Lord Monteagle immediately carried the warning to Cecil. On the morrow the conspirators learnt that they were betrayed. Nothing happened, however, to show that the mine had been discovered. Guy Fawkes recognized all his secret marks again, and, notwithstanding the growing uneasiness engendered by the information received, Guy Fawkes continued to mount guard in the cellar. The other conspirators waited the event with the courage of insanity. On the 4th, in the daytime, Fawkes was at his post when the Earl of Suffolk, High Chamberlain, entrusted with the preparations for the opening of Parliament, appeared at the door of the cellar. He cast a careless look around him. The barrels of powder were hidden beneath a heap of wood and fagots. "Your master has made great provision of fuel," he said to Fawkes, who had represented himself as the servant of Percy, and he quitted the dangerous cellar. Fawkes hastily gave intimation to Percy, who had remained in London, then he returned to his mine. At two o'clock in the morning he was arrested.
All the conspirators had taken to flight. Catesby still hoped to rouse the Catholics to insurrection, but none responded to the appeal. On the 7th of November they were assembled together in a house at Holbeach, upon the borders of Staffordshire, being resolved to perish to the last man in defending themselves. Sir Robert Walsh, sheriff of Worcester, caused the residence to be surrounded by his troops. There was no means of escaping, the house had already been fired. "Stay, fool!" cried Catesby to Winter, "we will die together." Both grasped their swords and sprang upon the assailants. They were immediately killed. Several others perished likewise. Sir Everard Digby was arrested, as well as other less distinguished conspirators. Tresham had remained quietly in London, counting upon his treachery to save him. He was arrested and taken to the Tower with his accomplices.
Guy Fawkes had, meanwhile, been questioned by the king himself. Indomitable even in the ruin of his hopes and the mortal peril in which he was situated: "How could you bear the thought of causing my children and so many innocent persons to perish?" said King James. "For desperate ills there must be desperate remedies," replied the bold conspirator. "Why did you collect so much powder?" asked a Scottish courtier. "I had purposed to cause all the Scots to be blown as far as Scotland," Fawkes said gravely. He was several times put to the torture, always refusing to tell the names of his accomplices. He was assured they had fled and were arrested. "It is useless then to name them," maintained Fawkes, "they have named themselves." It was through Bates, a servant of Catesby, that the complicity of the Jesuits Greenway and Garnet was discovered. Tresham had also given evidence against them, but being attacked in his prison with a serious illness he retracted his accusations, and died on the 23d of December, not without some suspicion of poison.
Greenway had succeeded in escaping; but Garnet, a provincial of the order of Jesuits, was arrested with Oldcorne, one of his own order. Both were submitted to torture; both finally confessed their knowledge of the plot, which, they said, they had often opposed, the order of Pope Paul V. being to suffer all and to win by patience the crown of life. In spite of the skill and eloquence of Garnet the two Jesuits suffered death; but Garnet was not executed till the 3d of May. All the conspirators who had fallen into the hands of justice had expiated their crime on the 30th of January. Oldcorne died at the end of February.
The terror which the plot occasioned, the horror excited in all classes of society, of which we still find the traces in the custom of burning in the streets upon the 5th of November, an effigy that bears the name of Guy Fawkes, fell upon the Catholics, who were persecuted in a mass with fresh rigor, even though they were strangers to the conspiracy. It was Parliament that urged the king into this fatal path. The ministers were obliged to moderate the ardor of the members who had been threatened with being blown into the air with his Majesty.
Royal visits amused James, and relieved him for awhile from the anxieties which his people occasioned him. The King of Denmark, brother-in-law of the King of England, who had married Anne of Denmark, and the Prince of Vaudemont, of the House of Guise, spent a few weeks in England, setting the courtiers an example of debauchery which did not prevent James from continuing to discuss all the theological questions of the time, in writing or by word of mouth, with Catholics as well as Puritans. He would always cause his adversaries to be thrown into prison when their reasons became too powerful, a resource especially valuable when it happened, as in 1607, an insurrection broke out during the discussions. A question had arisen, as in the days of Edward VI., of the right of enclosure. The people of Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, and Leicestershire, claimed, with arms in their hands, the pasturage of waste lands. When the king was assured that it was not a plot of his theological antagonists, the insurrection was soon repressed, without revealing the extreme weakness of the government and the indolence of the king as well as of his ministers.
Parliament rejected the favorite project of James, who desired to unite not only the two crowns, but the two nations of England and Scotland by common laws and a common religion. The plan was good and useful, but premature. Scotland rejected it angrily, fearing to be subjected to England. The latter rejected it with disdain, asserting that the beggars of Scotland already came to England in sufficiently numerous bands, without its being necessary to make Englishmen of them. The subsidies were not voted. The king, dissatisfied, abandoned his proposals; but for two years he did not convoke Parliament. It was necessity alone which compelled him, in 1610, to claim the co-operation of his people in filling the treasury. Cecil, who had become successively Lord Cranborne and Earl of Salisbury, now sat at the Treasury and proposed enormous subsidies to the Commons; but Parliament presented a petition of grievances, and refused to vote anything without being assured of the redress of its wrongs. Negotiations were carried on for several months. Parliament at length granted a greatly reduced subsidy, without having obtained all that it demanded in return. A weak, indolent monarch, often indifferent concerning the most important affairs, James was as obstinate when it was a question of his prerogative as he was in matters of theology. Cecil died, it is said, of the sorrows and vexations which Parliament had compelled him to endure in the two sessions of 1610 and 1611. He expired on the 24th of May, 1612. Cunning and avaricious as his father, he had not always given proof of that greatness of purpose and firmness of resolve which made Burleigh the worthy minister of Queen Elizabeth.
While the king was discussing with the Dutchman Conrad Vorstein, upon the nature and attributes of the divinity, demanding of the States of Holland the banishment of his adversary, Lady Arabella Stuart, whose name had so often served as a watchword for conspiracies, without her ever having been implicated in them herself, for the first time in her life had become a plotter. Her object, however, was simply to marry William Seymour, grandson of the Earl of Hereford, to whom she had been attached from infancy. When the secret was discovered, the princess was imprisoned at Lambeth, and her husband thrown into the Tower. She saw him, however, sometimes, and being forcibly removed to Durham, she contrived to escape. Seymour also fled from his prison. Both desired only to live together abroad; but the husband alone reached a free country. The poor Lady Arabella was arrested aboard the vessel which was taking her across the Channel, and consigned to the Tower for the remainder of her life. She lost her reason and died in 1615, long forgotten even by those who had dreaded her name.