We are now in the reign of James I. In 1605 was the Gunpowder Plot, the memory of which is still kept alive by bonfires, and by the farcical search of the cellars of the Houses of Parliament. Gunpowder Plot does not come into the Annals of Tyburn, as none of the conspirators suffered here.
1607. February 26. Robert Drury, priest, for being in England, executed at Tyburn (Challoner’s Memoirs, pt. ii., pp. 13-5).
1608. The 11. of Aprill, George Ieruis [Gervase or Jarvis] a Seminary priest, according to his iudgement was executed at Tyborne (Stow, p. 893).
The 23. of June, Thomas Garnet, a Jesuite was executed at Tyborne, hauing fauor offred him, if he would haue taken the oath of alleageance aforesayd, but he refused it (Stow, p. 893).
Thomas Garnet was related to Father Henry Garnet, executed for the Gunpowder Plot in 1606. Thomas Garnet was convicted on evidence that while a prisoner in the Tower he had written in several places “Thomas Garnet priest.” The Earl of Exeter, one of the Privy Council, present at the execution, would not suffer the rope to be cut till the victim was quite dead (Challoner’s Memoirs, pt. ii., pp. 17-9).
1610. December 10. John Roberts, and Thomas Somers, or Watson, or Wilson. These were priests. Roberts was apprehended for the fifth time at Mass and hurried away in his vestments. Somers had been deported, together with about a score of priests, earlier in the year, but returned to England. With Roberts and Somers were executed sixteen persons condemned for various offences. The priests were suffered to hang till they were dead and then bowelled, beheaded, and quartered, and buried with the sixteen in a pit (Challoner’s Memoirs, pt. ii., p. 37).
1612. William Scot and Richard Newport, or Smith. These were missionary priests who had been banished but returned to England (Challoner’s Memoirs, pt. ii., pp. 39-44).
The burning of Protestant heretics went on through the reigns of Elizabeth and James—“the fires of Smithfield” were not extinguished by the death of “bloody Mary.” Anabaptists and Arians were burnt, the printers, the distributors, even in one case the binder, of books “seditiously penned against the Book of Common Prayer” were hanged.
It is painful to find the genial Howell writing thus in 1635:—
I rather pity than hate Turk or Infidel, for they are of the same metal and bear the same stamp as I do, tho’ the Inscriptions differ. If I hate any, ’tis those Schismaticks that puzzle the sweet peace of our Church, so that I could be content to see an Anabaptist go to Hell on a Brownist’s back (“Familiar Letters,” ed. Jacob, p. 337).