The Gunpowder Plot Read online

  ‘Antonia Fraser has written an excellent book which unravels the whole story of the plot, exploring the background, keeping close to the evidence, and, above all, bringing the characters to life… a judicious and very readable account’

  Hugh Trevor-Roper, Literary Review

  ‘Every few years a work of history appears that succeeds in connecting its subject to the deeper questions troubling modern society. This is one such book’

  Amanda Foreman, Independent

  ‘It has a fine narrative flow, for Antonia Fraser recognises that history is essentially a story, and a gripping one at that. She writes with verve and imagination’

  Kenneth Baker, Daily Telegraph

  ‘Fraser’s meticulously researched book is an excellent read… Antonia Fraser has shed much light on one of the most controversial episodes in English history’

  Martin Jacques, Observer

  The Gunpowder Plot

  Terror & Faith in 1605

  ANTONIA FRASER

  History to the defeated

  May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon –

  W. H. AUDEN, Spain, 1937

  FOR

  Edward who would have defended them

  Lucy who would have hidden them

  Paloma who would have succoured them in exile

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise

  Title

  Dedication

  List of Illustrations

  Family Trees

  Map of the conspirators in the Midlands

  Author’s Note

  PROLOGUE: Bountiful Beginnings

  PART ONE: Before the Fruit Was Ripe

  1 Whose Head for the Crown?

  2 The Honest Papists

  3 Diversity of Opinions

  PART TWO: The Horse of St George

  4 A King and his Cubs

  5 Spanish Charity

  6 Catesby as Phaeton

  PART THREE: That Furious and Fiery Course

  7 So Sharp a Remedy

  8 Pernicious Gunpowder

  9 There Is a Risk…

  10 Dark and Doubtful Letter

  PART FOUR: Discovery – By God or the Devil

  11 Mr Fawkes Is Taken

  12 The Gentler Tortures

  13 Fire and Brimstone

  14 These Wretches

  PART FIVE: The Shadow of Death

  15 The Heart of a Traitor

  16 The Jesuits’ Treason

  17 Farewells

  18 Satan’s Policy?

  Notes

  Reference Books

  Index

  Illustrations

  About the Author

  By Antonia Fraser

  Copyright

  List of Illustrations

  Elizabeth I with Time and Death (Weidenfeld and Nicolson Archive, London)

  James I (National Galleries of Scotland)

  Accession medal of James I (British Museum, London)

  Anne of Denmark, Marcus Gheerhaerts, c. 1605–10 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson Archive, London)

  Henry Prince of Wales and Sir John Harington, Robert Peake, 1603 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

  Charles Duke of York (the future Charles I), Robert Peake (City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery)

  The monuments in Westminster Abbey to Princesses Mary and Sophia (Dean and Chapter of Westminster, London)

  Arbella Stuart, anon., 1589 (National Trust Photographic Library, London/John Bethell)

  Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia, Franz Pourbus the Younger, c. 1599 (Royal Collection, Windsor © Her Majesty the Queen)

  Princess Elizabeth, Robert Peake (National Maritime Museum, London)

  Engraving of the conspirators (Bodleian Library, Oxford)

  Ben Jonson (Weidenfeld and Nicolson Archive, London)

  William Shakespeare (Weidenfeld and Nicolson Archive, London)

  Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, Van Dyck (National Trust Photographic Library, London / Roy Fox)

  Robert Cecil, Ist Earl of Salisbury, (attrib.) John de Critz (National Portrait Gallery, London)

  Sir Everard Digby (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

  Thomas Wintour’s two signatures (Weidenfeld and Nicolson Archive, London)

  Thomas Habington of Hindlip and his wife (British Library, London)

  Vestment embroidered by Helena Wintour (Stonyhurst College, Lancashire)

  The Browne Brothers, Isaac Oliver (Burghley House, Stamford)

  Life in a recusant household, illustrated by a scene from the childhood of Mary Ward

  Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire (Hulton Getty Collection Ltd, London)

  Hindlip House, Worcestershire (British Library, London)

  Baddesley Clinton (Hulton Getty Collection Ltd, London)

  Coughton Court (Coughton Court, Warwickshire)

  Huddington Court (Huddington Court, Worcestershire)

  Map of Westminster (Weidenfeld and Nicolson Archive)

  Tower of London, c. 1615, Van Meer (Edinburgh University Library)

  Ashby St Ledgers (Ashby St Ledgers, Northamptonshire)

  The Cellars of the House of Lords (Hulton Getty Collection Ltd, London)

  Guy Fawkes entering Parliament (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

  A contemporary Dutch print of the Gunpowder Plot (Hulton Getty Collection Ltd, London)

  The anonymous letter delivered to Lord Monteagle (Public Record Office, London)

  The delivery of the Monteagle letter to the Earl of Salisbury (Weidenfeld and Nicolson Archive, London)

  Garnet’s straw (Hulton Getty Collection Ltd, London)

  Father Henry Garnet, SJ, by Jan Wiericx (Hulton Getty Collection Ltd, London)

  St Winifred’s Well, Holywell, Clwyd (Hulton Getty Collection Ltd, London)

  Father Garnet’s last letter to Anne Vaux (Weidenfeld and Nicolson Archive, London)

  Sir Edward Coke (Hulton Getty Collection Ltd, London)

  The entry in the Commons’ Journal for 5 November 1605 (House of Lords Record Office, London)

  Letter of King James authorising the torture of Guy Fawkes (Public Record Office, London)

  Instruments of torture at the time of the Gunpowder Plot (Royal Armouries, HM Tower of London)

  Guido Fawkes’ signatures before and after torture (British Library, London)

  A late eighteenth-century print of the execution of the conspirators (Hulton Getty Collection Ltd, London)

  Embroidered cushion depicting the defeat of the Armada and the Gunpowder Plot, c. 1621 (Bridgeman Art Library, London)

  Engraving of Father Garnet on the scaffold, C. Screta (Hulton Getty Collection Ltd, London)

  The Powder Plot from ‘A Thankful Remembrance of God’s Mercie’, George Carleton, 1630 (Hulton Getty Collection Ltd, London)

  Victorian impression of Guy Fawkes being taken to the scaffold (Hulton Getty Collection Ltd, London)

  Etching of Guy Fawkes laying his sinister trail, 1841 (Hulton Getty Collection Ltd, London)

  The Papists’ Powder Treason (Henry E. Huntingdon Library and Art Galley)

  A monument to the Plot’s discovery, Tower of London, 1608, Sir William Waad (Historical Royal Palaces © Crown Copyright)

  The search of the cellars of the House of Lords (Times Newspapers Ltd, London)

  Bonfire Night, 1994, Lewes, Sussex (Sussex Express, Lewes)

  Map of the conspirators in the Midlands

  Author’s Note

  ‘That heavy and doleful tragedy which is commonly called the Powder Treason’: thus Sir Edward Coke, as prosecuting counsel, described the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. It is a fair description of one of the most memorable events in English history, which is celebrated annually in that chant of ‘Remember, remember the Fifth of November’. Bu
t who was the Gunpowder Plot a tragedy for? For King and Royal Family, for Parliament, all threatened with extinction by terrorist explosion? Or for the reckless Catholic conspirators and the entire Catholic community, including priests, whose fate was bound up with theirs? In part, this book attempts to answer that question.

  Its primary purpose is, however, to explain, so far as is possible in view of imperfect records and testimonies taken under torture, why there was a Gunpowder Plot in the first place. The complicated details of this extraordinary episode resemble those of a detective story (including an anonymous letter delivered under cover of darkness), and, as in all mysteries, the underlying motivation is at the heart of the matter.

  Obviously, to talk of providing an explanation begs the question of whether there really was a Plot. Over the years – over the centuries – dedicated scholars and historians have divided into two categories on the subject. I have lightly designated these ‘Pro-Plotters’ – those who believe firmly in the Plot’s existence – and ‘No-Plotters’ – those who believe equally firmly that the Plot was a fabrication on the part of the government. My own position, as will be seen, does not fall precisely into either of these categories. I believe that there was indeed a Gunpowder Plot: but it was a very different ‘Powder Treason’ from that conspiracy outlined by Sir Edward Coke.

  By accepting that there was a Plot, I have also accepted that the conspirators were what we would now term terrorists. Certainly, the questionable moral basis for terrorism – can violence ever be justified whatever the persecution, whatever the provocation? – is a theme which runs through my narrative. And there is an additional problem: is terrorism justified only when it is successful? These are awkward questions, but for that reason, if no other, worth the asking.

  Writers on the subject of the Plot have, naturally enough, tended to draw their own contemporary comparisons. A student of Catesby family history in 1909 referred to ‘these days of [Russian] Anarchist plots’ as providing a suitable background for Catesby’s own conspiratorial activities. Donald Carswell, a barrister who edited The Trial of Guy Fawkes in 1934, likened the Gunpowder Plot to the Reichstag Fire of February 1933: ‘it turned out to be first-class government propaganda’, enabling the Nazis to suppress the Communists, as the Catholics had been suppressed after 1605.

  Graham Greene, providing an introduction in 1968 to the memoirs of Kim Philby, the Briton who spied for Stalin’s Russia, compared Philby’s Communist faith – ‘his chilling certainty in the correctness of his judgment’ – to that of the English recusant Catholics, supporting Spain and its Inquisition. Elliot Rose, in Cases of Conscience, published in 1975, the year in which the Vietnam War ended, drew a parallel between Catholics who refused to conform in the reign of Elizabeth and James I, and protesters against the Vietnam War. More recently, Gary Wills in Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1995) evoked the turbulent conspiratorial atmosphere in the United States after the assassination of President Kennedy to explain the world in which the play first appeared. (First performed in 1606, the text of Macbeth is darkened by the shadow of the Gunpowder Plot.) Certainly, the events of 5 November 1605 have much in common with the killing of President Kennedy as a topic which is, in conspiratorial terms, eternally debatable.

  It is appropriate, therefore, that in my case a book written towards the end of the twentieth century should be concerned with the issue of terrorism. This is an issue, for better or for worse, which has to be considered in order to understand the unfolding histories of Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine – to take only two possible examples. Meanwhile we have a phenomenon in which a number of today’s world leaders have in the past been involved – on their own recognition – in terrorist activities and have morally justified them on grounds of national or religious interest. It is for this reason I have given my book the subtitle of Terror and Faith in 1605.

  One should, however, bear in mind that the word ‘terror’ can refer to two different kinds. There is the terror of partisans, of freedom fighters, or of any other guerrilla group, carried out for the higher good of their objectives. Then there is the terror of governments, directed towards dissident minorities. The problem of subjects who differ from their rulers in religion (have they the moral right to differ?) is one that runs throughout this book.

  There is a similar contemporary relevance of a very different sort in the stories of the various Catholic women who found themselves featuring in the subterranean world of the Gunpowder Plot. At a time when women’s role in the Christian Churches, especially the Catholic Church, is under debate, I was both interested and attracted by the role played by these strong, devout, courageous women. At the time Catholic priests compared them to the holy women of the Bible who followed Jesus Christ. Some were married with the responsibilities of families in a dangerous age; others chose the single path with equal bravery. Ironically enough, it was the perceived weakness of women which enabled them to protect the forbidden priests where others could not do so. Circumstances gave them power; they used it well.

  Above all, throughout my narrative, I have been concerned to convey actuality: that is to say, a sense of what an extraordinarily dramatic story it was, with all its elements of tragedy, brutality, heroism – and even, occasionally and unexpectedly, its more relaxed moments, which sometimes occurred after unsuccessful searches for Catholic priests in their hiding-places. For this reason I have paid special attention to the topography of the Plot, including the details of these secret refuges, many of which are still to be seen today. Of course hindsight can never be avoided altogether, especially in untangling such an intricate story as that of the Gunpowder Plot: but at least I have tried to write as though what happened on 5 November 1605 was not a foregone conclusion.

  In order to tell a complicated story as clearly as possible, I have employed the usual expedients. I have modernised spelling where necessary, and dated letters and documents as though the calendar year began on I January as it does now, instead of 25 March, as it did then. I have also tried to solve the problem of individuals changing their names (on receipt of titles) by preferring simplicity to strict chronological accuracy: thus Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, is known as Cecil and then Salisbury, missing out his intermediate title of Viscount Cranborne.

  In writing this book, I owe a great deal to the many works of the many scholars acknowledged in the References. For further assistance, I would like to single out and thank the following: Mr Felipe Fernandez-Armesto for historical corrections and suggestions (surviving errors are my responsibility); Dr S. Bull, Lancashire County Museums, for allowing me to read his thesis ‘Furie of the Ordnance’; Fr Michael Campbell Johnston S.J. for letting me see the Gunpowder Plot MS. of the late Fr William Webb S.J.; Dr Angus Constam of the Royal Armouries; Fr Francis Edwards S.J., whose friendship and support I value, despite our different conclusions on the subject of the Gunpowder Plot; Mr D.L. Jones, Librarian, House of Lords; Mr John V. Mitchell, Archivist, and Mr R.N. Pittman, then headmaster of St Peter’s School, York; Mr Roland Quinault, Honorary Secretary, Royal Historical Society, for allowing me to consult his thesis, ‘Warwickshire Landowners and Parliamentary Politics 1841–1923’; Mr Richard Rose, editor of the unpublished diary of Joan Courthope; Mr M.N. Webb, Assistant Librarian, Bodleian Library; Mr Eric Wright, Principal Assistant County Librarian, Education and Libraries, Northamptonshire; lastly the ever helpful and courteous staff of the Catholic Central Library, the London Library, the Public Record Office and the Round Reading Room of the British Library.

  It was, as ever, both a pleasure and a privilege to do all my own research, beyond the help which is gratefully acknowledged here. In particular, tracing the story of the Gunpowder Plot involved me in a series of historical visits and journeys. In connection with these, I wish to thank the Earl of Airlie, Lord Chamberlain, General Sir Edward Jones, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, and Mr Bryan Sewell, Deputy Director of Works, for making possible a visit to the House of Lords on the eve of the Op
ening of Parliament; Mr R. C. Catesby for our journey to Ashby St Ledgers and its church; Professor Hugh and Mrs Eileen Edmondson of Huddington Court for their hospitality; Mr and Mrs Jens Pilo for receiving me at Coldham Hall, and Mr Tony Garrett, who accompanied me there; Mr Roy Tomlin, Honorary Secretary, Wellingborough Golf Club, Harrowden Hall; Sr Juliana Way, Hengrave Hall Centre; Mr Dave Wood, Service Coordinator, and Mr David Hussey, Headmaster, RNIB Forest House Assessment Centre, Rushton.

  Others who helped me in a variety of ways were Mrs K. H. Atkins, Archivist, Dudley Libraries; Professor Karl Bottigheimer; Mr Robert Bearman, Senior Archivist, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust; Mr Roy Bernard, Holbeche House Nursing Home; Fr Andrew Beer, St Pancras Church, Lewes; Fr M. Bossy, S.J., for the photograph of Helena Wintour’s vestment at Stonyhurst; Mr Conall Boyle; Mrs Kathryn Christenson, Minnesota; Mr Donald K. Clark, Director, Hyde Park Family History Centre; Ms Sarah Costley, then Archivist, York Minster, and Mr John Tilsley, Assistant Archivist; Ms Caroline Dalton, Archivist, New College Library; Mr Charles Enderby; Mr Dudley Fishburn M.P.; Major-General G.W. Field, Resident-Governor, Catherine Campbell, and Yeoman Warder Brian A. Harrison, Honorary Archivist, Tower of London; Ms Joanna Grindle, Information Officer, Warwickshire County Council; Father D.B. Lordan, St Winifred’s Church, and Brother Stephen de Kerdrel, O.P.M. Cap, Franciscan Friary, Pantasaph, Holywell; the Very Rev. Michael Mayne, Dean of Westminster; Mr Jonathan Marsden, Historic Buildings Representative, Thames and Chilterns Regional Office, National Trust; Professor Maurice Lee, Jr; Mr Stephen Logan, Selwyn College, Cambridge; Miss K.M. Longley, former Archivist, York Minster; Mr Roger Longrigg for answering an enquiry about late-sixteenth-century horses; Mother John Baptist, O.S.B., Tyburn Convent; Mr Simon O’Halloran, Queensland, Australia; Sir Roy Strong; Mr Barry T. Turner, Guy Fawkes House, Dunchurch; Mrs Clare Throckmorton, Coughton Court; Mr Richard Thurlow, National Bibliographic Service, British Library, Boston Spa; Mr J. M. Waterson, Regional Director, East Anglia Regional Office, National Trust; Mr Ralph B. Weller.