The Gunpowder Plot: Terror & Faith in 1605 (30 page)

Ambrose Rookwood was in his mid-twenties, that is, considerably younger than the Plotters; already, however, he had the reputation of a brave man, one that would dare anything for ‘a cause that was good’. He was the child of staunchly Catholic parents, Robert Rookwood and his second wife Dorothea Drury (both were imprisoned as recusants). Robert Rookwood had considerable estates, including Coldham Hall, near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, and Ambrose had been educated abroad, among the first of the pupils at the Jesuit school at St Omer, near Calais, which had been founded in 1593. Since it mainly attracted the children of the wealthy, St Omer was beginning to create a new kind of Catholic elite, consisting of well-educated and pious young men.

Even without this influence Ambrose Rookwood had many recusant connections. His cousin Edward was the kind of affluent Papist who was allowed to entertain Queen Elizabeth at his great house, Euston Hall, in Norfolk, but who also spent ten years in prison for his Faith. One half-sister Dorothea became a nun at St Ursula’s, Louvain – ‘the talk of the place for her holiness’ – and another, Susanna, also a nun, was one of the earliest and closest associates of Mary Ward.
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On his father’s death in 1600, Ambrose Rookwood inherited Coldham. With his wife Elizabeth, he proceeded to make the house ‘a common refuge of priests’ as it had been in his
father’s day.
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This devout young man had however his lighter side: his manner in public was ‘easy and cheerful’. Being handsome, but rather short, he found compensation in a taste for extravagant, showy clothes, and was generally rated a dandy – perhaps too much so for ‘his degree’, when clothes were supposed to denote rank rather than money. There was, for example, his ‘fair scarf with figures and ciphers upon it, his ‘Hungarian horseman’s coat’ entirely lined with velvet.
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But horses rather than clothes were Rookwood’s abiding passion, after his religion. And it was for his celebrated stable of horses at Coldham that Ambrose Rookwood – among the many who were under the charismatic spell of Catesby – was drawn into the net. It was necessary to have Rookwood and his horses close by the other midland conspirators. He was persuaded by Catesby to rent Clopton House, adjacent to Stratford. At Clopton, where Rookwood took up residence after Michaelmas, we know from government records later that he introduced at least two chalices, two or three crucifixes, vestments of different colours for the various feasts of the Church (including red for martyrdom and black for a Requiem Mass), Latin books and ‘praying beads’ made of bone. To conceal all this, Little John constructed a large cellar stretching under the garden, which could be reached by an underground passage.
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Ambrose Rookwood was the eleventh conspirator.

On 14 October, Catesby recruited a twelfth, Francis Tresham. The encounter took place at the home of Lord Stourton, Tresham’s brother-in-law, in Clerkenwell. Afterwards Tresham gave a highly partial account of the whole affair.
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By this time he had every reason to minimise his own participation (and guilt), not only for his own sake but for that of his wife and children.† Throughout this exculpatory confession
Tresham emphasised his own belief that he had at the very least secured a ‘postponement’ of the Powder Treason until the end of the Parliamentary session when the full extent of the new anti-Papist laws would be known.

In conversation with Catesby, Tresham raised at once the moral issue of whether the conspiracy was ‘damnable’, that is, leading to their spiritual damnation. When Catesby said it was not, Tresham replied: ‘Why then, Robin… you must give me leave to censure it myself.’ With the perfect accuracy of hindsight, Tresham presented himself as having foreseen correctly the dreadful effects of the Powder Treason. If Parliament was blown up, what could the Catholics do afterwards? ‘What strength are they of, as of themselves?’ he asked, having no foreign power to back them. Even if the government were confused at first, they would quickly rally, in order to run down and kill all the Catholics in England. To this Catesby simply answered: ‘The necessity of the Catholics’ was such that ‘it must needs be done’. These last words, with their ring of authenticity, represent Catesby’s unswerving view on the subject since the spring of 1604, when he had despaired of securing that toleration, once promised by King James, by peaceful means and had called for ‘so sharp a remedy’.

Catesby pressed his cousin for two favours. First he wanted a large sum of money – two thousand pounds – and then he begged Francis to keep Rushton open. According to Francis, he carried out neither request. He was not in possession of the kind of money Catesby wanted, given the tangled state of his father’s affairs, although he did give a hundred pounds to Tom Wintour, on the understanding he was taking a ship for the Low Countries. Secondly, Francis did shut up Rushton, bringing his mother and unmarried sisters to London, which, he pointed out, he would hardly have done if he had believed he was carrying them into ‘the very mouth and fury’ of the coming action.

In short, Francis Tresham, while admitting that from the government’s point of view he was ‘guilty of concealment’, maintained that he had never in any sense been an active
Plotter. Furthermore he believed he had brought Tom Wintour and even Thomas Percy to see the wisdom of postponement. Lastly, he had actually been planning to tip the wink to Sir Thomas Lake, the King’s Latin Secretary (but he planned to talk of a Puritan conspiracy in order to save his friends and relations), when events forestalled him.

It is questionable how much of all this should be believed, beyond the characteristic do-or-die attitude of Catesby, given the circumstances under which the story was told. It seems unlikely that Tresham, so clever and so close to Catesby, really thought he had secured this famous postponement, but the matter is finally unprovable. The most important point which emerges from Tresham’s narrative is his sheer unreliability. Whether he believed the Plot to be postponed or not, he was contemplating betraying his companions – among them his closest friends – to the authorities. For it was hardly likely that the assiduous Lake, who had the King’s ear for his championship of the Scots at court, would be long fooled by the prospect of a phantom Puritan rising, when emerging evidence of a real Catholic one was at hand. It was a man of this dangerous calibre that Catesby, with the reckless confidence of one who knows himself to be a natural leader, had introduced into the Powder Treason.

A week after Tresham’s meeting with Catesby – on Monday 21 October – the Feast of St Luke was celebrated at Harrowden. This was a day on which the Jesuits in England traditionally tried to gather together to renew their vows.
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Everard and Mary Digby rode over from Gayhurst for the occasion, returning that night. Father Garnet went with them, and so did Anne Vaux. It was at Gayhurst on this visit, while out riding, that Robin Catesby took the opportunity to let Everard Digby in on the secret.
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Sir Everard Digby was the thirteenth and last conspirator. But, whoever was to be the Judas in their midst, it was not
Digby. He was twenty-four and like the other junior member of the band, Ambrose Rookwood, was recruited for two practical reasons. Digby was wealthy, and he also had the essential horsemanship, as well as the equally essential stable of horses.

Digby, unlike Rookwood, was never involved in the grim London end of the proceedings. On the contrary, he was asked to install himself at Coughton Court, near Alcester in Warwickshire, which he was to rent from the current head of the Throckmorton family, Thomas, who had gone abroad in 1604. This move was, in Catesby’s words, to make Digby ‘the better to be able to do good to the cause’. He was to take Coughton for a month, ‘purporting to take it longer… if his wife should like to live there’.
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Near by, Digby was to organise a meeting of gentlemen, ostensibly for a hunt, but actually armed and on horseback ready for some great deed.

What was that great deed to be? There are some grounds for thinking that Digby, unlike Francis Tresham, was for the time being left in ignorance about the heart of the treason, the plan to blow up Parliament. It makes sense that Digby should have been entrusted with the vital midlands operation to abduct the Princess Elizabeth. Not only his horsemanship but his famous chivalric presence made him an excellent and even, it could be argued, reassuring figure. It is also likely that Digby believed that this abduction was the English side of some Flanders-based project of the sort which had beguiled Catholic intriguers for so long. Furthermore, he was informed – quite wrongly – that the Jesuits had given the venture their blessing.
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So, far from being a Judas, the thirteenth conspirator may well have been at this stage an innocent, or comparatively innocent, figure in the whole affair.

There was certainly a sweetness, even a naivety, about his character, which with his handsome looks charmed all those who knew Everard Digby. The mere memory of him would later cause Father Tesimond intense grief.
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Digby had not had a wild or dissolute youth like many of the older Plotters: nor had he endured the trauma of a recusant childhood. (Although now part of the Catholic world, he was one of the three
conspirators who had no place in the close network of blood relationships which bound ten of them together, the others being Guy Fawkes and the servant Bates.) As a ward of Chancery, following his father’s early death, he had been brought up a Protestant, before his conversion by Father Gerard. His teenage marriage to a young – and rich – girl whom he adored meant that his private life was similarly stable. In all his twenty-four years, Digby had never really had cause to feel himself to be an outlaw, and he was perhaps emotionally ill-equipped to deal with those who, for good reason, did.

October 1605 was a time of extraordinary tension, as rumours continued to spread, not altogether damped by the conspirators with their jittery consciences. It was now barely a month before the explosion was planned to take place and some people, inevitably, tried to assuage their guilt in advance. Others, less sympathetically, saw in the tense and tricky situation an opportunity for advancement.

In October Anne Vaux had another troubling interview with Father Garnet. This took place either at Gayhurst or at Harrowden. Anne told the priest that she feared ‘some trouble or disorder’ was brewing, since ‘some of the gentlewomen had demanded of her where they should bestow themselves until the brunt was passed in the beginning of Parliament’. This news must have filled Father Garnet once again with apprehension. But Anne refused to divulge any names: ‘she durst not tell who told her so, she was charged with secrecy’.
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The likelihood, however, was that the question came from the wives of the conspirators – from Gertrude Wintour of Huddington or her sister-in-law Dorothy Grant of Norbrook. Outside the direct circle of conspiracy, there was also Mary Habington of Hindlip, wife of loyal recusant Thomas and sister to Monteagle and Eliza Vaux, who already in April seems to have anticipated some extraordinary event when ‘Tottenham would turn French’. Father Garnet remained reassuring, emphasising the importance of Flanders as a sphere of action – and, we may assume, still hoping profoundly that he was right.

More serious in its implications for security than the secret talk of recusant women was the conversation which Catesby obviously engineered with Viscount Montague. This took place in London on 15 October, the day after he had recruited his cousin Francis.
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Montague encountered Catesby in the Savoy, a district off the Strand. The two men exchanged ‘a few words of compliment’ and then Catesby casually asked: ‘The Parliament, I think, brings your lordship up now?’ Montague, mainly based at Cowdray in Sussex, replied that he was actually visiting his aunt, Lady Southampton. But, as to Parliament, ‘he would be there’ in a few weeks’ time, unless he got the King’s permission to be absent, which he was in some hope of doing.

‘I think your Lordship takes no pleasure to be there,’ commented Catesby. To this Montague could only agree. He had already suffered a short spell in prison for speaking out against anti-Papist legislation in the House of Lords and, given his sense of honour, had every reason to wish to be absent when the next round of penalties was announced, so as not to have to approve them. Catesby had done what he could.
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It was in October, in London and the country, that the final details of the plan were worked out: how Guy Fawkes was to light the fuse in the cellar, and then, swiftly making his way out to avoid the explosion, escape by boat across the Thames. There would be a rising in the midlands, coincidentally with the explosion in London, and the person of the Princess Elizabeth would be secured for a puppet queen. At the same time, back on the continent, Guido would be explaining what had happened – and why – to the Catholic powers such as Albert and Isabella, and how it had been a holy duty to blow up the King, the Royal Family and the English government. This mission of explanation ‘to present the facts in the best light possible’ was certainly a necessary task in an age when
authority respected authority. Acts of radical terrorism such as tyrannicide were in principle frowned upon by those who might one day suffer themselves.
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A series of supper parties in various taverns – the Mitre in Bread Street in the City of London, the Bull Inn at Daventry – mark this final stage of plotting. These parties sometimes included unsuspecting guests as a cover. There was, for example, the party which Catesby gave on 9 October at the Irish Boy in the Strand at which Ben Jonson was present. The playwright, who had been in trouble for his satire on the Scots,
Eastward Ho!,
was in the habit of associating with recusants and was in fact himself charged with recusancy the following year.