The Gunpowder Plot
When James Stuart, King of Scotland, succeeded Elizabeth upon the English throne as James I., both the Puritans and the Roman Catholics hoped that he would look more kindly upon…
From: 1605 C.E. To: 1605 C.E.
Location: London, England
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“The Gunpowder Plot.” from Stories from English History by Louise Creighton, 1883.
A.D. 1605.
When James Stuart, King of Scotland, succeeded Elizabeth upon the English throne as James I., both the Puritans and the Roman Catholics hoped that he would look more kindly upon them than Elizabeth had done. But James disappointed their hopes, and little by little ordered the strict laws made in the time of Elizabeth to be carried out both against Puritans and Catholics. The Catholics were bitterly disappointed, and when James ordered that all Catholic priests should be banished from England, their hatred and rage against the Government led some of the more zealous amongst them to make a desperate plot.
The chief of these plotters was Robert Catesby, a man who knew very well how to gain over others to think as he did. When he heard that the Catholic priests were to be banished he gave himself up for a few days to angry and bitter thoughts of revenge, and then he wrote to his cousin Thomas Winter, begging him to come and see him in London on business of importance. Winter came as he was bidden, and found Catesby at Lambeth with a friend of his, John Wright.
These three men were all zealous Catholics; they had all suffered for their religion, and had tried by many plots and treasons to help the cause of the Catholics in England. Catesby now told Winter his new plan. He wished to blow up the Parliament House with gunpowder when the King came to open Parliament. Afterwards, when the Government of the country was all in confusion, it would be easy to make a successful rising in favour of the Catholic religion. Catesby did not let Winter leave him till he had agreed to risk his life to aid this plot.
A little while afterwards a new conspirator was fetched over from Holland. This was an Englishman named Guido Fawkes, of well-known courage and skill. Another man named Thomas Percy, who was known to be specially angry at the treatment which the Catholics had received, was asked to come to a meeting of the plotters. He burst into the room where they were sitting together with the words, "Shall we always, gentlemen, talk and never do anything" Catesby told him that they had a plan, and at another meeting, after all five had sworn a solemn oath of secrecy and taken the sacrament together, Catesby told Fawkes and Percy his plan.
Their next step was to hire a house which joined on to the Parliament House. Percy leased the house, and Fawkes, so as to be able to go in and out without suspicion, pretended to be Percy's servant; he had been so long out of England that no one knew him.
The house had been hired in the spring. The conspirators meant to carry out their horrible plan when Parliament should meet, as was expected, in the following February. For a time they separated and went into the country. In the early winter they met again in London, and then began to work to make a passage through the wall which divided the house they had hired from the Parliament House. They found that the wall was nine feet thick, and though they worked hard for a fortnight they got a very little way into it. As they worked they talked over their plans.
They hoped that both James and his eldest son Henry would perish with the Parliament, and that they would then be able to seize the King's younger children and set up a Catholic government in the name of one of them. They were still busy at the wall, when they heard that Parliament was not to meet till October. So, as there was no need for haste, they went again into the country for a while, and told one or two more of their friends and relations, after they had sworn secrecy, of the plot Then they went back to work at the wall. One day, as they were working, they were alarmed by hearing a rustling sound. Fawkes was sent to find out what it was, and came back to say that a certain woman was selling off a store of coals which she kept in a cellar close at hand.
They found out that this cellar ran under the Parliament House, and was just what they wanted for their purpose. They succeeded in hiring it, Percy giving as his reason that he wanted more room for his coals. They were now spared the trouble of working through the wall, and easily opened a door between the house and the cellar. They then put twenty barrels of powder into the cellar, and covered them up thickly with wooden logs and faggots. All was now ready, and they only had to wait till the day when Parliament should meet, which was at last fixed for the fifth of November.
As the time drew nearer, Catesby thought it was necessary for the success of the plot to get at least one or two rich men to join it. He chose three rich Catholics named Rokewood, Digby, and Tresham, to whom he told his plan, and who, after some hesitation, were gained over by him to promise their help. Thirteen people now knew the secret. It would not be safe to trust it to any more, but in order to have a number of discontented Catholics ready to help them, Digby agreed to invite a large hunting party for the day of the meeting of Parliament. When he had heard of the success of the plot he intended to tell it to his guests, and bring them at once to the help of the conspirators.
Of the three gentlemen to whom Catesby had told the plot, one, Tresham, had not joined with his whole heart, and the more he thought of it the less he liked it. He knew that his own brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle, himself a Catholic, would be in the House at the opening of Parliament, and he was determined to save him, even at the risk of betraying the plot. He wrote him a letter, to which he did not sign his name, begging him not to attend the Parliament, but to await quietly in the country what should happen, for Parliament was to receive a terrible blow, and yet not to see who hurt it. Monteagle at once took this letter up to London and showed it to the Earl of Salisbury, the head of the Government. Salisbury consulted with some other members of the Government. The mysterious words of the letter made them think that some mischief by means of gunpowder might be meant, and one of them remembered the existence of the cellar under the Parliament House. They made up their minds to do nothing till just before the opening of Parliament, so as not to alarm the conspirators.
On the 3d of November, when the King came up to London, they showed the letter to him. He ordered that the cellar was to be searched. The Lord Chamberlain went to do this the next day. He did not believe much in the plot, and was afraid of being laughed at for going to look for gunpowder, and finding none. So he said he had come to look for something which belonged to the King, which had been left in the care of the man who owned the cellar. Fawkes opened the door to him, and he just looked into the cellar and saw the piles of faggots. He asked to whom they belonged, and when he heard the name of Percy he began to believe that there might be some truth in the story. He went and told the King what he had heard and seen, and James bade him go again and examine more closely. At eleven o'clock at night Fawkes was found watching over the heap of faggots in the cellar. The faggots were removed, and the gunpowder was discovered. Then Fawkes, seeing there was nothing else to be done, confessed what he had meant to do the next morning. He was bound hand and foot and taken prisoner.
Tresham seems to have tried to give the other conspirators warning in time to allow them to fly. But they to the last clung to the hope that the plot might still succeed. When they learned the ruin of their hopes early on the morning of the 5th November, they took to their horses and fled from London. Digby heard nothing of the bad news, and held his hunting party as had been planned. Catesby himself arrived to tell of his disappointment. He told Digby privately that the plot had failed, but that if they all joined together they might still raise a force which would enable them to do something for the Catholic cause. Digby and a few of his friends agreed to join them, but most of the party indignantly refused.
The conspirators rode off together towards Wales, hoping to get more Catholics to join them by the way, but no one was willing to listen to them or give them any help. At last they stopped their flight at a house in Holbeach, on the borders of Staffordshire. They had lost heart; they knew that they were being pursued, that escape had become impossible. An accident occurred which caused them new terror. They were drying some gunpowder at the fire when a hot coal fell into it, and it exploded, burning the faces and hands of some of them. It seemed to them like God's judgment upon them for the deed they had planned; and for the first time the wickedness of their intentions seems to have struck them. They turned their minds to prayer, and confessed that they had been guilty of a great sin.
After a while the men who were pursuing them reached the house and began to fire into it Some of the conspirators went outside and were shot down. Catesby died kissing a picture of the Virgin; the rest were taken alive. Meanwhile, in London, Fawkes had been put to torture to force him to tell the names of his fellow conspirators; but though the particulars of the plot were wrung from him, he did not betray any one. After the conspirators were taken at Holbeach, all was soon known about the plot At the end of the month the eight conspirators, who were still living, were executed. Their courage did not fail them at the last. They died believing that they were martyrs in God’s cause. But they met with no sympathy from the crowds who lined the London streets to see them dragged to their death, and till this day the name of Guy Fawkes has been held up to the hatred of the nation. Still, whilst we hate the foul deed which he and his companions, in their blind zeal, plotted to commit, we must remember that, wicked as their ideas were, they came more from a mistaken devotion to the religion they loved than from a desire to gain anything for themselves.
Creighton, Louise. Stories from English History, Rivingtons, 1883.
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