The Gunpowder Plot (History/16th/17th Century History) (6 page)

T
here was an ephemeral and clumsy part-rehearsal for the gunpowder plot a full two years before that strange and lurid episode. The Bye plot (or ‘Surprise’ treason) had, of course, different leaders and a different locale. The intention was to capture James on Midsummer night 1603, in order to force from him certain concessions – notably the religious toleration that he found so poisonous a concept. William Watson and William Clarke were two secular priests, both fiercely anti-Jesuit. Watson had been sent into Scotland to visit James on behalf of English Catholics before the death of Elizabeth, a journey paid for by Sir Griffin Markham, and later he indignantly represented that James had then given them (through Watson) a most solemn promise of toleration. Now he had achieved his goal of the throne it was said he had jettisoned such notions, a proceeding that enraged the priests so that Watson threw himself into conspiracy, assuring all who listened that seizing the king was lawful as he was not yet crowned. Those approached were asked to take an oath of secrecy which ended: ‘this oath is voluntarily taken by me in simple and plain terms, without all equivocation and deceit, and religiously to be kept, I attest, so help me God and holy doom.’ The curiosity of this is that the oath itself was equivocal, as it has recently been pointed out. It bound the swearer ‘not to reveal anything . . . without advice and consent of twelve of the chief thereof’, but since there were never more than a handful of chief contrivers as Watson admitted, the terms of the oath were bogus. Counting the gunpowder plotters also presents a problem, but it is generally accounted to be Robert Catesby and twelve others.

The two priests travelled hither and thither amongst Catholic county families, calling upon them to come forward in the name of their religion and in defence of their property. Watson’s economy with the truth was further instanced by Anthony Copley, one of his accomplices, when under examination in July 1603. In order to draw in ‘associates of the better sort’ and those who were nervous of involvement, the oath presenters intimated that the episode was to be no more than a supplication to James ‘for an assuage of our grievance’. Then having taken the oath the more active and boldest individuals were to be told of the deep plan to seize James. If there was an agent provocateur nudging Watson then Copley himself would be a suitable candidate. A volatile man, a hater of Jesuits, he was the brother-in-law of John Gage, whose family were to be found in some numbers at Wormsley, Herefordshire. In the same county Watson’s views had an influence on Roger Cadwallader.

Sir Robert Cecil received warnings of the Bye plot from a variety of sources, so having intelligencers at home as well as abroad proved a benefit. The chief justice, Sir John Popham, also had agents about and one of them encountered a handful of rebels in arms at Tewkesbury.
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They were ‘well appointed with pistols’ and according to one of the servants in attendance they were riding to London. He blurted out with a hint of anxiety – ‘I pray God we break not our skins before we come back again.’ Yet it transpired that they saw no action at all and might have withdrawn to their homes without proper scrutiny but for Popham dining with Bancroft, Bishop of London, on 18 July. From him he learned more names of suspects, although unlike the Essex rebellion no significant leader emerged to take the reins of effort. The new Catholic peers of the reign were very reluctant to risk so much so early, and failing in that section of society. Watson had to cast about for further support, even approaching Thomas, Lord Grey of Wilton, regarded as the leader of the Puritans. He too declined to be involved, but his name was bandied about to convince some would-be conspirators who hesitated at seizing the sovereign, that James was to be taken in order to forestall a Puritan plot! It was Bancroft who named two Herefordshire men – Parry and Vaughan – neither of whom were known to have made any move, just as Lord Grey himself held off. With these two former names in mind Popham recalled now the information he had received from Tewkesbury, and he reasoned now that they had been involved in some treasonable purpose.

Among the hitherto unidentified plotters was John Parry of Poston, the son and heir of the late master of the buckhounds to Elizabeth, James Parry, with family connections scattered widely over Herefordshire and Breconshire. John Parry’s companions were Richard Croft (closely related to Sir Herbert Croft) and Richard Davies, who lived just outside Poston. Another privy to the plot was John Scudamore of Kentchurch – not seen in Tewkesbury, but linked by confessions made in London and subsequent developments. The fissures in the Catholic community are now highlighted by the fact that the government got confirmation of its suspicions from the archpriest George Blackwell, and from the Jesuits. Blackwell’s channel to Cecil, assuring the government of Catholic loyalty, was John Gage, and his kinsman Copley was arrested because his famous timidity would likely have led him to blab. Catholics and government alike were antipathetic towards Puritans and Sir Walter Ralegh found himself in a very exposed position, detested by Watson, who aimed to remove him when James was taken, and regarded as a personal rival by the court Catholic Earl of Northampton and Cecil. The arrest of Ralegh may originally have been intended to widen the government’s knowledge of the Bye plotters, including Sir Griffin Markham, once a supporter of Essex and now swamped by debts; George Brooke, brother of Lord Cobham and hence Cecil’s brother-in-law, and Anthony Champney. The dry comment of Cecil was that the mere fact of Brooke being involved made him suspicious of Cobham, Ralegh and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. They were all apprehended for involvement in what became known as the Main plot. Such simultaneity does not make the task of the historian any easier. What is certain is that those in power used both to eliminate personal rivals.

The hostility of the Jesuits was seen by Watson as a critical restraint on his supporters in Wales moving on London. He had uneasily anticipated this falling away while in conversation with Copley; and so it proved. Only John Harries of Haverfordwest and a posse of some thirty appeared, and once the government had a line on the conspirators from Herefordshire the project swiftly folded. The sheriff there was soon able to report that John Scudamore had been arrested, his house at Kentchurch searched. When the prisoner reached London he was examined by Sir William Waad and he admitted links to Watson who had been at Kentchurch in mid-July and may have intended to flee to Ireland. That never came about because by the end of the month Watson was under arrest, almost certainly secured by Henry Vaughan of Moccas.
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The fumblings of Watson and Clarke (what was he about at this time?) did nothing to enhance the reputation of the Earl of Northumberland. The folding of one plot into another certainly had uncomfortable repercussions for the man whose marriage to Lady Arabella Stuart had once been urged. She was the figurehead in the so-called Main plot and according to one account regicide was to have been a violent preliminary to her succession to the throne. It is true that those named as the Main plotters – Ralegh, Cobham, Brooke, Lord Grey and Markham – were seething with various grievances. For example, Ralegh had lost his post as Captain of the Guard and felt keenly the ignominy of being ejected from old Durham House, his palatial residence on the Thames. He and Cobham had been excluded from the new privy council, and Ralegh certainly resented the enhanced position of Cecil. The first cast of the plotters was to France for funds, but Henri IV would have nothing to do with them. Next they approached Archduke Albrecht through his London envoy, Charles de Ligne, Comte d’Aremberg. The instruction he received from Brussels was to give a favourable response to the plotters who intended to obtain some 500,000 to 600,000 crowns from the Spanish treasury. This was vital for a maverick like Markham, so much in debt that a warrant was out for his arrest even before the plots. It was Aremberg’s aide, La Rensy, who was spotted by government spies in meetings with Cobham, and when asked about these Ralegh denied all knowledge of them to the privy council. Then he stumbled into an error that made him and Cobham vulnerable to pressure from Cecil. Realizing that Cobham had once left Durham House to visit La Rensy and alarmed that this would have been reported, Ralegh sought to mitigate any inference from it by declaring it himself to Cecil, thus contradicting his previous submission to the privy council.
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This letter had an aggravating effect since it coincided with the confession of George Brooke whose loyalty to the plotters evaporated; there is even the possibility that he was (as it has been claimed) a spy for Cecil. According to Brooke the huge sums of money sought from France and then Spain had been ‘to assist and furnish a secret action for the surprise of his Majesty’ – a somewhat bland version of the intention to kill James and his immediate family.

Ralegh was sent to the Tower and in a trance of bemused anger and dismay seems to have made a half-hearted attempt at suicide. His trial was delayed, but rather by a combination of the plague, the coronation of James late in July and the presence still in England of Aremberg. With a touching regard for established diplomatic proprieties it was felt his intrigues could not be revealed yet and to expel him was too embarrassing. So the trials were stalled until the ambassador quit the country in October. Then all the Bye plotters were condemned by their own confessions after trial in mid-November. Only Sir Edward Parham was acquitted after pleading that he joined solely to rescue the king if his would-be captors got to him. Cecil’s mild intervention on his behalf allowed a rare verdict of not guilty, and so an air of impartiality was given to the proceedings.

The trial of Ralegh was held in Winchester on 17 November; the trials of Cobham and Grey on 25 and 26 November. The town was chosen because James and the court had quit London for Oxford and had finally settled at the Earl of Pembroke’s vast Wilton estate. It was there that some of the foreign ambassadors who had come to present greetings from brother rulers finally got to meet James during the time of the trials. In some measure Ralegh’s imperturbability had returned; a verdict against him was not a certain outcome. His lucidity and spirited ability to blunt the bullying invective of the attorney-general, Edward Coke, made it too difficult for the government to try and succeed in yoking Ralegh to the Bye plot, especially while public interest was high. Nor did they risk placing Cobham beside him to testify, for all he remained the Crown’s only witness. On Cecil’s orders it was Sir Walter Cope, a close associate of the minister, who led the search of Cobham’s house in Blackfriars, looking for incriminating papers and seizing Cobham’s servants. Nor was any spy for the government ever brought into court to testify against any of the accused. The difficulty with Cobham on trial was that he had already retracted earlier testimony and thus gave uncertainty a sharper edge. A public examination of him in such tense circumstances would very likely have rendered his evidence worthless in a confusing voiding of faltering denials from, as Ralegh charitably described him, ‘a poor silly, base, dishonourable soul’. Indeed, as an accused it was Cobham who sought to implicate Lady Arabella, and the charges of complicity certainly required that she should deny such things. In fact she was there, observing and listening from a gallery, and the old Earl of Nottingham, seated beside her, rose to protest that on her hopes of salvation she had never meddled in any such matters. Sir Robert Cecil himself acknowledged that she was not in any way tainted by the plot, and that the letter broaching treason from Cobham she had put before the king. Nottingham as a friend of Ralegh (and father-in-law of Cobham) did venture to suggest that it might serve to bring the two men face to face. However the crown lawyers baulked at this civil notion and Ralegh was condemned as James intended since he had an eye on his fortune.
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When Cobham and Grey were arraigned they too were condemned.

So the government now had a cluster of condemned men to deal with – priests and men of privilege. Clemency to all of them was not proper although Northumberland spoke to James on behalf of Ralegh and Cobham. Nor at the beginning of a reign was it suitable to have too much blood being shed. From his cell William Watson did send out an appeal, but it was not, as might have been expected, to the Catholic Earl of Worcester. Instead he wrote to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, because he knew how taken James was with the young man and he hoped the letter would be passed directly to the king.
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But on 29 November, the day the Venetian embassy made their farewells to James, both priests were executed and were ‘very bloodily handled’; neither claimed to be repentant in the manner that had become customary. As for George Brooke – he seems to have been the butt of a bitter little joke when executed. Sir John Harington, a friend of Cecil’s, had told the Secretary that Brooke blamed him (Cecil) for his failure to become Master of the Hospital of St Cross in Winchester, and it was opposite this building that the execution took place. Writing to John Chamberlain, Dudley Carleton noted that when the executioner held up the severed head with the cry of ‘God save the King’, no one but the sheriff responded with the echoing cry.
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So no applause, only silence for the removal of one of those who straddled the Bye and Main plots. Cobham, Grey and Ralegh remained, as did the lesser figure of Sir Griffin Markham, and on a day of atrocious weather a little after the execution of Brooke, it was Markham who was first escorted to the scaffold. The battle-scarred veteran was restless and declamatory, evidently expecting a last minute reprieve. It began to look as if that would come too late and though he regained some composure he had no last words prepared. The sheriff therefore halted proceedings and Markham was granted two hours in the great hall of the castle.