"La! bless me! there must be some mistake!" and other appeals of an ejaculatory but useless character.
Poor Guido Fawkes was examined by Popham, Coke, and Wood, whose names may now for the first time be noticed as appropriate to the business they were entrusted with. Popham is surely emblematical of the series of pops, bangs, and explosions that would have ensued from the Gunpowder Plot; while Coke and Wood are obviously symbolical of the combustibles required for fuel. In vain did these sagacious persons attempt to get anything from Guido, who said "he belonged to the Fawkes and not to the spoons, who might perhaps be made to convict themselves by cross questioning." Popham popped questions in abundance; Coke tried to coax out the truth; and Wood, if he could, would have got at the facts; but neither threats nor promises could prevent Fawkes from showing his metal.
Posterity, in altering his name to Guy Fox, has happily hit upon an appropriately expressed the cunning of his character. He confessed his own share in the business readily enough, but resolutely refused to betray his associates. "I will not acknowledge that Percy is in the plot," he cried; which reminds us of an intimation made by a gentleman just arrested, to his surrounding friends, that "he did not wish the bailiff pumped upon." A nod is as good as a wink in certain cases; and like winking the sheriff's officer was submitted to a course of hydropathic treatment. In the same manner the declaration of Fawkes that "Percy had nothing to do with it—oh, dear no, nothing at all!" was quite enough to put the authorities on the right scent had any such guidance been required.
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Poor Fawkes was so fearfully damaged by the torture he had undergone, that his handwriting was entirely spoiled; and specimens of his mode of signing his name after the torture, contrasted with the copy of his autograph before the cruel infliction, present the reverse of the result which writing-masters of our day boast of producing by their six lessons in penmanship.
Guido Fawkes, however, confessed nothing specifically beyond what the Government already knew, but Tresham and Catesby's servant Bates, a man remarkable for his bêtise, confessed whatever the authorities required. Tresham being seized with a fatal illness in prison, retracted his confession, which he declared had been extorted or "extortured"—as Strype has it—from him, and he died after placing his recantation in the hands of his wife to be given to Cecil. The surviving conspirators were brought to trial after some delay, and though they all pleaded not guilty, as long as there was a chance of escape, they were no sooner convicted beyond all hope than they began boasting of their offence, and were all "on the high ropes" when they came to the scaffold. Garnet the Jesuit was served up by way of garniture to the horrible banquet that the vengeance of the Protestants required. This brilliant character shone with increased lustre as the time for his execution approached, and however glorious had been his rise, the setting was worthy of Garnet in his very brightest moments.
Besides those who were executed for an avowal, or at least, a proved participation in the Gunpowder Plot, several persons were punished very severely, in the capacity of supplementary victims, who might, or might not, have been implicated in the conspiracy. Lords Mordaunt and Stourton, two Catholic nobles, were fined, respectively, £10,000 and £4000 because they did not happen to be in their places in Parliament, to be blown up, had Fawkes succeeded in accomplishing his object. The Earl of Northumberland was sent to the Tower for a few years, and mulcted of £30,000, because he had made Percy a gentleman pensioner, some years before; but no trouble was taken to show how this could have rendered him afterwards a rebel, nor how Northumberland could be responsible, even if such a result had really arrived. But it was urged by the apologists for this severity, that the Gunpowder Treason would have been fatal alike to the good and the bad, and that as the punishment should correspond with the offence, an indiscriminate dealing out of penalties among the guilty and the innocent was quite allowable.