God’s Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot. Alice Hogge

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СКАЧАТЬ towards England, accompanied by two other priests. ‘Passing through Switzerland,’ Gerard wrote, ‘we stayed a night at Basle and decided to see the old Catholic buildings of the town: the Lutherans usually leave them intact but the Calvinists destroy them.’ At Reims, he noted, ‘we passed incognito’: the seminary city was full of spies. In Paris a prisoner in one of the city gaols calling himself Jacques Colerdin learned of their arrival. On 1 October Colerdin was able to scribble a letter to Sir Francis Walsingham in London, telling him that ‘There be 8 Priests over from Rome, whereof John Gerard…will be in England within five days.’ Colerdin, who described himself to the Archbishop of Paris as ‘an English priest and Bachelor in Theology’ in a petition he wrote seeking his release, was a Government informer.* His real name was Gilbert Gifford. He was, indeed, a Catholic priest, but since his arrest as an alleged accomplice in the Babington Plot he had found it prudent to switch sides in the religious conflict.† Now he was well placed to point out his fellow seminarians to the English authorities.²⁸

      From Paris, Gerard and Oldcorne continued on to Eu, some miles north of Dieppe, in preparation for crossing the Channel. But here they received unwelcome news from England. ‘The Spanish Fleet’, wrote Gerard, ‘had exasperated the people against the Catholics; everywhere a hunt was being organised for Catholics and their houses searched; in every village and along all the roads and lanes very close watches were kept to catch them.’ Clearly conditions at home were far from ideal for them to attempt a landing in secret and for the next few weeks the pair were forced to kick their heels on the French coast, while their superiors back in Rome decided what should be done. At last a letter came through: ‘we were free’, wrote Gerard, ‘either to go ahead with the enterprise or stay back until things in England had quietened down. This was the answer we desired.’ Immediately, the two men set about finding a ship.²⁹

As John Gerard stood in the shadows of a Norfolk wood choosing the best and safest route to London, he had already committed treason, according to England’s latest laws. The act of 1585 ‘against Jesuits, seminary priests and such other like disobedient persons’, one of nine pieces of parliamentary legislation during Elizabeth’s reign to seek to redefine treachery in the face of a newly perceived menace, employed bully-boy language to make its point. Any Englishman ordained a Catholic priest since June 1559 would, the act threatened, soon find out ‘how dangerous it shall be for them…once to put their foot on land within any of her Majesty’s dominions’. In returning home, in stepping from his ship’s boat onto a Norfolk beach, John Gerard had become a traitor to his country. If caught, he would be punished accordingly. As he left the wood, heading westwards, he was spotted by a group of men walking towards him.* ³⁰

      Gerard takes up the story:

      ‘Walking boldly up to them I asked whether they knew anything about a stray hawk; perhaps they had heard its bell tinkling as it was flying around. I wanted them to believe that I had lost my bird and was wandering about the countryside in search of it [then] they would not be surprised because I was a stranger here and unfamiliar with the lanes and countryside; they would merely think that I had wandered here in my search…They told me they had not seen or heard a falcon recently and they seemed sorry that they could not put me on its track. So with a disappointed look I went off as if I were going to search for it in the trees and hedges round about.’³¹

      This was his strategy for the rest of that day. Each time he saw someone working in the fields he approached them, asking them the same question: had they seen his hawk? His progress was slow. Occasionally he doubled back on his tracks to make his search more convincing. But gradually he moved inland, away from the sea.

      ‘At the end of the day I was soaked with rain and felt hungry. It had been a rough crossing and I had been able to take practically no food or sleep on board, so I turned for the night into an inn in a village I was passing, thinking that they were less likely to question a man they saw entering an inn.’ Inside, he made enquiries about buying a pony and found the people willing to help him. The following morning, Sunday, 30 October, he set off on horseback towards Norwich, no longer in any danger of being taken for a vagrant, but still at the mercy of the county watches. At the village of Worstead he was apprehended.³²

      ‘They ordered me to dismount, and asked me who I was and where I came from. I told them I was in the service of a certain lord who lived in another county—he did in fact know me well, although these men had not heard of him—and I explained that my falcon had flown away and I had come here to see whether I could recover it.’ But this time the watchers refused to release him, insisting he be brought before the constable and the officer of the watch for further questioning. Gerard submitted and was led to the village church where the two men were attending morning service. Now he was faced with a dilemma. ‘One of the watchers went in [to the church] and came back with the answer that [the officer] wanted me to come inside where he would see me at the end of the service.’ For Gerard it was a sin to enter a Protestant church. So Gerard refused to go in, claiming he was reluctant to leave his horse behind. When the officer at last came out to question him he was clearly angry and suspicious. ‘He asked me first where I came from and I named a number of places which I had learned were not far away. Then he asked me my name, employment, home, the reason for my coming, and I gave him the answers that I had given before. Finally on asking whether I was carrying any letters, I invited him to search me.’ The officer was unimpressed. He declared ‘it was his duty to take me before the Justice of the Peace’, and Gerard prepared himself for immediate arrest. Then suddenly the man relented, with the words, ‘You’ve got the look of an honest fellow. Go on then in God’s name.’ Later, Gerard attributed this stroke of good fortune to providence. Now, he hurriedly set off towards Norwich before the officer could change his mind.³³

      Furnished by a fellow traveller with the name of a suitable inn on the southernmost outskirts of Norwich, Gerard circled the city walls. He avoided the busy London road, which led into the city through the well-guarded St Stephen’s Gates, and passed instead over common grazing land to Brazen Doors, a smaller set of gates that opened onto All Saints Green. From there it was a short walk to the inn on Market Hill, at the foot of Norwich Castle.³⁴

The inn was busy and Gerard settled himself down to observe. ‘I was there only a short time when in walked a man who seemed well known to the people of the house. He greeted me courteously and then sat down by the fire to warm himself. He began talking about some Catholic gentlemen imprisoned in the city and mentioned by name a man, one of whose relatives had been with me in the Marshalsea Prison…I listened carefully but said nothing.’ When the man left the room, Gerard asked his neighbour who he was. The reply was welcome news to him: ‘He is a very good fellow, except for the fact that he is a Papist.’ The man was out on bail from the city gaol after a decade in prison for his faith and he was, by common consent, ‘a most pig-headed’ Catholic.* ³⁵

      ‘I kept quiet until the man returned and when the others had gone out I told him that I wanted to have a word with him in some safe place. I had heard he was a Catholic, I said, and was very pleased to hear it because I was one too.’ Briefly, Gerard explained how he came to be in Norwich and asked for the man’s assistance in getting to London. The man knew of no one travelling to the capital that Gerard could join, and so pass as one of their party, but he did know someone in town who might be able to help him and he left the inn to find this contact.СКАЧАТЬ