[288] See Appendix K, Myths of the Powder Plot.
[289] In connection with this appears an interesting example of the natural philosophy of the time, it being said that Faukes selected this mode of escape, hoping that water, being a non-conductor, would save him from the effects of the explosion.
[290] I am informed on high authority that on the day in question it was high water at London Bridge between five and six p.m. In his Memorials of the Tower of London (p. 136) Lord de Ros says that the vessel destined to convey him to Flanders was to be in waiting for Faukes at the river side close by, and that in it he was to drop down the river with the ebb tide. It would, of course, have been impossible for any sea-going craft to make its way up to Westminster; nor would the ebb tide run to order.
[291] It is frequently said that the testimony of Bishop Goodman, who has been so often cited, is discredited by the fact that he probably died a Catholic, for he was attended on his death-bed by the Dominican Father, Francis à S. Clara (Christopher Davenport), chaplain to Queen Henrietta Maria, a learned man who indulged in the dream of corporate reunion between England and Rome, maintaining that the Anglican articles were in accordance with Catholic doctrine.
In his will Goodman professed that as he lived, so he died, most constant in all the articles of the Christian Faith, and in all the doctrine of God's holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, "whereof," he says, "I do acknowledge the Church of Rome to be the Mother Church. And I do verily believe that no other church hath any salvation in it, but only so far as it concurs with the faith of the Church of Rome." On this, Mr. Brewer, his editor, observes that a sound Protestant might profess as much, the question being what meaning is to be given to the terms employed. Moreover, the same writer continues, Goodman cannot have imagined that his life had been a constant profession of Roman doctrine, inasmuch as he advanced steadily from one preferment to another in the Church of England, and strongly maintaining her doctrines formally denounced those of Rome. What is certain, however, is this, that in the very work from which his evidence is quoted he speaks in such a manner as to show that whatever were his religious opinions, he was a firm believer in the Royal Supremacy and a lover of King James, whom he thus describes: "Truly I did never know any man of so great an apprehension, of so great love and affection,—a man so truly just, so free from all cruelty and pride, such a lover of the church, and one that had done so much good for the church." (Court of King James, i. 91.)
CHAPTER VII.
PERCY, CATESBY, AND TRESHAM.
On occasion of a notorious trial in the Star Chamber, in the year 1604,[292] Bancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, made the significant observation[293] that nothing was to be discovered concerning the Catholics "but by putting some Judas amongst them." That amongst the Powder Plot conspirators there was some one who played such a part, who perhaps even acted as a decoy-duck to lure the others to destruction, has always been suspected, but with sundry differences of opinion as to which of the band it was. Francis Tresham has most commonly been supposed at least to have sent the warning letter to Monteagle, which proved fatal to himself and his comrades: some writers have conjectured that he did a good deal more.[294] Monteagle himself, as we have seen, has been supposed by others to have been in the Plot and to have betrayed it. It would appear, however, that neither of these has so strong a claim to this equivocal distinction as one whose name has been scarcely mentioned hitherto in such a connection.