With the prisoners, other than Sir Everard Digby, I have nothing to do, and it will suffice to say, that, at the conclusion of the Attorney-General’s speech, the depositions of their examinations in the Tower—“the voluntary confessions of all the said several traitors in writings subscribed with their own proper hands”—were then read aloud. These are very interesting, and have already been partially used in framing the story in the preceding pages. They are humble and penitent in tone, and as a specimen of this apparent penitence I will quote the opening of one of the longest, namely that by Thomas Winter.[393]
“My most honorable Lordes.—Not out of hope to obtayne pardon, for speakinge of my temporall past, I may say the fault is greater than can be forgiven, nor affectinge hereby the title of a good subject, for I must redeeme my countrey from as great a danger as I have hazarded the bringinge her into, before I can purchase any such opinion; only at your Ho. Commans I will breifely sett downe my owne accusation, and how farr I have proceeded in this busyness wch I shall the faythfuller doe since I see such courses are not pleasinge to Allmighty God, and that all or the most material parts have been allready confessed.”
At the conclusion of the public reading of these confessions, the Lord Chief Justice made some remarks to the jury, and then directed them to consider of their verdict; upon “which they retired into a separate place.”[394]
Sir Everard Digby was then arraigned by himself upon a separate indictment issued by Sir Christopher Yelverton and other special commissioners of Oyer & Terminer, on the 16th of January, at Wellingborough, in Northamptonshire, and delivered to the same commission in Middlesex that had tried the other prisoners. It charged him with High Treason in conspiring the death of the king, with conferring with Catesby in Northamptonshire concerning the Gunpowder Plot, assenting to the design, and taking the oath of secrecy.
As soon as the indictment was read, Sir Everard began to make a speech; but was interrupted by being told that he must first plead, either guilty or not guilty, and that then he would be allowed to say what he liked.
He at once confessed that he was guilty of the treason; and then he spoke of the motives which had led him to it.[395] The first of these was neither ambition, nor discontent, nor ill-will towards any member of Parliament, but his intense friendship and affection for Robert Catesby, whose influence over him was so great that he could not help risking his own property and his life at his bidding. The second motive was the cause of religion, on behalf of which he was glad to endanger “his estate, his life, his name, his memory, his posterity, and all worldly and earthly felicity whatsoever.” His third motive was prompted by the broken promises to Catholics, and had as its object the prevention of the harder laws which they feared and professed to have solid reasons for fearing, from the new Parliament; as “that Recusant’s Wives, and women, should be liable to the Mulct as well as their husbands and men.” And further, that “it was supposed, that it should be made a Præmunire onely to be a Catholick.”
Having stated the motives of his crime, he proceeded to make his petitions—[396] “That sithens his offence was confined and contained within himself, that the punishment also of the same might extend only to himself, and not be transferred either to his Wife, Children, Sisters, or others: and therefore for his Wife he humbly craved, that she might enjoy her Joynture, his Son the benefit of an Entail made long before any thought of this action; his Sisters, their just and due portions which were in his hands; his Creditors, their rightful Debts; which that he might more justly set down under his hand, he requested, that before his death, his Man (who was better acquainted both with the men and the particulars than himself) might be licensed to come unto him. Then prayed he pardon of the King and Ll. for his guilt, and lastly, he entreated to be beheaded, desiring all men to forgive him, and that his death might satisfie them for his trespass.”
The daylight was waning quickly in the great hall of Westminster, on that short January day, when Sir Edward Coke, the Attorney-General, rose from his seat, at the conclusion of Sir Everard Digby’s dignified but distressed speech. He had already shown refinement of cruelty in treating the prisoners to a detailed description of the horrors of the death that was awaiting them, and he was now again ready to inflict as much pain as possible.
As to Sir Everard’s friendship with Catesby, he said, it was “mere folly, and wicked Conspiracy”; his religion was “Error and Heresie”; his promises—it does not appear that he had made any—were “idle and vain presumptions”; “as also his fears, false alarms, Concerning Wives that were Recusants.” “If a man married one,” great reason there is, “that he or they should pay for it”; but if a wife “were no Recusant at the time of Marriage”—as had been the case with Lady Digby, although he did not mention her by name—“and yet afterwards he suffer her to be corrupted and seduced, by admitting Priests and Romanists into his house”—Roger Lee and Father Gerard, for instance, Sir Everard might understand him to imply—“good reason that he, be he Papist or Protestant, should pay for his negligence and misgovernment.”
Next he dealt with Sir Everard’s petitions on behalf of his wife, children, sisters, &c., and on this point he became eloquent.[397] “Oh how he doth now put on the bowels of Nature and Compassion in the perils of his private and domesticated estate! But before, when the publick state of his Countrey, when the King, the Queen, the tender Princes, the Nobles, the whole Kingdom, were designed to a perpetual destruction, Where was then this piety, this Religious affection?” “All Nature, all Humanity, all respect of Laws both Divine and Humane, were quite abandoned; then there was no conscience made to extirpate the whole Nation, and all for a pretended zeal to the Catholick Religion, and the justification of so detestable and damnable a Fact.”