[378] S. P. Dom. Elizabeth, Vol. 165 n. 21.
[379] Papers or Letters of Sir Everard Digby. Appendix to the Gunpowder Treason, by Thomas, Bp. of Lincoln, p. 181.
CHAPTER XV.
On Monday, the 27th of January 1606, Sir Everard Digby, Robert and Thomas Winter, Guy Fawkes, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, and Thomas Bates, were taken from their cells in the Tower, led to a barge, and conveyed up the river to Westminster to be put on their trial in the celebrated hall, which stands on the site of the banquetting room of William Rufus. They were to stand before their accusers on soil already famous, and destined to become yet more famous for important trials. Here, three hundred years earlier, Sir William Wallace had been condemned to death. Here, only about eighty years before their own time came, both Anne Boleyn and Sir Thomas More had been tried and sentenced. In this splendid building, Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, and King Charles the First were destined to be condemned to the block. In the following century, sentence of death was here to be passed upon the rebel lords of 1745; here too, still later, Warren Hastings and Lord Melville were to be impeached.
Sir Everard Digby and his fellow-prisoners reached Westminster about half-an-hour before the time fixed for the trial, and they were taken to the Star Chamber to await the arrival of their judges. The following is a contemporary account of their appearance and behaviour while there.
[380]“It was strange to note their carriage, even in their very countenances: some hanging down the head, as if their hearts were full of doggedness, and others forcing a stern look, as if they would fear” [“that is frighten. Footnote.”] “death with a frown, never seeming to pray, except it were by the dozen upon their beads, and taking tobacco, as if hanging were no trouble to them; saying nothing but in commendation of their conceited religion, craving mercy of neither God nor the king for their offences, and making their consciences, as it were, as wide as the world; and to the very gates of hell, to be the cause of their hellish courses, to make a work meritorious.”
This writer clearly did not go to the trial prepared to be pleased with the prisoners. If they looked down, they were “dogged”and ought to have been looking up; if they looked up, they were “forcing a stern look,”and ought to have been looking down: if they were not praying, they should have been praying, and if they were praying, yea, even praying “by the dozen,”they should have not have been praying; if they smoked, it was because they did not mind being hanged; if they talked of nothing but religion, it was because they did not desire God’s mercy, and one thing was certain—that their prayers and their religion and all things about them, to their very consciences, were “hellish.”
Sir John Harrington was another unadmiring spectator.