What Gunpowder Plot Was - Samuel Rawson Gardiner

East End of the Prince’s Chamber.
Published July 1, 1804, by J. T. Smith.

Views of the East Side of the House of Lords, the East End of the Prince’s Chamber, &c.
Taken October 8, 1807.

N.B. From the doorway out of which a man is peeping, nearly in the centre of the print,
Guy Fawkes was to have made his escape. Published Nov. 4, 1807, by J. T. Smith.

That in the early part of the nineteenth century the storey beneath this room was occupied by a passage leading from the court opening on Parliament Place, and Cotton Garden, is shown in the plan at p. 81; and the views at pp. 88, 89, rather indicate that that passage was in existence when the old house, which I call Whynniard’s block, was still undemolished. If this was so, we are able to find a place for the ‘little entry,’ under which, according to Winter, the conspirators worked. This view of the case, too, is borne out by Smith’s statement, that ‘in the further end of that court,’ i.e. the court running up from Parliament Place, ‘is a doorway, through which, and turning to the left through another doorway, is the immediate way out of the cellar where the powder-plot was intended to take effect.’[142] It seems likely that the whole long space under the withdrawing room was used as a passage, though, on the other hand, the part of what was afterwards a passage may have been blocked by a room, in which case we have the ‘low room new builded’—i.e. built in some year in Elizabeth’s reign—in which the powder was stored.

Having thus fixed the position of the house belonging to Parliament, and shown that it probably consisted of a long room in one storey, we can hardly fail to discover the second house as that marked B in the plan on p. 81, since that house alone combines the conditions of being close to the House of Lords, and having a door and window looking towards the river.