Gunpowder, Treason and Plot Read online

  Gunpowder,

  Treason and Plot

  by

  Lettice Cooper

  For

  Matthew Felix Cooper

  to read later on

  This book is an account of the Gunpowder Plot based on historical records. I have invented dialogue only where there are no historical records, and to bring the facts, all of which are true, to life.

  L.C.

  Contents

  Chapter 1 A Conspiracy Begins

  Chapter 2 The Return of Guy Fawkes

  Chapter 3 The Oath

  Chapter 4 Entry by Night

  Chapter 5 The Conspiracy Grows

  Chapter 6 The Vault

  Chapter 7 A Time of Waiting

  Chapter 8 The Thirteenth Conspirator

  Chapter 9 The Unsigned Letter

  Chapter 10 A Warning

  Chapter 11 The King’s Command

  Chapter 12 A Second Warning

  Chapter 13 The First Search

  Chapter 14 Growing Suspicion

  Chapter 15 Arrest

  Chapter 16 The Second Search

  Chapter 17 Bonfire Night

  Chapter 18 The End of the Plot

  Chapter 19 Trial and Punishment

  A Note on the Author

  Please to remember

  The Fifth of November

  Gunpowder, treason and plot.

  I see no reason

  Why gunpowder treason

  Should ever be forgot.

  Traditional rhyme

  Chapter 1

  A Conspiracy Begins

  On a Spring morning in the year 1604 two young men met unexpectedly on the Westminster landing stage of the river Thames. Their names were Tom Winter and Jack Wright; they were distant cousins; they looked at one another and began to laugh.

  “Tom! I might have known it.”

  “So Robin sent for you too?”

  “Do you know what he wants us for?”

  “He wrote only that he had urgent need of help in a great enterprise.”

  “He wrote the same to me.”

  “So we are here.”

  Of course we are here, they were both thinking. All their lives they had admired their brilliant cousin, Robert Catesby, and had followed his lead in any game he wanted to play.

  “We had better take oars.”

  Tom Winter signalled to one of the wherries, the boats plying for hire on the water. The boat drew in to the landing stage, and the two young men stepped on board.

  “Row us across, if you please, to a landing stage on the south bank. You will know the house because it stands directly opposite to the Parliament House.”

  They were carried out into the middle of the great river. It was a busy thoroughfare on that fine Spring morning. A barge belonging to some nobleman swept by them, the eight oarsmen, in their livery of crimson and gold, swinging backwards and forwards together as their oars dipped and rose in unison. A swan moved with slightly ruffled dignity out of the wash from the barge. There were small wherries all over the water ferrying people from one landing stage to another. A coal barge, black as charred wood, made its slow way through the dense river traffic. Overhead the sun shone and the pale blue sky was lightly dappled with cloud.

  The wherryman, thinking about his fee, noticed that the two young men, though gallant in their bearing, were not rich. Their doublets were rubbed by wear: they had no gold chains hanging below their ruffs, no jewels in the bands of their high-crowned hats. He guessed that they might be younger sons of some good but impoverished family. They might even, he thought, be Roman Catholics. Everyone knew that the Roman Catholics, who had been forced to pay heavy fines under Queen Elizabeth for adhering to their faith, were still having to pay them under King James I, who had now been a year on the throne of England.

  The wherry cut across the main stream of traffic and drew near to the Lambeth bank.

  “That will be it,” Jack Wright pointed to a shabby-looking house standing alone on the marshy shore.

  “What possessed Robin to come and live in such a desolate, aguish place?”

  “Perhaps he could afford no other.”

  Tom Winter nodded. “Most likely.”

  The wherryman had been right. The cousins were Catholics who had already paid heavy fines, but so far had been lucky enough to escape imprisonment.

  The wherry nosed in along the reeds and bumped against the rotting planks of an old landing stage.

  “This must be it, for it is the only dwelling on this bank opposite to Parliament House.”

  “And there is Robin coming to meet us.”

  They paid the wherryman, ran up the short flight of dilapidated wooden steps, and threw themselves into the arms of a tall, dark-haired, remarkably handsome young man who came quickly to them with his own arms outstretched.

  “Tom! Jack!”

  “Robin!”

  “I knew you would come. It’s good to see you both.”

  “What’s in the wind, Robin?”

  “Come into the house and I will tell you.”

  With an arm through one of each, laughing, turning his head from one to the other, he led them indoors. Tom Winter and Jack Wright felt their spirits rise. From the time when they were all boys playing together in the country, the mere sight of Robin had always made life more interesting.

  Robert Catesby took them to an upstairs room with a window that looked out over the river. He called to his servant, Thomas Bates, to bring a flagon of wine.

  When Bates had gone out, Tom Winter, with a full glass of wine in his hand, strolled to the window.

  “You choose a strange dwelling, Robin! You cannot look out across the river without seeing the accursed Parliament House where these cruel laws are made to oppress Catholics.”

  Robert Catesby had flung himself into a chair, his handsome head tilted back. He too had paid heavy fines, but he always managed to make himself look splendid. His ruby, quilted doublet glowed freshly and his ruff was edged with tiny pearls.

  “Do you think it so strange that I should choose to live opposite Parliament House? The cat crouches opposite the mousehole until the time comes to spring.”

  He had spoken with so much meaning that the two cousins stared at him.

  “What do you mean, Robin?”

  “That I took this house for a purpose. As I asked you both to come here for a purpose.”

  “What purpose?”

  Catesby replied calmly. “My purpose is to blow up the Parliament House with gunpowder on the day of the Opening of Parliament. King James will be there—King James who promised more tolerance for Catholics and then betrayed us. The Queen will be there and the young Prince Henry; and the Chief Minister, Cecil, that little grey beagle who hunts us down without mercy … and the other Ministers and Lords and Commons who plan to make more laws to persecute us for adhering to our faith. With one swift secret stroke we shall send them all to their death. Then the country will be in our hands.”

  There was a silence of sheer astonishment.

  “Are you mad, Robin?”

  “No.”

  “It would be impossible.”

  “No.”

  Catesby smiled at their astounded faces.

  “No, it would not be impossible, only difficult. We would store gunpowder here in this house, and ferry it, over secretly by night to the other side. We should hire some house close to the Parliament House and dig a tunnel underground to the cellars below Parliament House, and pack the cellar with gunpowder and lay a mine with a fuse and a slow match. It has often been done by soldiers besieging a walled town. A skilled engineer trained in the foreign wars could do it.”

  “But … but we are not skilled engineers.”
>
  “We should find one. I know the right man for the work.”

  Tom Winter was still staring as if he did not believe that Robin could mean what he was saying.

  Jack Wright said earnestly, “If it is possible to attempt such a thing have you thought that if we should make the attempt and fail we should not be the only ones who would suffer? Every Catholic in this country would be worse treated because of this attempt.”

  “Could we be worse treated than we are now? Think of the priests creeping from hiding hole to hiding hole after dark, and saying Mass only at the risk of their lives. Think how we are all watched and spied upon, and may find ourselves any day hauled before the courts for no crime but worshipping God in the way we choose. Think how clipped and confined we are. You, Tom, you are a man of capacity, you speak French, Latin, Spanish and Italian with ease, but what hope have you or any other promising young Catholic of a good post in the service of your country? There is no future for you but to live on what is left of your estate here until even that is taken away from you, or to go and fight for Spain in Flanders, as Guy Fawkes has done.”

  “Guy Fawkes?” Jack Wright exclaimed. “Guy Fawkes of York? Why I was at school with him. I did not know he had gone to fight in the foreign wars. I have not heard of him for several years.”

  “But I have,” Tom Winter struck in. “He went with me last year on a mission to the King of Spain to beg him to find some way of helping English Catholics. But it was soon clear to us that his Spanish Majesty did not mean to lift a finger for us.”

  “I can tell you two important things about Guy Fawkes,” Catesby said. “He is a skilled military engineer, and he has been abroad for so long that he is forgotten in England. His face would not be known here; he is not marked down as a Catholic like the rest of us by Cecil’s spies.”

  There was a long silence. Then Tom Winter said, “I see, Robin, that you are serious in this purpose.”

  Robert Catesby jerked forward the hilt of his sword. It was engraved with a representation of the crucifixion of Christ. He laid his hand on the engraving.

  “I have lost untimely my father, my wife and my son. Since I have twice been fined heavily for being a Catholic, I have been driven to sell the greater part of my estates. I cannot hope for any advancement at court, nor am I likely to be allowed to rise in any worthwhile profession. I have nothing left but my faith. I am ready to die for it.”

  Jack Wright said doubtfully, “If we blow up the King, the Lords and Commons, will there not be chaos in the country?”

  “We shall take the young Princess Elizabeth and bring her up to be a Catholic Queen.”

  Catesby looked at his cousins. He was smiling, daring them as he had dared them long ago when he wanted them to help him to take an unbroken colt and ride him. “Jack? Tom? Are you with me?”

  “I am with you, Robin,” Jack said.

  “Are you, Tom?”

  “I would ask one thing,” Tom said slowly. “A Spanish Embassy led by the Constable of Castile is to visit King James this summer. Let us go to the Constable and beg him to influence the King to abate the penalties for his English subjects. It would be a terrible thing to send so many men to sudden death by gunpowder. Let us make this one more attempt to help ourselves by peaceful means. It if fails then I, too, am with you.”

  Catesby’s smile was twisted and a little scornful; he had no hopes of the mission to the Constable, and he did not really expect his cousin to make conditions before falling in with his plans. But he saw that Tom Winter was determined.

  “As you will, Tom. Go yourself to the Constable of Castile and try to persuade him. If he will not agree to do anything for us, then come back to England by way of the Low Countries and bring Guy Fawkes with you. I have been making inquiries about him lately. I know that he is a man of the most resolute courage and devoted to the Catholic faith.”

  Catesby picked up the flagon of wine, and filled all three glasses.

  “Tom! Jack! My very dear cousins and oldest friends! I give you a toast. To the Gunpowder Plot! Destruction to King, Lords and Commons, and a Catholic England again!”

  Chapter 2

  The Return of Guy Fawkes

  A few weeks later, a ship from Gravelines in the Low Countries sailed up the Thames Estuary and docked at Greenwich.

  “We must take oars now, Guy,” Tom Winter said.

  Guy Fawkes nodded. It was strange to him to be called Guy again. He had for so long been Guido Fawkes, an English captain in the Spanish army.

  There were plenty of wherry boats waiting near the dock to take off passengers from the big seagoing ships. Soon a couple of stout oarsmen were rowing Tom Winter and Guy Fawkes up the great river towards the heart of London.

  Guy Fawkes looked eagerly about him. He was thirty four years old, and he had left his own country when he was twenty one. This was the first time he had returned to it. He had not expected to come back at all while the laws against Catholics were so strict, but he had felt it to be his duty, as soon as he learned that he was urgently needed, to do some special service for his religion. What that service was he did not yet know.

  Tom Winter looked closely at Guy Fawkes as they were rowed up the river. Ever since they had met in Brussels, Winter had wondered whether this soldier of fortune would fall in with Robert Catesby’s plan. Once again Tom Winter scrutinized his companion; his eyes travelled from the reddish hair and the thin, bearded face down the long, lean body. Guy Fawkes had fought hard and lived without comforts; he looked older than his years. He struck Tom Winter as being a man of great determination. He was not easy company, he talked and smiled very little; he seemed to be a serious man, one who did not care for pleasure but was intent only on his religion and on soldiering. No doubt risking his life was an everyday hazard to him. Yes, probably Robin has been right, as he so often was, this would be the very man for his purpose.

  The wherry drew level with the Tower of London, that great walled fortress on the bank of the river where so many people had been imprisoned only to walk out to their execution.

  Tom Winter, thinking of this, said, “Sir Walter Raleigh, whom King James suspects of treachery to him, is now imprisoned in the Tower, and it is said that he may never come out except to lose his head on Tower Hill.”

  “Very likely,” Guy Fawkes replied without much interest. Tom Winter had discovered that there were many things in which Guy was not interested, perhaps because he felt so strongly about the things that did matter to him.

  Now the wherry was passing under London Bridge, that street crowded with shops and dwelling houses which spanned the water on its nine great arches. The spire of the old St. Paul’s Church soared up on their right above a jumble of roof tops. They were passing the homes built by noble families on the North bank; their gardens sloping down to the river were full of green grass and bright flowers. Ahead were the Towers of Westminister Abbey, and the new royal Palace of Whitehall with the Parliament House between them.

  The wind blew fresh and cool off the water. Guy Fawkes wrapped his cloak round himself, and clapped a hand to the brim of his tall hat. What was he thinking about, Tom Winter wondered.

  Fawkes, who was more moved by returning to his own country than he cared to show, was remembering his early life in the Northern city of York. His father had belonged to the Church of England. He had been a notary of the Ecclesiastical Court, and he and his wife and little son had always been about York Minster, the great Cathedral whose grey walls and towers rose up like a sudden miracle out of the narrow streets of the city.

  King Henry VIII was right, Guy’s father said, to throw off allegiance to the Pope, and give England a Church of her own, even if he did it because the Pope would not allow him to divorce Queen Catherine and marry Anne Boleyn. Queen Elizabeth was right when she kept a firm hand on the Catholics, and had Mary Queen of Scots executed when the Spanish Armada was coming so that she might not be used as a tool of Philip of Spain.

  But Guy Fawkes was only eight yea
rs old when his father died. His mother soon married again. This time she married a Catholic. Now young Guy heard the other side of the story. King Henry VIII was wrong, his stepfather said, to cause the Church of England to break away from the Catholic Church which alone had divine authority. Queen Elizabeth was wrong to oppress Catholics, and it was wrong to execute Mary Queen of Scots, who was a martyr to the true faith.

  Guy was very young and his stepfather was very kind. His mother became a Catholic, and almost without knowing it he found himself changing his faith as she did. He was baptized into the Catholic Church.

  This meant that in England a great many professions were closed to him, and if he was caught hearing Mass, he was liable for fines or imprisonment. He went abroad and enlisted in the Spanish army fighting in the Netherlands. He did not allow himself to see that the Netherlands had a just cause and that the Spaniards were invading and cruelly ill-treating a free people. He only cared that he was fighting for people of the same religion as his own.

  As they drew near to the Parliament House, Tom Winter said, “You are so lucky that you are not known to Cecil’s spies. The rest of us never know when we may be picked up and dragged off to prison.”

  “It is no better under King James?”

  “It is worse, for all he promised to change things for us.”

  Guy Fawkes did not answer. He thought, “Whatever my religion needs from me here, that I must do.”

  The wherry shot across the river under the bows of a City Alderman’s stately barge. As the oars nearly touched him, an indignant swan flew up, spreading his great wing span between the sunshine and the water. The wherry, slipping in front of a barge loaded with timber, was soon nosing in among the reeds and marsh marigolds on the South bank of the river. One of the oarsmen reached out with a boathook, and drew the wherry into the landing stage in front of Catesby’s house.

  Chapter 3

  The Oath

  One evening, in the following week, Guy Fawkes was walking at dusk through the streets of London. He was on his way to a house behind St. Clement’s Inn, near to St. Clement’s Church in the Fields.