This house had been taken, a long time before this, by Anne Vaux, and was rented by her[232] as a convenient place near London for the meeting of priests and the Catholic laity. Unfortunately, it had gradually got more into the hands of her relatives, who found it useful for other purposes. These relatives were Catesby and Tresham.
At one time White Webbs had been inhabited almost exclusively by Jesuits, being used as a centre for the renovation of vows, religious retreats, and conferences upon the affairs of their missions.[233] In his examination,[234] Father Garnet said “that it was a spacious house fitt to receave so great a company that should resort to him thither; there being two bedds placed in a chamber, but thinketh there have not been above the number of 14 Jesuits at one time there.”Disastrously for himself and his order, he was obliged to confess[235] that “Catesby and Wynter, or Mr Catesby alone, came to him to White Webbs and tould this examt. there was a plott in hand for the Cathc. cause against the King and the State,” assuring him that it was something quite “lawfull”; but that he had “dissuaded him,”and that “he promised to surceasse.”
It was no secret that White Webbs had been one of the principal meeting-places of the Jesuits; therefore, after they had given up going there, and it had got into the hands of Catesby and his band of conspirators, the Government, not altogether unnaturally, supposed that the Jesuits had purposely assigned it to the plotters as a convenient place from which to carry out their dread design.
This, however, was not the case; for, in October 1605, Father Garnet had intended to have gone thither, but finding that Catesby and his friends had established themselves in the house, most likely with the purpose of carrying out the “plott in hand,” which he so greatly feared, he did not dare to go there,[236] “and so accepted the offer of Sir Everard to be his tenants at Coughton.”He felt the more anxious to go to Coughton because Catesby had promised to come there on the 31st;[237] and he says, “I assuredly, if they had come, had entered into the matter, and perhaps might have hindered all.”As the modern Jesuit, Father Pollen, says, “to be able to do this he would, of course, have to ask Catesby to allow him to open the matter, but of success in this, considering that Catesby had of his own accord offered to tell him, he did not much doubt, and, perhaps to make the negotiations easier, he had ordered Greenway to be there too.”The pity is that he had not “entered into the matter”earlier. Nervous and horror-stricken, he had refused to allow Catesby to tell him the details, when he had reason for believing a plot to be brewing; he was tongue-tied when he afterwards met Catesby, having heard those details in confession; yet, after being for some time at Gothurst with Catesby, it was not until Catesby had left that he came to the conclusion that he might, and that it was highly desirable that he should, beg Catesby’s leave to speak to him of a subject which had been transmitted to him through the confessional, at Catesby’s desire.
A zealous Catholic like Sir Everard would be comforted by learning that an envoy had been privately despatched to Rome, to explain everything to the Pope, from the point of view of the conspirators, as soon as the great event should have taken place. The person selected for this purpose was Sir Edward Baynham, a member of a good Gloucestershire family, and an intimate friend of Catesby’s. He had started in September. Unluckily for himself, Father Garnet, on hearing that Baynham was going to Rome, as Catesby’s messenger, had encouraged it, believing,[238] “that he had procured Baynham’s mission in order to inform the Pope generally of the Plot, and that this was the reason why he so confidently expected from his Holiness a prohibition of the whole business.”Father Garnet’s approval of Baynham’s mission was thus capable of quotation, or rather misquotation, to Sir Everard Digby, and would naturally confirm the reports of his full approval of the conspiracy, as previously cited by Catesby.
This mission of Baynham to Rome was destined to bring trouble upon the conspirators, Sir Everard among them. In the indictment afterwards made against them, was the following Count.[239] “That after the destruction of the King, the Queen, the Prince, and the Royal Issue Male, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, the Knights and Burgesses; they should notifie the same to Foreign States; and therefore Sir Edmund Bayham, an attainted person of Treason, and stiling himself prince of the damned crew, should be sent, and make the same known to the Pope, and crave his aid; an Ambassador fit, both for the message and persons, to be sent betwixt the Pope and the Devil.”
The last week of October must have been a time of great anxiety to Sir Everard. His companions at Gothurst appear to have been his wife and his two little children, Mrs Vaux, her sister-in-law, Anne Vaux, and Father Garnet. In the meantime he was making his preparations for the pretended coursing-meeting at Dunchurch. He was arranging how the arms, armour, and ammunition were to be conveyed in carts, covered over with other things to conceal them, and he was getting his men and horses ready for the start. He was also making preparations for the journey of his wife, children, and guests to Coughton, and for this party, alone, a good many servants and horses were required.
It is highly improbable that Catesby and the other conspirators at White Webbs kept up communications with their friend and ally at Gothurst; so most likely he was spared the anxiety of the news that on Saturday, the 26th, Lord Mounteagle had received, when at supper, an anonymous letter, warning him to “devyse some exscuse”for absenting himself from the “parleament,”and to “retyere”himself into the “contri”where he might “expect the event in safti for thoghe theare be no apparance of anni stir yet i saye they shall receyve a terribel blowe this parleament and yet they shall not seie who hurts them &c.”;[240] and that Lord Mounteagle[241] ordered a man in his service to read this letter then and there before the party assembled. Most likely, too, Sir Everard did not learn till much later that when, early in the following week, Catesby and Winter heard of the delivery of this letter of warning, they suspected Tresham of being its author; that, on Wednesday, the 30th, they summoned him, after he had been down in Northamptonshire for about a week, to come at once to White Webbs, with the full intention of poignarding him on the spot, if they could convince themselves that he had been guilty of writing and sending the warning, and that he denied it, with such firmness and so many oaths, that they hesitated to assassinate him, while still doubting his sincerity.
On Tuesday, the 29th of October, Lady Digby, her children, guests, and servants, started for Coughton, a journey of some fifty miles. In mentioning Coughton, it may be worth noticing how many of those whose names are more or less connected, even indirectly, with the story of the Gunpowder Plot were related to each other. The owner of Coughton, Thomas Throckmorton, was a cousin both of Catesby’s and of Tresham’s, although he never had anything to do with the conspiracy. He was also a cousin of the Vaux family, his grandmother having been a daughter of a Lord Vaux of Harrowden.
It being known that Father Garnet was to be at Coughton for All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day, many Catholics in the neighbourhood came thither in order to attend mass and go to their religious duties.