Part 4 (2/2)

It thus appears that this final supply of powder was carried in at night, and by a way through the garden--not by the more frequented Parliament Stairs.

The story of the mine, no doubt, presents some difficulties which, though by no means insuperable, cannot be solved with absolute certainty without more information than we possess at present. We may, I think, dismiss the suggestion of the Edinburgh Reviewer that the conspirators may have dug straight down instead of making a tunnel, both because even bunglers could hardly have occupied a fortnight in digging a pit a few feet deep, and because their words about reaching the wall at the end of the fortnight would, on this hypothesis, have no meaning. Thomas Winter's statement is that he and his comrades 'wrought under a little entry to the wall of the Parliament House.'[156] The little entry, as I have already argued,[157] must be the covered pa.s.sage under the withdrawing room; a tunnel leading from the cellar of Percy's house would be about seven or eight feet long. The main difficulty at the commencement of the work would be to get through the wall of Percy's house, and this, it may be noticed, neither Fawkes nor Winter speak of, though they are very positive as to the difficulties presented by the wall of the House of Lords. If, indeed, the wall on this side of Percy's house was, as may with great probability be conjectured, built of brick, as the river front undoubtedly was,[158] the difficulty cannot have been great, as I have been informed by Mr. Henry Ward[159] that the brick used in those days was, both from its composition and from the method in which it was dried, far softer than that employed in building at present. We may, therefore, fairly start our miners in the cellar of their own house with a soft brick wall to penetrate, and a tunnel afterwards to construct, having wood ready to prop up the earth, and appropriate implements to carry out their undertaking.[160]

Here, however, Father Gerard waves us back:--

”It is not easy,” he writes, ”to understand how these amateurs contrived to do so much without a catastrophe. To make a tunnel through soft earth is a very delicate operation, replete with unknown difficulties. To sh.o.r.e up the roof and sides there must, moreover, have been required a large quant.i.ty of the 'framed timber'[161] of which Speed tells us, and the provision and importation of this must have been almost as hard to keep dark as the exportation of the earth and stones. A still more critical operation is that of meddling with the foundations of a house--especially of an old and heavy structure--which a professional craftsman would not venture upon except with extreme care, and the employment of many precautions of which these light-hearted adventurers knew nothing. Yet, recklessly breaking their way out of one building, and to a large extent into another, they appear to have occasioned neither crack nor settlement in either.”[162]

I have already dealt with the problem of bringing in articles by night, and of getting through Percy's wall. For the rest, Father Gerard forgets that though six of the seven miners were amateurs, the seventh was not.

Fawkes had been eight years in the service of the Archdukes in the Low Countries, and to soldiers on either side the war in the Low Countries offered the most complete school of military mining then to be found in the world. Though every soldier was not an engineer, he could not fail to be in the way of hearing about, if not of actually witnessing, feats of engineering skill, of which the object was not merely to undermine fortifications with tunnels of far greater length than can have been required by the conspirators, but to conduct the operation as quietly as possible. It must surely have been the habit of these engineers to use other implements than the noisy pick of the modern workman.[163] Fawkes, indeed, speaks of himself merely as a watcher whilst others worked. But he was a modest man, and there can be no reasonable doubt that he directed the operations.

When the main wall was attacked after Christmas the conditions were somewhat altered. The miners, indeed, may still have been able to avoid the use of picks, and to employ drills and crowbars, but some noise they must necessarily have made. Yet the chances of their being overheard were very slight. Having taken the precaution to hire the long withdrawing room and the pa.s.sage or pa.s.sage-room beneath it, the sounds made on the lower part of the main wall could not very well reach the ears of the tenants of the other houses in Whynniard's block. The only question is whether there was any one likely to hear them in the so-called 'cellar' underneath the House of Lords, beneath which, again, they intended to deposit their store of powder. What that chamber was had best be told in Father Gerard's own words:--

”The old House of Lords,”[164] he writes, ”was a chamber occupying the first floor of a building which stood about fifty yards from the left bank of the Thames,[165] to which it was parallel, the stream at this point running about due north. Beneath the Peers'

Chamber on the ground floor was a large room, which plays an important part in our history. This had originally served as the palace kitchen, and, though commonly described as a 'cellar' or a 'vault,' was in reality neither, for it stood on the level of the ground outside, and had a flat ceiling formed by the beams which supported the flooring of the Lords apartment above. It ran beneath the said Peers' Chamber from end to end, and measured seventy-seven feet in length by twenty-four feet four inches in width.

”At either end the building ab.u.t.ted upon another running transversely to it; that on the north being the 'Painted Chamber,'

probably erected by Edward the Confessor, and that on the south the 'Prince's Chamber,' a.s.signed by its architectural features to the reign of Henry III. The former served as a place of conference for Lords and Commons, the latter as the robing-room of the Lords. The royal throne stood at the south end of the House, near the Prince's Chamber.”[166]

According to the story told by Fawkes this place was let to Mrs. Skinner by Whynniard to store her coals in. In an early draft of the narrative usually known as the 'King's Book,'[167] we are told that there was 'some stuff of the King's which lay in part of a cellar under those rooms'--_i.e._ the House of Lords, and 'that Whynniard had let out some part of a room directly under the Parliament chamber to one that used it for a cellar.' This statement is virtually repeated in the 'King's Book'

itself, where Whynniard is said to have stated 'that Thomas Percy had hired both the house and part of the cellar or vault under the same.'[168] That part was so let is highly probable, as the internal length of the old kitchen was about seventy-seven feet, and it would therefore be far too large for the occupation of a single coalmonger. We must thus imagine the so-called vault divided into two portions, probably with a part.i.tion cutting off one from the other. If, therefore, the conspirators restricted their operations to the night-time, there was little danger of their being overheard. There was not much likelihood either that Whynniard would get out of bed to visit the tapestry or whatever the stuff belonging to the King may have been, or that Mrs. Skinner would want to examine her coal-sacks whilst her customers were asleep. The only risk was from some belated visitor coming up the quiet court leading from Parliament Place to make his way to one of the houses in Whynniard's block. Against this, however, the plotters were secured by the watchfulness of Fawkes.

The precautions taken by the conspirators did not render their task easier. It was in the second fortnight, beginning after the middle of January, when the hard work of getting through the strong and broad foundation of the House of Lords tried their muscles and their patience, that they swore in Christopher Wright, and brought over Keyes from Lambeth together with the powder which they now stored in 'a low room new-builded.'[169] After a fortnight's work, reaching to Candlemas (Feb.

2), they had burrowed through about four feet six inches into the wall, after which they again gave over working.[170] Some time in the latter part of March they returned to their operations, but they had scarcely commenced when they found out that it would be possible for them to gain possession of a locality more suited to their wants, and they therefore abandoned the project of the mine as no longer necessary.[171]

Before pa.s.sing from the story of the mine, the more important of Father Gerard's criticisms require an answer. How, he asks, could the conspirators have got rid of such a ma.s.s of earth and stones without exciting attention?[172] Fawkes, indeed, says that 'the day before Christmas having a ma.s.s of earth that came out of the mine, they carried it into the garden of the said house.' Then Goodman declares that he saw it,[173] but, even if we a.s.sume that his memory did not play him false, it is impossible that the whole of the produce of the first fortnight's diggings should be disposed of in this way. The shortest length that can be ascribed to the mine before the wall was reached is eight feet, and if we allow five feet for height and depth we have 200 cubical feet, or a ma.s.s more than six feet every way, besides the stones coming out of the wall after Christmas. Some of the earth may have been, as Fawkes said, spread over the garden beds, but the greater part of it must have been disposed of in some other way. Is it so very difficult to surmise what that was? The nights were long and dark, and the river was very close.

We are further asked to explain how it was that, if there was really a mine, the Government did not find it out for some days after the arrest of Fawkes. Why should they? The only point at which it was accessible was at its entrance in Percy's own cellar, and it is an insult to the sharp wits of the plotters, to suppose that they did not close it up as soon as the project of the mine was abandoned. All that would be needed, if the head of the mine descended, as it probably did, would be the relaying of a couple or so of flagstones. How careful the plotters were of wiping out all traces of their work, is shown by the evidence of Whynniard's servant, Roger James, who says that about Midsummer 1605, Percy, appearing to pay his quarter's rent, 'agreed with one York, a carpenter in Westminster, for the repairing of his lodging,' adding 'that he would send his man to pay the carpenter for the work he was to do.'[174] Either the mine had no existence, or all traces of it must have been effectually removed before a carpenter was allowed to range the house in the absence of both Percy and Fawkes. I must leave it to my readers to decide which alternative they prefer.

According to the usually received story, the conspirators, hearing a rustling above their heads, imagined that their enterprise had been discovered, but having sent Fawkes to ascertain the cause of the noise, they learnt that Mrs. Skinner (afterwards Mrs. Bright) was selling coals, and having also ascertained that she was willing to give up her tenancy to them for a consideration, they applied to Whynniard--from whom the so-called 'cellar' was leased through his wife, and obtained a transfer of the premises to Percy. All that remained was to convey the powder from the house to the 'cellar,' and after covering it with billets and f.a.ggots, to wait quietly till Parliament met.

Father Gerard's first objection to this is, that whilst they were mining, 'ridiculous as is the supposition, the conspirators appear to have been ignorant of the existence of the ”cellar,” and to have fancied that they were working their way immediately beneath the Chamber of Peers.' The supposition would be ridiculous enough if it were not a figment of Father Gerard's own brain. He relies on what he calls 'Barlow's Gunpowder Treason,'[175] published in 1678, and on a remark made by Tierney in 1841, adding that it is 'obviously implied' by Fawkes and Winter. What Fawkes says on November 17 is:--

”As they were working upon the wall, they heard a rus.h.i.+ng in a cellar of removing of coals; whereupon we feared we had been discovered, and they sent me to go to the cellar, who finding that the coals were a selling, and that the cellar was to be let, viewing the commodity thereof for our purpose, Percy went and hired the same for yearly rent.”[176]

What Winter says is that, 'near to Easter ... opportunity was given to hire the cellar, in which we resolved to lay the powder and leave the mine.' What single word is there here about the conspirators thinking that there was no storey intervening between the foundation and the House of Lords? The mere fact of Percy having been in the house close to the pa.s.sage from which there was an opening closed only by a grating into the 'cellar' itself,[177] would negative the impossible supposition. Father Gerard, however, adds that Mrs. Whynniard tells us that the cellar was not to let, and that Bright, _i.e._ Mrs. Skinner, had not the disposal of the lease, but one Skinner, and that Percy 'laboured very earnestly before he succeeded in obtaining it.' What Mrs. Whynniard says is that the cellar had been already let, and that her husband had not the disposal of it. Percy then 'intreated that if he could get Mrs. Skinner's good-will therein, they would then be contented to let him have it, whereto they granted it.'[178] Is not this exactly what one might expect to happen on an application for a lease held by a tenant who proves willing to remove?

Father Gerard proceeds to raise difficulties from the structural nature of the cellar itself. Mr. William Capon, he says, examined the foundations of the House of Lords when it was removed in 1823, and did not discover the hole which the conspirators were alleged to have made.

His own statement, however, printed in the fifth volume of _Vetusta Monumenta_,[179] says nothing about the foundations; and besides, as Father Gerard has shown, he had a totally erroneous theory of the place whence he supposes the conspirators to have had access to the 'cellar.'

Nothing--as I have learnt by experience--is so likely as a false theory to blind the eyes to existing evidence.

Then we have remarks upon the mode of communication between Percy's house and the cellar. Father Gerard tells us that:--

”Fawkes says (November 6th, 1605) that about the middle of Lent[180] of that year, Percy caused 'a new door' to be made into it, that he might have a nearer way out of his own house into the cellar.

”This seems to imply that Percy took the cellar for his firewood when there was no convenient communication between it and his house. Moreover, it is not very easy to understand how a tenant--under such conditions as his--was allowed at discretion to knock doors through the walls of a royal palace. Neither did the landlady say anything of this door-making, when detailing what she knew of Percy's proceedings.”

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