Part 5 (1/2)
Without perceiving it, Father Gerard proceeds to dispose of the objection he had raised.
”In some notes of Sir E. c.o.ke, it is said 'The powder was first brought into Percy's house, and lay there in a low room new built, and could not have been conveyed into the cellar but that all the street must have seen it; and therefore he caused a new door out of his house into the cellar to be made, where before there had been a grate of iron.”[181]
To Father Gerard this 'looks very like an afterthought.' Considering, however, that every word except the part about the grating is based on evidence which has reached us, it looks to me very like the truth. It is, indeed, useless to attempt to reconcile the position of the doors opening out of the 'cellar' apparently indicated on Capon's plan (p. 80) with those given in Smith's views (p. 109) of the four walls taken from the inside of the cellar, and I therefore conclude that the apertures shown in the former are really those of the House of Lords on the upper storey, a conjecture which is supported by the insertion of a flight of steps, which would lead nowhere if the whole plan was intended to record merely the features of the lower level. In any case, Smith's ill.u.s.tration shows three entrances--one through the north wall which I have marked A, another with a triangular head near the north end of the east wall marked B, and a third with a square head near the south end of the same wall marked C. The first of these would naturally be used by Mrs. Skinner, as it opened on a pa.s.sage leading westwards, and we know that she lived in King Street; the second would be used by Whynniard, whilst, either he or some predecessor might very well have put up a grating at the third to keep out thieves. That third aperture was, however, just opposite Percy's house, and when he hired Mrs. Skinner's part of the 'cellar,' he would necessarily wish to have it open and a door subst.i.tuted for the grating. There was no question of knocking about the walls of a royal palace in the matter. If he had not that door opened he must either use Whynniard's, of which Whynniard presumably wished to keep the key, or go round by Parliament Place to reach the one hitherto used by Mrs. Skinner. It is true that, if the north door was really the one used by Mrs. Skinner, it necessitates the conclusion that there was no insurmountable barrier between Whynniard's part of the cellar, and that afterwards used by Percy. Moreover, it is almost certainly shown that this was the case by the ease with which the searchers got into Percy's part of the cellar on the night of November 4th, though entering by another door. In this case the conspirators must have been content with the strong probability that whenever their landlord came into his end of the 'cellar,' he would not come further to pull about the pile of wood with which their powder barrels were covered. On the other hand, the entrances knocked in blocked-up arches may not have been the same in 1605 and in 1807. At all events, the square-headed aperture in Smith's view agrees so well with that in the view at p. 89, that it can be accepted without doubt as the one in which Percy's new door was subst.i.tuted for a grating, and which led out of the covered pa.s.sage opening from the court leading from Parliament Place.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Four walls of the so-called cellar under the House of Lords. From Smith's _Antiquities of Westminster_, p. 39.]
Though it is possible that Whynniard might, if he chose, come into the plotters' 'cellar,' we are under no compulsion to accept Father Gerard's a.s.sertion that Winter declared 'that the confederates so arranged as to leave the cellar free for all to enter who would.'[182] ”It is stated,”
writes Father Gerard, in another place, ”in Winter's long declaration on this subject, that the barrels were thus completely hidden 'because we might have the house free to suffer anyone to enter that would,' and we find it mentioned by various writers, subsequently, that free ingress was actually allowed to the public.”[183] As the subsequent writers appear to be an anonymous writer, who wrote on _The Gunpowder Plot_ under the pseudonym of L., in 1805, and Hugh F. Martyndale, who wrote _A Familiar a.n.a.lysis of the Calendar of the Church of England_ in 1830, I am unable to take them very seriously. The extraordinary thing is that Father Gerard does not see that his quotation from Winter is fatal to his argument. Winter says that Fawkes covered the powder in the cellar 'because we might have the house free to suffer anyone to enter that would.[184] The cellar was not part of the house; and, although the words are not entirely free from ambiguity, the more reasonable interpretation is that Fawkes disposed of the powder in the cellar, in order that visitors might be freely admitted into the house. Winter, in fact, makes no direct statement that the powder was moved, and it is therefore fair to take this removal as included in what he says about the f.a.ggots.
As for the quant.i.ty of the gunpowder used, the opinion of the writer discussed in the _Edinburgh Review_ (January, 1897), appears reasonable enough:--
”Apart from the hearsay reports, Father Gerard seems to base his computations on the statement that a barrel of gunpowder contained 400 pounds. This is an error. The barrel of gunpowder contained 100 pounds;[185] the last, which is rightly given at 2,400 pounds, contained twenty-four barrels. The quant.i.ty of powder stored in the cellar is repeatedly said, both in the depositions and the indictment to have been thirty-six barrels--that is, a last and a half, or about one ton twelve hundredweight; and this agrees very exactly with the valuation of the powder at 200_l._ In 1588, the cost of a barrel of 100 pounds was 5_l._ But to carry, and move, and stow, a ton and a half in small portable barrels is a very different thing from the task on which Father Gerard dwells of moving and hiding, not only the large barrels of 400 pounds, but also the hogsheads that were spoken of.”[186]
I will merely add that Father Gerard's surprise that the disposal of so large a ma.s.s of powder is not to be traced is the less justifiable, as the Ordnance accounts of the stores in the Tower have been very irregularly preserved, those for the years with which we are concerned being missing.
Having thus, I hope, shown that the traditional account of the mine and the cellar are consistent with the doc.u.mentary and structural evidence, I pa.s.s to the question of the accuracy of the alleged discovery of the conspiracy.
CHAPTER V
THE DISCOVERY
In one way the evidence on the discovery of the plot differs from that on the plot itself. The latter is straightforward and simple, its discrepancies, where there are any, being reducible to the varying amount of the knowledge of the Government. The same cannot be said of the evidence relating to the mode in which the plot was discovered. If we accept the traditional story that its discovery was owing to the extraordinary letter brought to Monteagle at Hoxton, there are disturbing elements in the case. In the first place, the Commissioners would probably wish to conceal any mystery connected with the delivery of the letter, if it were only for the sake of Monteagle, to whom they owed so much; and, in the second place, when they had once committed themselves to the theory that the King had discovered the sense of the letter by a sort of Divine inspiration, there could not fail to be a certain amount of shuffling to make this view square with the actual facts. Other causes of hesitancy to set forth the full truth there may have been, but these two were undeniably there.
Father Gerard, however, bars the way to the immediate discussion of these points by a theory which he has indeed adopted from others, but which he has made his own by the fulness with which he has treated it.
He holds that Salisbury knew of the plot long before the incident of the letter occurred, a view which is by no means inconsistent with the belief that the plot itself was genuine, and, it may be added, is far less injurious to Salisbury's character than the supposition that he had either partially or wholly invented the plot itself. If the latter charge could have been sustained Salisbury would have to be ranked amongst the most infamous ministers known to history. If all that can be said of him is that he kept silence longer than we should have expected, we may feel curious as to his motives, or question his prudence, but we shall have no reason to doubt his morality.
Father Gerard, having convinced himself that in all probability the Government, or, at least Salisbury, had long had a secret agent amongst the plotters, fixes his suspicions primarily on Percy. Beginning by an attack on Percy's moral character, he writes as follows:--
”It unfortunately appears that, all the time, this zealous convert was a bigamist, having one wife living in the capital and another in the provinces. When his name was published in connection with the Plot, the magistrates of London arrested the one and those of Warwicks.h.i.+re the other, alike reporting to the secretary what they had done, as may be seen in the State Paper Office.”[187]
The papers in the Public Record Office here referred to prove nothing of the sort. On November 5 Justice Grange writes to Salisbury that Percy had a house in Holborne 'where his wife is at this instant. She saith her husband liveth not with her, but being attendant on the Right Honourable the Earl of Northumberland, liveth and lodgeth as she supposeth with him. She hath not seen him since Midsummer.[188] She liveth very private and teacheth children. I have caused some to watch the house, as also to guard her until your Honour's pleasure be further known.'[189] There is, however, nothing to show that Salisbury did not within a couple of hours direct that she should be set free, as she had evidently nothing to tell; nor is there anything here inconsistent with her having been arrested in Warwicks.h.i.+re on the 12th, especially as she was apprehended in the house of John Wright,[190] her brother. What is more likely than that, when the terrible catastrophe befell the poor woman, she should have travelled down to seek refuge in her brother's house, where she might perchance hear some tidings of her husband? It is adding a new terror to matrimony to suggest that a man is liable to be charged with bigamy because his wife is seen in London one day and in Warwicks.h.i.+re a week afterwards.
The fact probably is that Father Gerard received the suggestion from Goodman, whose belief that Percy was a bigamist rested on information derived from some lady who may very well have been as hardened a gossip as he was himself.[191] His own attempt to bolster up the story by further evidence can hardly be reckoned conclusive.
In any case the question of Percy's morality is quite irrelevant. It is more to the purpose when Father Gerard quotes Goodman as a.s.serting that Percy had been a frequent visitor to Salisbury's house by night.[192]
”Sir Francis Moore,” he tells us, ”... being the lord keeper Egerton's favourite, and having some occasion of business with him at twelve of the clock at night, and going then homeward from York House to the Middle Temple at two, several times he met Mr. Percy, coming out of that great statesman's house, and wondered what his business should be there.”[193]
There are many ways in which the conclusion that Percy went to tell tales may be avoided. In the days of James I., the streets of London were inconceivably dark to the man who at the present day is accustomed to gas and electricity. Not even lanterns were permanently hung out for many a year to come. Except when the moon was s.h.i.+ning, the only light was a lantern carried in the hand, and by the light of either it would be easy to mistake the features of any one coming out from a door way.
Yet even if Moore's evidence be accepted, the inference that Percy betrayed the plot to Salisbury is not by any means a necessary one.
Percy may, as the Edinburgh Reviewer suggests, have been employed by Northumberland. Nor does Father Gerard recognise that it was clearly Percy's business to place his connection with the Court as much in evidence as possible. The more it was known that he was trusted by Northumberland, and even by Salisbury, the less people were likely to ask awkward questions as to his reasons for taking a house at Westminster. In 1654 a Royalist gentleman arriving from the Continent to take part in an insurrection against the Protector, went straight to Cromwell's Court in order to disarm suspicion. Why may not Percy have acted in a similar way in 1605? All that we know of Percy's character militates against the supposition that he was a man to play the dastardly part of an informer.
Other pieces of evidence against Percy may be dismissed with equal a.s.surance. We are told, for instance,[194] that Salisbury found a difficulty in tracing Percy's movements before the day on which Parliament was to have been blown up; whereas, ten days before, the same Percy had received a pa.s.s issued by the Commissioners of the North, as posting to court for the King's especial service. The order, however, is signed, not by the Commissioners of the North as a body, but by two of their number, and was dated at Seaton Delaval in Northumberland.[195]
As Percy's business is known to have been the bringing up the Earl of Northumberland's rents, and he might have pleaded that it was his duty to be in his place as Gentleman Pensioner at the meeting of Parliament, two gentlemen living within hail of Alnwick were likely enough to stretch a point in favour of the servant of the great earl. In any case it was most unlikely that they should have thought it necessary to acquaint the Secretary of State with the terms in which a posting order had been couched.