Part 4 (1/2)
Whynniard, it may be observed, had, on March 24, 1602, been appointed, in conjunction with his son, Keeper of the Old Palace,[140] so that the block of buildings concerned, which is within the Old Palace, may very well have been his official residence.
Let us now cast our eyes on the plan on p. 81. We find there a long division of the building running between the wall of the House of Lords and the back wall of the remainder of the block. It certainly looks as if this must have been the house, or division of a house, belonging to Parliament, and this probability is turned into something like certainty by the two views that now follow, taken from the _Crace Collection_; Views, Portfolio xv., Nos. 18, 26.
It will be seen that the first of these two views, taken in 1804 (p.
88), shows us a large mullioned window, inside which must have been a room of some considerable length to require so large an opening to admit light, as its breadth must evidently have been limited. Such a room would be out of place in the rambling building we have been examining, but by no means out of place as a chamber or gallery connected with the House of Lords, and capable of serving as a place of meeting for the Commissioners appointed to consider a scheme of union with Scotland. A glance at the view on page 89, which was taken in 1807, when the wall of the House of Lords was being laid bare by the demolition of the houses ab.u.t.ting on it, shows two apertures, a window with a Gothic arch, and an opening with a square head, which may very well have served as a door, whilst the window may have been blocked up. If such a connection with the House of Lords can be established, there seems no reason to doubt that we have the withdrawing room fixed beyond doubt. Father Gerard mentions an old print representing 'the two Houses a.s.sembled in the presence of Queen Elizabeth,' and having 'windows on both sides.'[141]
Such a print can only refer to a time before the mullioned chamber was in existence, and therefore--unless this print, like a subsequent one, was a mere copy of an earlier one still--we have fair evidence that the large room was not in existence in some year in the reign of Elizabeth, whilst the plan at p. 80 shows that it was in existence in 1685. That it was there in 1605 is not, indeed, to be proved by other evidence than that it manifestly supplies us with the withdrawing room for the Lords and for the Commissioners for the Union of which we hear so much.
[Ill.u.s.tration: EAST END OF THE PRINCE'S CHAMBER.
Published July 1, 1804, by J. T. Smith.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEWS OF THE EAST SIDE OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS, THE EAST END OF THE PRINCE'S CHAMBER, &C. TAKEN OCTOBER 8, 1807.
N.B. From the doorway out of which a man is peeping, nearly in the centre of the print, Guy Fawkes was to have made his escape. Published Nov. 4, 1807, by J. T. Smith.]
That in the early part of the nineteenth century the storey beneath this room was occupied by a pa.s.sage leading from the court opening on Parliament Place, and Cotton Garden, is shown in the plan at p. 81; and the views at pp. 88, 89, rather indicate that that pa.s.sage was in existence when the old house, which I call Whynniard's block, was still undemolished. If this was so, we are able to find a place for the 'little entry,' under which, according to Winter, the conspirators worked. This view of the case, too, is borne out by Smith's statement, that 'in the further end of that court,' _i.e._ the court running up from Parliament Place, 'is a doorway, through which, and turning to the left through another doorway, is the immediate way out of the cellar where the powder-plot was intended to take effect.'[142] It seems likely that the whole long s.p.a.ce under the withdrawing room was used as a pa.s.sage, though, on the other hand, the part of what was afterwards a pa.s.sage may have been blocked by a room, in which case we have the 'low room new builded'--_i.e._ built in some year in Elizabeth's reign--in which the powder was stored.
Having thus fixed the position of the house belonging to Parliament, and shown that it probably consisted of a long room in one storey, we can hardly fail to discover the second house as that marked B in the plan on p. 81, since that house alone combines the conditions of being close to the House of Lords, and having a door and window looking towards the river.
According to Father Gerard, however, the premises occupied by Percy were far too small to make this explanation permissible.
”We learn,” he says, ”on the unimpeachable evidence of Mrs.
Whynniard's servant that the house afforded accommodation only for one person at a time, so that when Percy came there to spend the night, Fawkes, who pa.s.sed for his man, had to lodge out. This suggests another question. Percy's pretext for laying in so much fuel was that he meant to bring up his wife to live there. But how could this be under such conditions?”[143]
Mrs. Whynniard's servant, however, Roger James, did not use the words here put into his mouth. He said that he had heard from Mrs. Gibbons 'that Mr. Percy hath lain in the said lodging divers times himself, but when he lay there, his man lay abroad, there being but one bed in the said lodging.'
Fawkes, therefore, lodged out when his master came, not because there was not a second room in the house, but because there was only one bed.
If Mrs. Percy arrived alone she would probably find one bed sufficient for herself and her husband. If she brought any maidservants with her, beds could be provided for them without much difficulty. Is it not likely that the plan of sending Fawkes out to sleep was contrived with the object of persuading the Whynniards that as matters stood no more than one person could occupy the house at night, and of thus putting them off the scent, at the time when the miners were congregated in it?
A more serious problem is presented by Father Gerard's inquiry 'how proceedings so remarkable' as the digging of the mine could have escaped the notice, not only of the Government, but of the entire neighbourhood.
”This,” he continues, ”it must be remembered, was most populous.
There were people living in the very building a part of which sheltered the conspirators. Around were thickly cl.u.s.tered the dwellings of the Keeper of the Wardrobe, auditors and tellers of the Exchequer, and other such officials. There were tradespeople and workmen constantly employed close to the spot where the work was going on; while the public character of the place makes it impossible to suppose that tenants such as Percy and his friends, who were little better than lodgers, could claim the exclusive use of anything beyond the rooms they rented--even when allowed the use of them--or could shut against the neighbours and visitors in general the precincts of so frequented a spot.”[144]
To this is added the following footnote:--
”The buildings of the dissolved College of St. Stephen, comprising those around the House of Lords, were granted by Edward VI. to Sir Ralph Lane. They reverted to the Crown under Elizabeth, and were appropriated as residences for the auditors and tellers of the Exchequer. The locality became so populous that in 1606 it was forbidden to erect more houses.”
This statement is reinforced by a conjectural view of the neighbourhood founded on the 'best authorities' by Mr. H. W. Brewer.[145] Mr. Brewer who has since kindly examined with me the drawings and plans in the Crace Collection, on which I rely, has, I think, been misled by those early semi-pictorial maps, which, though they may be relied on for larger buildings, such as the House of Lords or St. Stephen's Chapel, are very imaginative in their treatment of private houses. In any case I deny the existence of the two large houses placed by him between what I infer to have been Whynniard's house and the river side.
The history of the land between the wall of the old palace on which stood the river front of Whynniard's house, and the bank of the Thames, can be traced with tolerable accuracy. It formed part of a larger estate, formerly the property of the dissolved chapel of St. Stephen, granted by Edward VI. to Sir Ralph Fane;[146] Father Gerard's Sir Ralph Lane being a misprint or a mistake. Fane, however, was hanged shortly afterwards, and the estate, reverting to the Crown, was re-granted to Sir John Gates.[147] Again reverting to the Crown, it was dealt with in separate portions, and the part on which the Exchequer officers'
residences was built was to the north of Cotton Garden, and being quite out of earshot of Whynniard's house, need not concern us here. In 1588, the Queen granted to John Whynniard, then an officer of the Wardrobe, a lease of several parcels of ground for thirty years.[148] Some of these were near Whitehall, others to the south of Parliament Stairs. The only one which concerns us is a piece of land lying between the wall of the Old Palace, on which the river-front of Whynniard's house was built, and the Thames. In 1600 the reversion was granted to two men named Evershed and Holland, who immediately sold it to Whynniard, thus const.i.tuting him the owner of the land in perpetuity. In the deed conveying it to him, this portion is styled:--
”All that piece of waste land lying there right against the said piece, and lieth and is without the said stone wall, that is to say between the said pa.s.sage or entry of the said Parliament House[149]
on the north part, and ab.u.t.teth upon the said stone wall which compa.s.seth the said Old Palace towards the West, and upon the Thames aforesaid towards the East, and continueth at length between the pa.s.sage aforesaid and the sluice coming from the said Parliament House, seventy-five foot.”[150]
On this piece of waste land I place the garden mentioned in connection with the house rented by Percy. This is far more probable than it was where Mr. Brewer has placed it, in the narrow court which leads from Parliament Place to the other side of Percy's house, and ends by the side of the Prince's Chamber. If this arrangement be accepted, it gets rid of the alleged populousness of neighbourhood. No doubt people flocked up and down from Parliament Stairs, but they would be excluded from the garden on the river side, and with few exceptions would pa.s.s on without turning to the right into the court. n.o.body who had not business with Percy himself or with his neighbour on the south[151] would be likely to approach Percy's door. As far as that side of the house was concerned, it would be difficult to find a more secluded dwelling. The Thames was then the 'silent highway' of London, and the sight of a barge unloading before the back door of a house can have been no more surprising than the sight of a gondola moored to the steps of a palace on a ca.n.a.l in Venice. John Shepherd, for instance, was not startled by the sight:--
Memorandum that John Shepherd servant to the said Mr. Whynniard, saith that the fourth of September last being Wednesday before the Queen's Majesty removed from Windsor to Hampton Court,[152] he being taken suddenly sick, and therefore sent away to London, and coming late to lie at the Queen's Bridge,[153] the tide being high, he saw a boat lie close by the pale of Sir Thomas Parry's garden[154] and men going to and fro the water through the back door that leadeth into Mr. Percy's lodging, which he doth now bethink himself of, though then, being sick and late, he did not regard it.[155]