What Gunpowder Plot Was. Gardiner Samuel Rawson

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СКАЧАТЬ as these words came on the 10th under the eyes of the Commissioners themselves.71

      The fact is, that the declaration of the 9th fits the examination of the 8th as a glove does a hand. On the 8th, before torture, Fawkes described what had been done, and gave the number of persons concerned in doing it. On the 9th he is required not to repeat what he had said before, but to give the missing names. This he now does. It was Thomas Winter who had fetched him from the Low Countries, having first communicated their design to a certain Owen.72 The other three, who made up the original five, were Percy, Catesby, and John Wright. It was Gerard who had given them the Sacrament.73 The other conspirators were Sir Everard Digby, Robert Keyes, Christopher Wright, Thomas74 Grant, Francis Tresham, Robert Winter, and Ambrose Rokewood. The very order in which the names come perhaps shows that the Government had as yet a very hazy idea of the details of the conspiracy. The names of those who actually worked in the mine are scattered at hap-hazard amongst those of the men who merely countenanced the plot from a distance.

      However this may be, the 9th, the day on which Fawkes was put to the torture, brought news to the Government that the fear of insurrection need no longer be entertained. It had been known before this that Fawkes’s confederates had met on the 5th at Dunchurch on the pretext of a hunting match,75 and had been breaking open houses in Warwickshire and Worcestershire in order to collect arms. Yet so indefinite was the knowledge of the Council that, on the 8th, they offered a reward for the apprehension of Percy alone, without including any of the other conspirators.76 On the evening of the 9th77 they received a letter from Sir Richard Walsh, the Sheriff of Worcestershire: —

      “We think fit,” he wrote, “with all speed to certify your Lordships of the happy success it hath pleased God to give us against the rebellious assembly in these parts. After such time as they had taken the horses from Warwick upon Tuesday night last,78 they came to Mr. Robert Winter’s house to Huddington upon Wednesday night,79 where – having entered – [they] armed themselves at all points in open rebellion. They passed from thence upon Thursday morning80 unto Hewell – the Lord Windsor’s house – which they entered and took from thence by force great store of armour, artillery of the said Lord Windsor’s, and passed that night into the county of Staffordshire unto the house of one Stephen Littleton, Gentleman, called Holbeche, about two miles distant from Stourbridge whither we pursued, with the assistance of Sir John Foliot, Knight, Francis Ketelsby, Esquire, Humphrey Salway, Gentleman, Edmund Walsh, and Francis Conyers, Gentlemen, with few other gentlemen and the power and face of the country. We made against them upon Thursday morning,[81] and freshly pursued them until the next day,81 at which time about twelve or one of the clock in the afternoon, we overtook them at the said Holbeche House – the greatest part of their retinue and some of the better sort being dispersed and fled before our coming, whereupon and after summons and warning first given and proclamation in his Highness’s name to yield and submit themselves – who refusing the same, we fired some part of the house and assaulted some part of the rebellious persons left in the said house, in which assault, one Mr. Robert Catesby is slain, and three others verily thought wounded to death whose names – as far as we can learn – are Thomas Percy, Gentleman, John Wright, and Christopher Wright Gentlemen, and these are apprehended and taken Thomas Winter Gentleman, John Grant Gentleman, Henry Morgan Gentleman, Ambrose Rokewood Gentleman, Thomas Ockley carpenter, Edmund Townsend servant to the said John Grant, Nicholas Pelborrow, servant unto the said Ambrose Rokewood, Edward Ockley carpenter, Richard Townsend servant to the said Robert Winter, Richard Day servant to the said Stephen Littleton, which said prisoners are in safe custody here, and so shall remain until your Honours good pleasures be further known. The rest of that rebellious assembly is dispersed, we have caused to be followed with fresh suite and hope of their speedy apprehension. We have also thought fit to send unto your Honours – according unto our duties – such letters as we have found about the parties apprehended; and so resting in all duty at your Honours’ further command, we take leave, from Stourbridge this Saturday morning, being the ixth of this instant November 1605.

      “Your Honours’ most humble to be commanded,

      “Rich. Walsh.”

      Percy and the two Wrights died of their wounds, so that, in addition to Fawkes, Thomas Winter was the only one of the five original workers in the mine in the hands of the Government. Of the seven others who had been named in Fawkes’s confession of the 9th, Christopher Wright had been killed; Rokewood, Robert Winter, and Grant had been apprehended at Holbeche; Sir Everard Digby, Keyes, and Tresham were subsequently arrested, as was Bates a servant of Catesby.

      That for some days the Government made no effort to get further information about the mine and the cellar cannot be absolutely proved, but nothing bearing on the subject has reached us except that, on the 14th, when a copy of Fawkes’s deposition of the 8th was forwarded to Edmondes, the names of the twelve chief conspirators are given, not as Fawkes gave them on the 9th, in two batches, but in three, Robert Winter and Christopher Wright being said to have joined after the first five, whilst Rokewood, Digby, Grant, Tresham, and Keyes are said to have been ‘privy to the practice of the powder but wrought not at the mine.’82 As Keyes is the only one whose Christian name is not given, this list must have been copied from one now in the Record Office, in which this peculiarity is also found, and was probably drawn up on or about the 10th83 from further information derived from Fawkes when he certified the confession dragged from him on the preceding day.[84]

      What really seems to have been at this time on the minds of the investigators was the relationship of the Catholic noblemen to the plot. On the 11th Talbot of Grafton was sent for. On the 15th Lords Montague and Mordaunt were imprisoned in the Tower. On the 16th Mrs. Vaux and the wives of ten of the conspirators were committed to various aldermen and merchants of London.84 When Fawkes was re-examined on the 16th,85 by far the larger part of the answers elicited refer to the hints given, or supposed to have been given, to Catholic noblemen to absent themselves from Parliament on the 5th. Then comes a statement about Percy buying a watch for Fawkes on the night of the 4th and sending it ‘to him by Keyes at ten of the clock at night, because he should know how the time went away.’ The last paragraph alone bears upon the project itself. “He also saith he did not intend to set fire to the train [until] the King was come to the House, and then he purposed to do it with a piece of touchwood and with a match also, which were about him when he was apprehended on the 4th day of November at 11 of the clock at night that the powder might more surely take fire a quarter of an hour after.”

      The words printed in italics are an interlineation in Coke’s hand. They evidently add nothing of the slightest importance to the evidence, and cannot have been inserted with any design to prejudice the prisoner or to carry conviction in quarters in which disbelief might be supposed to exist. Is not the simple explanation sufficient, that when the evidence was read over to the examinee, he added, either of his own motion or on further question, this additional information. If this explanation is accepted here, may it not also be accepted for other interlineations, such as that relating to the cellar in the first examination?86

      That the examiners at this stage of the proceedings should not be eager to ask further questions about the cellar and the mine was the most natural thing in the world. They knew already quite enough from Fawkes’s СКАЧАТЬ