The Gunpowder Plot: Terror & Faith in 1605 (72 page)

Ashby St Ledgers, Northamptonshire, owned by Lady Catesby, mother of Robert: it is said that the conspirators used this gate-house to plot their treason.

Although the old Palace of Westminster burned down in 1834, this drawing by William Capon of 1799 gives an impression of how the cellar beneath the House of Lords must have been in 1605.

An Interpretation of Guy Fawkes entering Parliament.

Europe took a keen interest in the Gunpowder Plot: a contemporary Dutch print.

Woodcut showing the delivery of the Monteagle letter to Salisbury, from Vicar’s
Mischeefes Mystery,
1617.

The anonymous letter delivered to Lord Monteagle on 26 October 1605; the authorship of – and motive behind – this notorious document, described later as ‘dark and doubtful’, now in the Public Record Office, have never been conclusively established.

Garnet’s straw: this ‘miraculous’ image, an object of reverence to Catholics was found on a straw spotted with Father Garnet’s blood at his death; the straw, whose existence caused great annoyance to the English authorities, was smuggled abroad but vanished at the time of the French Revolution.

Father Henry Garnet SJ, by Jan Wiericx.

St Winifred’s Well, Holywell, Clwyd; Father Garnet led an expedition to this ancient site of pilgrimage (still in existence today) in the late summer of 1605; his companions included Anne and Eliza Vaux, Father Gerard and Sir Everard and Lady Digby Afterwards the government pretended the pilgrimage had been a cover for conspiracy.

Father Garnet’s last letter to his faithful protectress Anne Vaux, written from the Tower of London on 21 April 1606, twelve days before his execution; it ends ‘yours
in eternum,
as I hope, H G’. He appended a rough drawing and the letters ‘I H S’ for the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The entry in the Commons’ Journal for 5 November 1605 (which now hangs in the Noes voting lobby of the House of Commons); it records, in the margin: ‘This last Night the Upper House of Parliament was searched by Sir Thomas Knevett; and one Johnson, Servant to Mr Thomas Percy was there apprehended; who had placed 36 Barrels of Gunpowder in the Vault under the House with a Purpose to blow the King, and the whole company, when they should there assemble. Afterwards divers other Gentle[men] were discovered to be of the Plot.’

Sir Edward Coke, who, as Attorney-General, led the prosecution at the trials of the conspirators and Father Garnet.