It Might Have Been: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot

by Emily Sarah Holt

Guy Fawkes, whom his horrified contemporaries termed “the great devil of all” the conspirators, but who was simply a single-eyed fanatic, owes his reputation chiefly to the fact that he was the one selected to set file to the powder. His responsibility was in reality less than that of Catesby, Percy, or Thomas Winter. His father, Edward Fawkes,—in all probability a younger son of the old Yorkshire family of Fawkes of Farnley,—was a notary at York, and Registrar of the Consistory Court of the Minster. He could not of course have filled such as office, unless he had been a Protestant. Edward Fawkes died in 1578, and was buried January 17th in the Church of Saint Michael-le-Belfry, York. His widow, whose maiden name was Edith Jackson, is said by some to have subsequently married a zealous Roman Catholic, Mr Denis Bainbridge, of Scotton; but Sir W. Wade gives the name of her second husband as “one Foster, within three miles of York.” She was living at the time of the plot. Guy, who was baptised in Saint Michael’s Church, April 16th, 1570, and educated at the Free School in the Horse Fair, did not become a professed Papist until he was about sixteen years of age. He had a step-brother of whom no more is known than that he belonged to one of the Inns of Court in 1605. Guy was not eight years old when he lost his father, who left him no patrimony beyond a small farm worth about 30 pounds per annum; he soon ran through this, sold the estate, and at the age of twenty-three went abroad, living in Flanders for eight years, during which time he was present at the taking of Calais by the Archduke Albrecht. In 1601 he returned to England, with the reputation of one “ready for any enterprise to further the faith.” He now entered, along with the Winters and the Wrights, into negotiations with Spain for a fresh invasion of England, which was put a stop to by Elizabeth’s death, since the King of Spain declined to take up arms against his old ally, King James. Fawkes’s own statements in his examinations have been proved to consist of such a mass of falsehood, that it is scarcely possible to sift out the truth: and all that can be done is to accept as fact such portions of his narrative as are either confirmed by other witnesses, or seem likely to be true from circumstantial evidence. His contradictions of his own previous assertions were perpetual, and where confirmation is accessible, it sometimes proves the original statement, but sometimes, and more frequently, the contradiction. This utter disregard for truth prepares us to discount considerably the description given of Fawkes by Greenway, as “a man of great piety, of exemplary temperance, of mild and cheerful demeanour, an enemy of broils and disputes, a faithful friend, and remarkable for his punctual attendance upon religious observances.” So far as facts can be sifted from fiction, they seem to be that Thomas Winter, who had known Fawkes from childhood, came to him in Flanders to acquaint him with the plot, and subsequently introduced him to Catesby and Percy; that Fawkes was in the service of Anthony Browne, Lord Montague, about 1604; that in the summer of that year, when the mine was stopped on account of the prorogation of Parliament, he went to Flanders, returning about the 1st of September. During the progress of the mine, he served as sentinel, passing by the name of John Johnson, Mr Percy’s man; and he was the only one of the conspirators allowed to be seen about the house, his face being unknown in London. He said that he “prayed every day that he might perform that which might be for the advancement of the Catholic faith, and the saving of his own soul.” Fawkes provided the greater part of the gunpowder, and stowed it in the cellar, as is described in the story. His lodging when in London was at the house of Mrs Herbert, a widow, at the back of Saint Clement’s Inn. Mrs Herbert disliked Fawkes, suspecting him to be a priest. On his return from Flanders, he took up his quarters in the house at Westminster, where the mine had been, and brought in the remainder of the gunpowder. At the end of October, he went to White Webbs, whence he was sent to Town on the 30th, to make sure of the safety of the cellar and its dangerous contents. He returned at night to report all safe, but came back to Town not later than the 3rd, when he was present at the last meeting of the conspirators: but as to the exact day he made three varying statements. The circumstances of his arrest are told in the story. It is difficult, however, to reconcile some of the details. According to Greenway, Fawkes was taken as he opened the door of the vault; according to the official report, he was “newly come out of the vault;” while according to Fawkes himself, when he heard the officers coming to apprehend him, he threw the match and touchwood “out of the window in his chamber, near the Parliament House, towards the water,”—which can only refer to the room in Percy’s house. The one certainty is that he was not apprehended inside the vault. He said himself that if this had been the case, he would at once have fired the match, “and have blown up all.” The lantern (now in the Bodleian Library) was found lighted behind the door; the watch which Percy had sent by Keyes was upon the prisoner. Fawkes originally assumed an appearance of rustic stupidity; for Sir W. Wade writes to Lord Salisbury a little later that he “appeareth to be of better understanding and discourse than, before, either of us conceived him to be.” (Additional Manuscript 6178, folio 56.) That Fawkes was tortured there can be no doubt, from the King’s written command, and the tacit evidence of Fawkes’s handwriting. Garnet says he was half-an-hour on the rack; Sir Edward Hoby, that he “was never on the rack, but only suspended by his arms upright.” Nothing could induce him to betray his companions until he was satisfied that all was known: and with a base treachery and falsehood only too common in the statecraft of that day, he was deceived into believing them taken before they were discovered. Lying is wickedness in all circumstances; but the prisoner’s falsehood was based on a worthier motive than the lies which were told to him. There was, indeed, in the fearless courage and unflinching fidelity of Guy Fawkes, the wreck of what might have been a noble man; and he certainly was far from being the vulgar ruffian whom he is commonly supposed to have been. In person he was tall and dark, with brown hair and auburn beard.

Henry Garnet.

If Catesby be regarded as the most responsible of the Gunpowder conspirators, and Fawkes as the most courageous, Garnet may fairly be considered the most astute. Like the majority of his companions, he was a pervert. His father, Brian Garnet, was a schoolmaster at Nottingham, and his mother’s maiden name was Alice Jay. He was born in 1555, educated at Winchester College, in the Protestant faith, and was to have passed thence to New College, Oxford. This intention was never carried into effect: his Romish biographers say, because he had imbibed at Winchester a distaste to the Protestant religion; adding that “he obtained the rank of captain (of the school), and by his modesty and urbanity, his natural abilities and quickness in learning, so recommended himself to the superiors, that had he” entered at Oxford, “he might safely have calculated on attaining the highest academical honours. But he resolved, by the grace of God, upon embracing the Catholic faith, although his old Professors at Winchester, Stemp and Johnson, themselves Catholic in heart, together with another named Bilson, at first favourable, but afterwards hostile to Catholicity, made every exertion to persuade him to remain.” Unhappily for this rosy narrative, the “other named Bilson,” afterwards Bishop of Worcester and Winchester, has left on record his account of the matter: namely, that Garnet when at Winchester was a youth of such incorrigible wickedness, that the Warden dissuaded his going to the University, for the sake of the young men who might there be corrupted by his evil example. The reader can accept which version he may see good. On leaving school, Garnet proceeded to London, where for about two years he was employed as corrector of the press by the celebrated law-printer, Tottel. At the end of this time, he was received into the Church of Rome, and subsequently travelled abroad, first to Spain, and afterwards to Rome, where on 11th September, 1575, he entered the Society of Jesus. In the Jesuit College at Rome he studied diligently, under Bellarmine and others: and he was before long made Professor of Hebrew, and licenced to lecture on mathematics. In 1586, on the recommendation of Parsons, he was appointed to the Jesuit Mission to England, where he landed on July 7th. It is said that he was so remarkably amiable and gentle that Aquaviva, the General of the Jesuits, objected to his appointment on the ground that the post required a man of sterner and more unyielding character. Bellarmine records that his sanctity of life was incomparable; but Jesuits are apt to entertain peculiar notions of sanctity. As was then usual, Garnet on coming to his native country adopted a string of aliases—Walley, Darcy, Mease, Roberts, Parmer, and Phillips. Walley, however, was the name by which he was best known. Two years after he joined the Mission, he was promoted to be its Superior. For some years he lived in the neighbourhood of London, following various occupations to disguise his real calling, but chiefly that of a horse-dealer. That he was implicated in the intrigues with Spain before the death of Elizabeth, he never attempted to deny: but during the lull in the penal legislation which followed the accession of James, Garnet purchased a general pardon for all past political offences. He was frequently at Harrowden, the house of Lord Vaux, whose daughter Anne travelled everywhere with him, passing as his sister, Mrs Perkins. About 1599, as “Mr Mease, a Berkshire man,” he took the house in Enfield Chase, named White Webbs, for the meetings of the Romanists, after which he was “seldom absent from it for a quarter of a year together.” (Examination of James Johnson, servant in charge of White Webbs, Gunpowder Plot Book, article 188.) This house was ostensibly taken for Anne Vaux, and was maintained at her expense; her sister Eleanor, with her husband Mr Brooksby (whose alias was Jennings, and who is described as “of low stature, red beard, and bald head”), being often with her. Catesby was a frequent visitor. Anne Vaux had also a house at Wandsworth, where she and Garnet occasionally resided.

These details, gathered from the evidence of Anne Vaux herself, James Johnson, and others, do not, however, agree with some statements of Gerard. He asserts that Mrs Brooksby was a widow, and was the real mistress of the house; and he compares the two to the sisters of Lazarus, “the two women who received our Lord”! It is impossible to avoid seeing the tacit further comparison as to Garnet. When a Queen’s messenger arrived, Gerard writes, “rosaries, etcetera, all signs of piety (!) are thrown into a cavern; the mistress is hidden away: on these occasions the younger sister, the unmarried one, passed for the mistress of the house.” (Gerard to Aquaviva, quoted by Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, volume 4, page 36.) All the evidence, apart from this, tends to show that Brooksby was alive, and that he and Eleanor were only visitors—though very constant ones—at White Webbs, where Anne was the real mistress. In 1603, Garnet was returned as living “with Mrs Brooksby, of Leicestershire, at Arundell House. He hath lodgings of his own in London.” (Domestic State Papers, James the First, volume 8, article 50.) These lodgings were in Thames Street. A large house at Erith was also a frequent meeting-place of the recusants.

That Garnet was acquainted with the Gunpowder Plot from its very beginning is a moral certainty, notwithstanding his earnest efforts to show the contrary. He not only made assertions which he afterwards allowed to be false; but he set up at different times two lines of defence which were inconsistent. He had been told nothing: yet, he had tried to dissuade Catesby and his colleagues from the execution of the plot. If the first allegation were true, the other must have been false. But Garnet’s distinctly avowed opinions on the question of equivocation make it impossible to accept any denial from him. He believed that while, “in the common intercourse of life, it is not lawful to use equivocation,” yet “where it becomes necessary to an individual for his defence, or for avoiding any injustice or loss, or for obtaining any important advantage, without danger or mischief to any other person, there equivocation is lawful.” He held, as some do at the present day, that “if the law be unjust, then is it, ipso facto, void and of no force:” so that “the laws against recusants—are to be esteemed as no laws by such as steadfastly believe these (Romish rites) to be necessary observances of the true religion... That is no treason at all which is made treason by an unjust law.” In other words, the subject is to be the judge of the justice of the law, and if in his eyes it be unjust, he is released from the necessity of obeying it! This is simply to do away with all law at once; for probably no law was ever made which did not appear unjust to somebody: and it lays down the grand and ancient principle that every man shall do what is right in his own eyes. We have heard a good deal of this doctrine lately; it is of Jesuit origin, and a distinct contradiction of that Book which teaches that “the powers that be are ordained of God, and whosoever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.” Those who set up such claims, however they may disavow it, really hold that Christ’s kingdom is of this world, since they place it in rivalry to the secular authority. “If thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.” One great distinction of the Antichrist is that he is ho anomos, the Lawless One. Even further than this, Garnet was prepared to go, and did go at his last examination. “In all cases,” he said, “where simple equivocation is allowable, it is lawful if necessary to confirm it by an oath. This I acknowledge to be according to my opinion, and the opinion of the Schoolmen; and our reason is, for that in cases of lawful equivocation, the speech by equivocation being saved from a lie, the same speech may be without perjury confirmed by oath, or by any other usual way, though it were by receiving the Sacrament, if just necessity so require.” (Domestic State Papers, James the First, volume 20, article 218.) Garnet asserted that Catesby did him much wrong, by saying that in Queen Elizabeth’s time he had consulted him as to the lawfulness of the “powder action,” which was “most untrue;” but after the preceding extracts, who could believe their writer on his oath? Poor Anne Vaux, who undoubtedly meant to excuse and save him, urged that he used to say to the conspirators in her hearing, “Good gentlemen, be quiet; God will do all for the best:” and Garnet’s own last confession admitted that “partly upon hope of prevention, partly for that I would not betray my friend, I did not reveal the general knowledge of Mr Catesby’s intention which I had by him.” (Domestic State Paper, volume 20, article 12.) He allowed also that about a year before the Queen’s death, he had received two briefs from Rome, bidding him not consent to the accession of any successor to her who would not submit to the Pope: he had shown them to Catesby, and then burned them. Catesby, said Garnet, considered himself authorised to act as he did by these briefs; but he had tried vainly to dissuade him from so doing, since the Pope had forbidden the action. (Ibidem, volume 18, articles 41, 42.) In September, 1605, Garnet led a pilgrimage of Roman Catholics to Saint Winifred’s Well, in returning from which, he and Anne Vaux visited Rushton, the seat of Francis Tresham. Sir Thomas, his father, was then just dead, and the widowed Lady Tresham “kept her chamber” accordingly. They stayed but one night (Examination of Anne Vaux, Gunpowder Plot Book, article 212), and then returned to Goathurst, where they remained for some weeks, until on the 29th of October they removed, with the Digbys and Brooksbys, to Coughton, the house of Mr Thomas Throckmorton, which Sir Everard had borrowed, on account of its convenient proximity to Dunchurch, the general rendezvous for the conspirators after the execution of the plot. This journey to Coughton was considered strong evidence against Garnet; and his meaning has never been solved, in writing that “all Catholics know it was necessary.” (Domestic State Papers, volume 19, article 11.) At Coughton was the Reverend Oswald Greenway, another Jesuit priest, who has left a narrative of the whole account, wherein he describes the conspirators and their doings with a pen dipped in honey. In the night between November 5th and 6th, Bates arrived at Coughton with Digby’s letter, which afterwards told heavily against Garnet. Garnet remained at Coughton until about the 16th of December, when at the instigation of his friend Edward Hall (alias Oldcorne) he removed to Hendlip Hall. Garnet and Hall made up between them an elaborate story describing their arrival at Hendlip, and immediate hiding, on Sunday night, January 19th; but this was afterwards confessed both by Hall and Owen to be false, and Garnet was overheard to blame Hall for not having kept to the text of his lesson in one detail.

Nicholas Owen, Garnet’s friend and servant, committed suicide in the Tower, on March 2nd, from fear of further torture. Mr Abington, who had “voluntarily offered to die at his own gate, if any such were to be found in his house or in that sheire,” was condemned to death, but afterwards pardoned on condition of never again quitting the county. Made wiser by adversity, he spent the rest of his life in innocent study of the history and antiquities of Worcestershire.

The remainder of Garnet’s story is given in the tale, and is almost pure history as there detailed. In his conferences with Hall, he made no real profession of innocence, only perpetual assurances that he “trusted to wind himself out” of the charges brought against him; and when Lord Salisbury said—“Mr Garnet, give me but one argument that you were not consenting to it (the plot), that can hold in any indifferent man’s ear or sense, besides your bare negative,”—Garnet made no answer. He persistently continued to deny any knowledge of White Webbs, until confronted with Johnson; and all acquaintance with the plot before his receipt of Digby’s letter at Coughton, until shown the written confession of Hall, and the testimony of Forset and Locherson concerning his own whispered admissions. When at last he was driven to admit the facts previously denied with abundant oaths, he professed himself astonished that the Council were scandalised at his reckless falsehoods. “What should I have done?” he writes. “Why was I to be denied every lawful (!) means of escape?” That the Government did not deal fairly with Garnet—that, as is admitted by the impartial Dr Jardine, “few men came to their trial under greater disadvantages,” and that “he had been literally surrounded by snares,”—may be allowed to the full; but when all is said for him that honesty can say, no doubt remains that he was early acquainted with and morally responsible for the Gunpowder Plot. The evidence may be found in Jardine’s Narrative of the Plot; to produce it here would be to swell the volume far beyond its present dimensions. One point, however, must not be omitted. There have been two raids on the Public Record Office, two acts of abstraction and knavery with respect to these Gunpowder Plot papers; and it can be certainly stated, from the extracts made from them by Dr Abbott and Archbishop Bancroft, that the stolen papers were precisely those which proved Garnet’s guilt most conclusively. A Manuscript letter from Dr Jardine to Mr Robert Lemon, attached to the Gunpowder Plot Book, states that Mr Lemon’s father had “often observed to me that ‘those fellows the Jesuits, in the time of the Powder Plot (not the Gunpowder Plot) had stolen away some of the most damning proofs against Garnet.’ That thievery of some kind abstracted such documents as the Treatise of Equivocation, with Garnet’s handwriting on it—the most important of the interlocutions between Garnet and Hall in the Tower—and all the examinations of Garnet respecting the Pope’s Breves, is quite clear. The first thievery I have proved to have been made by Archbishop Laud; the others probably occurred in the reigns of Charles the Second and James the Second, when Jesuits and ‘Jesuited persons’ had free access to the State Paper Office.” An old proverb deprecates “showing the cat the way to the cream;” but there is one folly still more reprehensible—placing the cat in charge of the dairy. Let us beware it is not done again.

John Grant.

Of this conspirator very little is known apart from the plot. His residence was at Norbrook, a few miles south of Warwick,—a walled and moated house, of which nothing remains save a few fragments of massive stone walls, and the line of the moat may be distinctly traced, while “an ancient hall, of large dimensions, is also apparent among the partitions of a modern farmer’s kitchen.” Before May, 1602, he married Dorothy Winter, the sister of two of the conspirators. He had been active in the Essex insurrection, for which he was fined; and with his brother-in-law, Robert Winter, he was sent for by Catesby, in January, 1605, for the purpose of being initiated into the conspiracy: but he was not sworn until March 31. Greenway describes him as “a man of accomplished manners, but of a melancholy and taciturn disposition;” Gerard tells us that “he was as fierce as a lion, of a very undaunted courage,” which he was wont to exhibit “unto poursuivants and prowling companions” when they came to ransack the house—by which dubious expression is probably intended not burglars but officers of the law. “He paid them so well for their labour, not with crowns of gold, but with cracked crowns sometimes, and with dry blows instead of drink and good cheer, that they durst not visit him any more, unless they brought great store of help with them.” Mr Grant appears to have anticipated some tactics of modern times. All else that is known of him will be found in the tale. His wife Dorothy seems to have been a lady of a cheerful and loquacious character, to judge by the accounts of Sir E. Walsh and Sir R. Verney, who thought she had no knowledge of the conspiracy. (Gunpowder Plot Book, articles 75, 90.) It is, however, possible that Mrs Dorothy was as clever as her brothers, and contrived to “wind herself out of” suspicion better than she deserved.

John Grant had at least two brothers, Walter and Francis, the latter of whom was apprenticed to a silk-man; the relationship of Ludovic Grant is less certain. He had also two married sisters, Mrs Bosse, and Anne, wife of his bailiff Robert Higgins. (Gunpowder Plot Book, articles 34, 44, 68, 90.) His mother, and (then unmarried) sister Mary were living in 1603.