From a theological point of view, it was a happy thing that he knew the plot in which he had been implicated to be all but universally condemned by his co-religionists. If many of them had defended it, and he had heard that there were two parties, one extenuating the conspiracy and another anathematising it, he might have clung to the belief that he had done nothing wrong, and that “rending of the heart” conducive to true contrition might have been wanting.
He had sinned deeply; let us hope that deep was his sorrow. Yet is not this the moment—the moment when we are supposing him in the deepest degradation of spirit for his iniquities—at which we may best say a kind word for him?
Hitherto I have written little in palliation of his crime; perhaps the very fact of his having professed my own religion may have made me more careful to say nothing that might have the appearance of minimising his guilt; nor, in the few more pages that I have still to write, do I intend to plead that his sentence ought to have been commuted on account of any extenuating circumstances. Unquestionably he deserved to die, but I beg to commend his memory to the mercy of my readers.
Let others speak for him. The Protestant Bishop Barlow, in his book on the Gunpowder Plot, which so severely condemns all concerned in it, says[406]:—“This Gentleman was verily persuaded of the lawfulness of this Design, and did engage in it out of a sincere, but ignorant zeal for the advancement, as he thought, of the true Religion.” These are the words of a hostile historian: the following—some of which have been quoted earlier—are those of a friend[407]:—“He was so much and so generally lamented, and is so much esteemed and praised by all sorts in England, both Catholics and others, although neither side can or do approve this last outrageous and exorbitant attempt against our King and country, wherein a man otherwise so worthy, was so unworthily lost and cast away to the great grief of all that knew him, and especially of all that loved him. And truly it was hard to do the one and not the other.” An unfriendly critic, Scott, in a footnote to the Somers’ Tracts,[408] says that Sir Everard “was a man of unblemished reputation until this hellish conspiracy.” Yet another, Caulfield, says of him,[409] “Digby himself was as highly esteemed and beloved as any man in England”; and one more hostile writer, Jardine, says[410]:—“There is abundant evidence that Sir Everard Digby joined in the enterprise under the full persuasion that in so doing he was rendering good service to his church and promoting the cause of true religion.”
Testimonies to his character would be incomplete without any from a woman. Here is one from a Protestant to the back-bone, Miss Aikin:—[411] “His youth, his personal graces, the constancy which he had exhibited whilst he believed himself a martyr in a good cause, the deep sorrow which he testified on becoming sensible of his error, seemed to have moved all hearts with pity and even admiration; and if so detestable a villainy as the powder plot may be permitted to have a hero, Everard Digby was undoubtedly the man.”
Lastly, he must be allowed to have his share in the fair and considerate pleadings of the greatest of all historians of the Stuart period, on behalf of the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot. Dr Samuel Rawson Gardiner writes:—[412] “Atrocious as the whole undertaking was, great as must have been the moral obliquity of their minds before they could have conceived such a project, there was at least nothing mean or selfish about them. They had boldly risked their lives for what they honestly believed to be the cause of God and of their country.” A few lines further on he says, “if the criminality of their design was hidden from the eyes of the plotters, it was not from any ambitious thoughts of the consequences of success to themselves.” Presently he adds, “As far as we can judge, they would have been ready, as soon as the wrongs of which they complained had been redressed, to sink back again into obscurity.” And finally, after dwelling upon their difficulty in seeing “their atrocious crime in the light in which we see it,” he declares his opinion that, just at last, at least some of them saw “their acts as they really were,” and “with such thoughts as these on their minds,” “passed away from the world which they had wronged to the presence of Him who had seen their guilt and their repentance alike.”
It is well, however, to be just as well as generous, and if it be impossible to consider the fine, handsome youth, of four and twenty, awaiting execution in the Tower of London, without feelings of compassion; we should none the less remember that Sir Everard Digby’s co-religionists have other reasons for sorrow in connection with him. Instead of benefiting the Catholic cause in his country by the enterprise which he assisted with his influence, his wealth, his time, and his personal services, he did it the most serious mischief conceivable; we must keep before our minds, therefore, the fact, that to Catholics he should appear, not so much an unhappy failure, as a most active, if most unintentional, aggressor. Although King James himself declared that the English Catholics, as a body, were neither implicated in, nor approvers of the Gunpowder Plot; although the Archpriest condemned it formally a day or two after its discovery; although Father Gerard and other Jesuits distinctly and categorically disclaimed all connection with it, and although the Pope himself addressed two letters to King James, expressing his unqualified horror of it, the idea was never dispelled that it was a Popish and Jesuitical design. For many years, English people were ready to believe any absurd tale of Catholic conspiracy, such as[413] “Rome’s Master-piece: or, The Grand Conspiracy of the Pope and his Jesuited Instruments,” in 1640, and the pretended plot to assassinate Charles II. in 1678, for which, on the perjured evidence of Titus Oates and others,[414] “about eighteen Roman Catholics were accused, and upon false testimony convicted and executed; among them the aged Viscount Stafford.” Ballads, such as that which begins as follows, describing this so-called and non-existent conspiracy, were eagerly purchased in the streets.
[415] “Good People, I pray you, give ear unto me, A Story so strange you have never been told, How the Jesuit, Devil, and Pope did agree Our State to destroy, and Religion so old. To murder our King, A most horrible thing, &c.”
Nor did the prejudices against Catholics raised by the Gunpowder Plot, early in the seventeenth century, die out at the end of it. Even now there remains a traditional superstition in this country that it was planned by the Jesuits, admired by the majority of English Catholics, and secretly connived at by the Pope and the Sacred College. For generations, English schoolboys have believed that Roman Catholics are people who would blow up every Protestant with gunpowder if they could. So indelible has been the prejudice created against Catholics by the misdoings of a mere handful of conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot, that the large number of English Catholic squires, baronets, and noblemen, who squandered their estates and their patrimony, and even gave their lives, for their king, in the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II., failed to eradicate the popular notion that all Catholics were disloyal. The meetings at White Webbs and Gothurst gave rise to the idea that the private house of every Catholic served as a rendezvous for plotters, and every seminary as a nest of traitors; the fact that Catesby and Digby had Jesuit friends has made Protestants believe that every Jesuit would commit a murder if he thought it would serve the cause of his religion; and the fact that they had priests in their houses has led to the impression that, wherever there is a domestic Catholic chaplain, mischief is certain to be brewing. Worst of all, when Protestants are told of “an excellent Catholic,” a man who goes to confession and communion every week, a man of irreproachable character both in private and in public life, a man of high position, great wealth, charming manners, and popularity among Protestants as well as Catholics, they can point, as they have been able to point for nearly three hundred years, to the history of Sir Everard Digby, as an example of what even such a man would be “obliged to do” were “his priest” so to order him.
Thus much for the moral effect produced by the efforts of Sir Everard Digby and his friends for the benefit of the English Catholics; the material effect may be described in a few words. It was, instead of relieving them from oppression, to cause the laws and disabilities under which they suffered to be redoubled. When they reflect upon all these things, can Catholics recall the memory of Sir Everard Digby with no other feelings than those of pity? Surely, if any class of men have cause to execrate the memory of every conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot, it is not the Protestants but the Catholics.