Some seventeen miles from York stands the pleasant town of Knaresborough, and not far from Knaresborough is the village of Scotten. When Guy was yet a boy, there lived in this village a very gay, seductive wooer, named Dennis Baynbridge. This wooer was wont to visit the widowed Edith, and the result of his visits was that the widowed Edith rather hastily put away her weeds, assumed a bridal attire, married the irresistible Dennis, and, with her two daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, and her only son Guy, accompanied her new husband to his residence at Scotten.
Baynbridge was a Roman Catholic, as also were the Pullens, Percies, Winters, Wrights, and others who lived in Scotten or its neighborhood, and whose names figure in the story of the Gunpowder Plot.
At Scotten, then, and probably soon after his mother’s marriage, in 1582, Guy, it may be safely said, left the faith in which he had been baptized, for that of the Romish Church. Had he declined to adopt the creed of his step-sire, he perhaps would have been allowed but few opportunities of angling in the Nidd, rabbiting by Bilton Banks, nutting in Goldsborough Wood, or of passing idle holydays on Grimbald Craig.
On the wedding-day of Edith Fawkes and Dennis Baynbridge, the paternal uncle of Guy made his will. He exhibited his sense of the step taken by the lady, by omitting her name from the will, and by bequeathing the bulk of his property to the two sisters of Guy. To Guy himself, Uncle Thomas left only “a gold ring,” and a “bed and one pair of sheets, with the appurtenances.”
When Guy became of age, he found himself in possession of his patrimony—some land and a farm-house. The latter, with two or three acres of land, he let to a tailor, named Lumley, for the term of twenty-one years, at the annual rent of forty-two shillings. The remainder he sold at once for a trifle less than thirty pounds. Shortly after, he made over to a purchaser all that was left of his property. He bethought himself for a while as to what course he should take, and finally he chose the profession of arms, and went out to Spain, to break crowns and to win spurs.
In Spain, he fell into evil company and evil manners. He saw enough of hard fighting, and indulged, more than enough, in hard drinking. He was wild, almost savage of temper, and he never rose to a command which gave him any chance of gaining admission on the roll of chivalry. There was a knight, however, named Catesby, who was a comrade of Guy, and the latter clung to him as a means whereby to become as great as that to which he clung.
Guy bore himself gallantly in Spain; and, subsequently, in Flanders, he fought with such distinguished valor, that when Catesby and his associates in England were considering where they might find the particular champion whom they needed for their particular purpose in the Gunpowder Plot, the thought of the reckless soldier flashed across the mind of Catesby, and Guy was at once looked after as the “very properest man” for a very improper service.
The messenger who was despatched to Flanders to sound Guy, found the latter eager to undertake the perilous mission of destroying king and parliament, and thereby helping Rome to lord it again in England. The English soldier in Flanders came over to London, put up at an inn, which occupied a site not very distant from that of the once well-known “Angel” in St. Clement’s Danes, and made a gay figure in the open Strand, till he was prepared to consummate a work which he thought would help himself to greatness.
Into the matter of the plot I will not enter. It must be observed, however, that knight never went more coolly to look death in the face than Guy went to blow up the Protestant king and the parliament. At the same time it must be added, that Guy had not the slightest intention of hoisting himself with his own petard. He ran a very great risk, it is true, and he did it fearlessly; but the fact that both a carriage and a boat were in waiting to facilitate his escape, shows that self-sacrifice was not the object of the son of the York proctor. His great ambition was to rank among knights and nobles. He took but an ill-method to arrive at such an object; but his reverence for nobility was seen even when he was very near to his violent end. If he was ever a hero, it was when certain death by process of law was before him. But even then it was his boast and solace, that throughout the affair there was not a man employed, even to handle a spade, in furtherance of the end in view, who was not a gentleman. Guy died under the perfect conviction that he had done nothing derogatory to his quality!
Considering how dramatic are the respective stories of the page and squire, briefly noticed above, it is remarkable that so little use has been made of them by dramatists. Savage is the only one who has dramatized the story of the two knights, Somerset and Overbury. In this tragedy bearing the latter knight’s name, and produced at the Haymarket, in June, 1723, he himself played the hero, Sir Thomas. His attempt to be an actor, and thus gain an honest livelihood by his industry, was the only act of his life of which Savage was ever ashamed. In this piece the only guilty persons are the countess and her uncle, the Earl of Northampton. This is in accordance with the once-prevailing idea that Northampton planned the murder of Sir Thomas, in his residence, which occupied the site of the present Northumberland house. The play was not successful, and the same may be said of it when revived, with alterations, at Covent Garden, in 1777. Sheridan, the actor, furnished the prologue. In this production he expressed his belief that the public generally felt little interest in the fate of knights and kings. The reason he assigns is hardly logical.