* King James’s Works, p. 229.
** King James’s Works, p. 229.
*** King James’s Works, p. 230.
**** Winwood, vol. ii. p. 173.
v King James’s Works, p. 231.
Catesby, Piercy, and the other criminals who were in London, though they had heard of the alarm taken at a letter sent to Monteagle; though they had heard of the chamberlain’s search; yet were resolved to persist to the utmost, and never abandon their hopes of success.[*] [50] But at last, hearing that Fawkes was arrested, they hurried down to Warwickshire; where Sir Everard Digby, thinking himself assured that success had attended his confederates, was already in arms, in order to seize the princess Elizabeth. She had escaped into Coventry; and they were obliged to put themselves on their defence against the country, who were raised from all quarters and armed by the sheriff. The conspirators, with all their attendants, never exceeded the number of eighty persons; and being surrounded on every side, could no longer entertain hopes either of prevailing or escaping. Having therefore confessed themselves, and received absolution, they boldly prepared for death, and resolved to sell their lives as dear as possible to the assailants. But even this miserable consolation was denied them. Some of their powder took fire, and disabled them for defence.[**] The people rushed in upon them. Piercy and Catesby were killed by one shot. Digby, Rookwood, Winter, and others, being taken prisoners, were tried, confessed their guilt, and died, as well as Garnet, by the hands of the executioner. Notwithstanding this horrid crime, the bigoted Catholics were so devoted to Garnet, that they fancied miracles to be wrought by his blood;[***] and in Spain he was regarded as a martyr.[****]
Neither had the desperate fortune of the conspirators urged them to this enterprise, nor had the former profligacy of their lives prepared them for so great a crime. Before that audacious attempt, their conduct seems, in general, to be liable to no reproach. Catesby’s character had entitled him to such regard, that Rookwood and Digby were seduced by their implicit trust in his judgment; and they declared that, from the motive alone of friendship to him, they were ready, on any occasion, to have sacrificed their lives.[v] Digby himself was as highly esteemed and beloved as any man in England; and he had been particularly honored with the good opinion of Queen Elizabeth.
* See note XX, at the end of the volume.
** State Trials, vol. i. p. 199. Discourse of the Manner,
etc. p. 69, 70.
*** Winwood, vol. ii. p. 300.
**** Winwood, vol. ii. p. 300.
v State Trials, vol. i. p. 201.
It was bigoted zeal alone, the most absurd of prejudices masked with reason, the most criminal of passions covered with the appearance of duty, which seduced them into measures that were fatal to themselves, and had so nearly proved fatal to their country.[*]
The lords Mordaunt and Stourton, two Catholics, were fined, the former ten thousand pounds, the latter four thousand, by the star chamber; because their absence from parliament had begotten a suspicion of their being acquainted with the conspiracy. The earl of Northumberland was fined thirty thousand pounds, and detained several years prisoner in the Tower, because, not to mention other grounds of suspicion, he had admitted Piercy into the number of gentlemen pensioners without his taking the requisite oaths.[**]
The king, in his speech to the parliament, observed that, though religion had engaged the conspirators in so criminal an attempt, yet ought we not to involve all the Roman Catholics in the same guilt, or suppose them equally disposed to commit such enormous barbarities. Many holy men, he said, and our ancestors among the rest, had been seduced to concur with that church in her scholastic doctrines, who yet had never admitted her seditious principles concerning the pope’s power of dethroning kings, or sanctifying assassination. The wrath of Heaven is denounced against crimes, but innocent error may obtain its favor; and nothing can be more hateful than the uncharitableness of the Puritans, who condemn alike to eternal torments even the most inoffensive partisans of Popery. For his part, he added, that conspiracy, however atrocious, should never alter in the least his plan of government: while with one hand he punished guilt, with the other he would still support and protect innocence.[***] After this speech he prorogued the parliament till the twenty-second of January.[****]
* Digby, after his condemnation, said, in a letter to his
wife, “Now for my intention, let me tell you, that if I had
thought there had been the least sin in the plot, I would
not have been of it for all the world; and no other cause
drew me to hazard my fortune and life, but zeal to God’s
religion.” He expresses his surprise to hear that any
Catholics had condemned it. Digby’s Papers, published by
Secretary Coventry.
* Camden, in Kennet, p. 692.
* King James’s Works, p. 503, 504.
* The parliament this session passed an act obliging every
one to take the oath of allegiance; a very moderate test,
since it decided no controverted points between the two
religions, and only engaged the persons who took it to
abjure the pope’s power of dethroning kings. See King
James’s Works p. 250.
The moderation, and, I may say, magnanimity of the king immediately after so narrow an escape from a most detestable conspiracy, was nowise agreeable to his subjects. Their animosity against Popery, even before this provocation, has risen to a great pitch; and it had perhaps been more prudent in James, by a little dissimulation, to have conformed himself to it. His theological learning, confirmed by disputation, has happily fixed his judgment in the Protestant faith; yet was his heart a little biased by the allurements of Rome; and he had been well pleased, if the making of some advances could have effected a union with that ancient mother church. He strove to abate the acrimony of his own subjects against the religion of their fathers: he became himself the object of their diffidence and aversion. Whatever measures he embraced—in Scotland to introduce prelacy, in England to enforce the authority of the established church, and support its rites and ceremonies—were interpreted as so many steps towards Popery; and were represented by the Puritans as symptoms of idolatry and superstition. Ignorant of the consequences, or unwilling to sacrifice to politics his inclination, which he called his conscience, he persevered in the same measures, and gave trust and preferment, almost indifferently, to his Catholic and Protestant subjects. And finding his person, as well as his title, less obnoxious to the church of Rome, than those of Elizabeth, he gradually abated the rigor of those laws which had been enacted against that church, and which were so acceptable to his bigoted subjects. But the effects of these dispositions on both sides became not very sensible till towards the conclusion of his reign.
1606.