Chapter Nine.
On the weary Way to Holbeach.
“And thou hast fashioned idols of thine own—
Idols of gold, of silver, and of stone:
To them hast bowed the knee, and breathed the breath,
And they must help thee in the hour of death.”
Sir Edwin Arnold.
While the discomfited conspirators were thus speeding on their weary way, in hope of yet gathering recruits enough to raise the standard of rebellion in the interests of that Church on whose behalf they counted everything lawful, Lord Harrington, at Combe Abbey, heard the news, and hurried the little Princess off to Coventry, as a safer place than his own house, for Coventry was determinately Protestant and loyal. Elizabeth, afterwards well known as the Queen of Bohemia, was deeply impressed and horrified with the terrible discovery.
“What sort of a queen should I have been,” said the true-hearted child, “when I had won to my throne through the blood of my father and my brothers? Thanked be God that it was not so!”
The metropolis was passing through a ferment of delight, amazement, and activity. Everywhere in the streets bonfires were blazing,—the first of those Gunpowder Plot bonfires which every fifth of November has seen after them.
A watch was set on Percy’s house in Holborn, and his wife was guarded. A priest named Roberts was taken in the house. Mrs Martha Percy appears to have been a fitting mate for a conspirator. She put on an affectation of the sublimest innocence. How should she know anything? she who lived so quietly, and was entirely occupied in teaching her own and other children. As to her husband, she had not seen him since Midsummer. He was attendant on my Lord of Northumberland, and lodged, as she supposed, in his house. Having thus lulled to sleep the suspicions of those set to watch her, the next morning Mrs Percy was not to be found. Whether she slipped through a door, or climbed out of a window, or went up the chimney on a broomstick, there was no evidence to show; but three days later she made her appearance at Norbrook House in Warwickshire, the residence of her eldest brother, John Wright, and was affectionately received by her sister-in-law.
At Westminster, Lord Chief-Justice Popham and Sir Edward Coke sat in judicial ermine, and summoned before them two prisoners—Gideon Gibbons the porter, and the clever gentleman who called himself John Johnson, and whose real name was Guy Fawkes.
Gibbons was soon disposed of, for he was as innocent as he seemed to be. All that he could say was that he had been hired, in his usual way of business, with two other porters, to carry three thousand billets of wood to the Parliament House, and that Mr Percy’s servant Johnson had stacked them in the cellar. The key of the house next door had been at times left in charge of his wife. So much he knew, and no more.
The examination of “John Johnson” was another matter. The King himself had drawn up a paper containing questions to be put to him, and he answered these and all others with an appearance of perfect frankness and wish to conceal nothing. His replies were in reality a mixture of truth and falsehood, which was afterwards proved.
The catechism began as usual, “What is your name?”
“John Johnson.” To this he adhered through two more examinations.
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-six.” This was true.
“Where were you born?”
“In Netherdale, in the county of York.”
“How have you lived hitherto?”
“By a farm of thirty pounds a year.”
“How came those wounds in your breast?”
“They are scars from the healing of a pleurisy.”
The treatment of pleurisy in the seventeenth century was apparently rather severe.
Fawkes went on to reply to the articles demanded, that he had never served any man but Percy—though he had been in the service of Anthony Browne, Lord Montague, a few months before: that he obtained Percy’s service “only by his own means, being a Yorkshire man”; that he had learned French in England, and increased it when abroad; that he was born a Papist, and not perverted—which was false.
Being asked why he was addressed as “Mr Fauks” in a letter (as he alleged) from Mrs Colonel Bostock, which was found in his pocket, Mr “Johnson” replied with the coolest effrontery, that it was because he had called himself so in Flanders, where Mrs Bostock resided. This letter was subsequently discovered to come from Anne Vaux.
Thus far went King James’s queries: in respect of which the King desired “if he will no other ways confesse, the gentle tortours to be first used unto him, et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur; and so God speede your good work!”
It was not, however, necessary to urge a confession: Mr Percy’s man seemed anxious to make a clean breast of it, and promised to tell everything. He proceeded accordingly to lead his examiners astray by a little truth and a good deal of falsehood. He gave a tolerably accurate account of the hiring of the house and the cellar, the bringing in of the powder, etcetera, except that he refrained from implicating any one but himself. There was, at first, a certain air of nobility about Fawkes, and he sternly refused to become an informer. He declined to admit his summer journey abroad, and would not allow that the spring excursion had any other object than “to see the country and pass away the time.”
“What would you have done,” asked the examiners, “with the Queen and the royal issue?”
“If they had been there, I would not have helped them.”
“If all had gone, who would have been published or elected King?”
“We never entered into that consideration.”
“What form of government should have succeeded?”
“We were too few to enter into the consideration. The people themselves would have drawn to a head.” All this was untrue, as Fawkes subsequently allowed. A number of arrests were made, mostly of innocent persons. All in whose houses the conspirators had lodged. Mrs Herbert, Mrs More, the tailor Patrick; Mrs Wyniard, Mrs Bright, and their respective servants; Lord Northumberland’s gentlemen, and the Earl himself, were put under lock and key. The poor Earl bemoaned himself bitterly, and entreated that Percy might be searched for—“who alone could show him clear as the day, or dark as the night.” He asserted that Percy had obtained money from him by falsehood: and seeing how exquisitely little value most of these worthy gentlemen seem to have set upon truth, it was not at all unlikely. Lady Northumberland wrote an impulsive letter to Lord Salisbury, entreating him to stand her friend by “salving” her husband’s reputation, “much wounded in the opinion of the world by this wretched cousin”: but the only result of the appeal was to make the Lord Treasurer angry, and give rise to an intercession in her behalf from her lord and master, who begs Salisbury to “bear with her because she is a woman,” and therefore “not able with fortitude to bear out the crosses of the world as men are: and,” adds the Earl humorously, “she will sometimes have her own ways, let me do what I can, which is not unknown to you.” (Note 1.)
The prisoners were remanded, and the great metropolis slept: but there was no sleep for those bemired and weary horsemen who pressed on that night journey to Norbrook. Where Grant joined them is not recorded, but Humphrey Littleton had left them at Dunchurch. His share in the plot had been insignificant, but we shall hear of him again. Catesby, John Wright, and Percy, who rode in front, beguiled their journey by a discussion as to how they could procure fresh horses. They were approaching Warwick, and it was proposed that Grant and some of the servants should be sent on in front, with instructions to make a raid on a livery-stable in the town, kept by a man named Bennock, and seize as many horses as they could get.
Robert Winter, riding behind, saw the men sent on, and pressing forward to the front, inquired the meaning of it. When told the intention, he combated it strongly, and did his best to dissuade Catesby from it. The man who had swallowed the camel of the Gunpowder Plot was scandalised at the idea of horse-stealing! (Note 2.)
“I pray you, no more of this!” said Robert Winter. “It will but further increase the wrath of the King.”
“Some of us may not look back,” said Catesby.
Robert replied with some spirit, for he knew himself to be among the less guilty of the plotters. “Yet others, I hope, may; and therefore, I beg you, let this alone.”
Catesby looked up with a faint, sad smile, and tired sleepless eyes. “What, hast thou any hope, Robin? I assure thee, there is none that knoweth of this action but shall perish.”
When the body of the conspirators reached Warwick, about 3 a.m., the horses were almost ready for them to mount. Ten were seized at the the livery-stable, and a few more were either stolen or borrowed from the Castle. Thus provided, and now about eighty in number, they rode on to Grant’s house at Norbrook. On arrival here, they despatched Bates to Coughton, with a letter to Garnet from Digby. This letter was read by Garnet to Greenway, both of whom are represented by Bates as spotlessly ignorant of the plot until that moment. Greenway returned with Bates, at his earnest request, attired in “coulored satten done with gould lace,” and was met by Catesby with the exclamation—
“Here is a gentleman who will live and die with us!”
From Norbrook Robert Winter despatched a servant in advance, summarily ordering his wife to “go forth of the house, and take the children with her,” which the obedient Gertrude did. About two o’clock on the afternoon of the sixth, thirty-six worn-out men arrived at Huddington, to be re-armed from Robert Winter’s armoury; after which, finding himself rather at a loss in the housekeeping department, the master of the house recalled his Gertrude to minister to the comfort of himself and his guests.
That submissive lady did her duty, and leaving the children with the neighbour at whose house she had taken refuge, returned to her own kitchen to superintend a hastily-prepared supper for the weary travellers. Before this was ready, Catesby and John Wright took Robert Winter aside, and tried hard to induce him to write to his father-in-law, attempting to draw him into the now almost hopeless rebellion.
“There is no remedy, Robin,” said John Wright, “but thou must write a letter to thy father Talbot, to see if thou canst therewith draw him unto us.”
“Nay, that will I not,” was the determined answer.
“Robin, you must,” said Catesby.
“My masters, ye know not my father Talbot so well as I,” replied Robin Winter. “All the world cannot draw him from his allegiance. Neither would I if I could, in this case. What friends hath my poor wife and children but he? And therefore, satisfy yourselves; I will not.”
“Well, then,” suggested Wright, “write as we shall say unto thee to Master Smallpiece, that serves thy father Talbot.”
Robert Winter, who liked an easy life, suffered himself to be persuaded on this point; and wrote the letter, of which all that now remains is a few half-burnt lines, written in great haste, and barely legible:
“Good Cousin, I fear it will not seem strange to you that—a good number of resolved Catholics so perform matters of such... will set their most strength, or hang all those that ever... use your best endeavour to stir up my father Talbot... which I hold much more honourable than to be hanged after... Cousin, pray for me, I pray you, and send me all such friends... haste, I commend you. From Huddington, this 6th of November.”
“R...”
Having written this letter, Mr Robert Winter proceeded, not to forward, but to pocket it, and declined to give it up until the next morning, when he resigned it, “to stop a peace withal.”
Late in the evening of the 6th, the conspirators were joined by Stephen Littleton and Thomas Winter, the latter of whom had not been able to overtake them any sooner. Before daybreak on the following morning, they assembled in the private chapel of Huddington House, where mass was sung by the family confessor, Mr Hammond, and the Sacrament was administered to all present after due confession. Then, leaving Huddington about sunrise, they recommenced their weary flight.
They were now “armed at all points in open rebellion,” yet with daggers and guns only. Instead of continuing their course, as hitherto, directly westward, they turned towards the north, and made for Hewell Grange, the residence of Lord Windsor, where they plundered the armoury. The company had much decreased: one and another every now and then dropped off stealthily, doubtful of what was coming, though Catesby and Sir Everard rode pistol in hand, warning them that all who sought to steal away would be shot without quarter. Percy, Grant, John Wright, and Morgan, were placed behind for the same purpose. As the party rode towards Hewell Grange, they asked all whom they met to join them. The usual response was—
“We are for King James; if you go for him, then will we have with you.”
To this the conspirators were wont to reply—“We go for God and the country.”
But the shrewd Worcestershire peasants declined to commit themselves to anything so vague as this.
At last they came to an old countryman, to whom they addressed their customary appeal. The old man planted his staff firmly in front of him, and set his back against a wall.
“I am for King James,” he said, “for whom I will live and die.”
Upon this the disloyalty of the company was plainly manifested by shouts of “Kill him! kill him!” But there was no time to stop for that, which probably saved the brave old loyalist’s life.
Upon leaving Hewell, the conspirators rode up to the houses of all the Roman Catholic gentry in the neighbourhood, and summoned their owners to join them for God and the Church. But sore disappointments met them on every side. From door after door they were driven with horror and contumely—were openly told that “they had brought ruin on the Catholic cause.”
“Not one man came to take our part,” is their lament, “though we had expected so many.” To add to their misery, the rain began to pour down in torrents; one after another deserted them as they fled: and when at last in the darkness the heath was passed, and Holbeach House was reached, instead of the gallant company of eighty well-accoutred troops who had left Norbrook the morning before, there crept into the court-yard only eighteen wet and weary men, who had lost all, including honour.
Holbeach House was about two miles from Stourbridge, and was the home of Stephen Littleton, one of the latest to join the plot. Here the worn-out men slept—the last sleep for some of them.
So weary and worn-out were they, that they sank to sleep just as they were, in the dining-room—some pillowing their heads on the table, others casting themselves on the floor. At this very unsuitable moment, it seemed good to Mr John Winter to inquire of Percy what he meant to do. (Note 3.)
Percy, in extremely somnolent tones, answered that he intended to go on.
“Ay, but how and whither?” responded Thomas Winter, as wide awake as he usually was in all senses.
“If you have e’er a plan in your head, out with it,” replied Percy. “Just now, I’ve no head to put one in.”
“If you will hearken to me,” said Thomas, “you will now despatch Robin’s letter to my cousin Smallpiece.”
“What to do?”
“‘What to do’!—to win his aid. He is as true a Catholic as any of us.”
“Ay, he’s Catholic, but he is very timorous. He has no mind to be hanged, trust me.”
“Have you?”
“I should stand to it better than he. Then you’ll meet old Master Talbot, who shall kick you forth ere you have time to say, ‘An’t please you.’”
“I’ll have a care of that. Steenie, wilt have with me?”
Mr Stephen Littleton had to be awoke before he could answer the question. As soon as he understood what was demanded of him, he professed his readiness to accompany anybody anywhere in the future, so long as he might be let alone to finish his nap at the present. Before another sentence had been uttered, he reverted to an unconscious state.
Suddenly Sir Everard sprang up.
“Mr Catesby, methinks I shall best serve you if I go to hasten the succours. What think you?”
“If you will,” said Catesby, for once a little doubtfully.
Ten minutes later, one of the least wearied horses in the group carried him away.
There were troops on their way to Holbeach, but it was not for succour. Sir Richard Walsh, the Sheriff, Sir John Folliott, a few gentlemen, and a party of the King’s troops, with all the force of the county, were on the track of the wretched fugitives. They had chased them from Northamptonshire into Warwickshire, from Warwickshire into Worcestershire, and now they were approaching their last refuge in Staffordshire.
It was still dark on the Friday morning, when Thomas Winter and Stephen Littleton rode to Pepperhill, where old Mr Talbot was at that time. Robert declined to accompany them, and Bates excused himself. To obtain sight of Mr Smallpiece, without being seen by Mr Talbot, was the delicate business on which they were bent. Leonard Smallpiece seems to have been an agent or bailiff of Mr Talbot, and a relative of the Winters; he was “exceeding popishe, but very timorous.” (Note 4.) The pair of worthies settled that Stephen should remain outside in charge of the horses, while Winter tried to effect safe entrance. They rode up to the yard door, and having dismounted, were about to investigate possibilities, when without any warning the doors were flung open, and the sturdy old loyalist owner appeared behind them.
“How dare you come hither?” was his fierce greeting to the unwelcome visitors, “considering what speech there is of your tumultuous rising.”
“Sir,” answered Winter, deprecatingly, “my meaning was not to speak with you, but with one in your house; and I am very sorry I have met with you.”
“So am I, too!” said John Talbot. “Your coming may be as much as my life is worth. It is very fit you should be taken.”
“I shall not easily be taken,” was the reply.
“Fare you well! Get you away!” answered Talbot, as he slammed the gate in Winter’s face.
They came to the conclusion that discretion would be the better part of valour, and retraced their steps to Holbeach. Here Stephen went into the house, leaving Winter outside. The former found his friends very busily engaged in making preparations for resistance, for they had now determined that at Holbeach their last stand should be made. Their gunpowder, like themselves, had been soaked in the rain, the Stour being extremely high, and the cart which they had stolen from Hewell Grange a very low one. Catesby, Rookwood, and Grant, applied themselves to the drying of the powder. They laid about sixteen pounds of it in a linen bag on the floor, and heaping about two pounds on a platter, placed it in the chimney-corner to dry by the fire. A servant entering to put fresh logs on the fire, was not sufficiently careful of the platter. A spark flew out, lighted on the powder, and it exploded. Part of the roof was blown off, the linen bag was carried through the hole thus made, and afterwards taken up uninjured in the court-yard: but the three powder-dryers, with Henry Morgan, were severely injured both in face and body. In the same pit that they had dug privily, was their own foot taken.
When the conspirators thus beheld themselves “hoist with their own petard,” the first feeling among them was less fear for their safety than awe at the just judgment of God. The most guilty among them were also the most horrified. For a moment those nearest the powder were supposed to be killed. John Wright lost his head, flung himself on what he believed to be the corpse of his leader, with a wild cry—
“Woe worth the time that we have seen this day! Bring me the powder! bring me the powder, that I may set it afire, and blow up ourselves and this house together!”
Rookwood rushed to a picture of the Virgin, and throwing himself on his knees, confessed “that the act was so bloody that he desired God to forgive him;” in which prayer he was joined by some of the others. Catesby himself lost his firmness, and on recovering himself, gasped out his fear that God disapproved of their project. Robert Winter and Greenway fled in terror—so far that they never came back. Stephen Littleton went off also, but he waited long enough to send a message to Thomas Winter, who had not yet come in.
“Tell him to fly,” said the valiant Stephen, “and so will I.”
Whatever else Thomas Winter was, he was loyal to his oath and to his friends.
“His honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”
He supposed the news to mean that Catesby was killed.
“Nay,” said he; “I will first see the body of my friend and bury him, whatsoever befall me.”
Returning to the house, Winter found his friends decidedly alive and “reasonable well.”
“What resolve you to do?” he asked them.
“We mean here to die,” was the answer.
“Well!” replied Winter, “I will take such part as you do.”
And John Wright said, “I will live and die among you.”
Not long afterwards, about noon, the Sheriff and his troops surrounded Holbeach House. After several ineffectual summonses to surrender, and the reading of a proclamation in the King’s name bidding the rebels to submit themselves, which met only with blunt refusals, the Sheriff fired the house, and led an attack upon the gates. The conspirators who were left showed no lack of courage. They walked out into the court-yard, set the gate open, and took up their stand in front of it, Catesby in the middle, with Percy and Thomas Winter on either side. At the first assault, an arrow from a cross-bow had struck Winter in the shoulder, and rendered his right arm useless. The second shot struck John Wright, the third Christopher Wright, the fourth Rookwood. The two Wrights fell, and were supposed to be dead.
“Stand by me, Tom,” said Catesby to Winter, “and we will die together.”
“Sir,” was the answer, “I have lost the use of my right arm, and I fear that will cause me to be taken.”
They were the last words of Robert Catesby. The next bullet passed clean through his body, and lodged in that of Percy at his side. Catesby fell, mortally wounded. He had just strength to crawl on his hands and knees into the vestibule of the house, where stood an image of the Virgin: and clasping it in his arms, he died.
Percy sank down, also wounded to death; he expired the following day. John Wright, recovering somewhat from his wound, called to Bates, and delivered him a bag of money, entreating him to fly and take it to Mrs Wright at Norbrook. Winter was seized; Grant, Rookwood, and Morgan, yielded themselves to the Sheriff: but the exasperated mob, rushing in, while the Sheriff’s men were lifting one of the wounded, seized upon the others, stripped and ill-used them, until wounds which might possibly have been healed were past cure. John and Christopher Wright died in two or three days.
One or two fugitives were brought into Holbeach later; five were arrested at Stourbridge, Sir Everard Digby at Dudley. Bates succeeded in making good his escape with the bag, and reached Wolverhampton in the night. His wife Martha, who lived at Ashby, hearing a false rumour of his capture and imprisonment in Shrewsbury Gaol, went to see him, and both stayed for the night in the same inn at Wolverhampton, neither of them knowing the nearness of the other. Bates, finding himself unable to reach Lapworth, and with no hope of escaping finally, delivered the bag of money to a friend to convey to Martha, and departed, not wishing to endanger his friend. He then went to Oldfield, in Shropshire, to the house of his cousin, Richard Bates, by whom having been betrayed, he was apprehended, and brought to London. By his confession on his examination, Garnet and Greenway were implicated, though Bates tried his best to prove them innocent.
Sir Richard Walsh conveyed his prisoners to Worcester, where he occupied himself in taking their examinations, and sending the information obtained to the Lords of the Council. Sir Richard Verney was sent to scour the country on the recent track of the fugitives, and to arrest the relatives and servants of every one of them. John Winter, Gertrude Winter at Huddington, Ludovic Grant at Dudley, Dorothy Grant at Norbrook, and at Lapworth John Wright’s wife Dorothy, and Christopher’s wife Margaret; Ambrose Rookwood’s wife, and her sister; and Thomas Rookwood of Claxton, at Bidford, were all gradually added to the group. Mrs Dorothy Grant, whether from fright or loquacity, proved very candid in answering questions, and from her they learned that the missing Martha Percy was “not far off.” Sir Richard Verney, however, found it no easy matter to keep his prisoners when he had got them. Twice his house was set on fire, evidently by design; but he held stoutly to the lively ladies in his care, and delivered them all safely in London in due time.
We must now, for a short time, follow the two conspirators who had escaped in company, and whose wanderings are not devoid of interest. Robert Winter and Stephen Littleton got safely away from Holbeach, thus evading the miserable fate of their fellow-conspirators. They succeeded in reaching the house of a certain Christopher White, a servant of Stephen’s cousin, Humphrey Littleton, who lived in the village of King’s Rowley. This man they bribed to allow them to remain in his barn until the search for the fugitives should have ceased, when they promised to give him a substantial reward, and no longer to endanger him by their presence. “There they abode a great while, but with very poor and slender fare, such as otherwise had been too coarse and out of fashion for them.” A proclamation was meanwhile set forth by Government for their discovery, wherein Robert Winter was described as “of mean stature, rather low than otherwise; brown hair and beard, not much beard, short hair; somewhat stooping, square made, near forty.” Stephen Littleton was “a very tall man; swarthy complexion, no beard or little, brown coloured hair; about thirty.” A neighbour of White’s, named Smart, and apparently smart by nature as well as name, noticed the unusual evidences of prosperity in his neighbour’s dwelling, and shrewdly surmised the reason. Upon due consideration of the subject, Mr Smart, like a good many people both before and after him, came to the conclusion that it was highly unreasonable that his neighbour should be mounting the social ladder when he remained at the bottom. He therefore applied himself to the matter, discovered the refugees in the barn, and strongly recommended his barn as far preferable to White’s. The fugitives were persuaded to change their hiding-place. This was no sooner done, than another neighbour, named Hollyhead, set his wits also to work, and dulcetly represented that Smart’s barn was a much less safe and attractive locality than his house: each of these worthy individuals being of course moved by respect to the pecuniary reward for which he hoped. On the departure of his guests, White took fright and fled: which caused “much rumour to be blabbed abroad” concerning the vain search and the probable vicinity of the fugitives. Humphrey Littleton, who was in the secret, began to be alarmed, and removed his friends from Hollyhead’s house to that of a man named John Perks, in the village of Hagley, close to Hagley Park, the residence of his widowed sister-in-law. It was before dawn on New Year’s Day that they reached the cottage of Perks, a warrener or gamekeeper, who had been dismissed from Mrs Littleton’s service for dishonesty. The wearied men knocked at his door; and when Perks came forth, said they were friends, and begged him to help them to food and shelter.
“Ye be Mr Stephen Littleton, and Mr Winter,” said Perks.
“We are so,” they admitted. “Pray you, Goodman, grant us meat and lodging till we be fit for journeying; and when we can travel, then shall you bring us to London, and have a great reward from the King for taking us, we being willing to die, and not live any longer in so miserable a condition.”
If Mr Perks’s eyes glistened as this distant prospect of a great reward was held out to him, they grew yet more radiant when Humphrey Littleton counted into his hand thirty golden sovereigns, twenty into that of his man, and seventeen to his sister. Perks led the way to his barn, where mounting on a barley mow, he formed a large hole in its midst, and here the unhappy gentlemen were secreted, food being brought to them by Perks as occasion served, by his sister Margaret, or at times by his man, Thomas Burford. Here they might have remained in safety for a considerable time without fear of discovery, had not Mr Perks entertained rather too close an affection for barley in another form than heaped up in a barn—namely, in company with hops and water. Mr Perks had a friend, named Poynter, who liked beer and rabbits quite as well as himself; and one winter night, nine days after the fugitives had been hidden in the mow, these worthies set forth on a poaching expedition. Returning home somewhat late, and “well tippled in drink,” it occurred to Mr Poynter that it would save him a walk home if his friend Perks were to lodge him for the night. The latter, however, did not see the circumstance in that light, and a tipsy altercation followed, which was ended by Perks “shaking off” Poynter, and staggering home by himself. The night was cold and wet, and Mr Poynter’s temper was scarcely so cool as the atmosphere. He was tipsily resolved that he would have a lodging at Perks’s expense, whether that gentleman would or not; and bethinking himself that if Perks’s house were locked against him, his barn was not, he took thither his unsteady way, and scrambling up the barley mow, to his own unfeigned astonishment dropped into the hole on the top of the sleeping conspirators.
Thus roused suddenly in the dead of night, and naturally concluding that their enemies were upon them, Winter and Littleton sprang up to defend themselves, and to sell their lives dearly. Poynter, who was quite as much amazed and terrified as they could be, as naturally fought for his own safety, and a desperate struggle ensued. It ended in the two overcoming the one, and insisting on his remaining with them, so that they could be certain of his telling no tales. For four days Poynter remained on the mow, professing resignation and contentment, and lamenting the sore pain which he suffered from a wound in the leg, received in the pursuit of his vocation as a rabbit-stealer. When Margaret Perks came with food, and afterwards Burford, Poynter pretended to be in mortal anguish, and besought them earnestly to bring him some salve, without which he was quite certain he should die. The salve was brought, and the wily Poynter then discovered that lying in the hole he had not sufficient light to apply it. He was suffered to creep up on the top of the mow, which he professed to do with the greatest difficulty. But even there the light was scarcely sufficient: might he drag himself a little nearer the door? Being now quite deceived by Mr Poynter’s excellent acting, and believing that he was much too suffering and disabled to escape, they permitted him to crawl quite to the edge of the mow nearest to the light, and of course next to the door. The moment this point was reached, the disabled cripple slipped down from the mow, and the next instant was out of the door and far away, running with a fleetness which made it hopeless to think of following him.
There was still, however, some room for that hope which springs eternal in the human breast. Poynter’s friendship for Perks, and the expectation that Perks could bribe him to secrecy, weighed with the fugitives, who had not sufficiently learned that the friendship of an unprincipled man is worth nothing.
Poynter, on the other hand, considered his chances superior in the opposite direction. He made at once for Hagley Hall, intending to tell his story there; but on the way he met with Perks, who was ignorant of Poynter’s recent adventure; and that gentleman suggesting a joint visit to the nearest tavern, Poynter easily suffered his steps to be diverted in that attractive direction. The precious pair of friends drank together, and departed to their respective homes.
Now, Mistress Littleton, the lady of Hagley Park, was a Protestant, and a gentlewoman of extreme discretion; and the day on which Poynter thus made his escape from the hay-mow had been chosen by her to commence a journey to London. Before her departure, she summoned her steward, Mr Hazelwood, and desired him to be circumspect during her absence, “owing to the mischances happening in the county.”
Mistress Littleton having ridden forth on her journey, her worthy brother, Mr Humphrey, commonly called Red Humphrey, who certainly did not share the discretion of his sister, determined to play the mouse during the absence of his cat, and to convey his traitor-friends into his own chamber at Hagley Park. There is reason to think that Mistress Littleton was not only a sagacious but also a somewhat managing dame, who rode Red Humphrey with a tighter curb than that reckless individual approved. Accordingly, having heard of Poynter’s escape, and taking one person only into his confidence, he repaired to the barn about eleven o’clock that night, and smuggled his cousin and friend away from the barley mow into the pleasanter shelter of his own room in Hagley Park. The one person thus selected as Humphrey’s confidant, was John Fynwood or Fynes, alias “Jobber,” also known as John Cook, from the office which he bore in the household. Humphrey had brought him up, and when come to suitable age, had induced his sister-in-law to engage him as cook: he therefore expected this man, being thus beholden to him, to remain faithful to his interests. But there was another person whose interests were considerably dearer to John Cook, and that was himself.
The trio reached Master Humphrey’s chamber in safety, aided by John Cook. Robert Winter turned round as he entered, and grasped the cook’s hand.
“Ah, Jack!” said he, “little wots thy mistress what guests are now in her house, that in so long a space did never so much as look upon a fire!”
“Welcome, heartily!” answered Humphrey, motioning to his guests to approach nearer to the cheerful hearth. “Jack, lad, the time being thus late, canst kill some hen or chickens about the house, to serve and fit the present occasion withal? I will recompense it to thee afterward.”
Jack readily undertook the commission, and brought up a very appetising dish with great diligence and promptness.
“Master,” said he, “you shall need drink, and the butler is in bed; to call on him for the key might rouse suspicion. Pray you, shall I run in the town to my mother, and fetch you drink from thence?”
“So do, honest Jack, and hie thee back quickly. See, here is a tester for thee.”
Honest Jack picked up the tester, and disappeared.
It does seem strange, considering the danger which was thus run, that the fugitives should not have been satisfied to drink water with their supper, since even thus they would have fared much better than they had done for some time past. But in truth, the very idea of drinking water was foreign to men’s minds in those days, except in the light of a very cruel hardship, and about the last strait to which a starving man could be reduced.
The mother of Jack kept a small tavern in the village. Thither he ran to fill his jug, and to pour into the ears of the hostess the interesting fact that the traitors then sought for by the King’s proclamation were at that moment entertained in Master Humphrey’s chamber at Hagley Park.
“Pray you, Mother,” he added, “when morning breaketh, raise the town to take them, for I fear lest I may not, unsuspected, get forth again to do it.”
Having made which little arrangement, honest Jack and his jug returned to the Park, where the trio of traitors finished their supper, and proceeded to sleep three in a bed.
To make assurance doubly sure, Jack rapped at Mr Hazelwood’s door, and bestowed upon him the same interesting information already given to Mrs Fynwood.
The morning being come, the cook paid another visit to his prisoners, whom he found nearly dressed, and looking out of the window to see the meaning of the noise they heard, which was in fact the arrival of the Sheriff’s officer and his men. Even then, so complete was their confidence in Jack, that they never imagined themselves betrayed, and Humphrey, having stowed his friends for more complete security in a closet-room opening out of his chamber, went down into the hall—and met the officer of the law.
“Sir, I understand there be in this house certain traitors, so charged by proclamation of his sacred Majesty, whom you have in keeping.”
“Never an one, my master, I do ensure you,” answered Humphrey, as lightly as if he spoke the truth: and he cut a large slice from the loaf standing on the table. “Pray you, sit down and break your fast; you are full welcome, as I am sure my good sister should tell you were she at home. After that ye have eaten, ye shall search the house an’ ye will.—See here, Jack Cook! make a good toast for these worthy masters; and thou, David Butler, go up to my chamber for my cup—thou shalt find it on the window-ledge, I think.”
Outside, Mr Hazelwood was giving directions for the search, hints being constantly supplied to him by the cook as to what transpired within. The butler, David Bate, went to fetch his master’s cup, and of course found the room empty. As he came to the foot of the back-stair, Master Humphrey met him.
“Good David, help me to the key of the back-door into the cellar,” he said in a hurried whisper. “As ever thou wilt do anything for me, stick now to me, and help save my life.”
“Sir, I have not the key,” answered the astonished butler. “The brewer hath it.”
The brewer was hastily summoned, delivered the key, and was as hurriedly dismissed. Then Humphrey ran up to his closet, brought down his concealed guests, and conducted them through the buttery towards the cellar. The butler slipped away from them, and told the officers. The situation was now desperate. Inside the house the officers were pursuing them; outside, a crowd, in league with the authorities, was shouting itself hoarse in execration of them. The wretched men made one last frantic dash around the house, and Robert Winter and Stephen Littleton were arrested in the stable-yard, and prevented from reaching the neighbouring wood.
But what had become of Red Humphrey? The instant he saw the game was up, he hurriedly mounted his horse, and eluded his pursuers. But he was not to escape much longer. The searching party which Poynter had led to the barn, disappointed there, scoured the neighbourhood; and at Prestwood the fugitive was taken, and committed to safe custody in Stafford Gaol. Even after they were secured, it was no easy matter to carry the other prisoners to Worcester. While they were “refreshing themselves” in an alehouse at Hagley—probably the tavern kept by Mrs Fynwood—a tumult arose among the people outside which almost led to their rescue; and a few miles from Hagley, Sir Thomas Undirhood and his company overtook the Sheriff, and vainly attempted to gain possession of them to take them back to Staffordshire. The Worcestershire men, however, held on grimly to their prize, and at last triumphantly lodged their prisoners in the gaol at Worcester.
The examinations of the culprits in London went on. They were mainly characterised by Mr Fawkes’s contradictions on every occasion of something which he had previously said; by the addition of a little information each time; and by the very small amount of light that could be obtained from any outsiders. On his third examination, Mr “John Johnson” owned that his name was Guy Fawkes; that he was born at York, the son of Edward Fawkes, a younger brother, who had left him “but small living,” which he ran through with equally small delay. He denied on his conscience that he was in orders, “major or minor, regular or secular”: on which occasion he told the truth. Fawkes added that he did not now desire to destroy the King.
“It is past,” he said, “and I am now sorry for it, for that I now perceive that God did not concur with it.”
He admitted also the design on the Lady Elizabeth, but he still declined to name his accomplices, and proved obdurate to all attempts—and the attempts were basely made—to persuade him to accuse the prisoners in the Tower, of whom the chief was Sir Walter Raleigh. The utmost he could be induced to admit concerning this point was that it had been “under consultation that the prisoners in the Tower should have intelligence” of the intended plot, and that Raleigh and several others had been named in this connection.
“We should have been glad to have drawn any, of what religion soever, unto us,” he said: “we meant to have made use of all the discontented people of England.”
But he would not allow, even to the last, that any communication had actually been made.
In his fourth examination Fawkes gave the names of those who had been “made privy afterwards,” but he still refused to reveal those of the original traitors. He was accordingly put to the torture. Gentle or ungentle, this worked its office: and on the ninth of November, after half-an-hour on the rack, Fawkes recounted the names of all his accomplices. He made also an admission which proved of considerable importance—he mentioned a house in Enfield Chase, “where Walley (Garnet) doth lie.”
Every examination is signed by the prisoner. To the first he signs “Guido Faukes” in a free, elegant Italian hand, the hand of an educated man. But it is pitiful to see the few faint strokes which sign the fifth, even the “Guido” being left unfinished. He is supposed to have fainted before the word could be written. The subsequent reports are fully signed, and in a firmer hand; but the old free elegant signature never comes again.
That night an unheard-of event occurred at the White Bear. Hans Floriszoon was two hours late in coming home.
“My lad!” said Edith, meeting him in the hall, “we feared some ill had befallen thee.”
“It hath not befallen me, Mrs Edith,” was the answer; “and may God avert it from us all! But these men that Aubrey was wont to visit—Mr Catesby, Mr Winter, and the rest—are now confessed by the caitiff in the Tower to have an hand in the plot.”
“Aubrey?” The word was only just breathed from Edith’s lips.
“I went thither at once, and spake with Aubrey, whom I found to have heard nought, and to be very sore troubled touching Mr Winter, whose friendship I can see hath been right dear unto him. I besought him to lie very close,—not to come forth at all, and if he would communicate with us these next few days, to send a messenger to me at Mr Leigh’s, and not here, for it seemed to me there was need of caution. After a time, if all blow over, there may be less need. Will you tell my Lady Lettice, or no?”
“Dear Hans, thou art ever thoughtful and good. Thou hast done very well. But I think my mother must be told. Better softly now, than roughly after—as it may be if it be let alone.”
Lady Louvaine sat silent for a few minutes after that gentle communication had been made. Then she said—
“‘The floods lift up themselves, and rage mightily: but yet the Lord, who dwelleth on high, is mightier.’ ’Tis strange that it should be so much harder to trust Him with the body than with the soul! O father, keep my boy from evil!—what is evil, Thou knowest: ‘undertake for us!’”
On the 23rd of November, one of the prisoners in the Tower escaped the sentence of the law, by an inevitable summons to the higher tribunal of God Almighty. Francis Tresham died in his prison cell, retracting with his last breath, and “upon his salvation,” the previous confession by which he had implicated Garnet in the Spanish negotiations. It has been suggested that he was poisoned by Government because he knew too much; but there is no foundation for the charge except the possibility that his death might have been convenient to the Government, and the fact that they allowed his wife and servant to be with him in his last illness goes far to disprove this improbable accusation.
The authorities were now engaged in lively pursuit of the new track which Fawkes had indicated to them. A house in Enfield Chase where Garnet was or might be found, was too appetising a dainty to be lightly resigned. On the 23rd, they obtained a full confession from Thomas Winter, and the actual name of White Webbs. From this moment White Webbs became their Ultima Thule of hope and expectation.
A poor and mean revenge was taken on the dead Catesby and Percy. Their bodies were exhumed, and beheaded, and their heads set on the pinnacles of the Houses of Parliament. The spectators noticed with superstitious terror that blood flowed from Percy’s wound. The authorities seem to have regarded Percy as the head and front of the conspiracy; they term him “the arch-traitor.” But by the testimony of both Fawkes and Winter, Catesby was the original deviser of the Gunpowder Plot.
Note 1. Excerpts from Burghley Papers, Additional Manuscript 6178, folios 58, 184.—Lady Northumberland was Dorothy Devereux, daughter of Walter Earl of Essex and Lettice Knolles, and sister of the famous Robert Earl of Essex, in whose rebellion so many Romanists took part. Poor Lord Northumberland, if innocent, paid dearly for his relationship to his “wretched cousin,” being fined 30,000 pounds, which in 1613 was commuted to 11,000 pounds. He borrowed 12,000 pounds from Peter Vanlore to discharge the fine, and repaid half of it within a year.
Note 2. The most comical item of this assumption of virtue is the reason, as given by himself, for Mr Rookwood’s riding on in advance at this juncture. “Seeing that he was so well horsed as he was—he having fifteen or sixteen good bourses—he meant not to adventure himself in stealing of any!”
Note 3. “At Holbeach, I demanded of Mr Percy and the rest, being most of them asleep, what they meant to do.” (Letter of John Winter, Gunpowder Plot Book, article 110.)
Note 5. For this shot one of the Sheriff’s men, named John Streete, received 2 shillings per day up to 1627.