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.)