The Gunpowder Plot: Terror & Faith in 1605 (36 page)

There was only one rack in England, housed at the Tower of London. The rack was a large open frame of oak, raised from the ground. The prisoner was laid on it with his back to the floor, his wrists and ankles attached by cords to rollers at either end. Levers were operated which stretched the prisoner, quite slowly, while he was urged to confess. The rack, inevitably, caused permanent damage and dislocation to the prisoner. So feared was the instrument, indeed, that sometimes the mere sight of it was enough to cow the prisoner into giving information.
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It is not absolutely certain that in the case of Guy Fawkes
the authorities proceeded from manacles to the rack, although the King’s letter clearly envisaged that it might be necessary to move on to ‘the worst’, in order to break this iron man. Sir Edward Hoby, a well-informed observer and a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, wrote to Brussels that only the manacles had been used. ‘Yet the common voice’, in the words of Father Gerard, ‘was that he was extremely racked in the first few days.’ Priests subsequently held in the Tower certainly heard that Fawkes had been racked, and observers who saw Guido on the next occasion he was displayed in public witnessed a sick man, utterly broken in body.
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Thus the balance of probability is in favour of the rack. Men did manage to hold out against the manacles – and Guido was nothing if not strong – but against the rack never, or hardly ever.

What is certain is that some time on 7 November, following the application of torture, they broke him – they broke Guido’s body and in so doing they broke at last his spirit.
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Hoby had a meaningful phrase for it: ‘Since Johnson’s being in the Tower, he beginneth to speak English.’ His courage was still high the night before, as Sir William Waad, Lieutenant of the Tower, reported to Salisbury.
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(As Lieutenant, Waad was always present at these sessions of torture.)

Guido’s conversation with Waad was revealing. Here was no common criminal but, in a certain warped way, an idealist – or perhaps fanatic was the appropriate word: ‘He [Johnson] told us that since he undertook this action he did every day pray to God he might perform that which might be for the advancement of the Catholic Faith and saving his own soul.’ To explain his silence, Guido revealed that he had taken an oath to say nothing in company with his (so far nameless) comrades, and they had all then partaken of the Sacrament. But he
was careful to add that the (similarly nameless) priest who gave them the Sacrament ‘knew nothing about it’.
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This oath had been sworn, and this illegal Sacrament administered, in England, which of course whetted the appetite of his interrogators. Nevertheless Guido still hoped to be able to endure long enough not to have to break his vow.

To Waad’s amazement, Guido even managed to pass the night of 6 November resting peacefully ‘as a man devoid of all trouble of mind’ – although he had been warned of what lay in store for him. Waad told the prisoner that ‘if he held his resolution of mind to be so silent’, he must realise that the state was equally resolved to proceed with that severity which was necessary in a case of such great consequence. ‘Therefore I willed him to prepare himself.’
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Having held out with a staunchness which did indeed recall the legendary determination of Scaevola, Guido cracked. He began to talk, probably late on 7 November, and continued on the 8th and 9th.

There was only one problem with all this. As the historian Tacitus had wisely observed fifteen hundred years before Guido was taken to that dark, underground chamber in the Tower, torture tended to bring about false witness.
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In order to alleviate his sufferings, the tormented man was more likely to give the Council the details it wanted to hear, rather than a strictly truthful account of what had taken place.

On 6 November, with Guido still holding out, Catesby and his confederates in the midlands must be judged to have had at least a chance of escape, although they would no doubt have left a wake of destruction behind them when the innocent – wives, families and uninvolved recusants – were picked up to pay for the crimes of the guilty. In any case it was not an option that Catesby considered. The mad scramble for further arms, further horses and further adherents continued, but it continued without success.

The raid on Warwick Castle did secure some horses, but it also provoked the second public proclamation by the government, which was issued the next day. This named as wanted men, in addition to Percy: Catesby, Rookwood, Thomas Wintour, the two Wrights, John Grant (misnamed Edward Grant) and Robert Ashfield, servant to Catesby (probably a mistake for Bates). Rather touchingly under the circumstances, Robert Wintour had denounced the raid on Warwick because it would make ‘a great uproar’ in the county. Rookwood was against it for quite a different reason and skirted the town: with his magnificent equestrian cortège, he had no need of further horses.
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After a visit to Norbrook to pick up the stored arms, the conspirators headed in the direction of Huddington. At this point Catesby ordered Thomas Bates to make a detour and break the news to Father Garnet and his fellow priests at Coughton Court. In his letter to Garnet, Catesby once again showed that blind faith in the rightness of what he was doing – and had done – which was singularly out of touch with the reality of the recusant position. Catesby, together with Digby, asked Father Garnet to excuse their rashness, but then proceeded to solicit Garnet’s assistance to raise a party in Wales where, far from the centre of government, Catholic support was believed to be vigorous. Garnet was appalled. With the arrival of Father Tesimond, Bates overheard the despairing words: ‘we are all utterly undone’.
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The priests understood quite well what was going to happen, and so did poor Mary Digby. When Father Garnet tried to comfort her she burst out weeping, as well she might, with her glorious young husband a traitor and, almost worse, her two little boys as traitor’s sons. Garnet’s reply to Catesby and Digby begged them to desist from their ‘wicked actions’ and listen to the preachings of the Pope.
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Eliza Vaux, at Harrowden with Father Gerard and two other priests, Father Singleton and Father Strange, had got wind of the catastrophe the night before. It was brought to her by her young cousin (and tenant) Henry Huddlestone, who had had
that ominous encounter with Catesby and others on the road as they fled. At the time it was thought safer to pretend she had heard it via the servants’ network, from one of Sir Griffin Markham’s men to one of hers. Eliza was still intent on the marriage of her son Edward to Lord Suffolk’s daughter. She had been about to send him up to London to further the protracted negotiations when she heard that there were some ‘gar-boils’ (disturbances) in the capital and held him back.
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With a sinking heart, Eliza realised that there was now little point in a Catholic Romeo trying to further his suit with Lord Suffolk’s Juliet.

A more immediate problem was the plight of the priests. Harrowden, like any known recusant centre, might expect to be searched imminently. There was also the general Harrowden concern for Father Garnet, at Coughton. So Father Singleton and Father Strange, accompanied by Henry Huddlestone (who left his pregnant wife behind at Harrowden), set out on the morning of 7 November. On reaching Warwick, however, they found it heavily patrolled following the raid of the night before. Attempting to make a circuit, they were stopped and arrested at Kenilworth by Sir Richard Verney.

Since Sir Richard was uncle to Eliza’s new son-in-law, Sir George Symeon, Eliza was full of hope that she could get the prisoners released. But the situation was too serious for cosy family connections to operate – and recusant connections could in any case be an embarrassment. Furthermore Eliza, in sending desperate messages to Sir Richard, naively issued full physical descriptions of her friends – since she had no idea under what aliases they were being held (while fervently denying that any of them could possibly be priests).
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Coolly, Verney passed all this on to Salisbury. Huddlestone and Father Strange were taken to the Tower, and Father Singleton to Bridewell prison. Meanwhile the household at Harrowden – including Father Gerard – awaited the inevitable arrival of the poursuivants. At least Father Garnet managed to vanish from the authorities’ sight for the next few weeks into the thin recusant air. Anne Vaux was able to join him, posing as his sister
Mrs Perkins.
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The Superior of the Jesuits was safe – or so it seemed at the time.

The leading conspirators – those who were left – and their diminishing band of helpers continued on their route to Huddington, where, according to Gertrude Wintour’s subsequent testimony, they arrived at about two o’clock in the afternoon on 6 November.
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Here they were joined by Tom Wintour. Even among the Wintours’ closest relations and neighbours, there was no sympathy for the cause, only horror at the past and fear for the future. Thomas Habington of Hindlip, who had his wife Mary and their new-born son William to protect as well as priests, refused to have anything to do with the fugitives, and forbade his household to show any sympathy. Father Edward Oldcorne, among those he was sheltering, was equally horrified. Only Father Tesimond, the lively ‘cholerick’ Yorkshireman, seems to have had some concern for his friends’ plight, even if he did not share their objectives. He came back with Bates from Coughton to join Catesby at Huddington for a while. (Danger did not however diminish his sense of style: Henry Morgan would later testify that Tesimond had been wearing ‘coloured satin done with gold lace’ on this occasion.)
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On 7 November the Archpriest Father Blackwell issued a passionate public statement which was far more in keeping with the sentiments of these honest Catholics than the wild door-die statements the conspirators were still making. Blackwell denounced the Plot against the King, the Prince and the nobility as ‘intolerable, uncharitable, scandalous and desperate’. He was horrified by the news that a Catholic – he meant Guido – had been privy to ‘this detestable device’. Father Blackwell hastened to point out that according to Catholic doctrine it was
not lawful for ‘private subjects, by private authority, to take arms against their lawful king’, even if he turned into a tyrant. He hammered home the message still further by referring to the duty of priests to instruct their flocks that ‘private, violent attempts’ could never be justified; Catholics must not support them in any way.
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For the conspirators, even if they had time to be aware of the Archpriest’s proclamation, all this was the useless language of passive endurance which they had long ago rejected. In the small hours of the Tuesday morning, 7 November – as early as three o’clock – all those left at Huddington Court including the servants went to confession before taking the Sacrament at Mass. It was an indication, surely, that none of them now expected to live very long. Then they rode out into the rainy darkness, thirty-six of them all told. At midday they were at Hewell Grange, the house of the fourteen-year-old Lord Windsor (Northampton’s ward), who was not there. It was still raining heavily. They helped themselves to arms, gunpowder and a large store of money. But the local villagers gazed at them with sullen hostility. On being told that the conspirators stood for ‘God and Country’, the reply came back that round Hewell Grange, men were for ‘King James as well as God and Country’. Digby admitted later that ‘not one man’ joined them at this stage.
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Their expectations of gathering support had been moonshine.

At ten o’clock that night, the band arrived at Holbeach House, near Kingswinford, just inside Staffordshire. It was the home of Stephen Littleton, one of those from the hunting-party who had actually stuck with them, and it was a house they believed could be fortified. For some time the Plotters had been aware of being followed. For a moment a hope sprang up that these were reinforcements, but it was a wild hope. It was in fact the
posse comitatus
(vigilante force) of the High Sheriff of Worcestershire, Sir Richard Walsh, accompanied by ‘the power and face of the county’.

Tom Wintour now elected to beard the venerable John Talbot of Grafton, Gertrude Wintour’s father, and see if there
might not be some help forthcoming from that source. (Robert Wintour had pointedly refused to do so while they were still at Huddington, saying that everyone knew that John Talbot could not be drawn away from his loyal allegiance to the King.) Stephen Littleton went with Tom. None of this did any good. John Talbot was at his Shropshire home of Pepperhill about ten miles from Holbeach. He repelled them angrily, saying that the visit ‘might be as much as his life was worth’, adding, ‘I pray you get hence.’
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It was while these two were away on their fruitless mission that a horrible accident took place at Holbeach House, which in the taut and eerie atmosphere seems to have changed the mood there from one of bravado to despair.

The gunpowder taken away from Whewell Grange, conveyed in an open cart, had suffered from the drenching rain. It was now spread out in front of the fire at Holbeach to dry, which was an extraordinarily rash thing to do. One gets the impression that the Plotters were by now all so tired, as well as desperate – they had been riding on and on and on, some of them, like Catesby himself, seeking not only arms but sanctuary for the last three nights – that they were hardly aware of what they were doing. At any rate a spark flew out of the fire and the gunpowder ignited. So Catesby got his powder explosion at last. It was a quick violent blaze which engulfed him, together with Rookwood, John Grant and the latter’s friend (from the Dunchurch hunting-party), Henry Morgan. The night before Robert Wintour had had a dream of premonition: ‘He thought he saw steeples stand awry, and within those churches strange and unknown faces.’ When he saw the scorched faces of his comrades, he recognised them as the faces in his dream.
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