to death halfway between heaven and earth as unworthy of both. His privy parts were to be cut off and burnt before his face since he himself had been ‘unworthily begotten’ and was in turn unfit ‘to leave any generation after him’. The bowels and heart which had conceived of these terrible things were to be hacked out and the head ‘which had imagined the mischief was to be cut off. Thereafter the various dismembered portions of the traitor’s body were to be publicly exposed, that they might become ‘prey for the fowls of the air’.