The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter Part 2

[Footnote A: See the beautiful apologue of the Saxon n.o.bleman of Deira, delivered in the presence of St. Edwin King of Northumbria; given in Bede's "_Ecclesiastical History_."]

In the days of the second Henry Tudor--_fons et origo malorum_--the fountain-head and well-spring of almost all of England's many present-day religious and social woes--the men and women of England and Wales knew full well, whether they were of Cymric, Saxon, Scandinavian, or Norman race (or a mixture of all four), that to that a.s.semblage of ideas and emotions, laws and rules, habits and customs, which had come to them from men of foreign blood and alien name, dwelling on the banks of the far-off "yellow Tiber" and under sunny, blue Italian skies--these men and women, I repeat, knew full well that to their religious Faith they owed almost everything that was best and truest and most enduring, either in themselves or their kith and kin.[A]

[Footnote A: Yorks.h.i.+re, being the greatest of English s.h.i.+res, had among the inhabitants of its hills and dales and "sounding sh.o.r.es,"

representatives of the various races which compose the English nation. In the West Riding especially, those of the old Cymric or British stock were to be found. (Indeed, I am told, even now shepherds often count their sheep by the old British numerals.) This strong remnant of the old British race in the West Riding probably accounts for the marvellous gift of song wherewith this division of Yorks.h.i.+remen are endowed to this day, just as are the Welsh. In none other portion of England was there such a wealth of stately churches and beautiful monasteries as in Yorks.h.i.+re, the ancient Deira, whose melodious name once kept ringing in the ears of St. Gregory the Great, of a truth, the best friend the English people ever had. But Yorks.h.i.+re realised that "before all temples" the One above "preferred the upright heart and pure." Therefore, canonized saints arose from among her vigorous, keen-minded, yet poetically imaginative sons and daughters. York became sacred to St. Paulinus and St. William; Ripon to St. Wilfrid, the Apostle of Suss.e.x; also to St. Willibrord, the Apostle of Holland; Beverley was hallowed by the presence of St. John of Beverley; Whitby by the Saxon princess St. Hilda, the friend of Caedmon, the father of English poetry. The moors of Lastingham were blest by the presence of St. Chad and St. Cedd; and Knaresbrough by St. Robert, in his leafy stone-cave hard-by the winding Nidd.]

Now regard being had to the indisputable fact that for well-nigh a thousand years England had been known abroad as "the Dowry of Mary and the Island of Saints," by reason of the signal manifestations she had displayed in the way of cathedrals and churches, abbeys and priories, convents and nunneries, hospitals and schools (which arose up and down the length and breadth of the land to Northward and Southward, to East and West, thereby, by the aid of art, adding even to England's rare natural beauty), it was never at all likely that the bulk of the English people would, all on a sudden, cast off their cherished beliefs and hallowed affections respecting the deepest central questions of human life.[14]

Moreover, it may be taken as a general rule, to be remembered and applied by princes and statesmen, all the world over and for all time, that Man is a creature "full of religious instincts:"--"too superst.i.tious," should it be thought more accurate and desirable so to describe this undoubted habit and bent of the human mind.

Thence it follows that it is the merest fatuous folly for princes and statesmen if and when they have got themselves entangled in a false position, from some external cause or causes having little or no relation to the Invisible and the Eternal, to bid their subjects and denizens, "right about turn," at a moment's notice: however "bright and blissful"

such mental evolutions may be deemed to be by those who have unwisely taken it into their foolish head to issue the irrational command.[A]

[Footnote A: That able and strong-minded Englishman, Dr. Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, said (in 1901) in the House of Lords, during the debates on that pathetically ridiculous doc.u.ment, the Sovereign's Declaration against Popery, when speaking on Lord Salisbury's proposed amended form, that England was resolved "to stand no interference with her religion from the outside." It is a good thing that the heathen Kings Ethelbert and Edwin were _less abnormally patriotic_ 1300 years ago. For the idea of "independence" has to be held subject to the "golden mean" of "nothing too much." A fetish must not be made of that idea, especially by a people conscious of lofty imperial destiny. And "unity" must there be between ideas that are controlling fundamentals--in other words, between ideas intellectual, moral, and spiritual.]

Now, in the days of Queen Elizabeth[A] those whom religious loyalty prompted to wors.h.i.+p supremely "the G.o.d of their fathers" after a manner that those eager for change counted "idolatry," were marked by different mental characteristics. This was so throughout England; but especially was it so in those five northern counties which comprised what was then by Catholics proudly styled "the faithful North."

[Footnote A: The mother of Queen Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn, died reconciled to the Church of Rome. Her daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, was brought up in the tenets of that Church; but, like one type of the children of the Renaissance, Elizabeth was unconsciously "a Tribal Deist." Margaret Roper, the daughter of Sir Thomas More, was equally "cultured," but she accepted the Catholic tradition in its letter and in its spirit. I may here state that I have a great intellectual admiration for Queen Elizabeth, whose virtues were her own, while her faults, to a large extent, were her monstrous father's and her Privy Counsellors', _who told her not what she ought to do but what she could do, which no really faithful adviser of a Sovereign ever does_.]

Some of these English "leile and feile," that is loyal and faithful, servants of Rome were, on the subjective side, retained in their allegiance to the Visible Head of Christendom by bonds formed by mere natural piety and conservative feeling--dutiful affections of Nature which are the promise and the pledge of much that is best in the Teutonic race.

Others were mainly ruled by an overmastering sense of that lofty humility which foes call pride, but friends dignity.

Whilst a third cla.s.s were persuaded, by intense intellectual, moral, and spiritual conviction that--"in and by the power of divine grace"--come what might, nothing should separate them from those hereditary beliefs which were dearer to them far than not merely earthly goods, lands, and personal liberty, but even than their very life.

This last-mentioned cla.s.s, from and after the year 1580, "the year of the Lord's controversy with Sion," as the old English Catholics regarded it, who loved to recall that "good time" when Campion and Parsons "poured out their soul in words," especially Campion, who was remembered in the north for three generations: this last-mentioned cla.s.s, I say, were oftentimes, though certainly not always, found to be greatly attached to the then new Society of Jesus, which, in England, was in the glow and purity of its first fervour.

This last-mentioned cla.s.s--I mean the Jesuitically-affected cla.s.s of English Catholics--were also again sub-divided into three sub-divisions.

One sub-division was composed of Mystics; another of Politicians; and a third of those who, realising a higher unity, were at once Mystics _and_ Politicians--or, in other phraseology, _they were Men of Thought and Men of Action_.

Now, the Gunpowder conspirators belonged to the last-mentioned cla.s.s, and to the second division of that cla.s.s. That is to say, they were mere Politicians, speaking broadly and speaking generally.

CHAPTER VI.

It hath been truly observed by one of the most knowing and candid of modern students of Elizabethan biographical literature, that Sir William Catesby, the father of the arch-gunpowder conspirator, Robert Catesby, in common with the great majority of the country gentry throughout England, who were resident upon their own estates, and unconnected with the oligarchy which ruled in the Queen's name (_i.e._, Queen Elizabeth's) at Court, threw in his lot with the Catholic party, and suffered in consequence of his conscientious adherence to the old creed.[A]

[Footnote A: Dr. Augustus Jessopp: Article--"Robert Catesby," "_National Dictionary of Biography_."]

While Sir Thomas Tresham (the brother-in-law of the last-mentioned Sir William Catesby and father of Francis Tresham, one of the subordinate conspirators), was so attached to the ancient faith of the English people that, we are told, he not only regularly paid--by way of fines--for more than twenty years, the sum of 260 per annum, about 2,080 a year in our money, into the Treasury rather than not maintain what (to him) was "a conscience void of offence," but he also spent at least twenty-one years of his life in prison, after being Star-Chambered in the year 1581 along with Lord Vaux of Harrowden and his brother-in-law, Sir William Catesby, on a charge of harbouring Campion.

The Fleet prison in London, Banbury Castle and Ely--his "familiar prison,"

as Sir Thomas Tresham pleasantly styled the last-named place of incarceration--were the habitations wherein he was enabled to make it his boast in a letter to Lord Henry Howard, afterwards the Earl of Northampton, writ in the year 1603, "that he had now completed his triple apprentices.h.i.+p in direst adversity, and that he should be content to serve a like long apprentices.h.i.+p to prevent the foregoing of his beloved, beautiful, and graceful Rachel; for it seemed to him but a few days for the love he had to her."[A]

[Footnote A: Quoted from papers found at Rushton in Northamptons.h.i.+re, the seat of Sir Thomas Tresham, which he himself designed, being an architect of some skill.]

Well may the spiritual descendants to-day of these grand old Elizabethan Catholics exclaim:--"_Their_ very memory is pure and bright, and our sad thoughts doth cheer!"

CHAPTER VII.

The men known to history as the Gunpowder Plotters were thirteen in number.

They were at first Robert Catesby, already mentioned, Thomas Winter, Thomas Percy, John Wright, and Guy (or Guido) Fawkes.

Subsequently, there were added to these five--Robert Keyes, Christopher Wright (a younger brother of John Wright), and lastly Robert Winter (an elder brother of Thomas Winter),[A] Ambrose Rookwood, John Grant, Sir Everard Digby, Francis Tresham, and Thomas Bates.

[Footnote A: Lord Edmund Talbot, brother to the present Duke of Norfolk, K.G., Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, is allied to Robert Winter, through the latter's marriage with Gertrude Talbot, the daughter of John Talbot, Esquire, of Grafton in Worcesters.h.i.+re. The brother of Gertrude Winter became Earl of Shrewsbury. John Talbot had married a daughter of Sir William Petre. Lord Edmund Talbot, I believe, now owns Huddington.]

Of these thirteen conspirators, all, with the exception of Thomas Bates, a serving-man of Robert Catesby, were, as Fawkes said, "gentlemen of name and blood."

Thomas Percy was the eldest of the conspirators and in 1605 was about forty-five years of age.

Sir Everard Digby was the youngest, being twenty-four years of age, whilst the ages of the others ranged betwixt and between.[15]

Thomas Percy, a native of Beverley, an ancient and historic town in the East Riding of Yorks.h.i.+re, was therefore a Yorks.h.i.+reman by birth. He was the son of Edward Percy and Elizabeth his wife. Though not the ringleader of the band of conspirators, Thomas Percy must have cut the greatest figure in the eyes of the public at large. For he was a "kinsman" of Henry, ninth Earl of Northumberland, according to the testimony of the Earl himself,[16] and through this n.o.bleman Thomas Percy had been made Captain of the Pensioners-in-Ordinary--Gentlemen of Honour--in attendance at Court. At the time of the Plot, too, Thomas Percy--the Constable of Alnwick and Warkworth Castles--acted as officer or agent for his n.o.ble kinsman's large northern estates, at Alnwick, Warkworth, Topcliffe, Spofforth, and elsewhere.

Robert Catesby, the arch-conspirator, was--as we have seen already--the son and heir of Sir William Catesby, whose wife was a daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton of Coughton in Warwicks.h.i.+re.

Sir William Catesby was a gentleman of ancient, historic and distinguished lineage, who had large possessions in Northamptons.h.i.+re, Oxfords.h.i.+re, and Warwicks.h.i.+re, yielding him about 3,000 a year, or probably from 24,000 to 30,000 a year in our money.

These large estates his ill-fated son Robert Catesby succeeded to in expectancy in 1598.[17]

Catesby, the younger, diminished his annual revenue very considerably by involving himself in the rising of the brilliant Robert Devereux, second Earl of Ess.e.x (1601), who had given to Catesby a promise of toleration for Catholic recusants, who chafed greatly under a system of politico-theological persecution, at once galling, cruel and despicable.

But this promise of toleration was conditioned by the very vital condition precedent that the insurrectionary movement of the gallant but rash Ess.e.x against the Government of Elizabeth had a successful issue.

The movement, however, was emphatically not smiled on by Fortune, that fickle G.o.ddess, with the result that Catesby found himself locked up in prison, and was only ransomed by payment of a sum of 3,000.

This heavy fine, together with the fact that in the year 1605 his mother, the Dowager Lady Catesby, was living at Ashby St. Legers in Northamptons.h.i.+re, and owned for life all rents of the estates, except Chastleton near Chipping Norton in Oxfords.h.i.+re, seems to have been the cause that, at the time of the Gunpowder Plot, Catesby had not any very great amount of ready money in hand.

Besides this, until some four or five years prior to 1603, the year of the death of Queen Elizabeth, when he began to practise the religion which in 1580 his father, Sir William Catesby, had embraced or re-embraced, and for which the latter had suffered imprisonment and heavy fines, Robert Catesby "was very wild; and as he kept company with the best n.o.blemen of the land, so he spent much above his rate, and so wasted also good part of his living."

"He was of person above two yards[18] high, and though slender, yet as well proportioned to his height as any man one should see." He was, moreover, reputed to be "very wise and of great judgment, though his utterance was not so good. Besides, he was so liberal, and apt to help all sorts, as it got him much love."

At the time of the Plot Catesby was about thirty-five years of age. He had married Catherine Leigh, a daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh, of Stoneleigh, a Protestant gentleman of wealth and influence in Warwicks.h.i.+re. The Parish Register of Chastleton has the following entry:--"Robert Catesbie, son of Robert Catesbie, was baptised the 11th day of November, 1595."[19] He had only this one surviving child, who is said to have married the only child of Thomas Percy.

Catesby had the misfortune to lose his wife by death before the year 1602, and at the time of the Plot his home seems to have been with his mother, the Dowager Lady Catesby, at Ashby St. Legers in the County of Northampton, the family ancestral seat. For in 1602 he had sold his residence, Chastleton, in Oxfords.h.i.+re.

Now, as Robert Catesby, it seems by many circ.u.mstances, was the first inventor and chiefest furtherer of the Plot, it is worth while thus lingering on a description of what manner of man he was.

It, however, may be asked how came it to pa.s.s that this one person gained such prodigious ascendency over twelve other persons so as to make them, in the event, as mischievously, nay fatally, deluded as himself?