The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter Part 22

Catesby, Rookwood, and Grant were severely burnt in the face, especially the two latter, with some damp or dank gunpowder which they were drying on a platter before the kitchen fire, and into which a hot cinder fell.

This incident seems to have thoroughly unnerved Catesby and all his wicked confederates. They saw in the fact a stroke of poetic justice--nay, the flaming, avenging sword of Heaven.

Thomas Winter was told by Catesby and the rest, in reply to his question, "We mean here to die."

Winter thereupon replied, "I will take such part as you do."

"Then they all fell earnestly to their prayers," says Gerard, "the litanies and such like." They also "spent an hour in meditation."

About eleven o'clock in the forenoon of that black Friday, November the 8th, 1605, the High Sheriff of Worcesters.h.i.+re arrived with the whole power and force of the county, and beset the house.

Thomas Winter, going into the court-yard, was shot in the shoulder with an arrow from a cross-bow, and lost the use of his right arm.

John Wright was shot dead.

Christopher Wright was mortally wounded.

Ambrose Rookwood was wounded in four or five places.

John Grant was likewise disabled.

Catesby and Thomas Percy, each sword in hand, and "standing before the door" close together, were mortally wounded by two successive shots fired by one musketeer, who afterwards boasted of his resolute carriage of himself on that eventful day.[A]

[Footnote A: The man's name was John Streete. He received a pension of two s.h.i.+llings a day for life, equal to about sixteen s.h.i.+llings a day in our money. Gerard's "_What was the Gunpowder Plot?_" p. 155.]

Catesby, before receiving his fatal shot, we are told by Father Gerard in his "_Narrative_," p. 109, "took from his neck a cross of gold, which he always used to wear about him, and blessing himself with it and kissing it, showed it unto the people, protesting there solemnly before them all it was only for the honour of the Cross, and the exaltation of that Faith which honoured the Cross, and for the saving of their souls in the same Faith that had moved him to undertake the business; and seth he saw it was not G.o.d's will it should succeed in that manner they intended, or at that time, he was willing and ready to give his life for the same cause, only he would not be taken by any, and against that only he would defend himself with his sword.

"This done, Mr. Catesby and Mr. Percy turned back to back, resolving to yield themselves to no man, but to death as the messenger of G.o.d.

"None of their adversaries did come near them, but one fellow standing behind a tree with a musket, shot them both with one bullet,[A] and Mr.

Catesby was shot almost dead, the other lived three or four days.

[Footnote A: It was with one musket, but two successive bullets.]

"Mr. Catesby being fallen to the ground, as they say, went upon his knees into the house, and there got a picture of our Blessed Lady in his arms (unto whom he was accustomed to be very devout), and so embracing and kissing the same, he died."[B]

[Footnote B: The mind of each of the thirteen Gunpowder conspirators affords the intellectual philosopher and the moral philosopher rich food for thought. What a reflection from human nature is not the soul of these men, one and all--especially Catesby, Thomas Percy, Thomas Winter, Guy Fawkes, Ambrose Rookwood, and Christopher Wright. I would especially point out the strange superst.i.tion that Catesby exhibited in wis.h.i.+ng to blow up the _Parliament House_, because it was _there_ the iniquitous laws had been made against the Catholics. He primarily wished, like some pagan, to be revenged on the _material object_, which had been the unconscious and irresponsible instrument of his kinsfolk's and friends' hurt.

Moreover, how true to daily experience is the behaviour of Catesby in his last moments: of one who in his youth had been very wild, but who, on reaching maturer years, had grown to have a great devotion to _her_ whom Wordsworth has so beautifully styled "our tainted nature's solitary boast."

Again; the dying soldier's flying for protection to, and the kissing in his last agony, when the light of life was about to be quenched in his mortal eyes for ever, a picture of _her_ who is "the Mother of Christ,"

and whom millions hold to be likewise "the Refuge of sinners," is startlingly true to human nature.

But--"Close up his eyes, and let us all to meditation." For "_In la sua volontade e nostra pace_"--"Only in the Will of G.o.d is man's peace." And the essence of that Will is the Everlasting Moral Law.]

On the 9th of November Sir Edward Leigh wrote to the Privy Council that the Wrights were not slain as reputed, but wounded. Not till the 13th was their death certified by Sir Richard Walsh, High Sheriff of Worcesters.h.i.+re.--See Gerard's "_What was the Gunpowder Plot?_" pp. 153, 154.

Whatever was the case with John Wright, it seems clear that the weight of evidence inclines to show that Christopher Wright did not expire on Friday, the 8th November, but that he lingered at least a day or two. The exact day of Christopher Wright's death, and what became of his remains, may be ascertained facts hereafter, possibly. At present, they are unknown.[157]

CHAPTER LV.

Father Garnet did not go nearer London than Gothurst, in Buckinghams.h.i.+re, between ten and fifteen miles distant from Great Harrowden.

We know that he was at Gothurst when Catesby was there, on Tuesday, the 22nd of October, one day after the date of the _post scriptum_ mentioned in the last chapter. Probably the _post scriptum_ of the 21st October was written at Gothurst and not at Great Harrowden, though the letter itself of the 4th October undoubtedly was penned at Harrowden, between ten and fifteen miles distant from Gothurst, as just remarked.

The Honourable Anne Vaux, whose maternal grandfather was Sir Thomas Beaumont, Master of the Rolls, was a level-headed woman of acute mental perceptions as well as of great moral ardour and intense spiritual exaltation.[A]

[Footnote A: The psychologist will have observed that these qualities are not seldom combined in a certain order of minds. _Cf._, Shakespeare's "great wits to madness are near allied"--some thinkers will be inclined to say.]

Miss Vaux was allied to both Catesby and Tresham, and their words, and still more their doings, during the few months then last past, had been not unnoticed by her. She evidently had that strange premonitory foreboding, that curious sense of swift approaching doom, which have marked all tragedies written or unwritten since the world began.

Moreover, the large number of cavalry horses in the stables of Norbrook and Huddington (those places being her fellow-pilgrims' and her own places of sojourning when _en route_ for Holywell) had alarmed Anne Vaux's imagination. And in reply to the lady's anxious inquiries she had been told by her iniquitous, head-strong connections--Catesby and the rest--that the horses were wanted for the troop of horse whereof Catesby was to be in charge, with King James's permission, in aid of the cause of the Spanish Archdukes in the Low Countries, then still in rebellion against the Spanish sovereignty.

Again; at either Harrowden or Gothurst, Miss Vaux sought out her father's friend, and her own honoured and beloved spiritual counsellor, the chief of the English Jesuits, and told him that she feared that some trouble or disorder was a-brewing; and, moreover, that some of the gentlewomen, namely, the wives of the conspirators, "had demanded of her where they should bestow themselves until the burst was past in the beginning of the Parliament."

Garnet, in reply, asked his inquirer who told her this; but she said "she durst not tell who told her so; she was [choked] with sorrow."[A]

[Footnote A: Garnet's examination of the 12th March. Foley's "_Records_,"

vol. iv., p. 157.]

At Coughton, Father Garnet said Ma.s.s on the 1st of November, All Saints'

Day.

There "a.s.sisted" at this Ma.s.s the Lady Digby,[B] Mr. and Mrs. Brookesby, Miss Anne Vaux, and almost the whole of Sir Everard Digby's Gothurst household.

[Footnote B: Lady Digby had been brought up a strong Protestant, and, like most converts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the Church of Rome from Calvinistic Puritanism, she became an ardent devotee of the Jesuits. (The point of contact was probably a common interest in the problems of the mystical life, and a tendency towards a grave, sober, strict regularity of "daily walk and conversation.") George Gilbert, a gentleman of high Suffolk family and great wealth, was likewise a convert from Calvinism, through the instrumentality of the Jesuit Fathers, Darbys.h.i.+re and Parsons. Gilbert, as a young man, daily "waited upon the ministry" of the once celebrated Puritan Divine, Dering, the friend of Thomas Cartwright. George Gilbert died in Rome in 1583, holding in his hand a crucifix made in prison by "the Blessed" Alexander Briant, a martyr friend of "the Blessed" Edmund Campion. Of Briant it is said he was "of a very sweet grace in preaching," and that he was "replenished with spiritual sweetness" when suffering the tortures of the rack. George Gilbert mainly defrayed the cost of painting on the walls of the Church of the English College at Rome certain pictures of some of "the English Martyrs," although "old Richard Norton," of Norton Conyers, near Ripon, and some others who as exiles had "with strangers made their home,"

likewise subscribed to the expense of the pious and artistic work. I saw, on the 13th October, 1900, through the kind courtesy of the Right Reverend Monsignor Giles, D.D., Rector of the English College, copies of these remarkable pictures, copies which are painted on the walls of that very College where Father Oldcorne himself had been educated.

The original pictures on the walls of the Church are no longer in existence. The copies, however, even in our own day, have played an important part in "the beatification" of those of the English Martyrs already beatified, including "the Blessed" Thomas Percy Earl of Northumberland, who suffered death at York in 1572.--See the "_Acts of the English Martyrs_," by the Rev. J. H. Pollen, S.J. (Burns & Oates).]

At Gothurst, however, was Sir Everard himself, busy making his final preparations for the war he was about to levy upon his King.

We find Sir Everard there also on November 2nd, All Souls' Day, the last he and his ill-fated comrades were destined to keep on earth.--See Gerard's "_Narrative_."

On All Saints' Day, Father Garnet appears to have offered some prayers, or otherwise advised the offering of the same, which had a certain reference to the King, the Parliament, and the hoped-for triumph of his Church over her enemies, especially over those then molesting the faithful English remnant of "the elect." He also appears, according to his own admission, to have spoken a sermon which might be easily construed as bearing some allusion to the then wretched condition of the unhappy English Catholics.[A]

[Footnote A: See Letter to Miss Anne Vaux, dated 2nd March, 1605-6, quoted in Foley, vol. iv., p. 84, where Garnet says: "There is a muttering here of a sermon which either I or Mr. Hall [an alias of Father Oldcorne] made.

I fear mine, at Coughton. Mr. Hall hath no great matter, but only about Mr. Abington, though Mr. Attourney saith he hath more."]

Now, I infer that all this tends to demonstrate that Father Henry Garnet felt that a great burden or load had been lifted from his heart in regard to the aforetime perilous, but then practically abortive, Gunpowder Treason Plot. Therefore he must have known, from some source or another, that the Plot would be squashed before Tuesday, November the 5th, had dawned upon a "fallen world," and all danger from the Plot finally swept away.

Again, in the Ma.s.s for All Saints' Day there is a hymn, one verse of which is: "Take away the faithless people from the boundaries of the faithful, that we may joyfully give due praises to Christ."

Cardinal Allen had induced the Pope "to indulge" the recital of these words by Catholics for the harmless "intention" of the "Conversion of England."