The Gunpowder Plot: Terror & Faith in 1605 (70 page)

Charles Duke of York (the future Charles I) as a child by Robert Peake: unlike his athletic elder brother, Charles was physically frail and only learned to walk at the age of four.

The monuments in Westminster Abbey to two daughters of James I, Mary and Sophia, who died young: Princess Mary, who was born in England in 1605, was considered by some to have a better claim to the throne than her elder siblings born in Scotland.

Arbella Stuart by an unknown artist, 1589: the first cousin of King James, with both Tudor and Stuart blood, but brought up in England, Arbella was a possible contender for the throne.

Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia by Franz Pourbus the Younger,
c.
1599: some Catholics hoped that this Habsburg descendant of John of Gaunt – co-Regent, with her husband, in the Spanish Netherlands – would be backed by military force to succeed to the English throne.

Princess Elizabeth (the future Elizabeth of Bohemia) by Robert Peake: the charm and dignity of this nine-year-old girl, who held a little court in the midlands, encouraged the conspirators to think she might make a suitable puppet Queen.

This engraving shows eight of the thirteen conspirators: missing are Digby, Keyes, Rookwood and Tresham.

Both Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare had connections to Catholics on the periphery of the Gunpowder Plot;
Macbeth
contains allusions to the fate of the ‘equivocating’ Jesuit, Henry Garnet.

Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, by Van Dyck: although Northumberland’s actual involvement in the plot remains controversial, he was fined heavily and sentenced to prolonged imprisonment as a result.

Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, attributed to John de Critz: equipped with a prodigious intellect, and a capacity for hard work, Salisbury was short and physically twisted at a time when the outer man was often thought to be a key to his inner nature.

Sir Everard Digby: the darling of the court for his handsome looks and sweetness of character, Digby’s fate caused universal consternation even among those who condemned him.

Two contrasted signatures by Thomas Wintour: one indubitably his, in the habitual form in which he signed his name; the other, using a different spelling, on his so-called ‘Confession’, possibly forged by the government.