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GUNPOWDER PLOT
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See also:GUNPOWDER See also:PLOT , the name given to a See also:conspiracy for blowing up See also: In See also:January 1604 peaceable Roman Catholics could live unmolested and " serve God according to their consciences without any danger." But James's expectations that the pope would prevent dangerous and seditious persons from entering the See also:country were unfulfilled and the See also:numbers of the Jesuits and the Roman Catholics greatly increased. Rumours of plots came to See also:hand. Cecil, though like his master naturally in favour of toleration, with his experience gained in the reign of Elizabeth, was alarmed at the policy pursued and its results, and great anxiety was aroused in the government and nation, which was in the end shared by the king. It was determined finally to return to the earlier policy of repression. On the 22nd of See also:February 1604 a See also:proclamation was issued banishing priests; on the 28th of November 1604, recusancy fines were demanded from 13 wealthy persons, and on the loth of February 1605 the penal laws were ordered to be executed. The plot, however, could not have been occasioned by these measures, for it had been already conceived in the mind of See also:Robert See also:Catesby. It was aimed at the See also:repeal of the whole Elizabethan legislation against the Roman Catholics and perhaps derived some impulse at first from the leniency lately shown by the administration, afterwards gaining support from the opposite cause, the return of the government to the policy of repression.
It was in May 1603 that Catesby told Percy, in reply to the latter's See also:declaration of his intention to kill the king, that he was `" thinking of a most sure way." Subsequently, about the 1st of November 1603, Catesby sent a See also:message to his See also:cousin Robert See also:Winter at Huddington, near See also:Worcester, to come to See also:London, which the latter refused. On the arrival of a second urgent See also:summons shortly afterwards he obeyed, and was then at a See also:house at See also:Lambeth, probably in January 1604, initiated by Catesby together with See also: This counsel is not to be
the end of See also:April, bringing with him See also:Guy See also:Fawkes, contemned, because it may do you good and can do you no harm, England about w Y , for the danger is past as soon as you have burnt the See also:letter: and I
a man devoted to the Roman Catholic cause and recommended See also:hope God will give you the See also:grace to make good use of it, to whose for undertaking perilous adventures. Subsequently the three See also:holy See also:protection I commend you."
and Thomas Percy, who joined the conspiracy in May, met in a The authorship of the letter has never been disclosed or proved, house behind St Clement's and, having taken an See also:oath of secrecy but all See also:evidence seems to point to Tresham, and to the probatogether, heard See also:Mass and received the See also:Sacrament in an adjoining bility that he had some days before warned See also:Monteagle and agreed apartment from a See also:priest stated by Fawkes to have been See also:Father with him as to the best means of making known the plot and See also:Gerard. Later several other persons were included in the plot, preventing its execution, and at the same time of giving the viz. Winter's See also:brother Thomas, John See also: The preparations Fawkes returned to the cellar to keep guard as before. On the being completed in May the conspirators separated. Fawkes 4th the king, having been shown the letter, ordered the See also:earl of was despatched to Flanders, where he imparted the plot to See also:Hugh See also:Suffolk, as See also:lord See also: Even after -its Fawkes himself was to take See also:ship immediately for Flanders, spread reception complete belief was not placed in the warning. A the news on the See also:continent and get supporters. The conspirators search was made only to make sure that nothing was wrong and imagined that a terrorized and helpless government would guided only by Monteagle's letter, while no See also:attempt was made to readily agree to all their demands. Hitherto the See also:secret had been seize the conspirators. The steps taken by Salisbury after the well kept and the preparations had been completed with extra- See also:discovery of the gunpowder do not show the possession of any See also:ordinary success and without a single See also:drawback; but a very See also:information of the plot or of the persons who were its See also:chief agents serious difficulty now confronted the conspirators as the time for outside Fawkes's first statement, and his knowledge is seen to See also:action arrived, and disturbed their consciences. The feelings of develop according to the successive disclosures and confessions of ordinary humanity shrunk from the destruction of so many the latter. Thus on the 7th of November he had no knowledge persons guiltless of any offence. But in addition, among the of the mine, and it is only after Fawkes's examination by See also:torture peers to be assassinated were included many Roman Catholics on the gth, when the names of the conspirators were See also:drawn from and some lords nearly connected in kinship or friendship with the him, that the government was able to classify them according plotters themselves. Several appeals, however, made to Catesby to their See also:guilt and extent of their participation. The inquiry was to allow warning to be given to certain individuals were firmly not conducted by Salisbury alone, but by several commissioners, rejected. some of whom were Roman Catholics, and many rivals and On the 26th of October Lord Monteagle, a brother-in-law of secret enemies. To conceal his intrigue from all these would Francis Tresham, who had formerly been closely connected with have been impossible, and that he should have put himself in their some of the other conspirators and had engaged in Romanist See also:power to such an extent is highly improbable. Again, the plan plots against the government, but who had given his support to agreed upon for disclosing the plot was especially designed to the new king, unexpectedly ordered supper to be prepared at his allow the conspirators to escape, and therefore scarcely a method house at Haxton, from which he had been absent for more than a which would have been arranged with Salisbury. Not one of the See also:year. While at supper about 6 o'See also:clock an See also:anonymous letter was conspirators, even when all hope of saving life was gone, made any brought by an unknown messenger which, having glanced at, he See also:accusation against Salisbury or the government and all died handed to Ward, a See also:gentleman of his service and an intimate expressing contrition for their See also:crime. Lastly Salisbury had no friend of Winter, the conspirator, to be read aloud. The cele- conceivable See also:motive in concocting a plot of this description. His brated letter ran as follows:— political power and position in the new reign had been already " My lord, out of the love I See also:bear to some of your See also:friends, I have secured and by very different methods. He was now at the a care for your preservation. Therefore I would advise you, as you height of his See also:influence, having been created See also:Viscount Cranborne in See also:August 1604 and earl of Salisbury in May 1605; and James had already, more than 16 months before the discovery of the plot, consented to return to the repressive measures against the Romanists. The success with which the conspirators concealed their plot from Salisbury's spies is indeed astonishing, but is Jesuits were no doubt implicated, the secular priests and Roman probably explained by its very audacity and by the See also:absence of incriminating correspondence, the See also:medium through which the See also:minister chiefly obtained his knowledge of the plans of his enemies. On the See also:arrest of Fawkes the other conspirators, except Tresham, fled in parties by different ways, rejoining each other in See also:Warwick-See also:shire, as had been agreed in See also:case the plot had been successful. Catesby, who with some others had covered the distance of 8o m. between London and his mother's house at See also:Ashby St Legers in eight See also:hours, informed his friends in Warwickshire, who had been awaiting the issue of the plot, of its failure, but succeeded in persuading Sir Everard Digby, by an unscrupulous falsehood, to further implicate himself in his hopeless cause by assuring him that both James and Salisbury were dead; and, according to Father Garnet, this was not the first time that Catesby had been guilty of lies in order to draw men into the plot. He pushed on the same day with his companions in the direction of See also:Wales, where, it was hoped, they would be joined by bands of insurgents. They arrived at Huddington at 2 in the afternoon. On the See also:morning of the 7th the See also:band, numbering about 36 persons, confessed and heard Mass, and then rode away to Holbeche, 2 M. from See also:Stourbridge, in See also:Staffordshire, the house of See also:Stephen See also:Littleton, who had been See also:present at the hunting at Danchurch (see DIGBY, EVERARD), where they arrived at so o'clock at night, having on their way broken into Lord See also:Windsor's house at Hewell See also:Grange and taken all the See also:armour they found there. Their case was now desperate. None had joined them: " Not one came to take our See also:part," said Sir Everard Digby, " though we had expected so many." They were being followed by the See also:sheriff and all the forces of the See also:county. All spurned them from their doors when they applied for succour. One by one their followers fled from the house in which the last See also:scene was to be played out. They now began to feel themselves abandoned not only by man but by God; for an explosion of some of their gunpowder, on the morning of the 8th, by which Catesby and some others were scorched, struck terror into their See also:hearts as a See also:judgment from See also:heaven. The assurance of innocence and of a just cause which till now had alone supported them was taken away. The greatness of their crime, its true nature, now struck See also:home to them, and the few moments which remained to them of life were spent in See also:prayer and in repentance. The supreme See also:hour had now arrived. About 11 o'clock the sheriff and his men came up and immediately began firing into the house. Catesby, Percy and the two Wrights were killed, Winter and Rokewood wounded and taken prisoners with the men who still adhered to them. In all eight of the conspirators, including the two Winters, Digby, Fawkes, Rokewood, Keyes and Bates, were executed, while Tresham died in the See also:Tower. Of the priests involved, Garnet was tried and executed, while Greenway and Gerard succeeded in escaping. So ended the See also:strange and famous Gunpowder Plot. However atrocious its conception and its aims, it is impossible not to feel, together with horror for the See also:deed, some pity and admiration for the guilty persons who took part in it. " Theirs was a crime which it would never have entered into the See also:heart of any man to commit who was not raised above the lowness of the ordinary criminal." They sinned not against the See also:light but in the dark. They erred from See also:ignorance, from a perverted moral sense rather than from any mean or selfish motive, and exhibited extraordinary courage and self-See also:sacrifice in the pursuit of what seemed to them the cause of God and of their country. Their punishment was terrible. Not only had they risked and lost all in the attempt and drawn upon themselves the frightful vengeance of the See also:state, but they saw themselves the means of injuring irretrievably the cause for which they See also:felt such devotion. Nothing could have been more disastrous to the cause of the Roman Catholics than their crime. The laws against them were immediately increased in severity, and the See also:gradual advance towards religious toleration was put back for centuries. In addition a new, increased and See also:long-enduring hostility was aroused in the country against the adherents of the old faith, not unnatural in the circumstances, but unjust and undiscriminating, because while some of the Catholic laity as a whole had taken no part in the conspiracy. BIBLIOGRAPHY.—The See also:recent controversy concerning the nature and origin of the plot can be followed in What was the Gunpowder Plot ? by John Gerard, S.J. (1897); What Gunpowder Plot was, by S. R. See also:Gardiner (a rejoinder) (1897) ; The Gunpowder Plot . . . in reply to See also:Professor Gardiner, by John Gerard, S.J. (1897); Thomas Winter's See also:Confession and the Gunpowder Plot, by John Gerard, S.J. (with facsimiles of his writing) (1898); Eng. Hist. Rev. iii. 510 and xii. 791; See also:Edinburgh See also:Review, clxxxv. 183; See also:Athenaeum 1897, ii. 149, 785, 855; 1898, i. 23, U. 352, 420; See also:Academy, vol. 52 p. 84; The Nation, vol. 65 p. 400. A considerable portion of the controversy centres See also:round the question of the authenticity of Thomas Winter's confession, the MS. of which is at See also:Hatfield, sup-ported by Professor Gardiner, but denied by Father Gerard principally on See also:account of the document having been signed " Winter " instead of " Wintour," the latter apparently being the conspirator's usual See also:style of See also:signature. The document was deposited by the 3rd See also:Marquess of Salisbury for inspection at the See also:Record See also:Office, and was pronounced by two experts, one from the See also:British Museum and another from the Record Office, to be undoubtedly genuine. The cause of the variation in the signature still remains unexplained, but ceases to have therefore any great See also:historical importance. The bibliography of the contemporary controversy is given in the See also:article on Henry Garnet in the See also:Dictionary of See also:National See also:Biography and in The Gunpowder Plot by See also:David Jardine (1857), the latter work still remaining the See also:principal authority on the subject; add to these Gardiner's Hist. of England, i., where an excellent account is given; See also:History of the Jesuits in England, by Father See also:Ethelred See also:Taunton (1901); Father Gerard's Narrative in See also:Condition of the Catholics under James I. (1872), and Father Greenway's Narrative in Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 1st See also:series (1872), interesting as See also:con-temporary accounts, but not to be taken as complete or infallible authorities, of the same nature being Historia Provinciae Anglicanae Societatis Jesu, by Henry More, S.J. (1660), pp. 309 et seq.; also History of Great See also:Britain, by John See also:Speed (1611), pp. 839 at seq.; Archaeologia, xii. 200, See also:xxviii. 422, See also:xxix. 80; Harleian See also:Miscellany (1809), iii. 119-135, or See also:Somers Tracts (18o9), ii. 97-117; M. A. See also:Tierney's ed. of See also:Dodd's Church History, vol. iv. (1841); See also:Treason and Plot, by See also: Xi. 115; Add. See also:MSS. Brit. See also:Mus. 6178; State Trials, ii.; See also:Calendar of State Pap. Dom. (1603-1610), and the See also:official account, A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings against the See also:late most Barbarous Traitors (,6o6), a neither true nor complete narrative however, now superseded as an authority, reprinted as The Gunpowder Treason . with additions in 1679 by Thomas See also:Barlow, See also:bishop of See also:Lincoln. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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