CAMEO IV.

Father Garnet consulted. 1605.

cause the destruction of the guiltless with the guilty, of women and
children together with armed men, or as he put it, innocents with
nocents. Garnet answered, as any man must do, that there were
times when such considerations of mercy could not prevail in war; or
it would always be in the power of one party to stop the hostilities of
the other; and this Catesby represented to his friends as full sanction to
the scheme. Two more were gained over to join in it, John Wright's
brother Christopher, and Thomas Winter's brother Robert, and in
December they all entered the house at Westminster taking with them
a supply of hard eggs, dried meat and pasties, so as to have as little
going in and out as possible, while Fawkes, as the servant of the house,
kept watch, and warned them to desist if any one came near enough to
be likely to hear the sound. They found, however, that when they
tried to dig under the foundation, water came in on them, so that they
would have to bore through the wall itself, a massive structure of the
middle ages, three yards thick, and built of large stones, which their
unaccustomed hands found extremely difficult to pick out. They
thought one day that they heard a bell tolling under them, but this they
remedied by sprinkling holy water. However, a day or two after, such
a rumbling was heard over head, that they feared that they were
bringing the house down prematurely on their own heads, or else that
they were discovered, and they sent out Guy Fawkes to gain intelligence.
He brought back word that it was one Bright, a dealer in fuel, remov-
ing his stock of coal from a cellar under the Parliament House, as he
was going to set up business elsewhere. The cellar was to be let, and
as it was exactly under the House of Lords it seemed made for their
purpose. Fawkes hired it in the name of Mr. Thomas Percy, and
during several successive nights, thirty-six barrels of gunpowder were
conveyed into it, and covered with faggots, coal and lumber.
It was
now the May of 1605, and the accomplices dispersed until the autumn
meeting of Parliament. Guy Fawkes went to Flanders to obtain the
support of Sir William Stanley and Captain Owen, who held commands
there, and Catesby proceeded to gain further partisans in England.

It was in his favour that the Government was carrying out the persecution more rigorously than ever, perhaps from the intimations of danger which Cecil began to receive, but which did not make him perceive the chance of driving the party to desperation. Roman Catholics were arbitrarily declared incapable of recovering debts or damages for injuries, of making sales or purchases, or bequeathing legacies, and it was even reported that, in the next Parliament, a bill was to be brought in to secure the total extirpation of their faith in the island.

Meanwhile forebodings and misgivings were spreading. Father Garnet suspected something, and, while dining with Mr. Catesby, made a discourse on the bounden duty of subjects to endure persecution patiently like the first Christians, and to leave vengeance to God alone.

Catesby broke forth angrily—“It is to you and such as you that we

owe our present calamities. This doctrine of non-resistance makes us slaves. No authority of priest or Pope can deprive man of his right to repel injustice."

Feeling convinced that some perilous project was in hand Garnet wrote to his superiors at Rome for advice, saying, "All are desperate. Diverse Catholics are offended with Jesuits. They say that Jesuits do impugn and hinder all forcible enterprises." He received in return two letters, one from Pope Paul V., one from the General of his Order, both commanding him to refrain from all political intrigues and to prevent all seditious attempts against the State. This was a change of tactics since the last generation, when every kind of violence, open and secret, against rulers hostile to the Church, was secure of approbation, but these attempts had been foiled, and there had been a recent growth of true piety and Christian spirit which was striving to gain the hearts of men by milder means.

Clement VIII. had so much disapproved of the dangerous practices of the Jesuits that he had refused to canonise their founder Loyola, and the reigning Pope, Paul V., Camillo Borghese by name, was a man who perceived the obligation to obey the existing powers. But it was not wonderful that fanatical and discontented spirits should adhere to what had been instigated by their earlier training, and Catesby continued to argue with Garnet on the lawfulness of stratagem and violence against heretics. At last he disclosed that a conspiracy was in agitation; but Garnet refused to hear a word of the plan, and warned him against the crime.

Catesby cited two letters from Clement VIII., written during Elizabeth's lifetime, excluding James, as a heretic, from the throne. He argued that if it were right to keep out the heretic heir, it must be also right to drive him out when he had come in. Then the Father produced the two letters he had received from Rome, but Catesby was not moved by them, declaring that his Holiness had been misled by wrong information. Finally they agreed to send a message to Rome with letters explaining the condition of the Romanists in England, and promising to take no step till a reply should have been received from Pius.

This was on the 24th of July, and Garnet sent privately a letter entreating the Pope to prohibit all recourse to temporal weapons under pain of censure of the Church. Sir Edmund Baynham was a little later sent to Rome, without knowledge of the plot, but to be ready to act as agent with the Pope as soon as the explosion should have taken place.

Meantime more recruits were gained. These were Ambrose Rookwood, of Coldham Hall, in Suffolk, who had many good horses; and three men, named Bates, Grant, and Keyes. Parliament was again prorogued from October to the 5th of November, and this excited some alarm. Commissioners for the union of England and Scotland were lodged in the very house the conspirators had at first rented, and it was

CAMEO IV.

The Pope consulted. 1605.

CAMEO IV.

-

The delays. 1605.

Fawkes was

Suspected that something might have been discovered.
sent to reconnoitre, and found the commissioners viewing the House of
Lords and walking over the very spot where lay his thirty-six barrels of
powder, so that he concluded that all was safe.

were

Yet these delays really were providential in leading to the discovery of the plot. None of the conspirators save Catesby had any means to spare, and he had been maintaining several of the others, paying the rent, and finding money for all the expenses, till his resources exhausted, and he was forced to take two richer men into his confidence. One was Sir Everard Digby, of Gotehurst, in Buckinghamshire, a young man of five-and-twenty, who had been a ward of the Crown and educated at Oxford in the English Church. He had been at Court and was noticed by Elizabeth, but he was of an old Roman Catholic family, and as soon as he was of age he returned to their faith, living on his own estates, where he married and had two little children. He was greatly shocked and startled at the horrible plot revealed to him, but Catesby showed him a passage in a Latin book from which he inferred that such schemes were held lawful by the Fathers of the Jesuit company. It is thought that this might have been that book of Father Allen of which Elizabeth had complained. At last Sir Everard's scruples were so far overcome that he advanced 1,500/., and undertook to collect his friends under pretext of a hunting party at Dunmoor, in Warwickshire, so as to be ready to take up arms the moment the deed hould be done.

Lord Harrington, who had charge of the Lady Elizabeth, of Combe Abbey, was also invited, and in his absence she was to be seized.

Thomas Percy also undertook to advance the sum he should receive for the rents of his kinsman of Northumberland, about 4,000/.; but Catesby also had recourse to another wealthy gentleman, Francis Tresham, who had just succeeded to his father's estates at Rushton, in Northamptonshire. He had, like Catesby, been engaged in the sedition of Lord Essex, but had escaped through bribes to the extent of 3,000l. distributed among the Queen's councillors. He contributed 2,000l., but the others soon felt that it had been a mistake to admit him to the full knowledge, for he was of a fickle nature, without the iron fanaticism and ruthless sense of mutual fidelity that could alone make a true conspirator, and from the time of his accession Catesby began to lose confidence and to be troubled with ominous dreams.

However, the 5th of November drew on, and the plan was fully prepared at White Webbs, a solitary house near Enfield Chase. One difficulty was that every one had some one whom he wanted to save. The young Earl of Arundel was esteemed by all, Percy could not give up the Earl of Northumberland, Robert Keyes had deep obligations to Lord Mordaunt, who had supported his wife and children while he was himself in distress; and Tresham was very anxious about the husbands of his two sisters, Lords Monteagle and Stourton. Catesby declared that no good Catholic would attend such a Parliament since there was

no hindering the passing of laws against their own profession, but that rather than overthrow the project, they must be blown up, if they were as dear as his own son. However, the others agreed that if their friends should come to London, each should, at the last moment, receive a pressing message to detain him from the House. If this had been adhered to, probably the explosion would have taken place ; though, judging by later experience, it is scarcely probable that the destruction would have been by any means so universal as the conspirators expected, considering the strength of the stone vaulting through which it was expected to reach and annihilate five or six hundred men.

A slow match was arranged which Guy Fawkes was to fire, and he reckoned that he should have time, before the explosion, to take boat, and thus to reach a ship which was provided by Tresham's money to convey him to Flanders, whence he was to publish a manifesto in justfication of the deed, despatch letters requesting aid from all the Roman Catholic states, and then bring back in the vessel the arms and ammunition which he had already purchased.

Meantime, Percy, who, as a gentleman pensioner, could enter the palace, was to secure the little Prince Charles, in case he should not form part of the fatal procession at the opening of Parliament, and to carry him off to the place of meeting with Digby and his force at Dunchurch, whence all were to go in force to Lord Harrington's house to secure the Lady Elizabeth. If they failed in obtaining Charles, she would be proclaimed Queen.

One or other of the two would be proclaimed by Catesby at Charing Cross, and a declaration was to be issued providing redress of certain oppressions of a political nature, such as monopolies, which affected all subjects alike. It seems strange that these men should have deemed it possible that they should thus gain the support of a nation, whose most honoured and beloved would have been lying in one murdered heap -a nation too, full of courage, and peculiarly wrathful at cruelty and treachery!

By way of last preparation, Catesby went to confession to the Jesuit Father Greenway, who at once condemned the scheme as horrible wickedness, but without convincing one who had sucked in the poison of the doctrines of the League and of Philip II.—at least, such was Greenway's own account; and he further declared that Catesby desired him to procure the opinion of his superiors under seal of confession.

Greenway then went to the Provincial, Garnet, who was horrified at finding that the vague scheme which he hoped he had quashed a year ago had assumed such frightful shape and was so near its execution. He sharply reproved Greenway for discussing the matter or reporting it to him, and bade him endeavour to put a stop to it by all remonstrance in his power-by any means, indeed, short of violating the secresy of the confessional, an absolute impossibility to the priesthood.

It was the 22nd of October, too late to obtain any authoritative

CAMEO IV.

Last preparations. 1605.

censure of such proceedings, and Father Garnet, a really good man, went about in a state of silent misery and anxiety, but he still hoped to see Catesby before the 5th to keep the feast of All Saints together at a place called Coughton, where several Romanist families were to meet for the purpose of a secret Mass; but Catesby was prevented and never came; and Garnet, a pious and prudent man, perceiving all the wickedness and likewise the fatal absurdity of the plot, was obliged to wait in silence.

Catesby and Guy Fawkes were, together with Winter, at White Webbs, when Francis Tresham appeared, in a good deal of agitation, pleading for a warning to Lord Monteagle, and adding that he could not raise the money he had promised, until he had sold some estates to the amount of 16,000l., so that he strongly advised putting off the explosion till the end of the session, promising, in the meantime, to maintain the associates on board his ship in the Thames. This made Catesby very uneasy, but he hoped that he had convinced Tresham that delay was impossible, while that gentleman himself was, by his own account, trying to devise means of preventing the catastrophe without implicating the conspirators.

Lord Monteagle was a Roman Catholic, and had been engaged in one, at least, of the Spanish plots. He was aware that something was in hand-as, indeed, there almost always was-and he had written to Rome through Sir Edmund Baynham, but he had lately obtained favour from the King and Council, and had been one of the commissioners employed to prorogue the last Parliament. He had a house at Hoxton which he seldom inhabited, but on the 26th of October he sent forward orders that a supper should be made ready for him there, and, in due time, he arrived to partake of it. While he sat at table his page brought in a letter which he said had been delivered to him by a tall, dark stranger. Opening the letter and seeing that it was in a feigned hand and neither dated nor signed, Lord Monteagle bade Thomas Ward, one of his esquires, to read it aloud. The actual letter is still extant. It is as follows:

"My lord out of the love i heave to some of youer friends i have a caer of youer preservation therefor i would advyse yowe as yowe tender youer lyf to devyse some excuse to shift of youer attendance at this parliament for God and man hath concurred to punishe the wickedness of this tyme and thinke not slightlye of this advertisement but retyere yourself into your contri wheare yowe maye expect the event in safti for thowghe theare be no apparance of anni stir yet i saye they shall receyve a terribel blowe this parleament and yet they shall not seie who hurts them this cowncel is not to be contemned because it may do yowe good and can do yowe no harme for the danger is passed as soon as yowe have burnt the letter and i hope God will give yowe the grace to make good use of it in whose holy protection I commend yowe."

This was a more illiterate letter than a gentleman of the time was likely to have written; but the conspirators themselves believed it to have emanated from Tresham, who probably committed the blunders on purpose as a disguise. Lord Monteagle, guessing perhaps more than he ventured to avow, went that very night to Whitehall, where he found