What Gunpowder Plot Was. Gardiner Samuel Rawson

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СКАЧАТЬ Yet, after all, even in 1605, the public had to be taken into account. There must be an open trial, and the more detailed the information that could be got the more verisimilitude would be given to the story told. It is probably, in part at least, to these considerations, as well as to some natural curiosity on the part of the Commissioners themselves, that we owe the examinations of Fawkes on the 17th and of Winter on the 23rd.

      “Amongst all the confessions and ‘voluntary declarations’ extracted from the conspirators,” writes Father Gerard, “there are two of exceptional importance, as having furnished the basis of the story told by the Government, and ever since generally accepted. These are a long declaration made by Thomas Winter, and another by Guy Fawkes, which alone were made public, being printed in the ‘King’s Book,’ and from which are gathered the essential particulars of the story, as we are accustomed to hear it.”

      If Father Gerard merely means that the story published by the Government rested on these two confessions, and that the Government publications were the source of all knowledge about the plot till the Record Office was thrown open, in comparatively recent years, he says what is perfectly true, and, it may be added, quite irrelevant. If he means that our knowledge at the present day rests on these two documents, he is, as I hope I have already shown, mistaken. With the first five examinations of Fawkes in our hands, all the essential points of the conspiracy, except the names, are revealed to us. The names are given in the examination under torture, and a day or two later the Government was able to classify these names, though we are unable to specify the source from which it drew its information. If both the declarations to which Father Gerard refers had been absolutely destroyed we should have missed some picturesque details, which assist us somewhat in understanding what took place; but we should have been able to set forth the main features of the plot precisely as we do now.

      Nevertheless, as we do gain some additional information from these documents, let us examine whether there are such symptoms of foul play as Father Gerard thinks he can descry. Taking first Fawkes’s declaration of November 17, it will be well to follow Father Gerard’s argument. He brings into collocation three documents: first the interrogatories prepared by Coke after the examination of the 7th, then the examination of the 8th, which he calls a draft, and then the full declaration of the 17th, which undoubtedly bears the signature of Fawkes himself.

      That the three documents are very closely connected is undeniable. Take, for instance, a paragraph to which Father Gerard not unnaturally draws attention, in which the repetition of the words ‘the same day’ proves at least partial identity of origin between Coke’s interrogatories and the examination founded on them on the 8th.87

      “Was it not agreed,” asks Coke, “the same day that the act should have been done, the same day, or soon after, the person of the Lady Elizabeth should have been surprised?” “He confesseth,” Fawkes is stated to have said, “that the same day this detestable act should have been performed the same day should other of their confederacy have surprised the Lady Elizabeth.” Yet before setting down Fawkes’s replies as a fabrication of the Government, let us remember how evidence of this kind is taken and reported. If we take up the report of a criminal trial in a modern newspaper we shall find, for the most part, a flowing narrative put into the mouths of witnesses. John Jones, let us say, is represented as giving some such evidence as this: “I woke at two o’clock in the morning, and, looking out of window, saw by the light of the moon John Smith opening the stable door,” &c. Nobody who has attended a law court imagines John Jones to have used these consecutive words. Questions are put to him by the examining counsel. When did you wake? Did you see anyone at the stable door? How came you to be able to see him, and so forth; and it is by combining these questions with the Yes and No, and other brief replies made by the witness, that the reporter constructs his narrative with no appreciable violation of truth. Is it not reasonable to suppose that the same practice prevailed in 1605? Fawkes, I suppose, answered to Coke’s question, “Yes, others of the confederates proposed to surprise her,” or something of the sort, and the result was the combination of question and answer which is given above.

      What, however, was the relation between the examination of the 8th and the declaration of the 17th? Father Gerard has printed them side by side,88 and it is impossible to deny that the latter is founded on the former. Some paragraphs of the examination are not represented in the declaration, but these are paragraphs of no practical importance, and those that are represented are modified. The modifications admitted, however, are all consistent with what is a very probable supposition, that the Government wanted to get Fawkes’s previous statements collected in one paper. He had given his account of the plot on one occasion, the names of the plotters on another, and had stated on a third that they were to be classified in three divisions – those who worked first at the mine, those who worked at it afterwards, and those who did not work at all. If the Government drew up a form combining the three statements and omitting immaterial matter, and got Fawkes to sign it, this would fully account for the form in which we find the declaration. At the present day, we should object to receive evidence from a man who had been tortured once and might be tortured again; but as this declaration adds nothing of any importance to our previous knowledge, it is unnecessary to recur to first principles on this occasion.89

      Winter’s examination of the 23rd, as treated by Father Gerard, raises a more difficult question. The document itself is at Hatfield, and there is a copy of it in the ‘Gunpowder Plot Book’ in the Public Record Office. “The ‘original’ document,” writes Father Gerard,90 “is at Hatfield, and agrees in general so exactly with the copy as to demonstrate the identity of their origin. But while, as we have seen, the ‘copy’ is dated November 23rd, the ‘original’ is dated on the 25th.” In a note, we are told ‘that this is not a slip of the pen is evidenced by the fact that Winter first wrote 23, and then corrected it to 25.’ To return to Father Gerard’s text, we find, “On a circumstance so irregular, light is possibly thrown by a letter from Waad, the Lieutenant of the Tower, to Cecil91 on the 20th of the same month. ‘Thomas Winter,’ he wrote, ‘doth find his hand so strong, as after dinner he will settle himself to write that he hath verbally declared to your Lordship, adding what he shall remember.’ The inference is certainly suggested that torture had been used until the prisoner’s spirit was sufficiently broken to be ready to tell the story required of him, and that the details were furnished by those who demanded it. It must, moreover, be remarked that, although Winter’s ‘original’ declaration is witnessed only by Sir E. Coke, the Attorney-General, it appears in print attested by all those whom Cecil had selected for the purpose two days before the declaration was made.”

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