On Thursday, January 30, 1605-6, Sir Everard Digby, Robert Winter, John Grant, and Thomas Bates, were executed at the west end of St. Paul’s church; and on Friday, January 31st, the sentence of the law was carried into effect on Thomas Winter, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keys, and Guy Fawkes, in Old Palace-yard, Westminster, and at no great distance from the House of Lords, the scene of their recent treason.
Most of these wretched men evinced much penitence, both in prison and on the scaffold. It is remarkable that Fawkes, the most desperate of the whole number, appeared to be the most penitent at the time of his execution. They all declared their adherence to the church of Rome, dying, as they had lived, in her communion. They requested that the officers in attendance would communicate this their dying declaration to the world.
After the execution, their bodies, being quartered, were hung up in various parts of the city, as was the custom at that time with those who were put to death for treason. The heads of Catesby and Percy were fixed upon the House of Lords, where they remained some years after, when Osborne wrote his Memoirs of King James; unless, as he intimates, they had been removed, and others substituted in their room. It was reported when he wrote, that the heads then fixed on the House of Lords were not those of the two conspirators, but the heads of two other individuals procured, probably, from some church-yard, by the friends of Catesby and Percy, and fixed upon the poles for the purpose of preventing the discovery of the theft[21].
James acted with great lenity towards the families of the conspirators. By the statute respecting treason the property of the convicted traitor is forfeited to the crown; but in the cases of these individuals the children or heirs of those who were in possession of property were permitted to enjoy it. There was nothing vindictive in James’s character; and he would have spared even these conspirators, if it had been possible.
Such was the fate of men who appear to have been guiltless of any other crime, and who would not have been implicated in this horrible treason, but for the influence of those principles which the church of Rome instilled into the minds of her deluded followers.
Footnotes:
[20] King James’s Works, fol. 336.
[21] Osborne’s Works, p. 434.
CHAPTER VII.
THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF GARNET, THE JESUIT—THE ALLEGED MIRACLE OF THE STRAW—IS DECLARED A MARTYR.