According to Father Gerard, however, the premises occupied by Percy were far too small to make this explanation permissible.
“We learn,” he says, “on the unimpeachable evidence of Mrs. Whynniard’s servant that the house afforded accommodation only for one person at a time, so that when Percy came there to spend the night, Fawkes, who passed for his man, had to lodge out. This suggests another question. Percy’s pretext for laying in so much fuel was that he meant to bring up his wife to live there. But how could this be under such conditions?”[143]
Mrs. Whynniard’s servant, however, Roger James, did not use the words here put into his mouth. He said that he had heard from Mrs. Gibbons ‘that Mr. Percy hath lain in the said lodging divers times himself, but when he lay there, his man lay abroad, there being but one bed in the said lodging.’
Fawkes, therefore, lodged out when his master came, not because there was not a second room in the house, but because there was only one bed. If Mrs. Percy arrived alone she would probably find one bed sufficient for herself and her husband. If she brought any maidservants with her, beds could be provided for them without much difficulty. Is it not likely that the plan of sending Fawkes out to sleep was contrived with the object of persuading the Whynniards that as matters stood no more than one person could occupy the house at night, and of thus putting them off the scent, at the time when the miners were congregated in it?
A more serious problem is presented by Father Gerard’s inquiry ‘how proceedings so remarkable’ as the digging of the mine could have escaped the notice, not only of the Government, but of the entire neighbourhood.
“This,” he continues, “it must be remembered, was most populous. There were people living in the very building a part of which sheltered the conspirators. Around were thickly clustered the dwellings of the Keeper of the Wardrobe, auditors and tellers of the Exchequer, and other such officials. There were tradespeople and workmen constantly employed close to the spot where the work was going on; while the public character of the place makes it impossible to suppose that tenants such as Percy and his friends, who were little better than lodgers, could claim the exclusive use of anything beyond the rooms they rented—even when allowed the use of them—or could shut against the neighbours and visitors in general the precincts of so frequented a spot.”[144]
To this is added the following footnote:—
“The buildings of the dissolved College of St. Stephen, comprising those around the House of Lords, were granted by Edward VI. to Sir Ralph Lane. They reverted to the Crown under Elizabeth, and were appropriated as residences for the auditors and tellers of the Exchequer. The locality became so populous that in 1606 it was forbidden to erect more houses.”
This statement is reinforced by a conjectural view of the neighbourhood founded on the ‘best authorities’ by Mr. H. W. Brewer.[145] Mr. Brewer who has since kindly examined with me the drawings and plans in the Crace Collection, on which I rely, has, I think, been misled by those early semi-pictorial maps, which, though they may be relied on for larger buildings, such as the House of Lords or St. Stephen’s Chapel, are very imaginative in their treatment of private houses. In any case I deny the existence of the two large houses placed by him between what I infer to have been Whynniard’s house and the river side.
The history of the land between the wall of the old palace on which stood the river front of Whynniard’s house, and the bank of the Thames, can be traced with tolerable accuracy. It formed part of a larger estate, formerly the property of the dissolved chapel of St. Stephen, granted by Edward VI. to Sir Ralph Fane;[146] Father Gerard’s Sir Ralph Lane being a misprint or a mistake. Fane, however, was hanged shortly afterwards, and the estate, reverting to the Crown, was re-granted to Sir John Gates.[147] Again reverting to the Crown, it was dealt with in separate portions, and the part on which the Exchequer officers’ residences was built was to the north of Cotton Garden, and being quite out of earshot of Whynniard’s house, need not concern us here. In 1588, the Queen granted to John Whynniard, then an officer of the Wardrobe, a lease of several parcels of ground for thirty years.[148] Some of these were near Whitehall, others to the south of Parliament Stairs. The only one which concerns us is a piece of land lying between the wall of the Old Palace, on which the river-front of Whynniard’s house was built, and the Thames. In 1600 the reversion was granted to two men named Evershed and Holland, who immediately sold it to Whynniard, thus constituting him the owner of the land in perpetuity. In the deed conveying it to him, this portion is styled:—