Tales From the Tower of London (20 page)

A few minutes before midnight, the men returned to the cellar, accompanied by Sir Thomas Knyvett, the magistrate of Westminster and a band of armed men. When they arrived, the man ‘Johnson’ was still there guarding the door. Knyvett ordered him to hand over the keys and ordered several of the guards to keep Johnson under close guard while they searched the rooms. Ploughing through the pile of logs and wood, it was only minutes before they found thirty-five barrels of gunpowder and hundreds of iron bars. Rushing back to where the guards were holding Johnson under restraint, Knyvett ordered a body search. In Johnson’s clothes they discovered a watch, a length of slow-burning match and the ‘touchwood’ he would need to light it. The man calling himself Johnson was placed under arrest and escorted to Whitehall Palace for a personal meeting with King James.

By one o’clock in the morning on 5 November, a large group of government officials and soldiers had crowded into the king’s bedroom. With them was Guy Fawkes. Fawkes still insisted his name was Johnson, but now calmly admitted he had intended to blow up the House of Lords when the government assembled there to hear the king’s speech. His only regret, he said, was that he had obviously failed, because his intent was ‘To blow the Scottish beggars back to their native mountains . . .’, and if he had been given the opportunity he would have gladly blown up the men who had arrested him, the Houses of Parliament and himself with them. For all his bravado, he adamantly refused to name any of his fellow conspirators. Realising they weren’t going to get any more out of the man that night, Cecil ordered him to be taken to the Tower where he could think things over before being questioned in much greater depth in the morning.

After spending the night in the miserably cramped cell known as ‘Little Ease’ – where a man could neither stand up straight nor lie down and stretch out – Fawkes was taken to the Council Chamber in the Lieutenant’s Lodgings. He again insisted that his name was Johnson; he was a Catholic and had intended to blow up the king and parliament and only regretted that he had not succeeded. Everything else he said was a lie, and everyone in the room knew it. It would now be up to the king to decide how rigorous the next round of questioning would be.

Back in Whitehall, King James I was a very shaken, but determined, man. This was all too reminiscent of the death of his father, Lord Darnley, who had nearly been blown apart when James was still an infant. But no matter how personally frightening the plot was, the investigation had to be slow, thorough and carried out strictly according to the law. To oversee the investigation into what was already being called ‘the Gunpowder Plot’, James appointed Robert Cecil, the Earl of Nottingham, the Lord High Admiral, the Earl of Devon, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and the Earl of Northampton, the Lord Privy Seal. Cecil was obviously just as concerned as the king, but he already had suspicions that somewhere, somehow, the Jesuits were behind the whole thing. Cecil is quoted as having said ‘we cannot hope to have good government while large numbers of people go around obeying foreign rulers’. Implicit, but unsaid, was the fact that the ‘people’ indicated were Jesuit-leaning Catholics and the foreign ruler in question was the Pope.

While the commission was organising itself, the king spent all of 6 November writing up a list of sixteen questions that he personally wanted answers to. The King’s questions were:

(1)    As [to who] he is, for I can never yet hear of any man that knows him.

(2)    Where he was born?

(3)    What were his parents’ names?

(4)    What age he is?

(5)    Where he hath lived?

(6)    How he hath lived and by what trade of life?

(7)    How he received the wounds (i.e. scars) on his breast?

(8)    If he was ever in service, with any other . . . person, and what they were, and [for] how long?

(9)    How came he in [that] person’s service, by what means and at what time?

(10)  What time did his master hire this house?

(11)  How soon after the possessing of it did he begin his devilish preparations?

(12)  When and where did he learn to speak French?

(13)  What gentlewoman’s letter it was that was found upon him?

(14)  Wherefore doth she give him another name in it than he gives to himself?

(15)  If he was ever a papist, and if so, who brought him up to it?

(16)  How was he converted, where, when and by whom [to] this course of his life . . . because I have diverse motives leading me to suspect that he hath remained long beyond the seas and, either is a priest, or hath long served some priest . . .

Amended to the bottom of the list was a note expressly ordering that the prisoner be ‘put to the question’; a euphemism for torture. While English common law now expressly forbade the use of torture, it was permissible if specifically ordered by the monarch or the Privy Council. Considering the magnitude of the crime in question, James had no qualms about ordering its use to ferret out every bit of information and the names of everyone involved. The amendment read, in part, ‘if he will not other ways confess, the gentler tortures are to be first used unto him et sic per gradus ad mia tenditur (and so on by degrees proceeding to the worst), and so God speed your good work. James R’

The man in charge of the Tower and any prisoners kept there was Sir William Waad, one of the most active, and least sympathetic, men to hold the job for many years. When he was appointed Lieutenant of the Tower in 1605, Waad was already sixty years old and had a long and distinguished career as diplomat, spy and investigator of Catholic plots dating from the days of Sir Francis Walsingham’s investigation into the Babington plot. Hard, efficient, crafty and unemotional, Waad was an expert at the game of alternately consoling and threatening his prisoners; and he never hesitated to back up the threats with action.

When Waad assumed his post only months before the Gunpowder Plot was uncovered, he brought with him a small group of hand-picked interrogators under the assumption that his own men would be far more efficient at extracting information than the Yeoman Warders whose main job was protecting the Tower compound. With Waad by his side, Guy Fawkes was taken to face his first, official interrogation on the morning of 7 November. Not surprisingly, the Lord Chief Justice could get nothing new out of Fawkes, so Waad was given the list of questions from the king and told to put the prisoner to ‘the question’.

Before the torture began, Fawkes was shown the terrifying array of implements which might be used on him should the need arise. The rack, iron gauntlets and the scavenger’s daughter, an iron neckband connected by a bar to knee shackles: when the device was tightened the victim’s head was pulled towards their knees, slowly dislocating their spine. Each one was held in front of his face to start breaking down his psychological resolve. It only took half an hour on the rack – his muscles and joints pulled and stretched till the ropes bit into his wrists and ankles, chafing them till blisters were raised and broke open – that a few truths began to emerge. First was his name – Guy, or Guido, Fawkes. Then, in an attempt to justify anything he might say, he confessed that God must have not approved of the plot or it would have succeeded, so it was only proper that he felt ashamed for his own part in it. But he swore he would never divulge the names of the others involved. Waad told him they already knew the names of some of his friends, and that tomorrow the two of them would visit the rack again, and together they would find out everything else there was to know.

As he was returned to the cramped confines of Little Ease, Fawkes not only realised he would not be able to move enough to relieve the pain of the racking, but was informed of an aspect of ‘the question’ that took place outside the torture chamber. According to the rules of torture the prisoner ‘shall have three morsels of barley bread a day, and that he shall have the water next [to] the prison, so that it shall not be current (meaning stagnant water taken from the moat), and that he shall not eat the same day upon which he drinks, nor drink the same day upon which he eats; and he shall so continue till he die’. And so Guy Fawkes completed his first day of questioning.

The next morning the racking lasted for two full hours. Before he finally broke down and confessed, Fawkes’ muscles and ligaments had been torn, his shoulders had been dislocated and both wrists and ankles were so torn that the ropes holding them were soaked with blood. Finally, he delivered the names of the four other men who were at the centre of the plot and, according to Waad’s notes, ‘He 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 the saving of his own soul.’ A written transcript of the confession was drawn up.

The following day, 9 November, after being informed that some of his comrades had already been arrested, he told everything else he knew without further torture. A full, extended version of the confession was now prepared and read in part:

I confesse, that a practice in general was first broken unto me, against his Majesty for relief of the Catholic cause, and not invented or propounded by myself. And this was first propounded unto me about Easter Last [when I had been] twelve months beyond the seas in the Low Countrys . . . by Thomas Wintour, who came there upon with me into England and there we imparted our purpose to three other Gentlemen more, namely, Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy and John Wright, who all five consulting together to the means how to execute the same . . .

Nearly insensible with pain, Fawkes could hardly hold the quill to sign his name. After scratching out ‘Guido’ the pen fell from his hand. It was enough. The commission had the names of all the chief conspirators and all the information they needed to condemn them. Fawkes would spend the next forty-five days in Little Ease awaiting trial and the inevitable verdict.

By the time Guy Fawkes was arrested in the small hours of 5 November the remaining plotters, with the exception of Tresham, had already left London. Still, it was only a matter of days before word of Fawkes’ arrest reached them. Even if they had not heard of Fawkes’ arrest, the lack of news concerning the fate of parliament would have alerted them that something had gone terribly wrong. Nevertheless, Catesby was determined the plot would move forward in one form or another and pressed on to their appointed meeting place at Holbech House on the Worcestershire/Staffordshire border.

When Catesby and several of the others arrived at Holbech with a fresh cartload of gunpowder, they found Everard Digby waiting to tell them he had enlisted nearly four dozen new recruits. In spite of the foiled plot against parliament, this was hopeful news. After delivering the message, Digby set off to round up the new forces. Unfortunately, Catesby’s load of gunpowder had become damp in the drizzling rain that had dogged their journey. Foolishly, the seven men now lodged at Holbech House decided the best way to dry the powder was to spread it out in front of a roaring fire. Once spread across the floor of the great hall the powder could not explode, but a flying spark from the fire ignited it, badly burning some of the men and nearly engulfing the house. It was taken as a very bad sign.

By the next morning, 8 November, three of the company, Robert Wintour, Stephen Littleton and Hugh Owen had fled in panic, leaving only Robert Catesby, the Wright brothers, John and Christopher, and Thomas Percy to clean up the mess and decide what to do next. They did not have long to wait. Shortly before midday, the Sheriff of Worcester arrived with a large posse, surrounded the house and ordered the men to surrender. In the ensuing battle, Catesby, the Wrights and Percy were all fatally shot. With the core group now dead and Fawkes in the Tower, the remaining men, along with scores of other suspected Jesuit rabble-rousers, were rounded up and shipped off to the Tower.

It took time to collect them all. Wintour and Littleton were on the loose for nearly two months, but eventually everyone with the exception of Hugh Owen was taken into custody. Those captured included Fathers Garnet, Gerard and Oldcorne and others with only titular involvement in the plot, but no Jesuit was going to escape Cecil’s dragnet.

Their crime was so horrible, their absolute conviction in their cause so unshakeable, that Waad, his inquisitors and the regular Tower Warders were unable to exercise any restraint in dealing with the prisoners. One after another the prisoners were racked, hung in manacles and deprived of food and drink. The indictment presented at their trial, claimed that ‘There [were] twenty and three several days spent in Examinations’.

In the face of such gruesome treatment, some of the men held up amazingly well. Thomas Wintour, the only surviving member of the original group, was astoundingly blasé, saying, ‘I have often hazarded my life upon far lighter terms, and now would not refuse any good occasion wherein I might do service to the Catholic cause.’ Sir Everard Digby was more zealous about his part in the affair: ‘Oh! How full of joy I should die, if I could do anything for the Cause which I love more than my life’, adding that, had the assembled parliament actually been blown to kingdom come, ‘I do not think there were three worth saving that [w]ould have been lost.’ Eventually, strong or weak, zealous or stalwart, one by one the accused added their signatures to the confession based on Fawkes’ testimony. Of course, the Jesuit priests were another matter entirely. They had not actually been a part of the conspiracy but had only abetted it. They would require special handling.

Cecil had decided to rid England once and for all of the malign, manipulative influence of the Jesuits. In order to extract the greatest possible amount of information from the priests, he cautioned Waad to take special care of them. These men were accustomed to devious methods and thought nothing of laying down their lives for their cause. Simple torture might fail completely on men who considered martyrdom the most desirable death they could hope for.