[170] Sir R. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia (Harleian Miscellany, ii. 106).
[171] Blount to Parsons (Stonyhurst MSS.), Anglia, vi. 64.
[172] Such letters are found amongst the State Papers.
[173] The amount, it would seem, cannot have been less than this. A barrel of gunpowder, containing four firkins, weighed 400 lb., and had the casks in the cellar all been barrels, in the strict sense of the word, the amount would therefore have exceeded six tons. Some of these casks, we are told, were small, but some were hogsheads. The twenty barrels first laid in are described as "whole barrels." (Faukes, January 20th, 1605-6.)
[174] An interesting illustration of this point is furnished by a strange piece of evidence furnished by W. Andrew, servant to Sir E. Digby. Sir Everard's office was to organize the rising in the Midlands, after the catastrophe, but he apparently forgot to supply himself with powder till the very eve of the appointed day. Andrew averred that on the night of November 4th, his master secretly asked him to procure some powder in the neighbouring town, whereupon he asked, "How much? A pound, or half a pound?" Sir Everard said 200 or 300 lb. Deponent purchased one pound. (Tanner MSS. lxxv. f. 205 b.)
One Matthew Batty mentioned Lord Monteagle as having bought gunpowder. (Ibid. v. 40.)
In the same collection is a copy of some notes by Sir E. Coke (f. 185 b), in which the price of the powder discovered is put down as £200, i.e. some £2,000 of our money.
[175] Gunpowder was measured by the last = 2,400 lb. (Tomline's Law Dictionary.) In 1607 there were delivered out of the store 14 lasts and some cwts. In 1608 the amount in various strong places is entered as: "Dover Castle, 4 lasts; Arcliffe Bullwark, 1 last; Walmer, 1 last, 8 cwt.; Deal Castle, 1 last; Sandown Castle, 2 lasts, etc.; Sandgate, 1 last; Camber, 1 last."
[176] The position and character of the "cellar" admit of no doubt, as appears from the testimony of Smith's Antiquities of Westminster, Brayley and Britton's Ancient Palace of Westminster, and Capon's notes on the same, Vetusta Monumenta, v. They are, however, inconsistent with some circumstances alleged by the government. Thus, Sir Everard Digby's complicity with "the worst part" of the treason, which on several occasions he denied, is held to be established by a confession of Faukes, which cannot now be found among the State Papers, but which is mentioned in Sir E. Coke's speech upon Digby's arraignment, and is printed in Barlow's Gunpowder Treason, p. 68. In Sir E. Coke's version it runs thus: "Fawkes, then present at the bar, had confessed, that some time before that session, the said Fawkes being with Digby at his house in the country, about which time there had fallen much wet, Digby taking Fawkes aside after supper, told him he was much afraid that the powder in the cellar was grown damp, and that some new must be provided, lest that should not take fire."
Seeing, however, that the powder stood above ground, within a most substantial building, and could be reached by the rain only if this should first flood the Chamber of the Peers, it does not seem as if the idea of such a danger should have suggested itself.