The Gunpowder Plot: Terror & Faith in 1605 (12 page)

Cecil responded with an interesting account of his personal credo. Much as he loathed the Catholic priests and the peril they represented – ‘I condemn their doctrine, I detest their conversation’ – nevertheless he confessed that he shrank to see them ‘die by dozens’ when ‘at the last gasp’ they came ‘so near loyalty’. (Cecil’s compassion, however, specifically excluded the Jesuits, whom he designated ‘that generation of vipers’ trading in ‘the blood and crowns of Princes’.) On another occasion James similarly dissociated himself from the shedding of blood. And where the priests were concerned, he believed that exile was a better solution than execution: rather than have their heads separated from their bodies ‘I would be glad to have both their heads and their bodies separated from this whole island and transported beyond seas.’
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This letter from King James probably comes near to expressing what he actually felt on the subject: ‘I will never allow in my conscience that the blood of any man shall be shed for diversity of opinions in religion, but I should be sorry that Catholics should so multiply as they might be able to practise their old principles upon us.’ Although he would never agree that men should die for ‘errors in faith’, a pronounced rise in the numbers of Catholics was another matter. Such a Catholic increase would have serious consequences ‘as by continual multiplication they [the Catholics] might at last become master’.
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When King James wrote these words, he suggested at the least that English Catholics might one day enjoy the tolerated minority status of the Protestant Huguenots in France. Yet
there was an obvious flaw in this argument, at least from the Catholic point of view. The King indicated that Catholics might be tolerated, just so long as their numbers did not increase. But Catholic toleration almost certainly
would
bring about an increase in numbers. The religious climate would be balmier and the Church Papists would venture forth again under their true colours.

These were ideas being floated rather than plans being made. But some time in 1602 Henry Percy 9th Earl of Northumberland initiated a more down-to-earth correspondence on the subject with the King. He came of a family (like the Howards) that had suffered much for the King’s unfortunate mother. Cecil’s father might have been responsible for Mary Queen of Scots’ head being cut off (as James was rumoured to believe) but Northumberland’s uncle had lost
his
head in 1572 for his part in the Northern Rising on behalf of Queen Mary. Born in 1564, the 9th Earl was two years older than James VI and a magnificent peer with massive estates in northern England, as well as in the south, where he had an establishment at Petworth in Sussex. Highly gifted, his scientific experiments and his remarkable scientific library would later earn him the sobriquet of the ‘Wizard Earl’. But Northumberland also had something remote about him (to which his deafness contributed) and his speech was inclined to be slow. At times shy – ‘a kind of inward, reserved man’ – and at other times a manic gambler with a temper that flared up, he constituted a puzzle to his contemporaries.
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His lofty position aroused in others not only respect but jealousy.

Northumberland’s status at the court of Elizabeth was further complicated by a troubled marriage. His wife Dorothy was the sister of the Queen’s favourite Essex, and for this, and her own sweetness of character, Elizabeth bore her great personal fondness. The Queen took Dorothy’s side when the couple separated. A brief reconciliation resulted in the birth of a longed-for heir in 1602, but then the marriage again broke up. In general Northumberland does not seem to have exercised good judgement in his various relationships. Nowhere
was this more apparent than in his employment of a certain Thomas Percy as his go-between with King James.

Thomas Percy was a poor relation, one of those hangers-on that flocked around great men, petitioning for preferment. The connection was actually quite remote: Thomas Percy was a second cousin once removed, being the great-grandson of the 4th Earl (not an illegitimate half-brother of Northumberland as is sometimes suggested).
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But a kind of clan system existed by which a comparatively distant relation such as Percy would look to the proverbially generous Northumberland as his patron. In 1596 Percy was made Constable of Alnwick Castle, the great Percy fortress on the borders of Scotland, and thus the agent for the family’s northern estates. Northumberland declined a post as ambassador from Queen Elizabeth (his deafness made him draw back) but he did hold a command in the Low Countries from 1600 to 1601, where Thomas Percy joined him before the death of Queen Elizabeth. At some point Percy’s particular energies convinced Northumberland that he was the man to handle the somewhat delicate Scottish mission.

Presumably Percy’s religion was the clinching factor. Northumberland himself was summed up by a French ambassador as one who was ‘a Catholic in his soul’. Northumberland put it rather differently when he wrote to James to say that, although he was not a Catholic himself, there were sundry people in his entourage who had ‘oars in that boat’.
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He was referring by this to a few old recusant servants lingering in his house: the sort who would threaten no one. But Percy was different. He was a much more political animal, and his Catholicism more determinedly active.

Percy was a controversial figure in his own time – ‘a subtle, flattering, dangerous knave’ according to one verdict. He was in his forties at the death of Elizabeth (although his white hair made him look older) and a striking figure with his exceptional height and formidable build. He had a certain charm, despite the general seriousness of his manner, and a great deal of energy. This energy was physical as well as mental and as a
result Percy had a tendency to sweat and used to change his shirt twice a day, giving ‘much labour to his laundresses’.
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The personality of Thomas Percy still exercises a baleful influence on the events surrounding the Gunpowder Plot in the minds of historians, as, it might be argued, it did over the unwisely generous Northumberland. According to a Catholic source, Percy had had a wild youth in which he ‘relied much on his sword and personal courage’ and relished being among ‘foul-mouthed, ribald people’. His conversion to Catholicism – or at any rate his moving from some form of Church Papistry to more ardent belief – was supposed to have calmed him down.
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Nevertheless, some wildness seems to have remained, since he left his wife for another woman. In an age before the official registration of marriage or for that matter any possibility of legal divorce, men dealt with the situation by simply marrying again in another part of the country, which is what Percy appears to have done. His first wife, born Martha Wright, whom he married in 1591, was abandoned in London, in Holborn, ‘mean and poor’, to support herself as best she could by teaching the daughters of recusants. The other wife was in Warwickshire.
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The first marriage, even if a failure in personal terms, had important consequences for Percy. Martha Wright came from one of those stubbornly recusant families in Yorkshire, whose womenfolk were celebrated for their constancy. Her mother Ursula Wright – ‘a great prayer’ – served many years in prison for refusing to attend Protestant services. Another of Ursula’s daughters, who married into the Yorkshire recusant family of Ward, became the mother of the remarkable proponent of female education and founder of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mary Ward, born in 1585. At Ploughland Hall, in east Yorkshire, the young Mary Ward spent five years in grandmother Ursula’s care.
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Martha was, in the family tradition, ‘an honourable good lady’ and her teaching was still remembered with gratitude over forty years later by ‘those that were her scholars’. Apart from her work, Martha lived ‘very private’, due to the fact that she frequently harboured priests.
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Thomas Percy himself was clearly a clever man. If he were not, Northumberland’s continued reliance on his administrative abilities in the north would not make sense. At the same time, Percy was in some ways unscrupulous. He was not the only unjust steward to seek to benefit from the profits of a master immeasurably more wealthy than himself. Nevertheless, it was hardly to his credit that charges of dishonesty relating to the handling of the Percy estates were at one point brought against him, and proved. Yet Percy unquestionably had Northumberland’s trust. It was Percy who was sent on a confidential mission to Scotland, before the death of Queen Elizabeth, on behalf of the English Catholics. Northumberland intended to ‘deliver’ the English Catholics to King James, and the King seemed to be ready to ‘receive’ them – on his terms.

Northumberland’s plan was to build up a power base in the new reign and with the new sovereign, to make up for the Elizabethan family disgrace. There was also the need to counteract the rising influence of Cecil, in that perpetual dance to the music of jealousy which occupied sixteenth-century courtiers. As for the English Catholic faction, its floating quality, stressed in the previous chapter, made it easy for outsiders to overestimate its importance. Afterwards, when everyone was busy rewriting history to assert their own innocence (or the guilt of others) Northumberland would assert that the mission had been Percy’s idea.
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For all Percy’s power to manipulate his patron, this does not ring true. Northumberland had a clear agenda in which he intended to make use of the Catholics to his own advantage.

Percy seems to have made three visits altogether to Scotland before 1603, carrying Northumberland’s secret correspondence. He was genially received by King James. Father Oswald Tesimond, often known under his alias of Greenway, wrote an account of it later in his
Narrative,
which is one of the important Catholic sources for the events surrounding the Powder Treason. Tesimond, a Jesuit priest from the north, knew many of the participants well and was a first-hand witness to a
number of the happenings. Thus we have King James in Tesimond’s version making ‘very generous promises to favour Catholics actively and not merely to free them from the bondage and persecution in which they were then living’. It got better: ‘Indeed, he would admit them to every kind of honour and office in the state without making any difference between them and the Protestants.’ And even better: ‘At last he would take them under his complete protection.’ As the King pledged his word as a prince, he took Percy by the hand and ‘swore to carry out all that he had promised’. That was the thrilling story of his royal encounter which Thomas Percy now spread everywhere among the Catholics.
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If all this was true, it is easy to imagine the elation with which Percy returned to England, hastening to pass the good news to his co-religionists. Similarly, one can understand only too easily their own rising excitement. As Father Tesimond explained, the report as it spread in secret did an enormous amount of good for the King, ‘winning over as it did the allegiance of the Catholics and filling them with the highest hopes’. But was it true?

The consensus of opinions among historians is that King James did give certain assurances, but that they were verbal. In cultivating the Catholics his clear intention was to foster exactly those ‘highest hopes’ to which Tesimond alluded. This was how King James operated. (One should point out that he was making similarly encouraging noises, at precisely the same period, to the English Puritans, who would have been mortally offended at the merest hint of toleration for the Catholics.) The sort of thing he probably had in mind was to allow what Northumberland called ‘a Mass in a corner’ – that is, in a private house, giving no public offence. In his correspondence with Northumberland, King James continually stressed his unaggressive feelings towards those Catholics who were not ‘restive’.
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But all this was a very long way from the wild message of future royal ‘protection’ spread by Percy. Also, Percy, eager to establish his own importance, had been given a perfect
opportunity by these unwritten promises to impress his patron Northumberland, and his fellow Catholics. There is no question that the account of Tesimond shows a degree of exaggeration on Percy’s part. At the same time, equally fatally, the King promised much more than he would admit to later.

King James’ surviving correspondence with Northumberland is of a very different tone. At the start Northumberland knew exactly the right note to strike: ‘My conscience told me of your succession right.’ This was Northumberland’s message: ‘It were a pity to lose so good a kingdom’ by not tolerating private Masses so long as the Catholics ‘shall not be too busy disturbers of the government of the state, nor seek to make us contributors to a Peter [i.e. Catholic] priest’. King James’ written reply to Northumberland was along the same lines. As for the Catholics, he would neither persecute ‘any that will be quiet’ and give outward obedience to the law, nor fail to advance any of them who genuinely deserved it through their ‘good service’.
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Between this kind of sober, not unreasonable talk and Percy’s exaggerated account of a glorious future, there was an enormous, potentially lethal gap.

Not all the English Catholics, however, were prepared to conduct themselves quite so quietly. The cause of the old religion in England had not been helped – how could it be? – by an angry split which developed in the late 1590s between the Jesuits and another group of priests, the so-called Appellants.
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The dispute emerged into the open in the prison of Wisbech Castle in Lincolnshire where a great many priests were held. It was immensely disruptive within the narrow confine of the prison, and outside in the wider world even more so. Most importantly, from the point of view of the future, the dispute encouraged the Appellants to paint the Jesuits to the government as treacherous emissaries of the Pope who owed to him their first loyalty. This of course was almost exactly the government’s own declared position on those ‘hellhounds’ the Jesuits.