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PLOWLAND HOUSE, HOLDERNESS, E.R. YORKSHIRE.

THE GUNPOWDER PLOT
AND
LORD MOUNTEAGLE’S LETTER;
BEING A PROOF, WITH MORAL CERTITUDE, OF
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE DOCUMENT:
TOGETHER WITH
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE WHOLE THIRTEEN
GUNPOWDER CONSPIRATORS,
INCLUDING
GUY FAWKES.

BY
HENRY HAWKES SPINK, Jun.
(A Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Judicature in England).

LONDON:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LTD.
YORK:
JOHN SAMPSON.
1902.
[All rights reserved.]

“Veritas temporis filia. Truth is the daughter of Time, especially in this case, wherein, by timely and often examinations, matters of greatest moment have been found out.” — Sir Edward Coke (the Attorney-General who prosecuted the eight surviving conspirators).

“Suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which History has the power to inflict on Wrong.” — Lord Acton.

“History, it is said, revises the verdicts of contemporaries, and constitutes an Appeal Court nearest to the ordeal of heaven.” — Dr. James Martineau.

TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES LINDLEY
SECOND VISCOUNT HALIFAX
OF HICKLETON AND GARROWBY
IN THE COUNTY OF YORK
ONE OF YORKSHIRE’S MOST GIFTED AND DISTINGUISHED SONS
THIS BOOK
WHICH
AMONGST OTHER THINGS
TELLS OF SOME OF THE WORDS AND DEEDS
OF CERTAIN YORKSHIREMEN IN
THE DAYS OF SHAKESPEARE
IS
(BY KIND PERMISSION)
MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR.

Bland’s Court,
Coney Street,
York.

To the Right Honourable
Viscount Halifax.
My Lord,

The book which your characteristic generosity has permitted me to dedicate to you wears a two-fold aspect. For it is as to one portion — and predominantly — an Inquiry taking the form of a discourse with questions and proofs, propositions and demonstrations. While as to another portion — but subordinately — it is a History taking the form of a narrative of events, a relation of mental occurrences, a statement of concrete facts. Now these twain aspects will be found duly to play their respective parts in the course of the subsequent pages, in accordance with a selected order and method.

With most of the allegations of fact and the inferences therefrom, and with many of the assumptions and conclusions which this work contains, your Lordship will agree. From others you will disagree. Whilst in the case of a third class, it may be that you will deem a suspension of judgment to be the part which wisdom and justice alike enjoin.

Speaking for myself, both as a man and as a native of our great County of Yorkshire — whose sons are at

once speculative and practical, imaginative and concrete — necessity, in the form of an imperative sense of duty, has been laid upon me, to declare, with unmistakable emphasis and straightforward directness, what I hold to be the Truth governing the subject-matter wherewith I have sought to deal. For Truth is that which is, and its contradictory is error. This line of action I have pursued with the greater determination, inasmuch as daily observation of external events — and, if less frequent, still actual reflection thereupon — has strongly convinced me, even against my will, that much of the “forcible feebleness” and most of the “stable instability” of modern British Statesmen and Politicians have their origin and rise in nothing else than this: — lack of clarity of thought and want of knowledge of those, fixed fundamental intellectual, moral, and political principles which ought to be the sure inheritance of the human Race. And pre-eminently of that portion of the Race which is conscious of a lofty imperial mission. “For evil is wrought by want of thought as well as by want of heart.”

The ancient Stagyrite ranked Poetry above History, because the former bequeaths to Man universal principles of action, whereas the latter bestows upon Man only a relation of individual facts.

But the History of the Gunpowder Treason Plot rises to a higher unity. Because for a man to have read and mastered an impartial record of that deliberate and

appalling scheme of “sacrilegious murder,” which happily Destiny first frustrated, and afterwards, through Nemesis, her unerring executioner, signally avenged in the sight of all men, is to have witnessed, with the eye of the historic imagination, a drama that is a poem in action.

Nay, more; it is to have had a personal, experimental realization, through the historic feeling, of what is meant, in the realm of Moral actualities, by the infliction of Retribution, the working out of Expiation, the regaining of Justness, the restoration of Equality between outraged Right and outraging Wrong, and the attaining by the tempestuous, passionate human heart of final tranquillity, rest, and peace.

For one of the greatest recorded Tragedies in the world is the History of the Gunpowder Treason Plot, regard being had to the intellectual and moral ends effected by that history’s recital.

The man who has truly, if indeed but commemoratively, through force of the medium of language merely, taken his part in this great Action, even at a distance of well-nigh three hundred years, will have had his soul cleansed and purified by cleansed and purified pity and terror. Then will he have had that soul soothed and healed. He will have been first abased and then exalted.

For so to act is to weep with a Humanity that weeps. Then with that same Humanity to join in a triumphant pæan of victory that has for its universal and glorious theme this reality of realities which cannot be

broken, namely, that Universe — whereof Man, though not the measure, constitutes so large a part — is primevally founded and everlastingly established in Goodness, Being, and Truth.

Trusting that your Lordship will crown your gracious kindness by pardoning the great length of this Introductory Letter,

I beg to remain,
My dear Lord Halifax,
Yours sincerely and gratefully,
HENRY HAWKES SPINK, Jun.

Saturday, 26th October, 1901.

Tragedy primarily implies imitation of Action by action, not by language, although of course language forms a constituent part.

See the “Poetics of Aristotle,” chap. vi.

“Although it is by no means proved to be impossible that this nobleman [Lord Mounteagle] was a guilty confederate in the Plot, the weight of evidence is at present in his favour. It is, however, a most curious State mystery: and I am persuaded that, if the truth is ever discovered, it will not be by State papers, or recorded confessions and examinations. When such expert artists as Bacon and Cecil framed and propagated a State fiction in order to cover a State intrigue, they took care to cut off or divert the channels of history so effectually as to make it hopeless, at the distance of three centuries to trace the truth by means of documents which have ever been in their control. If the mystery should hereafter be unravelled, it will be probably by the discovery of some letters or papers of a domestic nature, which either slumber in private repositories, or remain unnoticed in public collections.” — Letter by David Jardine, Editor of “Criminal Trials,” to Sir Henry Ellis, F.R.S., “Archæologia,” pp. 94-95. Dated 30th November, 1840.

PREFACE.

The writer of the following work desires respectfully to put forward a modest contribution to the solution of one of the greatest problems known to History.

The problem referred to arises out of that stupendous and far-reaching movement against the Government of King James I. known as the Gunpowder Treason Plot.

This enterprise of cold-blooded, though grievously provoked, massacre was, of a truth, “barbarous and savage beyond the examples of all former ages.” But because the movement had a profoundly — in the Aristotelian sense — political causa causans, therefore it is of perennial interest to governors and governed.

The causa causans, or originating cause, of the Gunpowder Treason Plot, in its ultimate analysis, will be found to involve that problem of problems for Princes, Statesmen, and Peoples all the world over: — How to allow freedom of human action, and yet faithfully to maintain Absolute Truth concerning the Infinite and the Eternal — or that which is believed to be Absolute Truth.

To the intent that the mind of the reader may ever and anon find relief from the stress and strain occasioned by the dry discussion of Evidence and the severe reasoning

from necessary or probable philosophical assumptions, the writer has designedly interspersed, both in the Text and in the Notes, matter of a Biographical and Topographical nature, especially such as hath relation to the author’s honoured native County — Yorkshire — and his beloved native City — York.

The writer has thought out his thesis, and has treated the same without fear or favour — limited and conditioned only by a regard for what he knew or supposed, and therefore believed, to be the truth governing the subject-matter under consideration. Nobody can say more, not even the most advanced or emancipated thinker living.[A]

[A] Cf., “The Ethic of Free-thought,” by Professor Karl Pearson. (Adam and Charles Black, 1901.)

If it be demanded of the author why a member of the lower branch of the legal profession hath essayed the unveiling of a mystery that has baffled the learning and ingenuity of men from the days of King James I. — the British Solomon — down to the days of Dr. Samuel Rawson Gardiner, the renowned historian of the early English Stuarts, the author’s answer and plea must be — for it can only be — that by the decrees of Fate, his eyes first saw the light of the sun in a County whose history is an epitome of the history of the English people; and in a City which is an England in miniature.

In conclusion, the writer would be fain to be pardoned in saying that he has not had the advantage

of frequenting any British or Foreign University, or other seat of learning — all the education that he can make his humble boast of having been received in Yorkshire Protestant Schools.

The writer’s guide, during the past eighteen months, wherein he hath “voyaged through strange seas of thought alone,”[A] has been “the high white star of Truth. There he has gazed, and THERE aspired.”[B]

Saturday, 26th October, 1901.

[A] Wordsworth.

[B] Matthew Arnold.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

ERRATA.

The author regrets to have to request his indulgent readers to be kind enough to make the following corrections [Transcriber’s Note: These have been applied.]: —

Page 19, line 14 from top. — Put ) after word “conspirators,” not after word “Tresham.”

Page 77, line 9 from top. — Read: and “great great grandfather of Philip Howard Earl of Arundel,” instead of “great-grandfather.”

Page 79, in note, line 5 from top. — Read: “ninth Earl of Carlisle,” instead of “seventh Earl of Carlisle.”

Page 87, in note, line 8 from bottom. — Read: “Burns & Oates.”

Page 117, line 5 from top. — Read: “William Abington,” instead of “Thomas Abington.”

Page 122, in note, line 2 from top. — Read: “Duke of Beaufort,” instead of “Duke of St. Albans.”

Page 140, line 4 from top. — Read: “incarcerated,” instead of “inccarerated.”

Page 285, in note, line 2 from top. — Read: “kinswoman,” instead of “kinsman.”

Page 321, line 16 from top. — Read: “Deprave,” instead of “depeave.”

PRELUDE.

In order that the problem of the Gunpowder Plot may be understood, it is necessary for the reader to bear in mind that there were three movements — distinct though connected — against the Government on the part of the oppressed Roman Catholic recusants in the year 1605. The first of these movements was a general wave of insurrectionary feeling, of which there is evidence in Yorkshire as far back as 1596; in Lancashire about 1600; and in Herefordshire, at a later date, much more markedly. Then there was the Gunpowder Plot itself. And, lastly, there was the rebellion that was planned to take place in the Midlands, which, to a very limited extent, did take place, and in the course of which four of the conspirators were slain. That Salisbury’s spies and decoys — who were, like Walsingham’s, usually not Protestants but “bad Catholics” — had something to do with stirring up the general revolutionary feeling is more than probable; but that either he or they planned, either jointly or severally, the particular enterprise known as the Gunpowder Treason Plot — which was as insane as it was infamous — I do not for a moment believe.

All students of English History, however, are greatly indebted to the Rev. John Gerard, S.J., for his three

recent critical works on this subject; but still that the main outlines of the Plot are as they have come down to us by tradition, to my mind, Dr. Samuel Rawson Gardiner abundantly proves in his book in reply to the Rev. John Gerard.

The names of the works to which I refer are: — “What was the Gunpowder Plot?” the Rev. J. Gerard, S.J. (Osgood, McIlvaine & Co.); “The Gunpowder Plot and Plotters” (Harper Bros.); “Thomas Winter’s Confession and the Gunpowder Plot” (Harper Bros.); and “What Gunpowder Plot was,” S. R. Gardiner, D.C.L., LL.D. (Longmans).

The Articles in “The Dictionary of National Biography” dealing with the chief actors in this notable tragedy are all worthy of careful perusal.

“The History of the Jesuits in England, 1580-1773,” by the Rev. Ethelred L. Taunton, with twelve illustrations (Methuen & Co., 1901), contains a chapter on the Gunpowder Plot; and the Plot is referred to in Major Hume’s recent work, entitled, “Treason and Plot” (Nisbet, 1901).

CHAPTER I.

One of the unsolved problems of English History is the question: “Who wrote the Letter to the Lord Mounteagle?” surely, one of the most momentous documents ever penned by the hand of man, which discovered the Gunpowder Treason, and so saved a King of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland — to say nothing of France — his Royal Consort, his Counsellors, and Senators, from a bloody, cruel, and untimely death.

In every conspiracy there is a knave or a fool, and sometimes, happily, “a repentant sinner.”

Now it is well known that the contrivers of the Gunpowder Treason themselves suspected Francis Tresham — a subordinate conspirator and brother-in-law to Lord Mounteagle — and many historians have rashly jumped to the conclusion that, therefore, Tresham must have been the author.

But, when charged at Barnet by Catesby and Thomas Winter, two of his infuriated fellow-plotters, with having sent the Letter, Tresham so stoutly and energetically denied the charge that his denial saved him from the point of their poniards.

Moreover, the suspected man when a prisoner in the Tower of London, and even when in the act of throwing himself on the King’s mercy, never gave the faintest hint that the Letter was attributable to him. But, on the contrary, actually stated first that he had intended to reveal the treason, and secondly that he had been guilty of concealment.

Now, as a rule, “all that a man hath will he give for his life.” Therefore it is impossible, in the face of this direct testimony of Tresham, to maintain that to him the discovery of the Plot is due: and the force of the argument grounded on Tresham’s being the brother-in-law to Mounteagle, and that the accused man showed an evident desire that the Plot should be postponed, if not altogether abandoned, melts away like snow before the sun.[1][2][A]

[A] See Notes at End of Text, indicated by figures in [ ].

To whatever decision the Historical Inquirer into this hitherto inscrutable mystery is destined to come after reviewing and weighing the Evidence now available — which to-day is more abundant from a variety of accidental circumstances, than when Lingard and Mackintosh, and even Gardiner and Green, wrote their histories — it is manifest that the Inquirer’s decision in the matter cannot be as certain as a mathematical conclusion. But, it may be morally certain, because of the many degrees of probability that the information now ready to our hand will inevitably give that are favourable to the conclusion which the following pages will seek, by the evidence of facts, to sustain. And, as the ancient historian tersely says: “Ubi res adsunt, quid opus est verbis?” — “Where facts are at hand, what need is there for words?”

The Evidence to be relied on is mainly the evidence known as Circumstantial,[B] and consists of two classes of acts. One of these classes leads up to the performance of the transaction — namely, in the one case, the dictating of the Letter by the primary Author; in the other case, the penning of the Document by the secondary Scribe. Whilst the other class of acts tends to

demonstrate that the Author of the Letter and the Penman respectively were conscious, subsequent to the commission of the transaction — in the former case, of having incurred the responsibility of being the originating Cause of the Document; in the latter case, of being the Agent for its physical production.

[B] As to the nature of Circumstantial Evidence — see Appendix.

Before we begin to collect our Evidence, and, à fortiori, before we begin to consider the inferences from the same, we ought to bear in mind certain fixities of thought, or, in other words, certain self-evident fundamentals which are grounded in logic and daily experience. These fixities of thought or self-evident fundamentals will be points from which the reason of the Historical Inquirer can take swing. And not only so; but — like the cords of the rocket life-saving apparatus of the eager mariner — they will be lines of attachment and rules of thought, whereby first to secure to ourselves the available Evidence; and secondly, to prove to the intellect the truth of a theory which, if allowed, shall redound, in respect of courage and integrity, to the praise and honour of Man.

CHAPTER II.

Now, to my mind, it is a proposition so plain as not to require arguing, that there must have been at least two persons engaged in the two-fold transaction of dictating the Letter and of being the penman of the same. For although it is, of course, physically possible that the work may have been accomplished by one and the same person, yet that there was a division of labour in the two-fold transaction is infinitely the more likely supposal: because of the terrible risk to the revealing conspirator of his handwriting being detected by the Government authorities, and, through them, by his co-partners in guilt, should he have rashly adventured to be his own scribe; and this though he feigned his penmanship never so cunningly.

Now if such were the case, it follows that there must have been some second person — some entirely trustworthy friend — in the conspirator’s confidence. Nay, if the exigencies of the nature and posture of affairs demanded it, a third person, or even a fourth, might have been also taken into confidence. But only if absolutely necessary. For the risk of detection would be proportioned to the number of persons in the secret: — it being a rule of common prudence in such cases that confidences must not be unnecessarily multiplied.

Therefore it follows that, supposing there was a second person in the confidence of the “discovering” or revealing conspirator to pen the Letter; and supposing

there was a third person in the confidence of that conspirator, with or without the knowledge and consent of the second person, to act as a go-between, an “interpres,” between the conspirator and Lord Mounteagle, these two persons must have been very trustworthy persons indeed.

Now a man trusts his fellow-man in proportion as he has had knowledge of him either directly or indirectly; directly by personal contact, indirectly through the recommendation of some competent authority.

Experientia docet. Experience teaches. A man has knowledge of his fellow-man as the resultant of the experience gained from relationship of some kind or another. And relationship is created by kinship, friendship, or business — intending the word “business” to embrace activity resulting from thought, word, and deed extending to the widest range of human interests conceivable. Relationship creates bonds, ties, obligations between the several persons united by it.

Hence, the practical conclusion is to be drawn that if “the discovering” or disclosing Gunpowder conspirator, with a view to revealing the intended massacre, had recourse to one or more confidants, they must have been one or more person or persons who were united to him by kinship, friendship, or business, in the sense predicated, possibly in all three, and that they must have been persons bound to him by bonds, which if “light as air were strong as iron.”

Let us now turn to the Evidence to-day available bearing upon the momentous document under consideration. We will begin by saying a few words respecting the Lord Mounteagle, whose name, at least, the Gunpowder Treason will have for ever enshrined in the remembrance of the British people.

CHAPTER III.

William Parker,[3] the son and heir of Lord Morley, whose barony had been created by King Edward I. in 1299, was called to the House of Lords as the fourth Baron Mounteagle, in right of his mother the Honourable Elizabeth Stanley, the only child and heiress of the third Baron Mounteagle, whose wife was a Leybourne of Westmoreland.

At the time of the Plot (1605) the fourth Lord Mounteagle was thirty years of age. His principal country residence appears to have been at Great Hallingbury, near Bishop Stortford, in the County of Essex. His chief town-house seems to have been in the Strand. He married before he was eighteen years of age, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Tresham of Rushton, Northamptonshire, a high-minded, scholarly Roman Catholic gentleman of great wealth, who had been knighted at Kenilworth by Queen Elizabeth in 1577.

Mounteagle was connected through his mother alone, to say nothing of his father, with some of the noblest families in the land. Besides the then well-nigh princely Lancashire House, the Stanleys Earls of Derby, to whom he was related in both the paternal and maternal lines, through his mother Elizabeth Stanley, Mounteagle was related, as cousin once removed, to those twain gracious, beautiful souls, Anne Dacres Countess of Arundel and Surrey, widow of the sainted Philip Howard Earl of Arundel and Surrey, and to her sister the Lady Elizabeth Howard, wife of “Belted Will Howard”[4] of

Naworth Castle, the ancient home of the Lords Dacres of Gilsland, near Carlisle, commonly called the Lords Dacres of the North, in contradistinction to the Lords Dacres of the South, of Hurstmonceaux Castle in the County of Sussex.

Mounteagle was, therefore, through his mother, a near kinsman to the remarkable Thomas Howard Earl of Arundel, who married Aletheia, the only child and heiress of Gilbert, seventh Earl of Shrewsbury, and god-daughter of Queen Elizabeth.

This Earl of Arundel eventually became the well-known patron of the fine arts. But in the year 1605 the young peer had not yet quite attained his majority.

Mounteagle, again, through his mother’s relationship with the gifted Thomas Howard Earl of Arundel just mentioned, would be also connected with a nobleman who at that epoch was counted a very model of “the pomp, pride, and circumstance of ancient nobility,” with John Lord Lumley[5] of Lumley Castle in the County Palatine of Durham, whose wife was Jane, daughter of Henry Fitzalan Earl of Arundel, a nobleman “exceeding magnifical,” who indeed in his day had even cherished aspirations to the hand of the last representative of the Royal House of Tudor herself.

Lord Mounteagle consorted much with English Roman Catholics, and, in some sense, prior to the year 1605, was of that religion himself. He had been present with his wife’s brother Francis Tresham a little after the Midsummer of 1605 at Fremland in Essex, on the occasion of the celebrated meeting when Father Henry Garnet, the head of the Jesuits in England, took occasion to have special warning speech with Catesby respecting a general question propounded by Catesby to Garnet about a month or six weeks previously (i.e., the beginning of Trinity Term,

1605), and from the answer to which general question Catesby shamefully drew that particular conclusion which the promptings of his evil will desired, in order that the enormity he had purposed might be made acceptable to the wavering conscience of any dubious fellow-plotter against whose resurgent sense of right and wrong he thought he might have to strive.

Lord Mounteagle is a difficult man accurately to reckon up, either intellectually, morally, or religiously. For he seems in all three aspects to have been a slightly ambiguous person.[A] Yet certainly he was no mere titled fool, with a head-piece like a windmill. Far from it: he was probably a man of sufficient, though not, I think, of the very highest intelligence, good-natured, easy-going, and of very engaging manners.[B]

[A] It is curious and amusing to hear that the following was the opinion of Robert Catesby concerning the peerage of his day: — “He made account of the nobility as of atheists, fools, and cowards; and that lusty bodies would be better for the commonwealth than they.” — See “Keyes’ Examination,” Record Office.

[B] A certain English periodical, a few years ago, spoke admiringly of Lord Mounteagle’s twentieth century connection, the present Duke of Devonshire, as being one’s beau-ideal of the “you-be-damned” type of Englishman. Probably the same periodical would have found, had it been in existence in the seventeenth century, a similar contentment in the contemplation of the fourth Lord Mounteagle.

By his contemporaries, it is evident that even prior to 1605 Mounteagle was made much of and greatly courted. But less, I opine, on account of the intellectual and moral qualities wherewith he was endowed, than on account of the exalted station of his kith and kin and the general excellency and eminency of his own external graces and gifts of fortune.

So much, then, for the present, concerning the now famous William Parker fourth Baron Mounteagle, whom History has crowned with a wreath of immortals.

CHAPTER IV.

On Saturday, the 26th of October, ten days before the intended meeting of Parliament,[A] Lord Mounteagle, we are told, unexpectedly and without any apparent reason or previous notice, directed a supper to be prepared at his mansion at Hoxton, where he had not been for more than a twelve-month before that date.

[A] Parliament had been prorogued from the 3rd of October to the 5th of November. Lord Mounteagle was one of the Commissioners.

The “Confession” by Thomas Winter, which I regard as genuine, I have also drawn upon freely in my relation of facts. — See Appendix.

It will be well, however, to relate the history of what occurred in the exact words provided for us in a work published by King James’s printer, and put forth as “the authorised version” of the facts that it recorded. The work bears the title — “A Discourse of the late intended Treason,” anno 1605. “The Discourse” says: — “The Lord Mounteagle, sonne and heire to the Lord Morley, being in his own lodging ready to go to supper at seven of the clock at night one of his footmen whom he had sent of an errand over the streete was met by an unknown man of a reasonable tall personage[6] who delivered him a Letter charging him to put it in my Lord his Master’s hands, which my Lord no sooner received but that having broken it up and perceiving the same to be of an unknown and somewhat unlegible hand, and without either date or subscription, did call

one of his men unto him for helping him to read it. But no sooner did he conceive the strange contents thereof, although he was somewhat perplexed what construction to make of it ... yet did he as a most dutifull and loyall subject conclude not to conceal it, whatever might come of it. Whereupon notwithstanding the latenesse and darknesse of the night in that season of the year, he presently repaired to his Majesties palace at Whitehall and there delivered the same to the Earle of Salisbury his majesties principall secretarie.”

The Letter was as follows: —

“My lord out of the loue i beare yowe to some of youere frends i haue a caer of youer preseruacion therfor i would aduyse yowe as yowe tender youer lyf to deuys some exscuse to shift of youer attendance at this parleament for god and man hath concurred to punishe the wickednes of this tyme and thinke not slightlye of this aduertisment but retyere youre self into youre contri wheare yowe maye expect the euent in safti for thowghe[7] theare be no apparance of anni stir yet i saye they shall receyue a terrible blowe this parleament and yet they shall not sei who hurts them this councel is not to be contemned because it maye do yowe good and can do yowe no harme for the dangere is passed as soon as yowe have burnt the letter and i hope god will give yowe the grace to mak good use of it to whose holy proteccion i comend yowe.”

(Addressed on the back) to “the ryght honorable the lord mouteagle.”

The full name of the member of Lord Mounteagle’s household who read the Letter to Lord Mounteagle, we learn, was Thomas Ward.[8]

Ward was acquainted with Thomas Winter, one of the

principal Gunpowder plotters; for Winter himself had formerly been in Mounteagle’s service, and at the time of the Plot was almost certainly on amicable terms with the young nobleman.

On the 27th of October, the day following the delivery of the Letter, Thomas Ward came to Thomas Winter (being Sunday at night) and told him that a Letter had been given to Lord Mounteagle, which the latter presently had carried to Robert Cecil Earl of Salisbury. — “Winter’s Confession.”

Winter, thereupon, the next day, Monday, the 28th October, went to a house called White Webbs, not far from Lord Salisbury’s mansion Theobalds.

White Webbs was a lone and (then) half-timbered dwelling, “with many trap doors and passages,” surrounded by woods, near Enfield Chase, ten miles north of Westminster.

At this secluded spot Thomas Winter had speech with Catesby, the arch-conspirator, “assuring him withal that the matter was disclosed and wishing him in anywise to forsake his country.” — “Winter’s Confession.”

Catesby told Winter, “he would see further as yet and resolved to send Mr. Fawkes to try the uttermost protesting if the part belonged to himself he would try the same adventure.” — “Winter’s Confession.”

On Wednesday, the 30th October, from White Webbs, “Mr. Fawkes,” as Thomas Winter styles him, went to the cellar under the House of Lords, where thirty-six barrels of powder, wood, and coal were stored in readiness for the bloody slaughter purposed for November the Fifth.

Fawkes returned to White Webbs at night, at which the conspirators “were very glad.” Fawkes had found in the cellar his “private marks” all undisturbed.

“The next day after the delivery of the Letter,” says Stowe (though as a fact it was probably five days after the delivery of the momentous document, namely, on the following Thursday), this self-same “Thomas Winter told Christopher Wright” — a subordinate conspirator, — “that he (Winter) understood an obscure letter had been delivered to Lord Mounteagle, who had conveyed it to Salisbury.”[9]

Hence, most probably, either Thomas Winter went in search of Christopher Wright to afford him this piece of information; or Wright went in search of Winter to obtain it.

At about five o’clock in the morning of Tuesday, November, the Fifth, about five hours after Fawkes’ apprehension by Sir Thomas Knevet and his men,[10] the said Christopher Wright went to the chamber of the said Thomas Winter and told him that a nobleman (i.e., the Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse) “had called (i.e., summoned) the Lord Mounteagle, saying, ‘Rise and come along to Essex House,[11] for I am going to call up my Lord of Northumberland,’ saying withal, ‘the matter is discovered.’” — “Winter’s Confession.”

Of this conspirator, Christopher Wright, it is said,[12] that “he was the first to ascertain that the Plot was discovered.” Probably this refers to the information he (Christopher Wright) obtained as the upshot of his interview with Winter on (probably) Thursday, the 31st October.

Christopher Wright was, likewise, the first to announce the apprehension of Fawkes on the morning of the 5th of November.

It is also further said of Christopher Wright by one[13] who wrote during the last century, that “He advised that each of the conspirators should betake

himself to flight in a different direction from his companions. Had this been followed several of them would have probably succeeded in making their escape to the continent. The conspirators, however, adopted another course, which issued in their discomfiture in Staffordshire, where Christopher Wright was also killed.”

CHAPTER V.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and during the earlier part of the reign of King James I., almost all those castellated castles, moated halls, and gabled manor-houses which to-day, still standing more or less perfect, “amidst their tall ancestral trees o’er all the pleasant land,” go to constitute that “old England” which her sons and daughters (and their brethren and kinsfolk beyond the seas) know and love so well; during the reign of Elizabeth and during the earlier part of the reign of James I., these now time-honoured, ivy-clad abodes and dwellings of English men and English women, over whom the grave has long since closed, but who in their day and generation were assuredly among the heroic and the supremely excellent of the earth, were the sheltering, romantic roof-trees of those who clung tenaciously to the ancient religious Faith of the English race.

This Faith was indeed that faith which had been taken and embraced by their “rude forefathers” of long ages ago, in the simple hope and with the pathetic trust that it might “do them good.”[A] And this their hope, they believed and knew, had been not in vain, neither had been their trust betrayed.

[A] See the beautiful apologue of the Saxon nobleman of Deira, delivered in the presence of St. Edwin King of Northumbria; given in Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History.”

In the days of the second Henry Tudor — fons et origo malorum — the fountain-head and well-spring of almost all of England’s many present-day religious and social woes — the men and women of England and Wales knew full well, whether they were of Cymric, Saxon, Scandinavian, or Norman race (or a mixture of all four), that to that assemblage of ideas and emotions, laws and rules, habits and customs, which had come to them from men of foreign blood and alien name, dwelling on the banks of the far-off “yellow Tiber” and under sunny, blue Italian skies — these men and women, I repeat, knew full well that to their religious Faith they owed almost everything that was best and truest and most enduring, either in themselves or their kith and kin.[A]

[A] Yorkshire, being the greatest of English Shires, had among the inhabitants of its hills and dales and “sounding shores,” representatives of the various races which compose the English nation. In the West Riding especially, those of the old Cymric or British stock were to be found. (Indeed, I am told, even now shepherds often count their sheep by the old British numerals.) This strong remnant of the old British race in the West Riding probably accounts for the marvellous gift of song wherewith this division of Yorkshiremen are endowed to this day, just as are the Welsh. In none other portion of England was there such a wealth of stately churches and beautiful monasteries as in Yorkshire, the ancient Deira, whose melodious name once kept ringing in the ears of St. Gregory the Great, of a truth, the best friend the English people ever had. But Yorkshire realised that “before all temples” the One above “preferred the upright heart and pure.” Therefore, canonized saints arose from among her vigorous, keen-minded, yet poetically imaginative sons and daughters. York became sacred to St. Paulinus and St. William; Ripon to St. Wilfrid, the Apostle of Sussex; also to St. Willibrord, the Apostle of Holland; Beverley was hallowed by the presence of St. John of Beverley; Whitby by the Saxon princess St. Hilda, the friend of Caedmon, the father of English poetry. The moors of Lastingham were blest by the presence of St. Chad and St. Cedd; and Knaresbrough by St. Robert, in his leafy stone-cave hard-by the winding Nidd.

Now regard being had to the indisputable fact that for well-nigh a thousand years England had been known abroad as “the Dowry of Mary and the Island of Saints,” by reason of the signal manifestations she had displayed in the way of cathedrals and churches, abbeys and priories, convents and nunneries, hospitals and schools (which arose up and down the length and breadth of the land to Northward and Southward, to East and West,

thereby, by the aid of art, adding even to England’s rare natural beauty), it was never at all likely that the bulk of the English people would, all on a sudden, cast off their cherished beliefs and hallowed affections respecting the deepest central questions of human life.[14]

Moreover, it may be taken as a general rule, to be remembered and applied by princes and statesmen, all the world over and for all time, that Man is a creature “full of religious instincts:” — “too superstitious,” should it be thought more accurate and desirable so to describe this undoubted habit and bent of the human mind.

Thence it follows that it is the merest fatuous folly for princes and statesmen if and when they have got themselves entangled in a false position, from some external cause or causes having little or no relation to the Invisible and the Eternal, to bid their subjects and denizens, “right about turn,” at a moment’s notice: however “bright and blissful” such mental evolutions may be deemed to be by those who have unwisely taken it into their foolish head to issue the irrational command.[A]

[A] That able and strong-minded Englishman, Dr. Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, said (in 1901) in the House of Lords, during the debates on that pathetically ridiculous document, the Sovereign’s Declaration against Popery, when speaking on Lord Salisbury’s proposed amended form, that England was resolved “to stand no interference with her religion from the outside.” It is a good thing that the heathen Kings Ethelbert and Edwin were less abnormally patriotic 1300 years ago. For the idea of “independence” has to be held subject to the “golden mean” of “nothing too much.” A fetish must not be made of that idea, especially by a people conscious of lofty imperial destiny. And “unity” must there be between ideas that are controlling fundamentals — in other words, between ideas intellectual, moral, and spiritual.

Now, in the days of Queen Elizabeth[A] those whom religious loyalty prompted to worship supremely “the God of their fathers” after a manner that those eager for change counted “idolatry,” were marked by different mental characteristics. This was so throughout England; but especially was it so in those five northern counties which comprised what was then by Catholics proudly styled “the faithful North.”

[A] The mother of Queen Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn, died reconciled to the Church of Rome. Her daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, was brought up in the tenets of that Church; but, like one type of the children of the Renaissance, Elizabeth was unconsciously “a Tribal Deist.” Margaret Roper, the daughter of Sir Thomas More, was equally “cultured,” but she accepted the Catholic tradition in its letter and in its spirit. I may here state that I have a great intellectual admiration for Queen Elizabeth, whose virtues were her own, while her faults, to a large extent, were her monstrous father’s and her Privy Counsellors’, who told her not what she ought to do but what she could do, which no really faithful adviser of a Sovereign ever does.

Some of these English “leile and feile,” that is loyal and faithful, servants of Rome were, on the subjective side, retained in their allegiance to the Visible Head of Christendom by bonds formed by mere natural piety and conservative feeling — dutiful affections of Nature which are the promise and the pledge of much that is best in the Teutonic race.

Others were mainly ruled by an overmastering sense of that lofty humility which foes call pride, but friends dignity.

Whilst a third class were persuaded, by intense intellectual, moral, and spiritual conviction that — “in and by the power of divine grace” — come what might,

nothing should separate them from those hereditary beliefs which were dearer to them far than not merely earthly goods, lands, and personal liberty, but even than their very life.

This last-mentioned class, from and after the year 1580, “the year of the Lord’s controversy with Sion,” as the old English Catholics regarded it, who loved to recall that “good time” when Campion and Parsons “poured out their soul in words,” especially Campion, who was remembered in the north for three generations: this last-mentioned class, I say, were oftentimes, though certainly not always, found to be greatly attached to the then new Society of Jesus, which, in England, was in the glow and purity of its first fervour.

This last-mentioned class — I mean the Jesuitically-affected class of English Catholics — were also again sub-divided into three sub-divisions. One sub-division was composed of Mystics; another of Politicians; and a third of those who, realising a higher unity, were at once Mystics and Politicians — or, in other phraseology, they were Men of Thought and Men of Action.

Now, the Gunpowder conspirators belonged to the last-mentioned class, and to the second division of that class. That is to say, they were mere Politicians, speaking broadly and speaking generally.

CHAPTER VI.

It hath been truly observed by one of the most knowing and candid of modern students of Elizabethan biographical literature, that Sir William Catesby, the father of the arch-gunpowder conspirator, Robert Catesby, in common with the great majority of the country gentry throughout England, who were resident upon their own estates, and unconnected with the oligarchy which ruled in the Queen’s name (i.e., Queen Elizabeth’s) at Court, threw in his lot with the Catholic party, and suffered in consequence of his conscientious adherence to the old creed.[A]

[A] Dr. Augustus Jessopp: Article — “Robert Catesby,” “National Dictionary of Biography.”

While Sir Thomas Tresham (the brother-in-law of the last-mentioned Sir William Catesby and father of Francis Tresham, one of the subordinate conspirators), was so attached to the ancient faith of the English people that, we are told, he not only regularly paid — by way of fines — for more than twenty years, the sum of £260 per annum, about £2,080 a year in our money, into the Treasury rather than not maintain what (to him) was “a conscience void of offence,” but he also spent at least twenty-one years of his life in prison, after being Star-Chambered in the year 1581 along with Lord Vaux of Harrowden and his brother-in-law, Sir William Catesby, on a charge of harbouring Campion.

The Fleet prison in London, Banbury Castle and Ely — his “familiar prison,” as Sir Thomas Tresham pleasantly styled the last-named place of incarceration — were the habitations wherein he was enabled to make it his boast in a letter to Lord Henry Howard, afterwards the Earl of Northampton, writ in the year 1603, “that he had now completed his triple apprenticeship in direst adversity, and that he should be content to serve a like long apprenticeship to prevent the foregoing of his beloved, beautiful, and graceful Rachel; for it seemed to him but a few days for the love he had to her.”[A]

[A] Quoted from papers found at Rushton in Northamptonshire, the seat of Sir Thomas Tresham, which he himself designed, being an architect of some skill.

Well may the spiritual descendants to-day of these grand old Elizabethan Catholics exclaim: — “Their very memory is pure and bright, and our sad thoughts doth cheer!”

CHAPTER VII.

The men known to history as the Gunpowder Plotters were thirteen in number.

They were at first Robert Catesby, already mentioned, Thomas Winter, Thomas Percy, John Wright, and Guy (or Guido) Fawkes.

Subsequently, there were added to these five — Robert Keyes, Christopher Wright (a younger brother of John Wright), and lastly Robert Winter (an elder brother of Thomas Winter),[A] Ambrose Rookwood, John Grant, Sir Everard Digby, Francis Tresham, and Thomas Bates.

[A] Lord Edmund Talbot, brother to the present Duke of Norfolk, K.G., Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, is allied to Robert Winter, through the latter’s marriage with Gertrude Talbot, the daughter of John Talbot, Esquire, of Grafton in Worcestershire. The brother of Gertrude Winter became Earl of Shrewsbury. John Talbot had married a daughter of Sir William Petre. Lord Edmund Talbot, I believe, now owns Huddington.

Of these thirteen conspirators, all, with the exception of Thomas Bates, a serving-man of Robert Catesby, were, as Fawkes said, “gentlemen of name and blood.”

Thomas Percy was the eldest of the conspirators and in 1605 was about forty-five years of age.

Sir Everard Digby was the youngest, being twenty-four years of age, whilst the ages of the others ranged betwixt and between.[15]

Thomas Percy, a native of Beverley, an ancient and historic town in the East Riding of Yorkshire, was therefore a Yorkshireman by birth. He was the son of Edward

Percy and Elizabeth his wife. Though not the ringleader of the band of conspirators, Thomas Percy must have cut the greatest figure in the eyes of the public at large. For he was a “kinsman” of Henry, ninth Earl of Northumberland, according to the testimony of the Earl himself,[16] and through this nobleman Thomas Percy had been made Captain of the Pensioners-in-Ordinary — Gentlemen of Honour — in attendance at Court. At the time of the Plot, too, Thomas Percy — the Constable of Alnwick and Warkworth Castles — acted as officer or agent for his noble kinsman’s large northern estates, at Alnwick, Warkworth, Topcliffe, Spofforth, and elsewhere.

Robert Catesby, the arch-conspirator, was — as we have seen already — the son and heir of Sir William Catesby, whose wife was a daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton of Coughton in Warwickshire.

Sir William Catesby was a gentleman of ancient, historic and distinguished lineage, who had large possessions in Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, and Warwickshire, yielding him about £3,000 a year, or probably from £24,000 to £30,000 a year in our money.

These large estates his ill-fated son Robert Catesby succeeded to in expectancy in 1598.[17]

Catesby, the younger, diminished his annual revenue very considerably by involving himself in the rising of the brilliant Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex (1601), who had given to Catesby a promise of toleration for Catholic recusants, who chafed greatly under a system of politico-theological persecution, at once galling, cruel and despicable.

But this promise of toleration was conditioned by the very vital condition precedent that the insurrectionary movement of the gallant but rash Essex against the Government of Elizabeth had a successful issue.

The movement, however, was emphatically not smiled on by Fortune, that fickle goddess, with the result that Catesby found himself locked up in prison, and was only ransomed by payment of a sum of £3,000.

This heavy fine, together with the fact that in the year 1605 his mother, the Dowager Lady Catesby, was living at Ashby St. Legers in Northamptonshire, and owned for life all rents of the estates, except Chastleton near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, seems to have been the cause that, at the time of the Gunpowder Plot, Catesby had not any very great amount of ready money in hand.

Besides this, until some four or five years prior to 1603, the year of the death of Queen Elizabeth, when he began to practise the religion which in 1580 his father, Sir William Catesby, had embraced or re-embraced, and for which the latter had suffered imprisonment and heavy fines, Robert Catesby “was very wild; and as he kept company with the best noblemen of the land, so he spent much above his rate, and so wasted also good part of his living.”

“He was of person above two yards[18] high, and though slender, yet as well proportioned to his height as any man one should see.” He was, moreover, reputed to be “very wise and of great judgment, though his utterance was not so good. Besides, he was so liberal, and apt to help all sorts, as it got him much love.”

At the time of the Plot Catesby was about thirty-five years of age. He had married Catherine Leigh, a daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh, of Stoneleigh, a Protestant gentleman of wealth and influence in Warwickshire. The Parish Register of Chastleton has the following entry: — “Robert Catesbie, son of Robert Catesbie, was baptised the 11th day of November, 1595.”[19] He had only this one surviving child, who is said to have married the only child of Thomas Percy.

Catesby had the misfortune to lose his wife by death before the year 1602, and at the time of the Plot his home seems to have been with his mother, the Dowager Lady Catesby, at Ashby St. Legers in the County of Northampton, the family ancestral seat. For in 1602 he had sold his residence, Chastleton, in Oxfordshire.

Now, as Robert Catesby, it seems by many circumstances, was the first inventor and chiefest furtherer of the Plot, it is worth while thus lingering on a description of what manner of man he was.

It, however, may be asked how came it to pass that this one person gained such prodigious ascendency over twelve other persons so as to make them, in the event, as mischievously, nay fatally, deluded as himself?

The answer is manifold: for besides the wrongs which these ruthless plotters sought to avenge, they evidently came under a potent psychological spell when they came under the influence of this wayward, yet fascinating, son of the brilliant age of Elizabeth — an age in which men’s intellectual and physical powers too often attained a complete mastery over their moral powers.[20]

For a proof of Catesby’s immense influence over others, it may be mentioned that Ambrose Rookwood, one of those whose blood afterwards stained the scaffold at the early age of twenty-seven for his share in the wicked scheme, says of Catesby that “he (Rookwood) loved and respected him as his own life.”[21]

Four things seem to have caused those who came in contact with Robert Catesby to have been carried captive at his will, if from the first they were at all well affected towards him — his personal appearance, his generosity, his zeal, and his skill in the use of arms.

We are told that Tesimond (alias Greenway), another contemporary of Catesby, says that “his countenance

was exceedingly noble and expressive. That his conversation and manners were peculiarly attractive and imposing, and that by the dignity of his character he exercised an irresistible influence over the minds of those who associated with him.”[22]

His zeal was of that kind which is contagious and kindles responsive fire.

As for his martial prowess, it was sufficiently attested by his behaviour at the time of the Essex rising, when Father Gerard, his contemporary, tells us that “Mr. Catesby did then show such valour and fought so long and stoutly as divers afterwards of those swordsmen did exceedingly esteem him and follow him in regard thereof.”[23]

CHAPTER VIII.

Thomas Winter came of a Worcestershire family. His father, George Winter (or Wintour), had married Jane Ingleby, the daughter of Sir William Ingleby, a Yorkshire knight of historic name, whose ancestral seat was Ripley Castle, near Knaresbrough[24] in Nidderdale, one of the most romantic valleys of Yorkshire.

Jane Winter’s brother, Francis Ingleby,[25] a barrister, and afterwards a Roman Catholic priest, was hanged, drawn and quartered at York, on the 2nd of June, 1586, for exercising his priesthood in York and his native County.

He was a man of rare parts, and the heroic story of his life and death must have often thrilled the hearts of his sister’s children.

Would that they had taken him as their model. For of all those many Roman Catholic Yorkshiremen[A] who, of divers ranks and degrees, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, preferred “death” to (what to them) was “dishonour,” none has left nobler memories than this self-sacrificing, exalted soul.[26]

[A] At least 49 persons, priests and laymen, suffered death in York alone for the Pope’s religion, between the reigns of Henry VIII. and Charles II. inclusive. The place of execution was usually the Tyburn, opposite Knavesmire, near Hob Moor Gate, in the middle of the Tadcaster High Road. In the reign of Philip and Mary no Protestant was burned to death in Yorkshire. Archbishop Heath, of York, like Bishop Tunstall, of Durham, and the great Catholic Jurist, Edmund Plowden, who, for conscience sake, declined the Chancellorship when offered to him by Elizabeth, did not think they could “save alive” the soul of a “heretic” by roasting “dead” his body at the stake. And they were right.

Thomas Winter, the ill-fated nephew of him just mentioned, was a courageous man and an accomplished linguist.

He had seen military service in Flanders, in behalf of the Estates-General against Spain, and in France, and possibly against the Turk.

We are told by a contemporary that “he was of such a wit and so fine a carriage, that he was of so pleasing conversation, desired much of the better sort, but an inseparable friend of Mr. Robert Catesby. He was of mean stature, but strong and comely and very valiant, about thirty-three years old, or somewhat more. His means were not great, but he lived in good sort, and with the best.”[27] He seems to have been unmarried.

Sir Everard Digby was a tall, handsome, singularly generous, charming young fellow, and like Ambrose Rookwood, previously mentioned, had won the loving favour of all who knew him. Digby had two estates in the County of Rutlandshire (Tilton and Drystoke), also property in the County of Leicestershire; and through his amiable and beautiful young wife, Mary Mulsho, a wealthy heiress, he was the owner of Gothurst[A] (now Gayhurst) in the parish of Tyringham, near Newport Pagnell, in the County of Buckinghamshire, still one of England’s stately homes.[28]

Francis Tresham was married to a Throckmorton, and was connected with many English families of historic name, high rank, and great fortune.

[A] Gothurst (now Gayhurst), resembles in its style of architecture, The Treasurer’s House, York, on the North side of the Minster, the town-house of Frank Green, Esquire. Walter Carlile, Esquire, now resides at Gayhurst.

He was a first cousin to Robert Catesby through his mother — a Throckmorton. Tresham and the Winters were also akin.

Francis Tresham, like his cousin, Robert Catesby, had been involved in the Essex rising, and his father, Sir Thomas Tresham, had to pay a ransom of at least £2,000 to effect his son’s escape from arraignment and certain execution. Powerful interest had been exerted in the son’s favour with Queen Elizabeth by Lady Catherine Howard, the daughter of Lord Thomas Howard, Lieutenant of the Tower, and afterwards Earl of Suffolk.[29]

John Grant was a Warwickshire Squire, who had married Robert and Thomas Winter’s sister Dorothy. Grant’s home was at Norbrook, near Snitterfield, a walled and moated mansion-house between the towns of Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon.[30] Grant was a taciturn but accomplished man, who had been likewise fined for his share in the Essex rising.

John Wright and Christopher Wright were younger sons of Robert Wright, Esquire, of Plowland (or Plewland) Hall, Welwick, Holderness, in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

They were related to the Inglebies of Ripley, through the Mallories of Studley Royal near Ripon. Hence were they related to Thomas Winter, Robert Winter, and Dorothy Grant.

Robert Keyes, of Drayton in Northamptonshire, was the son of a Protestant clergyman and probably grandson of one of the Key or Kay family of Woodsome, Almondbury, near Huddersfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Through his Roman Catholic mother, Keyes was related to Lady Ursula Babthorpe, the daughter of Sir William Tyrwhitt[31] of Kettleby, near Brigg, Lincolnshire, and wife of Sir William Babthorpe, of Babthorpe and

Osgodby, near Selby, in the East Riding of Yorkshire Sir William Babthorpe was “the very soul of honour,” one of the most valiant-hearted gentlemen in Yorkshire, and himself, likewise, related to the Mallories, the Inglebies, the Wrights, and the Winters. His sister was Lady Catherine Palmes, the wife of Sir George Palmes, of Naburn, near the City of York.

Ambrose Rookwood, of Coldham Hall — an ivy-clad, mullion-windowed mansion still standing — in the parish of Stanningfield, near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, was of an honourable and wealthy Suffolk family, who had suffered fines and penalties for the profession of their hereditary faith.

His wife was a Tyrwhitt and sister to Lady Ursula Babthorpe. At the time of the Plot he was twenty-seven years of age.[A]

[A] Edward Rookwood, of Euston Hall, Suffolk, was cousin to Ambrose Rookwood. At Euston in 1578 Queen Elizabeth was sumptuously entertained by Edward Rookwood. — See Hallam’s “Constitutional History,” and Lodge’s “Illustrations.”

Of the engaging Ambrose Rookwood a contemporary says, “I knew him well and loved him tenderly. He was beloved by all who knew him. He left behind him his lady, who was a very beautiful person and of a high family, and two or three little children, all of whom — together with everything he had in this world — he cast aside to follow the fortunes of this rash and desperate conspiracy.”[32]

Guy Fawkes was also a Yorkshireman, being born in the year 1570, in the City of York.

His baptismal register, dated the 16th day of April, 1570, is still to be seen in the Church of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, hard-by the glorious Minster.

Probably that one of four traditions is true which says that the son of Edward Fawkes, Notary and Advocate of the Consistory Court of York, and Edith, his wife, was born in a house situated in High Petergate. In fact, in the angle formed by the street known as High Petergate and the ancient alley called Minster Gates, leading into the Minster Yard, opposite the South Transept of the Minster, and at the top of the mediæval street called Stonegate.[A]

[A] The house I refer to is occupied by the Governors of St. Peter’s School (where Fawkes was himself educated), by Mr. T. H. Barron, and Mr. Matkins. It is still Minster property. It is a brick Elizabethan house refaced. Fawkes’ grandmother, Mrs. Ellen Fawkes, almost certainly lived in a house in High Petergate, on the opposite side of the road, probably. His father may have had a house also at Bishopthorpe. — See Supplementum I.

Though the property Guy Fawkes inherited was small, his descent and upbringing had made him the equal and companion of the gentry of his native County.

In the thirty-third year of Elizabeth (1592), in a legal document dealing with his property, Guy Fawkes is described as of Scotton, a picturesque village in the ancient Parish of Farnham, between Knaresbrough and Ripley, in Nidderdale.

Fawkes was a tall athletic man, with brown hair and an auburn beard. He was modest, self-controlled, and very valiant. He left England for Flanders most likely in 1593 or 1594. At the time of the conspiracy he was about thirty-five years of age. He was unmarried.

Fawkes was highly intelligent, direct of purpose, simple of heart, well-read, and, as a soldier of fortune in the Netherlands, not only “skilful in the wars,” but, apart from his fanaticism, which seems to have grown by degrees into a positive monomania, possessed of many attractive, and even endearing, moral qualities.

Fawkes held a post of command in the Spanish Army when Spain took Calais in 1596, and gave promise of becoming, like his friend and patron, Sir William Stanley, an ideal “happy warrior,” and one of England’s greatest generals.[A]

[A] It is interesting and instructive to compare the Forty Years’ War between Spain and the Netherlands with the present unhappy strife in South Africa between Britons and the descendants of those that repelled the arms of the once greatest soldiery in the world. The war between Spain and the Dutch was not a religious war at the commencement of the struggle. It arose out of a chafing under the sovereignty of Spain, and a dispute about tenths. In fact, many Catholics fought against Philip II. in this war at the beginning.

I visited Scotton for the first time on the day set apart in York as a general holiday for the Relief of Mafeking (19th May, 1900).

It is said by an old writer, “Winter and Fawxe are men of excellent good natural parts, very resolute and universally learned.”[33] In the days of their joyous youth these two gifted men may have many a time and oft played and sported together in Nidderdale, with its purple moors, its rock-crowned fells, its leafy woods, its musical streams, its flowery ghylls, its winding river.

Guy Fawkes was a son of destiny, a product of his environment, a creature of circumstances — always saving his free-will and moral responsibility.

But, dying, he must have remembered his dear York and sweet Scotton.

CHAPTER IX.

Let us deal with the inferences from the Evidence, and ascertain to what further suggestions those inferences give rise.

Now, among the first things that must strike the reader of the list of actors in the Gunpowder tragedy is the large number that were, directly or indirectly, connected with the far-stretching, prolific province of Yorkshire. Of the whole thirteen conspirators, four first drew the breath of life in that grandest and fairest of English Counties, namely: Thomas Percy, John Wright, Christopher Wright, and Guy (or Guido) Fawkes. While five of the other intending perpetrators of an action which, if consummated, would have indeed “damned them to everlasting fame,” indirectly had relations with it.

Nay, more; of the four members of the clerical profession whom the Government sought to charge with complicity in this nefarious designment, namely: Fathers Garnet, Tesimond, Gerard, and (subsequently) Oldcorne — two out of the four, Oswald Tesimond and Edward Oldcorne, were likewise Yorkshiremen.[A]

[A] The late Bishop Creighton, in his fine illustrated work entitled, “The Story of some English Shires” (Religious Tract Society), says: — “Yorkshire is the largest of the English shires, and its size corresponds to its ancient greatness.”

Edward Oldcorne was certainly a native of the City of York, and it is very likely indeed that Oswald Tesimond was a native also.[34]

Moreover, Oswald Tesimond, John Wright, Christopher Wright, and Guy Fawkes were all educated at the Royal School of Philip and Mary in the Horse Fayre, at the left-hand side going down Gillygate, York, where Union Terrace is now situated, just outside Bootham Bar, and not far from the King’s Manor, where Henry Hastings Earl of Huntingdon, or his preceding or succeeding Lords President of the North, presided in State over the Council of the North and the Court of High Commission.[A]

[A] Lord Strafford, the representative of Charles I. in Ireland, was in after years Lord President of the North. In his day the King’s Manor was known as the Palace of the Stuart Kings, for both James I. and Charles I. sojourned there. It is now used as a beneficent Institution for the Blind, as a memorial to that illustrious Yorkshireman, William Wilberforce, M.P., the immortal slave emancipator. One of the rooms in the old Palace is called the Earl of Huntingdon’s room to this day. William Wilberforce’s direct heir, William Basil Wilberforce, Esquire, resides at Markington Hall, near Ripon.

The Earl of Huntingdon was a scion of the House of York, and had Elizabeth become reconciled to the Church of Rome the Puritans would have probably rallied round Lord Huntingdon as their King. The Honourable Walter Hastings, the Earl’s brother, was a Roman Catholic. They were, of course, akin to Queen Elizabeth, and were descended from the “Blessed” Margaret Plantagenet Countess of Salisbury.

It is more than probable that Edward Oldcorne also quaffed his first draught of classical knowledge at the same “Pierian spring;” for we are told that his parents “in his young years kept him to school, so that he was a good grammar scholar when he first went over beyond the seas.”[35]

Before going to Rheims and Rome Edward Oldcorne had studied medicine.

Who among these unparalleled conspirators is then the most likely, either through fear or remorse or both feelings, to have first put into motion the stupendous machinery whereby the Gunpowder conspiracy was revealed? Only

an energy practically superhuman would be, or could be, sufficient for the accomplishment of such an end, as — well-nigh at the eleventh hour — speedily to swing round on its axis a project so diabolical and prodigious as the Gunpowder Plot.

For the passion — the concentrated, suppressed, yet volcanic passion — that had purposed so awful a catastrophe was deep as hell and high as heaven.

And well might it be, regard being had to the indisputable facts of English History from the year 1569 — the year of the Rising of the North, which was stamped out with such cruel severity — down to the year 1605. Truly, the measure of the Gunpowder conspirators’ personal guilt was the measure of their representative wrongs. Yet this, in itself, for these wrong-doers was no ground of pardon or release: for, by a steadfast decree of the universe, “The guilty suffer.”

CHAPTER X.

Now, according to the laws which govern human nature, a subordinate conspirator, introduced late into the conspiracy, whose early training was such as to lead him, on reflection, to regard as morally unlawful the taking of a secret oath, such as the Gunpowder conspirators had taken: a conspirator in whose heart emotions, not only of compassion but also of compunction, were likely to be awakened by the remembrance of that training, as the day was about to dawn and as the hour was about to strike when would be consummated one of the bloodiest tragedies that had ever stained an evil world: a conspirator answering to this, I say, was the most likely to be the conspirator who revealed this purposed appalling massacre, the bare thought of which causes strong men to shudder, even to this day.

Still more likely would be a conspirator who, fulfilling the description just mentioned, adds to that the following, namely — that he possessed an entirely trustworthy friend who would act as penman of any document he might wish to use as a means of communicating a secret yet warning note to a representative of the intended victims.

And yet still more likely would be a conspirator who, to the descriptions of the two preceding paragraphs, added a third, namely — that he possessed a second entirely trustworthy friend who would act as an “interpres” — a go-between — to drive home the full

intended effect of the document penned by the hand of the first; and this with the express knowledge and consent of that first.

Hence, such go-between would be the agent common to both the revealing conspirator and his scribe, and would be informed, directed and controlled by them.

Regard being had to the fixities of thought or self-evident fundamentals which in the introduction to this Inquiry were enunciated, these two friends, these two confidants must have been bound to the revealing conspirator by bonds, ties, obligations, “light,” indeed, “as air, yet strong as iron,” which were the outcome of kinship, friendship, or business (in a superlatively wide sense), possibly of all three.

Now the inference that I draw, from a reviewing and weighing of the Evidence to-day available in relation to this matter, is this, that Christopher Wright was the conspirator who revealed the Plot, and that his worthy aiders and honourable abettors were, first, Thomas Ward, the gentleman-servant (and almost certainly kinsman) of Lord Mounteagle himself, amicus secundum carnem; and, secondly, Edward Oldcorne, Priest and Jesuit, amicus secundum spiritum: — friends according to the flesh and to the spirit respectively.

CHAPTER XI.

Let us proceed to support these statements with Evidence and with Argument.

(1) Now was Christopher Wright a subordinate conspirator, introduced late into the conspiracy? It is plain that he was, from “Thomas Winter’s Confession,” where he says: “About Candlemas we brought over in a boat the powder which we had provided at Lambeth and layd it in Mr. Percy’s house, because we were willing to have all our danger in one place. We wrought also another fortnight in the mine against the stone wall which was very hard to beat through, at which time we called in Kit Wright (sometime in February, 1605), and near to Easter as we wrought the third time, opportunity was given to hire the cellar in which we resolved to lay the powder and leave the mine.”

Again, in the published “Confession” of Guy Fawkes (17th November, 1605), Fawkes says, that a practice “in general was first broken unto me against his majestie, for releife of the Catholique cause, and not invented or propounded by myself. And this was first propounded unto me about Easter last was twelve-month,[36] beyond the seas, in the Low Countries of the Archdukes’ obeyance by Thomas Wynter.”

Fawkes says, in his “Confession” further on: “Thomas Percy hired a howse at Westminster ... neare adjoyning the Parlt. howse, and there wee beganne to make a myne about the XI. of December, 1604. The

Fyve that entered into the woorck were Thomas Percye, Robert Catesby, Thomas Wynter, John Wright, and myself, and soon after[37] we tooke another unto us, Christopher Wright, having sworn him also, and taken the sacrament for secrecie.”[38]

Therefore Christopher Wright must have become a confederate about ten months after Fawkes himself and the other prime movers in the nefarious scheme, and his services were requisitioned — as the modern phrase goes — primarily for the purpose of adding to the amount of manual labour available for the digging of the mine, which was afterwards abandoned for the cellar as the receptacle for the gunpowder that was to effect the explosion purposed.

(2) Now, was Christopher Wright a conspirator whose early training was such as to lead him, on reflection, to regard as morally unlawful the taking of a secret oath such as the Gunpowder conspirators had bound themselves by, and one in whose heart emotions, not only of compassion but also of compunction, were likely to be awakened by the remembrance of that training as the day was about to dawn and the hour was about to strike when the awful tragedy would be consummated?

If a man’s character may be presumptively known by his friends, still more may it be presumptively known by his progenitors; and in the light of this principle I therefore answer the foregoing question emphatically in the affirmative.

But what was the form of the oath taken by all these conspirators save one, namely, Sir Everard Digby, who was specially “sworn in” on the hilt of a poniard?

It was this: — “You shall swear by the Blessed Trinity and by the Sacrament you now propose to receive,

never to disclose, directly or indirectly, by word or circumstance, the matter that shall be proposed to you, to keep secret nor desist from the execution thereof until the rest shall give you leave.”

This oath was administered to the conspirators by each other in the most solemn manner — “kneeling down upon their knees with their hands laid upon a primer.”[39]

Immediately after the oath had been taken,[40] we are told, Catesby explained to Percy, and Winter and John Wright to Fawkes, that the project intended was to blow up the Parliament House with gunpowder when the King went to the House of Lords.[41] This would include the Queen, the Commons, Ambassadors, and spectators who would be present during the King’s Speech.

From Fawkes’ “Confession,” already quoted, it would seem probable that all five prime conspirators imparted their prodigious designment of sacrilegious, cold-blooded murder to the conspirator Christopher Wright.